The Bent Railroad Foundation was started in the early months of 1995. A friend and I decided we wanted to make a "zine" dedicated to the underground Birmingham Scene. We wanted to show people, both locally and nationally, that skateboarding, graffiti and music was thriving here despite the bad reputation Birmingham has always maintained.

After some minimal planning, Issue #1 was born. It spotlighted local skateboarding, graffiti and some humurous writings. Now that I look back on it, the first two issues seem lame, but at the same time, very important. Little did I know that Bent would snowball and become more than a B & W cut and paste zine.

As time passed, Issue #3 came around. We decided to do an entire issue devoted to freight train graffiti. We had been watching and photographing trains since 1992. We thought it would be great to have an all freight issue to send out to other writers. Before we knew it, our post office box was full of photos and letters from writers wanting to trade addresses, zines, photos and stories. From there, Bent naturally progressed to Bent Railroad Foundation. Now the zine would be totally devoted to the national underground movement of freight train graffiti rolling across the U.S.A.

As years passed, issues came and went as well as the friend who helped create Bent. He went on to own a skateboard shop and basically keeps the skateboading community alive.

With my friend gone and myself working a full-time job, Bent Rail started slipping from my grasp. It was pretty much dead for the most part. I sat on it for around a year and realized that I needed to keep it going as well as steer it in new direction. I decided that instead of documenting freight train graff in still pictures in a photocopied zine, I would put out a video. We tried numerous times to put out a video in 1996 but failed miserably. Mostly due to a lack of resources, it never got off the ground. Fast foward a few years, I had saved some money and enlisted the help of J. Harbaugh. She had the computer skills and patience to sit down with me and edit Hellbent Volume I. I had also been stockpiling footage from 1995 to present in hopes that I would release a video one day. At the end of 2000, Bent Rail put out Hellbent - The Movie, and I feel I accomplished what I had set out to do.

In 2001, Bent Rail Foundation also started releasing music from Birmingham area bands and this is its main focus to this day.