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Regarding Mike Bogen....a story he shared with me while visiting the Diana the Valkyrie site many years ago, still sticks in my mind. He was fortunate enough to experience many female biceps in his videos, so out of curiosity, I asked him a typical schmoe question. 😁 Who had the hardest biceps he ever felt? His answer surprised me but also made me smile. Sherry Thompson's left biceps he stated, was probably the hardest he ever felt. The reason for my smile...Sherry Thompson has always been my favorite. I assumed Michelle Maroldo but nope...Peak Princess Sherry Thompson.
Regarding Mike Bogen....a story he shared with me while visiting the Diana the Valkyrie site many years ago, still sticks in my mind. He was fortunate enough to experience many female biceps in his videos, so out of curiosity, I asked him a typical schmoe question. 😁 Who had the hardest biceps he ever felt? His answer surprised me but also made me smile. Sherry Thompson's left biceps he stated, was probably the hardest he ever felt. The reason for my smile...Sherry Thompson has always been my favorite. I assumed Michelle Maroldo but nope...Peak Princess Sherry Thompson.
Beautiful biceps !!!
I do think Sean v Beauty is a Beast was real, I’ve arm wrestled her myself she’s no joke
The truth is that Sean has bad wrists and it makes him an awful arm wrestler, but also he doesn’t like doing it much cause it hurts him. So his matches, you’ll see him give up quickly cause he sucks and it hurts lol. But the matches don’t usually look great cause he’s pretty muscular. We mostly use other guys these days.
When I (I’m Mike) was the one doing a lot of the Armwrestling, it was my favorite thing to do with models who were game. I basically spent years learning that these women are mostly really strong. People would ask me if I was trying my hardest and of course I wasn’t trying to go fast and put someone down fast…I liked the slower paced test of strength and tried not to use my height or to get leveraged positions, which I could if I was going for that. As a result, I legitimately lost most of the matches against these muscular women. Now I look back, and I think I was really out of my mind that it kept surprising me that these women could put me down, and sometimes easily.
We just started a site where we will try and get all or most of the old stuff up along with hopefully a lot of new stuff.
Regarding Mike Bogen.....
I had the privilege of being friends with Mike Bogen. He was a real gentlemen, and a huge female bicep enthusiast. He got pretty sick and had a tough time getting around and his energy wasn’t great, but he always got excited talking about the old days being at WPW shoots (he would play victim/schmoe and write articles, but wasn’t one of the principles). Mike was a career sports writer, and his wife was the love of his life. She supported him doing the muscle stuff, and he took care of her when she got sick. He once wrote me a beautiful letter about her, and I’ll never forget it. He continued to follow my “career” and was always supportive. He wanted to write some profiles for HerBiceps, on the new platform, but he just ran out of time.
Back when WPW and the old head Photog’s were advising people to stay away from us internet photographers, Mike Bogen would go out of his way to stand up for us. He joined Boomer and I for meals at shows, and it made us feel like we belonged. I miss both of them.
Enjoyed reading this whole thread. We always loved the idea that some people thought we owned those vegas vacation rentals. The NYMC was fun to do, I even got to promote it briefly on Howard Stern, thanks to Nicole Bass, who was a friend.
I had no idea HerBiceps, which started as a side-piece to tbe NYMC, would be the way I’d make a living for the rest of my adult life (fingers crossed). I got so carried away with it, I punted my budding legal career at a top New York law firm. Good times.
Enjoyed reading this whole thread. We always loved the idea that some people thought we owned those vegas vacation rentals. The NYMC was fun to do, I even got to promote it briefly on Howard Stern, thanks to Nicole Bass, who was a friend.
I had no idea HerBiceps, which started as a side-piece to tbe NYMC, would be the way I’d make a living for the rest of my adult life (fingers crossed). I got so carried away with it, I punted my budding legal career at a top New York law firm. Good times.
At leat fate brought you away from New York and into an honorable profession,Mike! LOL.
Back when WPW and the old head Photog’s were advising people to stay away from us internet photographers, Mike Bogen would go out of his way to stand up for us. He joined Boomer and I for meals at shows, and it made us feel like we belonged. I miss both of them.
Wow Mike. I had no idea that WPW and other established guys tried to block your path to muscle girls. I have to admit, what you got for so little on two hours and 90 minute tapes was incredible, with WPW!!! Of course the old herbiceps site was quite the value in itself. Also, you guys helped launch Lou Krivda and Robby Brand sites. Sorry but the new site, just doesn't live up to the old one yet. 😫
Could you imagine not moving forward in the space and having shelves of long form HB video on VHS or CD lmao even as it was how could anyone explain having a shelf of WPW material next to godfather or Disney movies 💀💀
@fp909...I am one of the oldest guys on this site. I grew up loving female muscle when it was very rare. Can you imagine how my head and possibly other parts exploded, when I discovered WPW and before that, it's infant start ups, W.A.S.P, WSP and WPP. Let's just say I bought enough photo sets and VHS tapes to fill a library. 😂
Wow Mike. I had no idea that WPW and other established guys tried to block your path to muscle girls. I have to admit, what you got for so little on two hours and 90 minute tapes was incredible, with WPW!!! Of course the old herbiceps site was quite the value in itself. Also, you guys helped launch Lou Krivda and Robby Brand sites. Sorry but the new site, just doesn't live up to the old one yet. 😫
Well, people were legit kinda scared of the internet around 1998-2000, in a horror movie kinda way...and digital photography. The biggest question we would get was whether we were going to paste their heads on other people's bodies, photoshop them into porn or some stuff like that. People didn't even know what the internet was back then, a lot of them...including the WPW guys. It was a generational difference as was reflected in their failure to adapt and honestly, just their age. They believed in film, etc etc...and then also they also probably felt like they didn't want to share. It was smaller then. Eventually, it didn't matter...and I didn't take any of it too personally. But Mike Bogen was part of the DtV chatroom, and more online than the guys who were running WPW. It wasn't just those guys, it was trainers and promoters and magazine photogs who didn't know us.
I ended up having very cordial relationships with all of those guys, Steve W, Bill Jentz and especially John N. I wish I could have worked out a deal to buy WPW and their back catalogue, but never really got past the front door with that...I've lost touch with all of them now. We stand on their shoulders, that's for sure.
@Mike...Bill Jentz sent me a very complimentary email one time. He remembered my name, from buying their super early W.A.S.P material and so much more along the way. Thanked me for my continued loyalty and deep interest in muscular women. I remember all of you guys and Mike from DtV as well. Mike was so cool to talk to because he did lots of Ray Mertin style bicep videos. Can't even imagine how incredible it must have been to be able to work with all of those Wonderful women. It would be like going to heaven...without dying. 💪👍
Could you imagine not moving forward in the space and having shelves of long form HB video on VHS or CD lmao even as it was how could anyone explain having a shelf of WPW material next to godfather or Disney movies 💀💀
You’d need a secret chest in the basement.
The first time herbiceps.com appears on archive.org is on 24 May 2002.
The site actually opened for business and took our first sign ups on May 21. 2002. I had opened a yahoo group called HerBiceps first and took polls asking people what they’d want in the site. The NYMC debuted in February of 2002 in a black box rehearsal type theater off 41st and 10th or thereabouts. I had been doing some shooting as “Fistman” and message board hosting as well for DtV. Tre was a full time traveling band of a shooter all over the US for Diana at that time. Boomer was my right hand man and operations guy for the NYMC and early on in HerBiceps. I figured while I had the fbbs in town for the stage show, I should do some shooting with them and HerBiceps would be where I put that stuff along with some of my other shooting, and it would help NYMC with some extra revenue. Long story short, the NYMC was break even and in the first 10 days of HerBiceps, we got 300-400 signups and it kept going for awhile after that. Clearly, the scale of the internet had spoken, and I put most of my time after that into HerBiceps.
As much as I like camming, as it has never been easier to get in touch with women bodybuilders - the next best thing to meeting in real - as much do I miss the days of NYMC. It was either save money and travel in to attend the events, or stick with lo-res sites with lots of written stuff too.
DTV had its legendary board, where some of the known athletes participated. I always enjoyed the conversation room of Lisa Bavington - who acted like a hardcore feminist at the time. Lisa gave some of the folks quite a reality check.
Then there was the site of Lori Braun, femalemuscle.org or something. She had a chatroom open, quite the predecessor of modern age online meetings. Must have been around the mid 90s, I was still at university and - due to the time difference - sometimes spent the night in the only computer room open all night, feeding myself from what was in the food vending machine.
Then came FTV with its cam, and not long after HBC, which I stick to until today.
If I had the money back then, I would have travelled into NY from Europe. Now I have the money, but NYMC does not exist any longer.
Where is the time machine when you need one ....
Not that I’m asking about the secret sauce but what was a wild subscriber peak on the old site? And who were some notables that were really driving memberships up?
We don't really talk overall membership specifics, but Cindy Phillips, Britt Miller, Sarah Dunlap, Mindi O'Brien, and Steph Park were some of the early needle-movers. I think 2006-07 may be have been the peak period for memberships, which would have been around the time that HBC began gaining momentum. These days, it seems most members are interested in our variety and volume. Back then, there was no Instagram. With almost every model having her own Instagram or other platform now, many of our customers already have some familiarity with many of the women featured on the site.
As much as I like camming, as it has never been easier to get in touch with women bodybuilders - the next best thing to meeting in real - as much do I miss the days of NYMC. It was either save money and travel in to attend the events, or stick with lo-res sites with lots of written stuff too.
DTV had its legendary board, where some of the known athletes participated. I always enjoyed the conversation room of Lisa Bavington - who acted like a hardcore feminist at the time. Lisa gave some of the folks quite a reality check.
Then there was the site of Lori Braun, femalemuscle.org or something. She had a chatroom open, quite the predecessor of modern age online meetings. Must have been around the mid 90s, I was still at university and - due to the time difference - sometimes spent the night in the only computer room open all night, feeding myself from what was in the food vending machine.
Then came FTV with its cam, and not long after HBC, which I stick to until today.
If I had the money back then, I would have travelled into NY from Europe. Now I have the money, but NYMC does not exist any longer.
Where is the time machine when you need one ....
Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane and for your longtime support!
Yes, Lisa was smart, funny, and took this whole bodybuilding thing very seriously. She was not into being an element of some group's fantasy.
That makes sense. Pretty rare bavk then for someone to host their own site (Jodi Miller, I remember, and maybe one or two were hosting geocities or aol homepages lmao) but there was basically nothing except the shooters. Now they can post their own stuff though given how social media is it tends to be over filtered, over edited, relying too much on angles for perspective at times. I appreciate that HB has, for example, given us shoulder height videos of the women so that their biceps aren’t under or over exaggerated.
All those women were great. I remember the big Cindy Phillips talk on the old boards. In particular I remember her counting video, which is one of my faves of all time of any video
Are you referring to Mike Bogen?