Like most cyclists, I am a dork. And like most dorky Americans, in addition to bicycles I also have a soft spot for British humor. (I was one of those people who would describe Monty Python skits in detail as you grinned politely and backed away slowly.) For this reason, I was very pleased to discover via the Twitter a new British humorist by the name of Andrew Grimes, whose recent "Why the bicycle has no place on our city roads" is as fine a piece of absurdist comedy as any I've encountered:
This column is a tidy little English garden of Dumbassery, and I can only assume that the newspaper in which it appeared needed a sudden infusion of website visits an therefore put their best "troll" on the job.

Meanwhile, moving from comedy (unintentional or otherwise) to drama (unintentionally comedic or otherwise), and from Britain to British Columbia, I recently came across the trailer for an upcoming series called "To Catch A Bike Thief:"


In it, some enterprising vigilantes employ GPS-enabled bicycles to track down bike thieves. I don't know what they actually do with the thieves when they catch them, but this is Canada, so I'm assuming they then administer a severe scolding. (This is colloquially known as a "Canadian beatdown.") And even though the show has yet to premiere, there's already a dumbed-down American version, which you can view here in its entirety:



Amazingly, they managed not to run down any pedestrians or cyclists while in pursuit, though to all appearances they did their best. Ah, America: Where countless vehicular wrongs inside of a one-minute period apparently do make a right.
And with that, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz. As always, study the item, think, and click on your answer. If you're right you'll be pleased, and if you're wrong you'll see the next hipster bike.
Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and watch out for reckless "duders" chasing bike thieves.


--Wildcat Rock Machine





1) Which came first, the Ghost Bike or the ghost bike?
--The Ghost Bike--The ghost bike





(36ers are like sooo 2010.)
2) The hot new mountain bike wheel size is apparently:
--29-inch--650b--700c--π




3) This pendulous product is called the:

--The "Low Hanger"--The "Saddle Yabby"
--The "Safe One"
--The "Saddle Nad"




4) What is this?
--A folding Darth Vader mask--A folding helmet--A folding saddle--The revolutionary new pocket-sized nano-Brompton complete bicycle





5) Sure, why not? $7,500 for:
--Miniature bikes--Glow-in-the-dark wheels--Pedals that speak your cadence--An all-crabon 14-speed solar electric road bike groupset




(The scene in downtown Portland on the night of the confiscation.)
6) In a momentous occasion for freedom and democracy, which beloved Portland institution was recently returned to its rightful owner after being confiscated by police?
--The SpinMyWheels DJ Bike--The CrankMyChain Disco Trike--The SuqMyBallz Hip Hop Unicycle--The CombMyBeard Recumbent Bicycle Lending Library and Mobile Book Club




7) This book contains:
--English words--Steamy tales of erotica--Some sort of homemade cigarette--All of the above



***Special Medical-Themed Bonus Question***

(Diner perusing the menu at "X-Ray's," a popular chain of medical-themed restaurants.)
Doctor's orders! No more:
--"Fixie bikes"
--"Upright bikes"--"Unicycle bikes"--"Visits to Coxsackie"

Further to yesterday's post, in which I mentioned Ghost Bikes and ghost bikes, a number of commenters were kind enough to inform me that Ghost Bikes have been around since 1993, while ghost bike memorials began in 2003:


I suppose I might have learned this had I spend the requisite four and a half seconds checking dates via a popular search engine, but as I always say, I didn't get into the semi-professional bike blogging racket to "work." So why did I get into it then? Well, for the strange care packages, of course. (The dissemination of misinformation is merely a bonus.) In fact, here's a particularly strange care package I received recently:

At first glance this appeared to be simply a United Airlines toiletry kit of some kind, but when I opened it I discovered that it was in fact a clown car of weirdness:
The morbid rubber mask and unicycle brochure were disconcerting enough:

But it was the juxtaposition of the dreidel, the Iron Maiden badge, and the photo of a kid with holes punched through his eyes that really made me shiver:

At this point in the unpacking process I paused briefly to change the locks on my front door and adopt a pit bull. (I call him Cuddles. He has cigarette burns on his face, testicles the size of Fuji apples, and he's really angry). Then, I returned to the package and flipped open the smutty paperback as Cuddles sat by my front door alternately growling and licking his apples:
Only to find a secret vaginal-shaped cutout containing a fragrant object:
If you're wondering how all this made me feel, "freaked the fuck out" is probably the best way to describe it. You know a package is creepy when a parcel from All Hail The Black Market seems reassuring by comparison:
I haven't been this scared of my mailbox since I was a high school senior applying to college. (You don't know rejection until you've been denied admission by a SUNY; it's like being told you don't have what it takes to own a Scattante.)
Anyway, all of this is to say that I simply don't have time for tasks as onerous as fact-checking. Also, part of the problem is simple cultural misunderstanding. See, Ghost Bikes is a German company, and at least some of the commenters who corrected me appeared to be from Germany (or at least from Europe). Given this, I suppose they could be excused for expecting accuracy. However, that's just not how we do things here in Canada's apple sack. No, what we do is formulate an opinion, declare it to be truth, and then alter the facts accordingly. Consider this video from commenter "CE:"



Having been to Amsterdam with my family recently I can confirm that what Bill O'Reilly is saying is insane. Indeed, visiting Amsterdam and traveling there by bike was easily one of our best family experiences to date. It's pretty sad that you have to leave America in order to feel safe going on a bike ride with your kid (or even by yourself for that matter). The simple fact is that you have not seen pleasure on the face of a child until you have seen one inside a "bake feets" on an Amsterdam cycle path. Really, it's second only to the look of joy they get while visiting a legal prostitute, or taking a big hit of cannabis at one of the many coffee shops.
Interestingly though, if you take the Fox News video and substitute the word "Amsterdam" with the words "Las Vegas," then it does become totally accurate.
Speaking of America, during my "high-8-us" last week I received a very important press release:
Herndon, Va., January 26, 2012― At the Washington Auto Show today, Volkswagen of America, Inc. (VWoA) and the Bikes Belong Foundation, the nation’s leading advocacy organization for biking, announced a new two-year partnership to help develop biking-friendly communities, foster healthy lifestyles and create a cleaner environment. VWoA will donate vehicles and funding to support three core Bikes Belong advocacy and urban planning initiatives: Peopleforbikes.org, Safe Routes to School National Partnership (SRTSNP) and Bicycling Design Best Practices.
Awww, isn't that cute? Here comes a car company to finally lend cycling some legitimacy! Doesn't this make you feel better about yourself? Doesn't the Volkswagen logo look great next to the Bikes Belong logo? Doesn't the irony make you feel all tingly inside, like you just opened a United Airlines bag full of psychotic bric--à-brac, or like seeing Jim Perdue in one of those sexy naked PETA ads? Really, this is what American-style "biking" is all about: putting your hybrid bike on the trunk rack of your $45,000 Touareg TDI (it's environmentally friendly, you know), driving to the nearest recreational path, and then riding for 20 minutes in sweatpants around the local reservoir just like LeBron James.
Of course, cycling is a little more sophisticated in the larger American cities like New York, where instead of driving our bikes to the bike path we prefer to salmon into each other:

horrible biker on Tompkins - w4m - 24 (Tompkins in Brooklyn)Date: 2012-02-01, 11:10PM ESTReply to:
i just need to say a feeeewwww things:
As a biker you should be looking out for your fellow bikers. Hightailing it around a corner the wrong way onto a one-way bike lane/road wearing all black without a light is not cool. Sure, in general that may not be a place you'd be concerned about getting into or CAUSING an accident...but really. Its not that hard to slow down a bit and look out for your own. Did you notice that I landed in the middle of the car lane? What would've happened had there been more traffic? We're both damn lucky you only caused me a ridiculously untrue front wheel and busted up knees. I'm pissed. You offered me a few bucks to true the wheel. Thanks, but honestly...had I been in your presence for another second I would have raged. Obviously you didn't perform as a jackass biker on purpose, and I'm sure you feel terrible...but that was stupid.
ouch.
Or else simply engage in the timeless Cat 6 Dance of Dorkiness:


Unspoken Bike Race on Williamsburg Bridge Tonight - m4mDate: 2012-01-30, 8:50PM ESTReply to:
You beat me, you son of a bitch.
I wasn't there, but I'm reasonably sure that shame was the only winner of that race.

Branding: is there any more important? When it comes to Doing Business, choosing the right brand name can make or break your venture. This is especially true when it comes to selling bicycles, as you can tell from looking at the world's most successful bike companies. For example, "Rock Machine" means that their bikes are machines for riding on rocks; "Huffy" evokes the fact that many Huffy riders like to "huff" toxic fumes for recreation; and Vanilla reflects the utter lack of ethnic diversity in the company's Portland home.

These are companies that got it right. But what about the companies who get it wrong? One such company is "Ghost Bikes," to which I was alerted by a reader:

If I were naming a company that sold road and mountain bikes, I'd think in terms of speed, or strength, or stealth. I'd think about famous trails, or legendary races, or perhaps even accomplished racers who might wish to lend their name and expertise to my product line. However, what I would not do is name my bicycle brand after an internationally-recognized means of memorializing fallen cyclists:


However, if I absolutely had to do this, I'd at least refrain from offering a model that came in white:

I'm not superstitious, but there's no way you'd ever get me on that thing--and it's not because it has tiny wheels and dual suspension either. (Though that part's not helping.)
Meanwhile, a local entrepreneur recently had the same idea (marketing ghost bikes, not marketing dual suspension bikes), but instead decided to simply cut out the middleman and sell the actual ghost bikes themselves:

Though it's pretty obviously the work of a "troll:"

I'm not superstitious, but if I were this person I'd probably look both ways before crossing the street for the whole entire rest of my life.

Speaking of mountaining bicycle wheel sizeways, not too long ago I noticed an interesting article on the Bicycling dot Calms website about 650b and how it's poised to become the biggest thing in dirt-oriented bicycle cycling since baggy shorts (which can get pretty big):


It's kind of cute how the bicycling industry ignored the whole 29-inch wheel thing until it became utterly impossible for them to do so, and so now they're doing the exact opposite by rushing headlong into a new standard. They're like the frat boys who took forever to warm to Nirvana but then, when they finally did, next ran out and bought the Stone Temple Pilots album in droves. Of course, the difference there is that the Stone Temple Pilots were like the Monkees of "grunge," whereas the 650b wheelsize has been around for a long time, so maybe it's more like suddenly "discovering" some band that's already been around forever, like the Melvins.
None of this is to critique the actual utility of the 650b wheel size on the mountaining bikes, since it would seem to make quite a bit of sense. In fact, it's funny how touchy people get about wheel sizes--as far as I'm concerned, people should use whatever size works for them, whether it's "retrofitting" dual p-far wheels or simply appropriating your wheelset from a jogging stroller. (I believe the latter is called a "Moulton.") It's just entertaining to watch how the various companies play "Frogger" across the various trends, letting one log float away and then jumping en masse onto the next. This is something we all do--look at all the fixed-gear people and how they're all coveting cyclocross bikes with derailleurs now. Even I once swore I would never ride a bicycle with a saddle; now, almost all of my bikes have them, and I'm walking a lot more comfortably.
Speaking of cyclocross, this past weekend saw the running of the 2012 Cyclocrossing World Championships in Koksijde, Belgium (the Coxsackie of Europe), and American fans made a big show of getting all excited about it:
(Surprise! It's a bunch of Belgians on a podium!)
This level of cyclocross fandom is still relatively new to America and is thus characterized by great "flambullience," so I wonder how long it will take everybody to reach the inevitable jaded phase. Obviously we've been there with road racing for quite some time now, to the point where it's a tremendous faux-pas to express anything other than skepticism when watching a big road race. Interestingly though, it's still perfectly acceptable to enjoy watching cyclocross in complete complete earnestness. So enjoy it while you can, I suppose, because in a few years it should be thoroughly uncool to do so.
Meanwhile, a reader tells me that, amazingly, there are still people who think it's uncool to ride with a brake:


Fixie girl with beanie who called me a "Pussy" - m4w - 25 (Bushwick)
Date: 2012-01-26, 6:46PM EST
Reply to:

I was biking on Morgan Ave. near the corner of Meserole St. I was riding a KHS flite 100, You were riding a black fixie with a pursuit front but I couldnt make out the brand of your bike in the dark. You caught me looking at you and your bike and you looked over at me too and at my bike pointed at my breaks, smirked and called me a pussy before you hauled ass down the street.

If you see this I dare you to call me a pussy again.

Now that the "fixerati" have turned their attention to cyclocross bikes, custom road bikes, and all the rest of it, I occasionally make the mistake of thinking that the whole brakeless fixie think is over--but then I head over one of the Big Skanky bridges and realize it's not the case. In fact, it's evolved into a new style of riding, in that all the brakeless riders mostly just go incredibly slowly now. I guess what's happened is that we're experiencing a "noob inversion." See, it used to be that the novice fixie rider would start out with a brake, and the idea was to wean him- or herself off of it. Now, though, they simply start brakeless since they want to be "cool" from the very beginning, only to eventually discover the thrilling new world of brakes and, ultimately, derailleurs, at which point they place the inevitable order for a Geekhouse.

Lastly, from yet another reader comes this folding helment:


Inflatable helments, folding helments, helment hats... Like the alchemists of yore attempting to turn lead into gold, designers today think they're going to hit on that one idea that finally makes helmet use ubiquitous and makes them rich. However, I think they need to give it up. If you want to wear a helment, why not just wear a regular helment? And if you don't want to wear a helment, then don't wear a helment. Of all the goofy equipment that bike racing has foisted on the masses--wimpy wheels, fenderless frames, and so forth--the one useful thing it's given everyday cyclists is the lightweight helmet. Really, what good one that folds up to be slightly smaller but is twice as ugly?
The only real reason I could see for needing this thing is if you have a Brompton and you feel the need to maintain the folding theme throughout your entire wardrobe.

(Good for you.)
When you're a solipsist, you never get to ask, "Who farted?"

Think about it.
These are precisely the sorts of insights one ponders while in the throes of illness as I was yesterday, and I'd like to thank you all for bearing with me during what was in all respects a truly disgusting time. However, now that I'm more better, I find myself pondering less profound matters. Instead of asking myself The Big Questions, my attention has reverted back to the prosaic, and now I find myself wondering stuff like: What is the big deal about LeBron James riding a bike to work?
This story has been all over the news, and it's a perfect example of what's wrong with America. Where else would the sports media marvel over the fact that a professional athlete in peak physical condition was able to survive a bicycle ride of just over half an hour?

The ride took 40 minutes and he safely arrived at the arena with plenty of time to spare.
I'm not sure if they're amazed he was able to do something a typical Dutch grandmother does on a daily basis, or that he didn't get run over by a car, or both, but in any case it's a sad reminder of just how developmentally challenged our relationship with cycling is here in Canada's steer head belt buckle. I'm also not sure why James opted for the "Cat 6 scuba diver" look (especially given the fact that he's in Miami, where it seems like his usual basketball uniform would have been a cooler and more comfortable choice of attire) but I'm sure he had his reasons. In any case, I certainly don't mean to criticize James himself for his mode of transport; rather, I just wish I lived in a country where this wasn't considered in any way remarkable. (I also wonder if ESPN would have found it funny if James was hit by a car and sent flying into a barbed wire fence.) Even the "smugness media" is excited about it, even though James appears to be one of those infuriatingly un-smug "vehicular cyclists" who wears a helmet and doesn't ride in tweed.
At the same time, though, I shouldn't be surprised people find this amazing, for we are a spoiled people. In Miami it's considered newsworthy when a professional athlete is able to ride a bike for 40 minutes, and in Portland, Oregano it's considered a human rights violation when someone's "Disco Trike" gets confiscated:

Here's video of the shocking incident:



And here's the description that accompanies the video:
PORTLAND, Ore. - Portland Police showed up in force to put down a peaceful protest march in solidarity with Egyptian revolutionaries on the anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising Jan. 25. This video shows police surrounding and impounding the CrankMyChain Disco Trike, a human powered multimedia vehicle used by the PDX Bike Swarm to entertain, bolster and help pacify protesters. Owner/operator Dan Kaufman was handcuffed, cited for "unlawful operation of sound producing equipment," and released. The trike, its sound system and miscellaneous other equipment, remains in police custody until a court date of Feb. 13.
In other words, the people of Portland, oppressed by a magnificent cycling infrastructure, an openly gay mayor, and ready access to exquisite artisanal goods of all kinds, staged a protest "in solidarity with Egyptian revolutionaries on the anniversary of the Tahrir Square uprising," a people with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. Then, when the police showed up, they chanted "Get those animals off those horses," which anyplace else would guarantee you at least a spirited pepper spraying, if not an entire hoof up the derriere. This being Portland though, the police instead merely opted to take their biggest toy away, which seems about as oppressive as the time my off-brand Walkman got confiscated in high school. And of course anyone who's every been around children knows what comes next--the inevitable temper tantrum:
If the Disco Trike is not released by Friday, February 3rd, in full working condition, the PDX Bike Swarm will be forced to swarm the mayors office to ask more directly for its release. Anybody that wants to join the swarm is more than welcome, as we know the Bike Swarm are not the only ones that really appreciate the Disco Trike’s presence. Hopefully it won’t come to this, but if it does, stay tuned for details... We are giving the mayor a choice: either release the Disco Trike by Friday, or we will swarm to its defense!

So did the Disco Trike's curator get his Disco Trike back? Of course he did:
UPDATE, 1:37pm: Dan Kaufman has been notified by Mayor Adams that the trike will be released today. Stay tuned.
This is the inspiring stuff of which national holidays are made. Expect a solidarity march in Afghanistan to commemorate this great victory for human rights--in strict accordance with Islamic law of course. Perhaps they'll even trot out the beloved Three-Legged Ghazal Mule, which is the Afghani equivalent of the Disco Trike.
Meanwhile, in product-related news, a reader informs me that the inventors of the helment-hat will now sell you a pendulous under-the-saddle testicle:
Apparently you affix your helment-hat to this testicle and then engulf it in the weatherproof scrotal sack that is conveniently contained in said testicle:

Truly, the best designs are inspired by nature.
Lastly, Esteemed Commenter Daddo-One tells me that "Wired" have published an article about Ritte, which contains information on how to pronounce "Ritte," among other factoids:

As it happens, riding my own Ritte was the last thing I did as a healthy person this past Sunday before falling victim to the stomach flu shortly thereafter, and I kept to flat and windy terrain in order to honor the bicycle's faux Belgian heritage. Then, I stopped on the boardwalk, where I leaned the bike on a railing instead of on an indigent person and in so doing may have voided my warranty:
I remain extremely fond of this bicycle, though now that I think about it, an under-the-saddle testicle would really complement that long stem.

Obscure Bike Blogger Feels Yucky and Stuff
Brooklyn, USA, January 30th, 2012 -- On the eve of the return to his widely read bicycle cycling blog after a week-long hiatus, the blogger BikeSnobNYC (also known as "Wildcat Rock Machine") fell victim to the stomach flu.
The blogger acquired the illness from his young son, most likely while engaged in the questionable practice of handling vomit while not wearing a helment, and spent much of yesterday evening regurgitating Tibetan food.
"I feel like I just finished a Single Speed World Championship," said the bedridden blogger, "apart from the fact that I'm currently wearing pants."
"Scranus," he then added before rolling over and groaning.
In addition to curating, cultivating, manhandling, and otherwise molesting the BikeSnobNYC blog, BikeSnobNYC is also the author of the book "Bike Snob," the forthcoming book "The Enlightened Cyclist," and also, under the pseudonym Wiley McRothstein, the popular instructional manual "How to Pick up Women at Hospitals and Funerals," now in its 216th printing and the winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
BikeSnobNYC hopes to be able to return to his blog in earnest as soon as possible, and has already consumed an entire English muffin (top half and bottom half) with success.
Pending his return, BikeSnobNYC would like to share two (2) humorous videos. The first one is a trailer for an upcoming movie called "Peloton," which comes via Cycling Inquisition and which you may also have seen on the All Hail the Black Market webbing site:


Don't bother trying to fast-forward to the part where they finally start "doing it," because amazingly it isn't there.
The other is this hilarious video called "Shit Mussolini Says:"


Wow, the whole "Shit [Blanks] Say" thing never gets old.
With that, I return unto my private misery, but with any luck I hope to be back tomorrow in finer fettle. In the meantime, in lieu of flowers, please send any well-wishings in the form of a donation to your local Dachshund rescue society. Because all wiener dogs should have a loving home--and a bun.

--Wildcat Rock Machine

Firstly, I'd humbly request that you mark the following date in your calendars, "Palm Pilots," or prison wall tally marks:

Monday, January 30th, 2012
(That's planet Earth years, by the way. I'm finally off the Venusian calendar since I kept showing up 140.3 Earth days early for appointments.)
The reason I'd like you to make note of this date is because it's the date I'll be resuming regular updates of this blog. In the meantime, I will not be posting. However, I can assure you I will not be idle during that time. I mean, I won't be working, inasmuch as it would be silly to call whatever it is that I do "work," but I will still be doing the same non-work I usually do. See, like Comicus, I like to think of myself as a "stand-up philosopher"--or if you prefer, a "bullshit artist:"



The fact of the matter is that I will be "bullshitting" every day next week. However, that bullshit will not be posted immediately to this blog but will instead be made available for perusal at some later date. I apologize for this inconvenience (unless of course you hate this blog, in which case you're welcome), but such is the life of a bullshit artist, and it will all be worth it in the end. Or not. Either way, I look forward to returning on Monday, January 30th with regular updates.
Moving on, yesterday I mentioned some self-important Portlanders (yes, I realize how redundant that phrase is) who took their self-importance and lack of useful practical knowledge to the poor uncool people of the south, and similarly a reader has forwarded me this video of some people who live in Brooklyn (I hesitate to call them "Brooklynites") who were kind enough to present the backward folk of Virginia with the sleep-inducing gift of minimalist percussion:



Their group is called "Mantra Percussion:"
Though the really should think about changing it to "Men Without Girlfriends:"

Here's their leader, embittered former professional cyclist Floyd Landis:
And here's what people look like while listening to them:

("I'd request 'Freebird' ironically but I'm far too nonplussed.")
As for the music itself, to call the piece a "composition" seems grossly unfair. Really, even the word "music" is a stretch. This is more the kind of thing you're likely to hear played on a loop when you go to a MFA exhibit and one of the installations is a multimedia experience based on the artist's inability to reconcile that time the cat ate their hamster, or the morning they walked in on their parents having sex, or some other middle-class suburban childhood trauma.
Also, if you're wondering why they went from Brooklyn all the way to a Lowe's in Virginia instead of just performing at the Brooklyn Lowe's, I suspect it's either because it's probably too hard to get a gig at the Brooklyn Lowe's now (I hear they have a talent booker), or else it was Sukkot and there was a run on two-by-fours.

Meanwhile, a reader tells me those Budnitz bikes continue to get attention:

Let's fire up the BSNYC Enlarge-A-Nator for a closer look at that caption:


Firstly, it's not a "break lever," unless it's designed so that the moment you pull it the bike falls apart. (Actually, I wouldn't put such a feature past this Budnitz character). Secondly, it's not his name, it's the name he just happens to share with the company that made the lever. Then again, I'm starting to see how easy it is to dupe the dimwitted design community, so maybe Budnitz should just change his name to Paul Chris King Gates Schwalbe-Lynskey so he can take credit for the entire thing. I mean, they're already giving him credit for the concept of an attractive bike:

The progressions in bicycle design have been limited to high-end manufacturers creating ever more lightweight (and often ugly) machines designed for road racing, rather than reflecting the aesthetic concerns of the owner. In America especially, the great period of beautifully designed utility bicycles all but died after Peter ‘Bullit’ Yates’ 1979 bikecentric coming of age movie Breaking Away, after which everyone, it seemed, wanted a race bike and manufacturers responded accordingly.

Towards the tail end of last year that balance shifted however, when serial entrepreneur Paul Budnitz entered the market.

This would come as news to the roughly 90,000 bike builders in Portland alone who have been doing this for years.
The article also makes some astute technical observations:

...a carbon belt drive chain negates the need for lubricant, keeping clothes clean and chain on the bike - not wrapped around your ankles.

I'm not sure what that means, but if your pants keep winding up around your ankles when you ride then you are grossly misinterpreting what it means to "lube your chain:"

(Stopping for some mid-ride "drivetrain maintenance.")
And Budnitz himself also adds his own contribution to the canon of great frame material myths:
"Also, as well as being lighter, titanium is harder than steel and it’s a great material for riding on so there’s a sense of completeness."
If Budnitz was experiencing a sense of incompleteness prior to obtaining a titanium bicycle then he may have been riding a bike without a seat.
Penultimately, in entertainment news, from another reader comes this gripping film trailer:

I AM NOT A HIPSTER (the movie) from Destin Daniel Cretton on Vimeo.

Sure you're not.

And ultimately, from still yet another reader comes a music video which I found entertaining:



I recommend he seek out a titanium bicycle for a sense of completeness.
Post-ultimately, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz. As always, study the question, think, and click on your answer. If you're right you'll experience a sense of completeness, and if you're wrong you'll see a commercial for a high-performance mountaining bicycle.
Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and I look forward to returning on the 30th.

--Wildcat Rock Machine





1) What are they staring at?
--His bike bag--His fanny pack--His crotch--Peta Todd





(They may dress funny, but you can't put one over on the British.)
2) Amazingly, it turns out it's actually possible to enjoy riding two different types of bicycles.
--True--False




(The visor is the yarmulke of the douchebag set.)
3) Which is not a tenet of the "Holstee Manifesto?"

--"Getting lost will help you find yourself."
--"If you don't like your job, quit."
--"Live your dream and share your passion."
--"If life doesn't give you what you want, stomp your feet a lot and cry."





("Who's that douche?")
4) Shane Warne is:
--An Australian sports douche--An Antipodean cricketing scranus--The "Frumunda" from Down Under--All of the above




(Book of Moron: Gentrification missionaries spreading the Gospel of Bullshit to America's uncool.)
5) In which of the following ways were the Portland hipster migrant workers mistreated by their cruel organic farming overlords?
--They were fed inorganically--They were silently admonished for stealing pickles--They were served cat food burritos--All of the above




6) "Bi-keen" and beekeeping, together at last! Must be:
--Portland--Brooklyn--Portland--Chicago




(Creepy wet bearded man stalks mother in supermarket.)
"You were in the bulk aisle. Tall, red-head, absolutely gorgeous, dinosaur son in the cart. I was bearded and soggy from the bike ride, just needed some oranges and some almonds. You said, "Now let's pick out some snacks for... me." You hesitated on that part, like you were going to say mommy, but caught yourself. It was cute. Seriously, I feel sorry for your kid. His friends are all going to crush on you hard. Hell, I'm going to crush on you hard."
7) In Portland, cycling can apparently cause you to grow a beard.
--True--False


***Special Law Enforcement-Themed Bonus Question***

"Back in the day," bike cops weren't afraid to "get rad."

--True
--False

The Loch Ness Monster. Sasquatch. Larry King. For centuries people have sought these horrific legendary beasts. Some insist they are merely fantastical, while others maintain they are as real as Jesus's hatred of Buddhists (Are you kidding? Jesus fucking hated Buddhists!) and thus dedicate their lives to pursuing these creatures. For years, I too have been engaged in such a pursuit, and I'm pleased to report I've finally managed to photograph my quarry.
The day was yesterday, January whatever-it-was, and it was about the time of day when most people are thinking about what to have for lunch but extremely lazy people are finally dragging themselves out of bed and into the bathroom to scrub the red wine stains from their lips. I had just scrubbed the red wine stains off my lips, mounted my Scattante, and sallied forth into New York City's hated bicycle infrastructure, when I spotted the fabled rider I had been seeking for years--The Barefoot Bike Salmon of Brooklyn:

Granted, he didn't actually start salmoning until the next intersection, but as you can see he is clearly barefoot:

Also, I know it's The Barefoot Bike Salmon of Brooklyn and not just another random barefoot bicyclist on his way home after a picnic in the park, because this was the weather yesterday and only The Barefoot Bike Salmon of Brooklyn has the formidable foot callouses that permit him to ride a bicycle with metal pedals in the winter while unshod:

Unfortunately however I was unable to capture him, and therefore was also unable to claim the million-dollar bounty that the American Podiatric Medical Association has placed on his head (or, more accurately, his feet). Podiatrists believe that if they can unlock the mystery of his mighty footpads then they will also be able to use this knowledge to cure a host of disorders that have afflicted the human foot since the time we started walking upright, from hallux valgus to the dreaded unguis incarnatus. Sadly though, I will have to continue my search if I am ever to become a member of the 1%.
Still, I was glad I finally saw him, because I was starting to become disillusioned and instead am now filled with hope. I have, however, become quite disillusioned with Australia, which I had previously imagined as a quirky Edenic paradise where the toilets flush backwards and the koalas lovingly pick lice out of your hair while kangaroos box people of note for your amusement. As it turns out though, it's apparently just as awful a place as America is (at least if you ride a bike), and as you may have heard by now some Australian sports douche has attacked a cyclist with his car.
The sports douche is some guy named Shane Warne, and it's a good thing Wikipedia is back online because I was able to find out who he is:
Shane Keith Warne (born 13 September 1969) is a former Australian international cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game.

I thought bowling was the thing with the alleys and the pins and the funny shoes, so I'm not sure why that has any bearing on his cricket career. Then again, I deeply hate all organized ball sports ("pocket pool" being among the few exceptions) as well as most organized non-ball sports, so I'm probably missing something. I was also surprised to learn that there is apparently doping in cricket, since Shane Warne failed a drug test:
His career was plagued by scandals off the field; these included a ban from cricket for testing positive for a prohibited substance, charges of bringing the game into disrepute through accepting money from bookmakers and marital infidelities.
My surprise was due to the fact that cricket looks about as strenuous as playing croquet, so I wondered what performance-enhancing drug they could possibly be using. Presumably it's just something to keep them awake. I don't mean to single out cricket, by the way. Baseball also looks about as strenuous as playing croquet to me, though I suppose it's a bit harder than cricket since the players also have to do it while being considerably overweight.
Anyway, the Australian sports douche got mad at a cyclist for not being stuck in traffic and so he ran over the cyclist's bike with his car, and now Cadel Evans's wife is upset:
Unlike in America, though, the police are taking action against the assailant:

Police spoke to the cyclist and Warne but said there would be no further action.

Oh, sorry, they're not.
By the way, even though America is slipping from its coveted position as Most Awesomest Country in the Whole Wide World, I'd like to think that we're still at least the undisputed global leader in idiotic bicycle-related news article commentary. Unfortunately though I think we've finally lost that as well, since Australians seem to have us beat by a kalometer kolamater Euro-mile:
I'm with Warnie on this one. The guy deserves to have his bike damaged after riding in front of him in an aggressive manner. There should be more of it so thst riders learn their place. They think they have rights, but so do us motorists.
That's some impressive idioting right there. I give that comment five non-opposable thumbs up.
As for Warne, he cut out the middleman and took his idioting straight to his Twitter:

I don't consider myself particularly smart, but I had to watch five hours of quality PBS programming just to get the taste of stupid out of my mouth.
Speaking of disillusionment, you'll be disillusioned to learn that Williamsburg is no longer the hipster capitol of the United States, having in recent years passed that intangible threshold between "youthful exuberance" and "upscale douchery." For example, you used to find the track bikes locked up in front of bars or underneath people trackstanding interminably, but now you find them on the backs of Porsche SUVs instead:


The above photo was taken by a reader, and it's a perfect encapsulation of the evolution of the fixed-gear "culture."
In fact, disillusionment is so widespread these days that Portlanders are even growing disillusioned with Portland, as in this gripping (in that it will grip you with nausea) narrative that was forwarded to me by another reader:

(Portlanders on the loose!)
In it, two people find themselves experiencing the sort of vague dissatisfaction you can only feel if you've never, ever had a moment of adversity in your entire life, and so they decide to leave the safety of the "hipster belt" and work for free:
Jenne and I were both raised in Seattle, we began dating in Brooklyn, N.Y., and we moved together to Portland. We had been born and bred in blue America. Our parents held college degrees, professional jobs and predictable points of view on issues like reproductive rights, marriage equality and preemptively launched wars. We were raised to believe in recycling, temperance and respecting other people’s differences.
Recently, however, we had begun to feel a little disillusioned with the culture. The brew pubs and brunch spots. The high-class cafes and cheapo burrito shops. The happy hours and house pets and crass condo construction. We were tired of the hipsters, with their gaudy mustaches and flannel shirts, unimpressed with the environmentalists, with their blinkered social concern and preening sense of self-righteousness, disgusted by the corporate shills, with their shimmering cocktails and newly minted lofts, and put off by the housewives piling their shopping carts high.
After 25 years surrounded by such people, we were looking for something new. Farming provided us with a point of departure.
So essentially what's happening here is that the cultural phenomenon that is "hipsterism" is now in the process of doubling over on itself and is seeking an alternative to its own alternative. Also, in true spoiled child fashion, now that people in places like Brooklyn and Portland have every single toy they ever wanted they apparently don't want to play with them anymore. Of course, when actual spoiled children lose interest in their toys they decide they want to play with forbidden things, like glass and pieces of scrap metal. But when adult children tire of their toys they become fascinated by forbidden people, like "hicks" and "rednecks" and "conservatives."
And so our heroes restyle themselves as hipster migrant workers and go to work on organic farms in the south:
Jenne and I mostly work the weeds.
I bet you do.
They also have thrilling brushes with danger, like actually meeting people who tuck their shirts in and who vote differently from them:
Mark and Lindsay hardly look like volunteer farmers: He has bright blond hair sculpted in the military style and a stiff collared shirt tucked into blue jeans, while his wife wears a shy smile and a skirt covering her knees....
After the conversation turns to politics, Mark expresses regret about John McCain’s recent electoral defeat, while Lindsay professes to liking Ron Paul. Neither has even heard of our favored choice, Dennis Kucinich.
Amazingly, they not only survive this encounter, but also learn that uncool people actually have feelings too:
After we discover Mark has suffered a recent death in his family, as I have in mine, we talk grief, loss and the protracted process of healing.
"Wait, when someone in your family died you got upset? Me too, I totally hate that!," I can hear the narrator saying. I'm sure Mark felt validated when the Portlanders actually condescended to acknowledge his humanity.
But they're not out of danger yet, and soon they fall victim to a cruel Dickensian mistress:
It doesn’t take much to recognize the woman is having a hard time. She is moody, self-absorbed and difficult to communicate with. (“You ask too many questions,” she admonishes after Jenne attempts to clarify an instruction.) She feeds us inorganically and sometimes not enough. (Dinner the first two nights consists of corn dogs and potato chips.) Our sleeping area, which doubles as the packing room for her CSA (Community Supported Agriculture: a subscription program by which farmers provide produce to urban consumers), is open to the public, not to mention cramped and hot.
You may scoff at the notion that feeding someone inorganic food is tantamount to cruelty, but you have to understand that sheltered hipsters like this are simply unable to process the food additives that the rest of us consume so easily. See, we take the ability to occasionally eat diner food and deli sandwiches for granted, but a simple side of inorganic cole slaw is enough to send these people into anaphylactic shock. Incidentally, if you're ever traveling with a sheltered hipster and he has a bad reaction to a corn chip or a turkey sandwich, simply pass a locally-foraged truffle under his nose so that he can smell "the intoxicating smell of semen that the tubers emit--known to foodies as the truffle umami." It's the "woosie" equivalent of an epinephrine shot.
Anyway, I suspect that by feeding them corn dogs the Dickensian farmer just enjoyed watching them squirm. I also suspect she called the next farmer and told them how funny it was because he just fed them cat food:
We eat even worse with Joe than we did in Texas. Hot dogs and TV dinners, packaged ham and cups of noodles, canned vegetables and canned meat: The man’s diet runs the gamut of cheap, mass-produced quasi-edibles. One night, the roast beef rolled into my tortilla tastes suspiciously like cat food.
Incidentally, the reason he knows what cat food tastes like is because food trucks for pets are all the rage in Portland and it's easy to get confused.
But while it may seem like all these wayward Portlanders did was alternately do some gardening and complain about the food, the truth is they learned profound lessons about life:
But our trip was about more than just farming. It was about pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones, shedding some of our prejudices about what makes a life worth living, and opening to another way.
In some small way, it was about growing up.
Of course it was. They did fail to learn one lesson though, which is that if they wanted to eat processed foods while mingling with people who are broke and lack fashion sense, then they could have saved themselves a lot of time and just gone to the nearest Walmart.
By the way, if you want to know more about the author, here's his bio:
Alex Gallo-Brown's essays have appeared in Bookslut, The Rumpus, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Collagist, among other publications. He is currently working on a manuscript of poems about grief.
I'm really hoping there's a poem in there called "They Made Us Eat Cat Food."
If not, I'll be deeply disillusioned.

As you may have noticed, certain popular Inter Net webbing sites are participating in a "blackout" today. The purpose of this blackout is to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, or "SOPA." For example, if you go to Craigslist to buy a crappy used bike or get ripped off while trying to rent an apartment, you'll find this:


Or if you go to Wikipedia to gaze upon the raw essence of male sexuality that is Nonplussed Bib Shorts Model Guy:

You'll find this:

Though if you go to Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things, you'll still find this:

Unless you're actually in North Korea, in which case your "computer" is just a state-run newspaper taped to a cardboard box.

Needless to say, operators of webbing sites do not like SOPA, because while it is ostensibly designed to protect copyright holders, it could also hinder free speech as well as the sort of user-generated content that makes the Internet so simultaneously wonderful and awful. Imagine, for example, a world without videos of people "bombing hills" on their fixies to stupid songs for which they did not receive the proper clearances, or even a world without crappy bike blogs that make fun of the aforementioned videos. It would be a living heck. You'd hate it. In fact, you'd hate it so much you'd move to another world instead, like Narnia, or Hogwarts, or the idealized version of Brooklyn in which the Huxtables lived.
I too do not like the idea of SOPA, but despite tremendous pressure on me to join the blackout (well, one guy emailed me) I will not be doing so. This is for two reasons: 1) It would be disingenuous of me, because even though I'm against SOPA in principle the truth is I really don't know nearly as much about it as I should; and B) When Wikipedia participates in a blackout, millions of people take notice, but when this blog takes part in a blackout the 19 people who read it and already know way more about SOPA than I do just see me for the douchebag I am. Given this, it seems to me that it makes way more sense to leave the blog switch on the "on" position so that people can alternately leave intelligent SOPA-related comments from which we can all learn, and/or gratuitously post the word "scranus."
Of course, one argument in favor of SOPA is that the entertainment industry backs it. The Motion Picture Association of America says that piracy costs the business of show billions of dollars a year. This is a great tragedy, because without that money studios and producers couldn't give Will Smith $20 million to star in "Men In Black III," a movie that has already cost something like $215 million (about half of what Congress spends on all of public broadcasting) and isn't even finished yet. Yes, life without incessant sequels and insipid comic book movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce is just too nightmarish to contemplate. Plus, we should also remember that piracy supposedly costs the entertainment industry jobs, since apparently there's no way to budget for a film that allows the star to have a $9,000 a month trailer as well a $25,000 a month apartment around the corner from that trailer without also firing a few PAs that earn annually what Will Smith spends on lunch. Therefore Congress really should help these people with some bespoke legislation that ensures us the constant stream of shitty entertainment we all deserve. (Maybe they can plaster Big Bird with product placement while they're at it.)
Anyway, I doubt SOPA and PIPI and Pipi Longstocking and all the rest of them will get very far in the long run, since I've just had word that the Best Made Company has joined the blackout. However, they won't actually be blacking out their site. Instead, they're offering customers this $375 hand-stitched artisanal blindfold:
Just slip it over your face and--voilà!--instant blackout. It's also handy for generally living in a state of ostrich-like denial. For example, if you ever find yourself in an unattractive, non-minimalist environment where you're surrounded by ugly people (such as a hospital or a Walmart), you can just slip it on and imagine yourself in a rustic luxury "cabin" in the "wilderness" eating pancakes drenched with designer maple syrup and looking at framed maps of places that haven't existed for a hundred years.
Moving on, yesterday I mentioned Gene Hackman's bicycle "accident" (it's cute when they call getting rammed by a car an "accident"), which prompted a reader to leave the following comment:
Bogusboy said...
Is it, perhaps, just barely possible that Gene Hackman is not an accomplished cyclist and was, in fact, riding like a geriatric Fred?
JANUARY 17, 2012 9:02 PM
It certainly is eminently possible. However, another reader has forwarded me actual video evidence that Mr. Hackman in fact has crazy mad tight sick bike-handling skillzzz:


Though if that's what Hackman was doing when the pickup truck hit him I suppose we could say that he bears some responsibility for the incident.
Speaking of cabins (as I was a bit earlier) I also received an email from yet another reader informing me that cabin porn is the new bike porn and directing me to the following site, which was indeed full of some of the filthiest cabin porn I've ever seen:
That's the kind of porn that sends fans of the "Americana backwoods revival" straight to the outhouse for some hot and frenzied "whittling" sessions. Seriously, that's full frontal cabin porn--you can see the whole derned woodpile for Lob's sake:

(Exposed woodpiles are the "beaver shot" of cabin porn.)
I think I even see a solar panel, which is of course the cabin porn equivalent of a "tramp stamp," and I won't even address the fact that this cabin is in a place called "Black Butte." There's even bike-on-cabin porn on freecabinporn.com, though frankly it leaves a lot to be desired:

Unless of course you're into bikes with step-through frames and missing front wheels "getting it on" with storage sheds. After all, who am I to judge?
Lastly, from cabin porn to portage porn, from a reader in Austin comes this action shot of a rider portaging a couple of big rods and a nonplussed pussy:


If the rider is also en route to a cabin then I may have hit the jackpot.

It's all too easy to be critical of the American media, especially when it comes to covering cycling. However, you do have to credit them for their consistency. Sure, when cyclists get hit by drivers the newspapers tend to blame the victim, but at least they do it to all the victims--regardless of whether it's just some unfortunate schmuck, or it's celebrated actor Gene Hackman:


Hackman was riding without a helmet on an Islamorada street around 3 p.m. when the pickup hit him, throwing him onto the grassy shoulder, according to a Florida Highway Patrol report. No charges were immediately reported.
Yes, pretty much every news outlet made sure to point out that Hackman was riding without a helment, because this is America, and what could possibly be crazier than a former marine thinking he could enjoy a bicycle ride in a dense urban area like the Florida Keys without first donning safety gear? Yet while they all seem compelled to mention the helment, not one of them so much as bothered to point out whether or not Hackman was wearing a sun hat--as a fair-skinned octogenarian, the actor is at high risk for skin cancer, and going out without adequate protection from the harsh Florida sun would technically be far more foolhardy behavior.
I'm sure we all agree on one thing though, which is that it's a good thing the driver of the pickup was not charged. Again, this is America, so the helmentless Hackman almost certainly committed the hideous crime of somehow being completely and totally invisible because he was riding a bicycle. As we all know, human beings automatically vanish into thin air when they sit on a bike, so it's safe to assume that the driver "didn't see him," or that Hackman "came out of nowhere," or else he fell under any of the other innumerable excuses by which it's perfectly fine to hit someone on a bike with your car in this strange and vexing country of ours.
In any case, if Hackman had made a habit of wearing giant floppy red sun hat, maybe the driver would have seen him and the unfortunate incident might have been averted.
In other stale news, it was announced on Friday that the Volagi guys have to pay Specialized one whole American "fun credit:"

Clearly the judge was a big fan of the movie "Trading Places:"

This was certainly at best a hollow victory for Specialized, though Mike Sinyard did his best to remain upbeat and gave the following quote through his clenched teeth:

“This lawsuit was a matter of principle and about protecting our culture of trust and innovation. We respect the ruling of the court in our favor. We are very satisfied with the outcome and the damages set at $1.00. We really want to put all our passion and time into growing the sport of cycling.”

According to earlier court filings, Specialized had spent $1.5 million in legal fees up to the start of the trial last week.

Sure, $1.5 million in legal fees to sue a couple of upstart Fred bike "curators" for a singe dollar may not seem like good business, but Specialized will recoup it next year when they once again unveil their radical new frame decal placements and pad the prices accordingly.
(The precision-engineered placement of the "S-Works" decal is the product of thousands of hours of graphic design and results in a 120% increase in other people knowing what kind of bike you're riding over last year's model.)
In fact, between the branding and the celebrity product placement, Specialized are sure to more than earn back their legal fees and reduce the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company to "boutique" status in short order in the process:

Oh yeah, Duhamel's really putting that Specialized through its paces, because nothing says "performance" like "shredding" a handicapped parking space on a mountain bike with the reflectors still on it:

Incidentally, Duhamel was not wearing a sun hat when the wheelchair van hit him, and no known charges have been filed against the driver.
Meanwhile, a reader recently sent me what very well may be the most offensive video I have ever seen. It's called "The Holstee Manifesto," it uses "bi-keen" to stunning effect, and I must be the last person in the world to know about it because it has been viewed over 400,000 times:


Thousands of years from now, when the space lizard archaeologists excavate the remains of our once-great society and ask, "What happened to the humans?," I only hope they're able to watch this video because it should answer all their questions. In particular, it will explain how a disease called "entitlement" swept through humanity with a virulence that made the bubonic plague seem like the sniffles. First, after going into debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to go to college, the very few people who were fortunate enough to get jobs afterwards decided they didn't like them and quit:

I may be mistaken, but that looks like the Occupy Wall Street protest. If so, we have to assume that the filmmakers actually sent someone to a demonstration about joblessness and told him to hold up a sign telling people to quit their jobs. This is the 21st century equivalent of going to a civil rights march with a sign that says, "If you don't like sitting in the back of the bus then take a plane and fly first class."
Also, here's the funny thing about jobs: you're not supposed to like them. That's why they call it "work" and not "masturbating." If you don't like your job, the last thing you should do is quit. Look for a better one in your spare time? Sure. Work to improve the one you have? Absolutely. Start a company like the Volagi guys and get sued by your former employer? Why not? But quit your job with no prospects just because you don't "like" it? That's the "If it rains take the bus" of career advice. If you don't like your job you're much better off doing it anyway until you become really awesome at it. Granted, this is old-fashioned thinking since we've mostly outsourced the concept of "paying your dues," but at least you wind up with some options that don't involve going back to school for that fourth MFA.

Next, after all the humans quit the jobs they were lucky to have because they didn't like them, they rationalized their choice by adopting the philosophy of "minimalism:"

Theoretically, this would reduce their overhead and give them more leisure and yoga time. Unfortunately though, all the beautifully-designed clutter-reducing products they coveted were sold by big companies, and despite what the humans had been led to believe by marketing the big companies were not in fact benevolent. Their computers were sold by Apple and their fixies were sold by Specialized, and paradoxically all these "minimalist" products were actually pretty expensive since the big companies needed lots of money for marketing and lawsuits. And even though the humans now owned products that were simple, they were still too lazy to actually use them properly, and in many cases couldn't even muster the energy to place their feet in their toeclips:
Soon, crippled by unemployment and the high cost of minimalism, their basic survival skills began to whither as well. No longer able to afford cellphone plans for their iPhones, they were forced to revert to paper maps. However, they no longer knew how to read the maps, and so they rationalized away that ability as well:

So the once-great cities of the world became dystopias. Just as Rome had once been plundered by barbarians, New York was overrun by lost flannel-clad meh-rauders in an aimless search for a "self" that didn't exist:

(Every one of these people suffers from the delusion that he or she is awesome at something and will find out what it is by doing absolutely nothing.)
They struck blows not with clubs but instead with total self-interest, and they were impervious to any sort of criticism since they were still covered by their parents' health insurance and had plenty of ready access to all sorts of prescription drugs:

And thus was born the modern-day monster, a fickle being who had never experienced the slightest bit of displeasure or discomfort, and whose greatest satisfaction in life was the intoxicating sensation that comes from peer acceptance and the belief that the city and the world was custom-made for you:

("Is there anything more ah-some than being special and having friends?")
In fact, they became so delusional that they adopted an all-ice cream diet:

Then they shared the ice cream and gave each other herpes:

And when they ate their Ice Cream of Conformity:

They appreciated every last bite:

And so their over-educated brains finally succumbed to both herpes and culture-wide brainfreeze.

Thus, the "entitlement" disease reached its final stages, and these herpetic entitlement zombies were reduced to roaming around and speaking to people incoherently:

By the way, next time you're on the subway, go ahead and ask the person next to you, "Excuse me, what's your passion?" Then watch in terror as he smiles lasciviously, unzips his pants, and produces his "pants yabbies" for your delectation.

And here's the final message of the film:

Sure, that all sounds nice, but the truth is that not all dreams should be lived, and not all passions should be shared. Sometimes it's better to just do your job and shut the fuck up.

Anyway, after watching all this I wanted to know what Holstee actually does, and it turns out they sell stuff like $99 headphones:




These are great for listening to the neutered faux-transcendent 21st century background music that now passes for rock, and presumably you can use them while you ride your fixie-out-of-a-box to your next sick waterfront ice cream-licking "sesh" with your limp, overeducated friends.

Also, Holstee will sell you a poster of their dumb manifesto:

As well as a frame to put it in, demonstrated here by a douchebag in a visor:




The world according to marketing is an odd one indeed. Apparently, when it comes to real life we're supposed to just quit our jobs and follow our dreams, yet when it comes to our recreation we're supposed to install power meters on our bikes, upload our "workouts" to Strava, undertake brutal "epics," and generally suffer and be miserable.
Just beware of smiling people bearing ice cream.

Hi! [Said buoyantly.] Firstly, please note that I will not be posting a blog post to this blog on Monday the 16th, but will resume my regular posting of blog posts to this blog posting schedule on Tuesday the 17th. I apologize for any conveniences this may cause. However, I should also point out that Monday the 16th is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, so if you have any problem with my not posting that day then you're obviously a racist.
Shame on you.
Moving on, jurors heard closing arguments in the controversial Specialized v. Volagi case yesterday, and I can't wait for the TV movie because this is courtroom drama at its most compelling:


For their part, Specialized claims that Volagi owes them royalties to the smell of $41,000:

Earlier Wednesday, Specialized's lawyers called on an economist who said that, assuming Volagi borrowed intellectual property from Specialized, Volagi owed Specialized about $41,000 in royalties, based on comparable royalty rates he examined.
At first sniff this may seem like a lot of money, but it's actually only about two-and-a-quarter Specialized S-Works McLaren Venge Schmegmas:

You have to figure anyone who quits a job at Specialized leaves with crabon bikes the way the rest of us walk out with office supplies, so should the court decide against them the Volagi guys should have their debts paid off in no time.

Meanwhile, the Volagis called an expert witness who in turn claimed that Specialized appropriated the Roubaix concept from Seven Cycles:
Also on Wednesday, the defense called Sean Sullivan, a former product manager and executive vice president at Specialized. Sullivan was asked about the development of the Specialized Roubaix bike. Sullivan said its inspiration was a custom Seven Cycles bike that a Specialized employee rode, and which caught the eye of Specialized's founder and president Mike Sinyard. The Seven had a tall headtube and a relaxed geometry that the Roubaix later featured, Sullivan said.

After appropriating the design, Sinyard promptly fired the employee for riding a non-Specialized bicycle. Forced to seek an alternate career path, the former employee eventually landed a job writing for "The Simpsons," and the rest is television history:
And he still has that Seven.

Meanwhile, a reader tells me that someone wants $10,000 (or a little more than half a Venge Schmegma) to make bracelets out of bicycle chains:

Like many of you, I love riding bicycle cycles. However, I am strongly against wearing bicycle cycle parts on your body. Sure, I realize that everybody needs to know you ride a bike no matter how far away you are from that bike at any given moment, but the simple fact is that wearing bike parts is very dangerous, as the Kickstarter page itself shows. See, it starts off with cute stuff like keychains:


Then it progresses to bicycle chain bracelets:


Which is a gateway drug for creepy innertube sex masks:

And before you know it you're Mad Fred Beyond Thunderdork:

Anyway, here's the video, and if you decide to start wearing one of these things then don't say I didn't warn you:


Lastly, another reader has forwarded me the following image of David Byrne (who does not own either a car or a pet gorilla) from a recent issue of "Rolling Stone" magazine (which for some reason still exists) complete with smug helment-related caption:


Oh, save it, "Rolling Stone," he'll be fine. Of all the risky activities engaged in by all the musicians "Rolling Stone" has covered over the years, riding a bike without a helmet in the West Village is about as risky as a game of tiddlywinks. Half the people who have been on the cover of "Rolling Stone" have since died of drug overdoses, for Lob's sake. Where were they with the smug captions when Jimi Hendrix was about to choke to death on his own vomit?
In any case, if you're wondering what David Byrne looks so nonplussed about, the reader who sent this to me points out that it's probably the breast to his immediate right:

He may not wear a helmet, but he doesn't cotton to distractions.
And now, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz. As always, study the question, think, and click on your answer. If you're right you'll win $41,000 from the Volagi guys, and if you're wrong you'll see a compelling PSA.
Ride safe, ride happy, and beware of errant "side boob."

--Wildcat Rock Machine




(Tallis Navidad: Recent converts Alberto Contador and Oscar Pereiro still eight riders short of a minyan.)
1) In a move some suspect was contrived to ingratiate himself to the Israeli judge who will be deciding his case, Alberto Contador has converted to Hasidic Judaism.
--True--False





(Unregistered dog prepares to ride "bandit.")
2) To alleviate crowding, registration for this year's Five Boro Bike Tour will be decided by:
--Lottery--Auction--Prologue time trial--The the tyrannical whims of the guy with the dog





3) Barrels of _____:

--Safety
--Shame
--Despair
--Venomous snakes





(Budnitz Bicycles: For Douchebags who Fart Rainbows)
4) Which is not a selling point touted by Budnitz Bicycles founder Paul Budnitz?
--"Reality is that I began creating my own bikes when I couldn’t find anything that was well made, fast and especially beautiful — and that wouldn’t add clutter to my life."--"Sure, you could buy something more practical, more attractive, and a lot less expensive, but why would you want to?"
--"They roll so godd*mn fast that we actually had to adjust the gearing on our first production models because traditional gear ratios moved too slowly."--"Our bicycles don’t add anything you don’t need. In a way, they actually add less."






(All kidding aside, frankly I'm a little worried about this guy.)
5) Which bicycle company will now be sponsoring "real riders?"
--Trek--Specialized--Giant
--Budnitz Bicycles

6) Specialized has sued the wearer of this tattoo for unauthorized use of their logo.
--True--False



("My uncertainty as to your gender is making me aroused.")
7) One of the finalists in The New Yorker's cartoon caption contest actually includes the word "fixie."

--True--False


***Special Playtime Is Fun!-Themed Bonus Question***
(This is what happens when you use the search term "Lego porn.")
Lego's online store features a tableau in which:
--A driver is talking on a cellphone--A thief is stealing a bicycle--Spectators are watching a cyclocross race--EMTs are coming to the aid of a cyclist
(Correct answer via a reader)

In yesterday's post, I mentioned Prospect Park's Barrels of Shame. Naively, it was my impression that the Department of Transportation was relying entirely on these barrels to solve the problem of speeding cyclists. How wrong I was. In fact, I was riding through Prospect Park last night on my safety bicycle when I discovered that the DOT has now unleashed Phase II of the Barrels of Shame scheme for undoing cyclists, this one being the Giant Free-Standing Sign in the Middle of the Road:

(Giant Free-Standing Sign in the Middle of the Road lurking in the park at night like a lonely man cruising for anonymous sex.)
As you can see, the concept behind the Giant Free-Standing Sign in the Middle of the Road is simple: should a cyclist position himself wrongly in relation to the Barrels of Shame and approach them at an excessive rate of speed, he or she will collide with the Giant Free-Standing Sign in the Middle of the Road. Thus incapacitated, he or she will no longer pose a threat to the good people of Brooklyn--at least until the bones knit.
Keeping cyclists injured and off their bikes is American Urban Planning 101.
Nevertheless, the fun-filled act of bicycle-cycling remains a popular pastime for the people of New York and elsewhere, which is why the TD Bank Five Boro Bike Tour is very possibly the World's Biggest Fred Ride, attracting upwards of 30,000 people to the city each spring, some of whom carry their pets on their top tube:
The ingenious saddle atop which the dog was sitting was upholstered in a comfy-looking carpet-like material that perfectly matched the dog's coat, and I'm not lying when I say the ornery dog snarled like a two-stroke engine and did his very best to chew off the fingers of anybody who dared lean in for a closer look at the proprietary technology.

I've attended the Five Boro Bike Tour a number of times in vaguely-defined help-giving capacity, but I've only actually ridden in it once. I don't recall the exact year, but it was sometime in the 1990s, and Kestrels and mountain bikes that never saw dirt were extremely popular, which meant that everyone was on either one or the other. Upon finishing the ride I vowed never to participate in it again--not because it wasn't a lovely ride, but because tens of thousands of others also felt the same way which made much of it feel like waiting to go through security at JFK. In fact, someone even tried to make me submit to a full body scan at one of the rest stops, though in retrospect the paper badge that said "OFICIAL VOLANTEER" in crayon could have been a sign he wasn't a legitimate part of the tour organization.
In any case, I must not have been the only one to nearly fall victim to the old "OFICIAL VOLANTEER" ploy, because as of this year the World's Largest Fred Ride will be awarding the coveded Pinnies of Fredness on a lottery basis:
This means that, like a cyclocross race, "call-ups" will be all-important if you want to get the BQE holeshot and win this completely non-competitive event:

To avoid a bottleneck like last year’s on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Mr. Podziba said, Bike New York will space out riders across three starting times.
Also, they're swapping Shore Parkway for the Gowanus, which is like when they sneak a 105 bottom bracket into your "full Dura-Ace" bike:
The route is also being changed, with riders taking the Gowanus Expressway instead of the Shore Parkway toward Staten Island.
However, to make up for it, you get a new rest stop (beware "OFICIAL VOLANTEERs" bearing latex) as well as entertainment:
He said Bike New York was adding a rest stop at Brooklyn Bridge Park with restrooms, food, water and entertainment.
No word yet on what that entertainment will be, but I'm hoping for either artistic cyclist extraordinaire Serge Huercio:


Or else those two synchronized swimmers I mentioned yesterday:


Well, they did say "water and entertainment."
Speaking of entertainment, there's a moment in all of our young lives when we seek out unsanctioned, non-parentally-vetted entertainment for the first time. Very often, this entertainment is music. Nowadays, these crazy kids with their Sony Sports Walkmen and their digital food processors can just "down load" music from the "Inter Net," but when I was a child we had to actually go to the store and buy a record bigger than our face.
I remember very clearly the first time I went to a record store all by myself and bought an album of my own choosing with my own money, and this was it was:
I don't even know why I wanted it. Somewhere or somehow I had heard about it, and I had to have it. When I came home, I didn't want anybody to look at it or ask me about it. It was mine. I didn't really know what the pentagram was--an evil Star of David perhaps?--but it was exciting. I also didn't know what a "Mötley Crüe" was, but I figured they must be pretty scary if they had the audacity to shout at the devil, and this was reaffirmed by the band photos on the inside of the album:

Yes, this was actually scary to me at the time, though now they just look like some guys who couldn't decide if they should dress like football players or porn queens and therefore decided to split the difference.
Anyway, I loved my Mötley Crüe album. It was weird and it described sex acts I wouldn't learn about for like ten more years, and every time I played it I felt like I was committing an act of rebellion. Eventually though, something happened: I discovered punk and hardcore music. What had once seemed rebellious was now just embarrassing. These Hollywood assholes were the enemy! Suddenly, I was ashamed of my Mötley Crüe album, and so one day I took it outside and shot it full of holes with a BB gun.
I found myself thinking about this recently in the context of Lance Armstrong after having read that Outside article everyone's talking about:

I tend not to mention Lance Armstrong much, only because doing so tends to ignite tedious helment debate-esque "flame wars," and to elicit crackpot theories like this:

3. Could Dopers Be Forming 'Strategies' Ties With Blogs? : The oldest trick in the book is to manipulate human perception about the truth through mass media propaganda. I laid out a plausible theory here that this sort of clandestine alliance might be happening between Armstrong and his blogging friends, among them which includes Fat Cyclist (Elden Nelson) and BSNYC (____ _____). These two cycling blogs, who command a wealth of American readers, have revealed quite ostentatiously that they are friends of L.A. Their blogs, like Rick Reilly's unpopular ESPN columns, could potentially become a tool to brainwash people. At the other end, a single link from Armstrong on his Twitter account could divert millions of people to read the blogs.

I must have missed the "ostentatious friend announcement," though I'm oddly flattered by the notion that my blog could possibly "manipulate human perception about the truth through mass media propaganda."
You didn't just see that.
Anyway, I started thinking about all of this because at the moment the cycling world's relationship with Lance Armstrong is exactly like mine was with that Mötley Crüe record, and right now everybody wants to make a big show out of shooting him full of holes. Just look at the image "Outside" used, in which they spared his penis, but not by much:
Of course, when I really think about it, the real reason I hated the Mötley Crüe record was because it was evidence that I had once been "uncool," and what better way to prove that I was hardcore than destroying that evidence? Similarly, that's why magazines like Outside are now so desperate to show their disdain for someone who was once their favorite cyclist--it's a contrived attempt by a mainstream publication to cultivate a hardcore image.
However, besides the headline and the penile near-misses, the actual article contains non-bombshells such as this:

During an investigation that played out over several months—involving dozens of interviews and careful examination of Livestrong’s public financial records—I found no evidence that Armstrong has done anything illegal in his role as the face of the organization.

And this:

On the program side, I learned that Livestrong provides an innovative and expanding suite of direct services to help cancer survivors negotiate our Kafkaesque health care system.
And this:
The foundation gave out a total of $20 million in research grants between 1998 and 2005, the year it began phasing out its support of hard science. A note on the foundation’s website informs visitors that, as of 2010, it no longer even accepts research proposals.
This is sort of like shooting at your Mötley Crüe album because you want to impress your hardcore friends but complementing Mick Mars on his outstanding guitar work as you're doing it. I guess I was supposed to be outraged when I read the article, but instead I mostly just thought about Charles Barkley, another retired athlete, and his $10 million gambling losses.
Looking back, I still think my Mötley Crüe album was ridiculous, but I now think my relationship with it was even more ridiculous. First I loved that record, then I hated it. There was never an in between. Now, though, I realize why this was, and for that reason I'm more embarrassed now about having destroyed the record than I am about having owned it.
It's kind of lame to be embarrassed about having liked something, or about still liking something. It's also lame to feel like you have to make a big empty show of how much you don't like it now--especially when you're doing it mostly because everybody else suddenly is. And that's the mainstream media's specialty. They're like the kid who wouldn't talk to you in high school and then reinvents himself in college and wants to show you his new tattoo.
Just relax, mainstream magazines, and roll you pant cuff back down over your tribal ankle tattoo. It's OK that you liked Mötley Crüe.

Firstly, I'd like to sincerely thank everybody who made a suggestion for a BRA stop yesterday. Not only was I deeply flattered by the invitations, but I also learned of many strange and exotic places I never even knew existed. For example, did you know there's a Portland in Maine? I didn't. Did you know that the capital of the United States is Washington, DC and not Wall Street? I didn't. Did you know that Mississippi and Missouri are two entirely different states? I certainly didn't, I just thought a surprising number of Mississippians (Mississippippians?) didn't know how to spell. Really, it's amazing what Americans can learn from each other when we actually communicate instead of just wearing headphones, eating sour cream and onion-flavored Pringles, and shooting at one another.
Anyway, now that you've shared the places where you live, I'd like to share a little bit about the place where I live, which is a small town called Brooklyn, USA. There are 2.5 millionses of people here, which is a lot. That's over 24,000 times more people than there are in Fucking, Austria:
Though it's only a third of the population of fucking Austria:
(Duuude, fucking Austria looks nice!)
To be perfectly honest, my feelings towards Brooklyn vacillate like a tourist on one of those rent-a-bikes. Sure, sometimes I don't like it here, but the times when I actively hate it more than make up for this. Here's just one of the many profoundly annoying things that are going on in Brooklyn right now:
First of all, if you're not familiar with Brooklyn, here's a little background on Prospect Park: it's a park. That's all you really need to know. Well, that and the fact that, as one of the New York City's most beautiful and popular public parks, it is open to motor vehicle traffic some of the time, and the rest of the time people just drive through it anyway. Sure, there are people lobbying to have cars banned from the park, but naturally we can't let this happen, since if people aren't allowed to drive through the precious few spaces we have in which to do things like walk and teach our children how to walk then before you know it we'll all get spoiled and start expecting people not to run us over when we're outside of the park, too. Obviously this notion is absurd.
Anyway, lots of people also ride bikes in Prospect Park, and yes, a not-insignificant number of these people are idiots who do things like don mankinis practice their time-trialling on busy summer Saturday afternoons, or who egregiously "salmon" while dragging some dimwitted dog along with them. Some of them even suck your wheel in the night. Others of these riders are not idiots at all, but are merely conscientious people enjoying a public space in an unobtrusive fashion. Either way, once in a great while, whether it's their fault or not, one of these cyclists runs into a pedestrian.
We're funny in America. When a person gets hit by a car, which happens roughly all the time, we generally place it in the same category as bear attacks and people who fall of their roofs because they were wearing roller skates while trying to install a satellite dish: basically, we blame the victim. If the victim was a pedestrian, he or she should have been more careful. If the victim was a cyclist, he or she should have been more careful and should also have been wearing a helmet. Motor vehicle traffic and the concomitant carnage is an inevitablity. A force of nature. An act of god that is completely out of our control.
On the other hand, when a person on a bicycle hits somebody, we react in the same way that we do to shootings: we're outraged, and we call for stricter laws. It's just the way we are. Faced by something that's just too daunting (cars) we instead prefer to beat up on the little guy (bikes).
In any case, there were some bike-related pedestrian injuries in the park recently, and somebody sued the city, and so there was a little mini bike crackdown in the park, and the Department of Transportation ultimately moved to solve it by harnessing the awesome power of orange barrels:
In Portland, the joke is that they "put a bird on it." However, in New York when it comes to traffic-related issues we prefer to "put a cone on it"--or, if this doesn't solve the problem, we bring out the heavy artillery and use the dreaded barrels. As you can see, the idea here is to force traffic into this extremely well-designed funneling system, and as you can imagine, it does no good whatsoever.
When I first saw the barrels, I thought, "Holy crap! Roadwork! They're actually fixing something." When I saw them again awhile later, I thought, "Huh, whatever it is is still broke." Then I learned that it wasn't roadwork at all, and that this was somehow supposed to keep me from riding into people.
Of course, in practice the barrels are merely confusing. Do you ride between the cones? Outside the cones in the bike lane that's right next to them? Or do we just play slalom through them? But to worry about these things is to miss the point, which is that the barrels aren't barrels of safety. The barrels are Barrels of Shame. They're great big dunce caps for the cyclists of Brooklyn to remind us of how hated we are.
So what are we supposed to do? Sometimes it feels like there are metaphorical barrels everywhere, and the goal is to funnel us all into Portland. But Portland isn't my home. This is my home, for better or worse. Do I really have to leave? Meanwhile, in the same paper as the above article, I also saw this:
Yes, it's synchronized swimming, the ideal nostalgic activity for the person looking for something that splits the difference between tweed rides and roller derby:
The amateur duo began moonlighting as urban mermaids in 2010 after meeting a ballerina in Paris who made them nostalgic for the swim and dance classes of their youth. Today, they’ve turned the Brooklyn Peaches into a creative project: Salm and Sciarrillo teach a class at the Dodge YMCA in Boerum Hill and the Brooklyn Peaches have appeared at an arts festival in the Rockaways, a winter pool party at a Park Avenue hotel, and an indie rock show at the Midtown Holiday Inn.
As well as for the enterprising fellow who figured this would be a great way to pick up chicks:
Roy Auty, a 35-year-old from Fort Greene and the only male in the class, said he’s always dreamed of learning synchronized swimming — but he likes the company more than the workouts themselves.
Sure, I could have Mr. Auty all wrong, but I can't help imagining him just spending the entire workout standing stock-still in the pool and leering.
Either way, given the sheer abundance of increasingly arcane pursuits in Brooklyn it often feels like we're turning into Portland anyway. And with the orange barrels and the synchronized swimming and the artisanal mayo all closing in, what choice does one really have? Why stay in the big, crowded new Portland that hates bikes? Maybe all the cyclists of Brooklyn should decamp for the real Portland where we can ruin their town instead.
Then, we could all get sponsorships from Giant:


"Why do sports companies only ever sponsor these guys?," asks the narrator:
"Why not sponsor him?"

Well, it's a good question, but if I had to guess I'd say that, given the route of the 2012 Tour de France, he's got little shot at the overall and is likely to win a only a transitional stage at best.
Then again, if Cadel Evans could do it maybe anyone can.

*(Spelling of "special" altered due to pending litigation by Specialized.)
The year was 2010. An obscure Brooklyn bike blogger published a book called "Bike Snob." Despite containing not a single delicious casserole recipe, "Bike Snob" immediately rocketed to the top slot of the New York Times best seller list, and in the ensuing months went on to outsell the Bible, the Talmud, and "Horton Hears a Who" combined. This whirlwind of publishing success continued until the author's ill-fated "Oprah" appearance, during which he claimed to be "bigger than Zoroaster" and then, while jumping up and down on the couch wildly, accidentally kicked Oprah in the face. The author is unwelcome in Iran to this day.
If you haven't yet figured it out, this bike blogger was me, or I, or myself, or whatever the correct grammer is. Despite the controversy I enjoyed writing and publishing a book so much I went ahead and wrote another one, and it will be in bookstores by April 2nd of this year. Here's what it will look like when viewed from the front:

Here's what it will look like censoring a naked lady on a recumbent:


And here's what it will look like when you take it home and read it in the bathroom:
Like my last book, this one is published by Chronicle, so you can rest assured that fit and finish will be top notch. Also like the last book, you can rest assured it's all new and original material and that you have never read it before unless either you have broken into my house or you are this guy and you can travel through time. As for what it's about, it's merely a humorous bike-themed exploration of the human condition from prehistoric times until today that contains the secret to everlasting happiness. I think you will enjoy it, unless you were hoping for a biography of Benjamin Franklin, in which case you may be profoundly disappointed.
Again, the book will be in stores by April 2nd, but if you're inclined to pre-order it you can do so now through:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
and
IndieBound.
Also, as you may recall, back in 2010 when "Bike Snob" came out I visited a number of cities and made various Book-Related Appearances, or "BRAs." These BRAs were tremendously enjoyable to me, and I'd like to think they were also fun for everyone who was kind enough to attend. Well, with this book Chronicle are going to send me out once again, only they're not sure where, and to that end they're soliciting recommendations as to where I should go this time around. So if you have a good idea for a BRA, simply leave it in the comments below, which they will be reading (Lob help them), and they will use it to determine whether or not to force me to go to your city.
Just to be clear, this request for tour stop recommendations is completely sincere. Nevertheless, I fully realize various joke suggestions are bound to appear anyway, so for my publisher's sake I'll just go ahead and pre-empt some of the more obvious ones:
--Send BSNYC to Scranus, PA--Send BSNYC to Uranus--Send BSNYC to Libya--Send BSNYC to the Fukushima nuclear reactor--Send BSNYC to Cleveland
Please, Lob, don't let it be Cleveland.
Of course, if I do come to your city, I will endeavor to make the visit as much fun as possible (even if it's Cleveland), and to get my hands on some good bikey stuff to give away, and to work in a bicycle cycling ride of some kind.
Thanks very much for your readership and your gratuitous scranus jokes, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in the various weird, scary, beautiful, and smug places that are not New York.


Moving on, further to yesterday's post in which I mentioned those Budnitz Bicycles (which I'm free to find silly since last time I checked this is AMERICA), one reader left an indignant comment (as is his or her right since last time I checked this is AMERICA):
Anonymous said...
Wow...you people are absolutely clueless to the contributions that Paul has made in the modern art world. This man is a visionary that supports the arts and the people around him. Just because he has never actually made the bikes doesn't mean that he shouldn't take credit for the daft designs that will live on for eternity. When I made a design for a Dunny I didn't craft each and everyone as that would be a big waste of time. Paul understands design and who he can talk to to get things made. Further more all the references to No 1 and No 2 are immature and sophomoric. Grow up!
It won't be long before all of you will be wishing you bought one because they are limited.
JANUARY 10, 2012 2:52 AM
First of all, nobody's criticizing Budnitz for not fabricating his own bikes--I think most of us would agree that having Lynskey build them is the only smart decision he's made. I also admit I'm not familiar with Budnitz's contributions to the modern art world, but as far as I can tell they mostly consist of these:
Even if I thought this stuff was artistically valid and not just a pointless anime-meets-Noid brainfart, I'm not sure why that would mean I should also respect his bikes. Nelson Mandela made some pretty important contributions to the world too, but that doesn't mean if he designed a bike it wouldn't suck. And as far as the whole "limited" thing, clearly the commenter has never heard of NAHBS. Bike dorks don't get excited about "limited" unless it's a single one-of-a-kind bike hand-fabricated specifically for their own crotchal dimensions by a Portlander with interesting facial hair .
In all honesty though, I would have forgotten about the Budnitz bikes by now if I hadn't also visited their site and read this:
They roll so godd*mn fast that we actually had to adjust the gearing on our first production models because traditional gear ratios moved too slowly.

Yeah, you know, "traditional gear ratios." I'm sure we all agree on exactly what those are--especially for a lobsided titanium hybrid named after a euphemism for going to the bathroom. Then came this:

Even better, our bicycles don’t add anything you don’t need. In a way, they actually add less.

So, $6,000 for less than you need. That's 17 words just to say "fuck you" to your customers. Pretty wasteful for a minimalist.
In other news of unpainted metal vehicles, Hans of Komet Club Rouleur (who kindly had me over to Gothenburg, Sweden last spring) recently sent me this photograph taken by a friend at a Bay Area cyclocross race:
I think it goes without saying who the owner is:


While another reader has forwarded me what could very well be the greatest disembodied hand shot ever taken:

Now that's a contribution to modern art.

So how crazy was that Apocalypse last Friday?
Ever since I announced that the world would end on January 6th, 2012, I admit that even I had my doubts. After all, we've seen this sort of thing time and time again, and it things always turn out the same. Basically, the Apocalyptic template it this:
1) Some person announces world is going to end on a certain date;
2) A bunch of people all gather in anticipation and engage in a set of prescribed behaviors such as giving away their belongings, putting on special sneakers, and killing themselves;
3) Date on which world is supposed to end comes and goes, person who made initial announcement explains his mistake, and cognitive dissonance sets in among the newly-broke followers in the special sneakers (barring the ones who have killed themselves of course);
4) Life goes on as stupidly as it has for millenia millenniae milenniums years.
So as the day wore on I started to worry that perhaps the calendar I had found was wrong and that the world might in fact not end after all. Looking down at my Apocalyptic Sneakers, I winced as I reflected on my recent behavior. Maybe taking all my money out of the bank and treating everybody at Staples to free office supplies was a mistake. Maybe I should have paid my rent instead of laughing maniacally at my landlord and confidently declaring, "You'll get yours, infidel!" Maybe I shouldn't have advised my highly gullible neighbors to place their beloved cat in the freezer as a last-ditch attempt at cryogenic preservation.
In fact, I was just about to knock on their door and suggest that there might still be time to save Mittens before hypothermia set in when I heard the strains of Don McLean's "American Pie." At first I reacted as I normally do when I hear that song, which is to say I smashed my stereo to pieces and then set fire to the remains. However, as the plastic smoldered I realized I could still hear the plaintive whining, and that it seemed to be coming from the heavens. That's when I looked outside.
I don't need to bore you with the rest, since the details are still fresh in all our minds. First came the Pengins of Retribution with the Crowns of Flames, then they smited smoat smate effed up the wicked, then every Specialized bicycle on Earth turned to vinegar ("I swear, I was just riding along when my S-Works McLaren Schmegma turned to balsamic!"), and then a young Ted Koppel took to the airwaves, officially ushered in the Age of Aquarius, and just as Moses had once done, read the Nü-Kommandments to us from the Tablets of Justice.
Sure, the Nü Age is going to take some getting used to, but I for one am looking forward to it. Money was indeed the root of all evil, and paying for stuff with love and stories is bound to be a lot more enjoyable. The whole "no clothing" thing is also quite liberating, and I was surprised to learn that what I used to experience as "cold" was merely a post-Edenic manifestation of my own shame. However, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the new dietary code, and there's no way I ever would have guessed that the only food that is pure in the Almighty Lobster's all-seeing eye stalks is Arby's. S/He scuttles in mysterious ways, ah-meh, challahluja, etc.
Moving on, this past weekend saw the thrilling conclusion of the Cyclocross National Championships in Madison, WI:
I mention this only as a public service announcement for all the people who are buying cyclocross bikes because they're the new track bike. Remember when you used to pretend to be interested in boring stuff like keirin racing, Theo Bos, and the formidable British track racing program? Well, now you're supposed to pretend that you follow cyclocross, so start studying and earn those fancy new cantilevers you just bought. Also, make sure you study the UCI's rules on tire width--not because your bike will ever see a UCI race, but because UCI-legal is the new NJS.
Speaking of track bikes and fond reminiscences, remember the Golden Age of Collabos?
The above bicycle cost $6,000 in 2007 and was a "collabo" between "The Nemesis Project" and something called "Kidrobot." This is what "Kidrobot" is:
Founded in 2002 by designer Paul Budnitz, Kidrobot is the world's premier creator of limited edition art toys and apparel. Kidrobot creates toys, apparel, accessories, and other products in collaboration with many of the world's most talented artists and designers.
In other words, Kidrobot sells toys to the sorts of "adults" who leave the sticker on their hat brims, collect footwear, wear giant headphones, listen to musical genres that contain "step" in the name, and claim to be DJs even though nobody's ever heard them "spin" except for their roommate and the cat.
Anyway, believe it or not, back in 2007 people used to take these "collabo" bikes seriously--so seriously that when I actually saw this bike in a Kidrobot store at the time an employee explained the price tag to me by pointing out some inane feature like the valve caps and then refused to let me photograph it. Granted, they were probably right not to let me photograph it because it looked exactly like a hastily-rattlecanned Giant Bowery and my sole intent was to mock it on the Internet, but it turned out that the importance attached to the project was even more absurd than the bicycle itself.

In any case, like everybody else in the world I had completely forgotten about the Kidrobot bike, but then I was reading about bicycles on the Internet while using the bathroom and learned that the Kidrobot guy is now selling his own line of bicycles:
In so doing, he's finally addressing the needs of an oft-neglected customer: the person who wants to spend many thousands of dollars on a city bike, but who also wants one that's been marketed by a designer toymaker instead of somebody with any real knowledge of bicycles.

(Budnitz resurrecting a concept that proved so successful in Trek's 69er and Cannondale's Beast of the East.)
Of course, Budnitz's bikes are actually built by a company that certainly does know what it's doing (Lynskey), so there is that, but the "philosophy" is all his:
"I'm basically saying, 'You're going to spend $5,600 on a bike and potentially that frame's going to last you forever'," he said. "Or you can spend less than that on something that's going to be creaky after a while and it's going to get rundown or it's going to chip – the whole replacement mentality."
This makes total sense as long as you forget the fact that most frames will last "forever," and that absolutely every bike will be creaky after awhile if you don't maintain it. Clearly while rummaging around in that same Discarded Ideas of the Bicycle Industry bin where he found the "two different-sized wheels" concept, he also found the "titanium lasts forever and is the last bike you'll ever buy" concept. I fondly remember when Freds used to buy Litespeeds and Merlins based on this concept so that they could finally stop replacing their steel frames that had "gone soft." Unsurprisingly, these bikes did not last forever--not because they failed, but because as soon as crabon came on the scene they all mysteriously vanished.
Speaking of vanishing, what happens when your blossoming love for your Budnitz gets nipped in the budnitz by a bike thief? Well, don't worry, it won't cost you a thing:
Budnitz also has an interesting theft replacement policy: a 20 percent discount that – assuming a reasonable homeowner's or renter's insurance policy – should make the replacement close to free.
You'd think that between Hurricane Katrina and the whole AIG thing we'd have learned by now not to ever rationalize any decision by using the words "assuming," "reasonable," and "insurance" together in the same sentence. Apparently not.
However, if you are thinking about a Budnitz, at least he has the decency to tell you that you're a clueless consumer who doesn't know anything about anything:
"We’re offering very few things on purpose," he said. "This bike is dialed for what it is. Things were chosen for a specific reason. From a marketing side of things, it's my belief that things have gotten really complicated. It's not clutter, it doesn't cause anxiety, everything works really well together. We're just keeping it simple. A lot of it is modeled after the way Apple sell computers – just choose a few options and you're done and you don't have to be technically oriented to buy an Apple. Do you know what goes inside your car?"

Wait, my car? Yes. Yes I do know what goes inside of it:
(My car.)
I also know what goes inside David Byrne's car:

(The nothingness under the hood of the car David Byrne does not have is a black hole from which nothing in the universe can ever escape. So never offer to check his oil for him.)
What I don't know though is what bikes he's talking about that are so "complicated" and produce so much "anxiety" in people. Is it really that hard to buy a Jamis? Do people really find the prospect of choosing between the blue Linus or the black one so horrifying that they're just breaking down and going, "Fuck it! Here's $6,000, just give me the lobsided one from the robot guy!"? I don't know, maybe they are.
I wonder if Budnitz adheres to the Nü-Kommandments and will accept love and stories in lieu of cash. Maybe I can hug and recount my way onto a sweet titanium 69er.