FastDates.com - 1994 Fast Dates Racebike Calendar Gallery

1994 Fast Dates Racing Motorcycles and Swimsuit Model Calendar
Fast Dates features a 16-month look at the world's top American V-Twin and custom bikes together with sexy centerfold models in revealing lingerie, photographed by Jim Gianatsis.

This was our 4nd edition of the then, Mikuni Calendar featuring some of the world's top racing motorcycle using Mikuni Carburetors.

The 1994 edition marks the first time the Calendars expanded from 6 to 8 sheets / 12 to 16 pages with each month of the new year getting its own picture, plus a page featuring the outgoing months of September - December 1993 and a Credits page.

1994 also the year of an expanded budget for the Mikuni Calendars which now were now really taking off in sales and selling world-wide.
This expanded budget allowed us the luxury of hiring a different model and spending a day going on location for each bike shoot.

The bikes themselves now became the top racing motorcycles in the world, most of them running Mikuni carburetors. Though fuel injection was starting to make its emergence on roadracing bikes like Doug Polen's World Superbike Championship wining 1991-1992 Ducati 888 Superbike.

One of the most significant Championship bikes feature this year was the Team Marlboro Roberts factory Yamaha YZR500 which Wayne Rainey used to win the 1991 World 500cc Grand Prix Championship. Wayne would repeat his title again on a similar model Yamaha in 1992, then tragically his racing career ended in 1993 with his crash a Misano which left him wheelchair bound.

The American Yamaha Racing Department actually dropped Wayne's World Championship winning YZR at our photo studio where it sat about for 2 weeks. We can tell you now, years later, one day we were bored and curious, and actually pulled the bike apart, measured it and looked into the engine.

It was a hand built, sand cast prototype like any GP bike, and even had very trick Mikuni magnesium racing carburetors unlike we had ever seen before, designed specifically for the V-4 2-stroke engine. But technology was pretty straight forward with cylinder porting and the use of power valves and reed valves similar to current production motocross bikes.

Our beautiful model for the Rainey Yamaha shot was beautiful 19 year old Ginger Switzer who we photographed with the bike, first in our LA studio, then we loaded up the million dollar bike in the back of a ratty old pickup truck and drove them up to the legendry Rock Store on Mulholand Highway in Agoura, CA. There at the Rock Store we posed the YZR500 and Ginger in front of the Rock Store's famous gas pumps and had her pretend to be your not so typical service station attendant filling the bike up. This is one of our favorite, most famous, and best recognized Fast Dates Calendar photos ever!

Other winning bikes in this year's Calendar include the Team Hammer Valvoline National Endurance Championship winner Suzuki GSXR100. Scott Russell's 1992 AMA National Championship and 1993 World Superbike Championship winning Muzzy ZX7R Kawasaki. Two Brothers Racing Honda VFR750 Superbike photographed at the Queen Mary in Long Beach,CA, where we would return 8 years later as the new location venue for our annual LA Calendar Motorcycle Show Weekend. And AMA National Dirt track Champion Chris Carr's Harley-Davidson XR750.

The celebrity models in this Calendar included Playboy Playmate Tawni Cable, Playboy Special Editions' model Sandra Wild, Penthouse Pet Seana Ryan, actress Deprise Brescia.

And sadly it would be one of our last shoots with good friend, beautiful model and LA Raiders Cheerleader Linda Sobeck, who would be murdered and abused by a another photographer during a photo shoot in the nearby Angeles Forest Mountains then buried. The search for missing Linda and her murderer would grab national headlines for weeks until it was resolved.

Each picture tells a thousand stories if they could talk, and if I had the time and space to tell them all.- Jim Gianatsis