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Published in The Seattle Times online on May 8, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on May 11, 2025

Site for 1979 Rainier ad, conceived by students, is rural no more

By Clay Eals

It’s what I call an all-too-common Northwest reality: One of our region’s best-remembered idyllic landscapes is now a vast housing development.

This rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway, once was a narrow, two-lane curve flanked only by backwoods, meadows and aging wooden fence posts.

Long-timers know it as the setting for a 30-second commercial first aired in 1979, in which a solitary motorcycle sweeps by, heading in pre-sunset magic light toward a glowing Mount Rainier. Besides crickets, the ad’s only sound is the bike’s overdubbed, seemingly changing gears: “Raaaaiiiii-neeeerrrr-Beeeeerrrrrr.”

It could be the most talked-about local TV spot ever. Its saga — and that of other hilarious Rainier commercials, including super-sized “wild” beer bottles “hunted” by actor Mickey Rooney — is told in an irresistible two-hour documentary, “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey.” It debuted at the 2024 Seattle International Film Festival and has had several later runs.

Where did the motorcycle idea come from? Not Rainier or its ad agency. Many insisted to the documentary’s director, Isaac Olsen, that they knew someone who dreamed it up. But they offered no proof, so the doc skirted the question.

After I saw the film last May, I informed Olsen that I happened to write a 1979 story for the Oregonian newspaper about two Eugene high-school students who sent in the idea in 1976 and were paid $500.

That evidence helped Olsen locate the true originators: Brian Nyjordet, a Poulsbo carpenter, and Jack Inglis, a Portland coffee-wine bar proprietor. Olsen plans to feature them in a sequel focusing on the motorcycle spot.

Nyjordet (who conceived the idea after seeing the sketch-parody movie “The Groove Tube”) and Inglis (who captured it in a storyboard and handled communication) remain thrilled that Rainier embraced their basic concept and executed it at a perfect location.

Of course, the mountain’s still there. So are the two lanes, wider and still divided by a double-yellow line, but surrounded by (no typo) 350 one- and two-floor suburban homes built over the past 10 years, with high perimeter fences, gravel berms, tree saplings, trimmed grass and shrubs, tiny pink marker flags, speed-limit and street signs, fire hydrants, a stormwater facility and a streetlamp.

Typically whizzing along the gradual turn is a sporadic stream of sizable cars, trucks and the occasional motorcycle. Many flout the posted 35-mph limit, slowing only to turn onto side streets.

Posted blue and orange placards promote “Up to 6 Bedroom Homes,” “Up to 5 Car Garages” and, naturally, “Mountain Views.”

But during breaks in traffic, you can still hear an intermittent cricket.

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Dave Lamar, Brian & Joele Nyjordet, Jack Inglis, Bobbi Lee Betschart (of the Elk Run development) and especially Isaac Olsen for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Here is a June 11, 2025 story on Brian Nyjordet and the famed motorcycle commercial, by Mike De Felice of the Kitsap Daily Sun. And click here and here to download pdf files of Mike’s story and photos as they appeared in the Port Orchard Independent and North Kitsap Sun.

Below, you also will find 4 more videos, 3 additional photos and 5 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources, all of which were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(Above) The Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial filmed in 1978 is re-created April 5, 2025, at the same spot, with motorcyclist Dave Lamar of Tacoma doing the honors. The rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, is where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway. Here are three versions. (Clay Eals)

(Above) The classic Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial filmed in 1978 is re-created April 5, 2025, at the same spot, with three different nameless motorcyclists doing the honors. The rural Pierce County site, one hour’s drive southeast of Seattle, is where 230th Avenue East becomes Buckley Tapps Highway. Here are three versions. (Clay Eals)

(Above) Here is the original 1979 Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial, embedded in a trailer for the documentary “Rainier: A Beer Odyssey.” The trailer includes sound effects from a previous “frog” commercial.

(Above) Brian Nyjordet, of Poulsbo, reflects on how he came up with the idea for the classic Rainier Beer motorcycle commercial that was filmed in 1978 and first aired in 1979. He is standing on April 5, 2025, at the site the commercial was filmed. (Clay Eals)