Slam of the Tongue: Racing and Portaging

Did you know there's a three-week bicycle cycling stage race taking place in France right now called the Tour of France? There sure is. And even though it's the very first one, the cycling media is all over it. For example, Bicycling magazine has put their very best writers on the race. They've also put their worst writer on it--me--and here's my most recent Tour of France-related post. Also, here's other stuff I have wroten for them over the years. And here's a pretty picture of an egret. And here's a kid wearing an ALF t-shirt.

I realize that's a lot of stuff, but I'm just doing my best to please everybody.

Still, as hard as I try, I always manage to forget something. For example, you'd think that between the Tour of France crap and the egret and the kid in the ALF t-shirt I'd have satisfied every demographic. However, someone's always left wanting more--like the commenter who wanted to see Cadel Evans throwing his backwash onto Mark Cavendish:

Anonymous said...

Where is Cadel 'accidentally' throwing water at Cav?!

July 12, 2011 12:38 AM

Well, here it is:



Note the surreptitious manner in which Evans throws the water at the Vittel guy:

And them immediately supplicates himself before an angry Mark Cavendish when he's caught in the act, like a submissive dog exposing his belly:

It's clear who's the alpha male in the peloton, and I think mischievous heel-nipper Cadel Evans might benefit from a week with Cesar Millan:

(The Cadel Whisperer)

Also, speaking of creatures who can't control their tongues, here's Thomas Voeckler's wild Stage 9 tongue action via Cycling Inquisition:



I think he may have taken that old Sam Kinison routine about "licking the alphabet" a bit too seriously. Actually, it looks like he's spelling out "maillot jaune" with his tongue.

Moving away from the glamorous world of professional bicycle racing and on to the sordid world of amateur unsanctioned bicycle racing meant to generate images and marketing copy for luxury cycling apparel brands, yesterday I complained that my team didn't make it into the 2011 Rapha Northeast Gentlemen's Race video. Well, the filmmaker was kind enough to visit the comments section and offer an explanation:

Stebs said...

Sorry I missed filming your team! We were all over the place and unfortunately missed a lot of racers...

July 11, 2011 1:32 PM

Right. WHAT-everrr. You can make it sound like a coincidence, but I know it's all about looks. I bet we would have been all over that video if we had sweet integrated aero-beard face fairings like this guy did:

I guess he couldn't afford the Rapha neck gaiter and so he just grew one instead.

Also, in other cycling apparel-related news, a reader tells me that Conan O'Brien and actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar recently had a chat about Lycra and leg-shaving:



By the way, if you look up Gosselaar's race results, he's got fairly impressive palmarès for a famous actor:

Certainly way better than that Andrew Tilin guy who doped yet never made it out of the 4s:

And then wrote a book about it:


I've actually been reading this book for weeks now but I'm still only on page 125. If I ever do manage to finish it I'll let you know what I think, but I may have to take some kind of literacy-enhancing drug to get there.

Anyway, as far as I know Conan O'Brien doesn't have any race results, but he does ride a Serotta and looks like an elongated Alexandre Vinokourov:

Meanwhile, in the world of non-competitive (except for Cat 6 racers of course) cycling, local site Gothamist recently reported on perhaps the most offensive bike lane television news story I've ever seen:


In it, the reporter says of a bike lane that would pass the Israeli Consulate:

"Imagine if the man on the bike was a terrorist!"

Right. Remember those bicycles that bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and then destroyed it in 2001? Neither do I. That comment has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard anyone say about cycling or terrorism--on TV or off--and I would have given anything to see her get hit by that cab when she stepped out into the middle of the street at 1:06:

Not enough to injure her seriously, mind you, but just enough to keep her off the air. Actually, maybe that already happened, because a severe head injury is the only thing that could possibly explain her idiotic reporting.

Idiot reporters aside, I'm very thankful for bike lanes, since they greatly facilitate child-portaging. I'm constantly refining my child-portaging technique, and I recently realized that I had installed my Xtracycle PeaPod LT a little too far back:

Now, though, I'm running it totally "slammed:"

I was proud of my aggressive new setup, and I even boasted about it by means of the Tweeter, though commenter "ce" totally humbled me yesterday:

ce said...

Snob, slam your kid seat properly by ditching the deck and the various bracket bits. Attach the seat directly to the V-Racks with SuperHooks. Then cut the LawyerLegs off the seat to clean up the lines of your cargo area.

The bit about the LawyerLegs really stung, and as a child-portaging "noob" I had no idea I was doing the smugness equivalent of "palping" a pie plate.

Slam That Stem was even tougher on me:

Eventually I'll get it together, though I'm not sure I'll ever attain this level of child-slammage:

Now that kid is slammed.

Hard Times: Is Preciousness Over?

Last week on this blog, there was much discussion in the comments regarding the subject of h-e-l-m-e-t-s. (So as not to start another debate, please note I'm spelling out the "h" word as you might spell out the word "walk" when your dog's in the room.) This is ironic. While we cyclists bicker over h-e-l-m-e-t-s incessantly, most American non-cyclists think we're crazy to ride bicycles no matter how much safety equipment we use. In fact, even driving an economy car is still widely regarded as suicidal in this country. I was reading an article in the New York Times this past weekend about fuel efficiency standards, and one commenter had this to say:

While it might be technically feasible to do this how many extra deaths will we get as a result of the smaller lighter cars? I read that for every 5 mpg increase there will be 3,500 extra deaths each year. So that means something like 17,500 folks will die each year to avoid extracting a little more oil out of the ground. With our current death rate on the highways of 42,000 that is about a third increase. No thanks, I'll keep driving my big old mean SUV.

Right. Because it's impossible to get hurt in an SUV.

Nevertheless, the rolling bunker mentality is still a pervasive (and politically influential) one. For this reason, even though bicycle commuting is on the rise all over the country, as cyclists we remain vulnerable. We're like mammals in the waning days of the dinosaurs: far more adaptable and with much better long-term prospects, yet in the meantime still in imminent danger of being squashed.

You'd imagine that at some point Americans would wake up to the fact that they're being sold a very expensive illusion of safety that is in fact killing them and opt for practicality and efficiency over sheer size, but until that day there's nothing illusory about city streets filled with light-running SUVs driven by a gentry who are more or less free to maim with impunity. And when it comes to cycling for transportation, the fact that your safety--indeed your very life--is not a consideration is what you might call a "barrier to entry."

We all approach this barrier differently depending on our dispositions. Some of us hop it as adroitly as a cyclocross racer and ride undaunted. Others step over it with considerable trepidation, riding only occasionally or strictly for recreation. Still others simply go around it by opting for other modes of transport. And of course millions of people buy gigantic "safe" automobiles and just drive through the fucking thing while jockeying their smartphones, with two or three cyclists pinned to their bumpers.

But while a h-e-l-m-e-t may help some New Yorkers approach this barrier with a bit more confidence, guess what's not helping? Expensive pretty stuff:

It took a few years, but it would appear that people are finally coming to terms with the fact that New York is not in fact Copenhagen or Amsterdam, and that beneath the veneer of gentrification it's still an indifferent hellhole. You've got to hand it to them, though--they really tried to maintain the illusion for a few years. Remember those articles about "cycle biker chic?" Remember when we were all going to be riding Dutch Bikes?

That was cute.

Then it turned out that in New York City $1,000 commuter bikes still get stolen, cops still hate you, and drivers don't care how faaahbulous you look because they don't see you in the first place.

Of course, the "hook" of this article is that it's women who are finding all this discouraging, but to spin it that way is to ignore the fact that we all suffer regardless of genitalway. Who among us--male, female, or "other"--can't relate to at least part of this?

And if the experiences of Lisa Buonaiuto are any indication, the safety concerns are still legitimate. She started cycling three years ago, taking her bicycle from the Metro-North station on 125th Street in Harlem to her job at Barnard College. In that time, she has been nearly hit by a bus, ticketed for riding on an empty sidewalk on Amsterdam Avenue when she felt overwhelmed by the trucks and endured shouts from “daredevil” messengers. Now she travels along side streets, avoids Broadway and on a recent afternoon took the Hudson River Greenway to a hair appointment downtown.

For my part, I've actually solved the hair appointment problem by riding in curlers. Not only do I save time by styling while on the go, but the curlers themselves offer protection and make a fantastic helmet substitute:

(New York City Cycle Chic 2.0)

I'd like things to improve for all of us, but in the meantime the h-e-l-m-e-t remains a symbol that we're under attack, and the expensive pretty stuff a symbol of a somewhat rarefied ideal. Speaking of rarefied ideals, these are also the hallmarks of that other incendiary "h" word, by which I mean h-i-p-s-t-e-r-s. They too tend to live in denial when it comes to certain realities of urban living--and when they're inevitably forced to confront them it always seems to make the news:

In an age when some of New York City's roughest areas have been "tamed," it's only natural that the young and creative should feel as though they have something of a "Midas Touch" when it comes to neighborhoods. As it turns out, that's not the case, for when a "psychedelic punk-rap" band rented a cheap apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant recently they were immediately robbed:

“This is not the kind of neighborhood people like us move into,” said Zayd Brewer, known to friends as Spaceman, the 19-year-old lead singer of the band. “Call it naïveté or whatever. ‘We can defend ourselves.’ ”

The story of what happened in that apartment on a corner of Bedford-Stuyvesant on the morning of June 13 is a cautionary tale about too-good-to-be-true dwellings in unfamiliar neighborhoods, and a reminder that not all of Brooklyn is a red carpet for the young and aspiring.

Indeed, what follows is more than just a cautionary tale. In fact, it's perhaps the most harrowing h-i-p-s-t-e-r gentrification-gone-awry tale ever told, and the Medal of Valor goes to bandmate Andrew Downs, who presumably cowered under his car while the "shit went down:"

Mr. Downs was outside: he had gone to move his car before morning. He was returning when he saw “a whole bunch of dudes overrunning the house,” he said. He hid and feared the worst for his friends: “I thought they were all dead.”

Granted, barging in and trying to be a hero probably wouldn't have ended well. But, like, you don't even call 911? "Ah, they're probably all dead anyway," Downs apparently concluded. "Why waste my anytime minutes?"

None of this bodes well for the tide of gentrification, which is clearly ebbing:

They revisited the apartment on Tuesday to clean it up, as the landlord threatened to keep their security deposit, 300 bucks they badly needed. There was blood on the floor and fingerprint dust on every doorknob. They are looking for new digs, undeterred. Maybe Bushwick.

That is one ballsy landlord.

Anyway, the time-honored pattern is that artists move into a rough neighborhood for the cheap rents, put up with a huge amount of crap, and eventually shore it up so that rich douchebags can move in and displace everybody. Now though, even the first wave is simply saying "fuck it" after a few days, which is either good news or bad news, depending on how you view gentrification in the first place. This may also be something of a generational shift, especially when you consider that the band itself is actually bragging about it:

I remember when rappers used to brag about robbing people. Now they're bragging about getting robbed. What's next, Christian death metal?

Speaking of theft that's only newsworthy because it happened to h-i-p-s-t-e-r-s, a reader informs me that some guy got his bike stolen in London:


Yes, I'm sure he's the first person ever to have his bike stolen in London:

Though I'm pretty sure he's not the first person to lock his bike only by the seatpost:

By the way, the photo above shows the thieves actually stealing the bike. It was taken by a "bystander," who clearly attended the Andrew Downs School of Passive-Assertiveness Training.

At least it wasn't the even more expensive Kate Spade model.

Racing Towards Anxiety: Sowing the Seeds of Doubt

This past weekend, the Bicycle Film Festival took place in New York City. If you're unfamiliar with the Bicycle Film Festival, it's kind of like Sundance, only for the sorts of people who wear cycling caps as casual wear and ride brakeless bicycles with perpetually empty CETMA racks. I did not attend the festival, even though (or, more accurately, because) it featured films like that "Racing Towards Red Hook" video, the preview of which is so sublimely absurd as to warrant a second viewing:

expresso: racing towards red hook (trailer) from Jessica Scott on Vimeo.

In addition to the infamous "This ain't no hipster shit" quote, the "Racing Towards Red Hook" preview also features other rhinestones of wisdom, such as this:

"So many people have, like, this type of bike it makes sense to create some sort of sporting event around it."

I couldn't agree more. Given the popularity of fixed-gears it really is about time somebody invented some kind of competition in which these bicycles can be utilized. I think the ideal venue for a bicycle with a single gear ratio and no brakes would be some sort of flat, closed bicycle track, and instead of running lights and getting signatures on manifests or popping wheelies they could simply ride around and around it to see who's the fastest. It could be called a "velo-drome"--"velo" for bike, and "drome" for, well, drome--and if someone were to build some sort of prototype I have no doubt it would attract many fixed-gear cyclists with trendy moustaches:

Sure, it will be underground to begin with, but who knows? Maybe in 50 or 100 years racing bicycles inside of a "velo-drome" could become an olympic sport! I know it seems far-fetched, but hey, we can dream. And it will all have started thanks to the boundless vision of the guy in the Cinelli hat.

(Frank Warren: Non-Hipster and Inventor of the Velodrome)

It's hard to blame him for his exuberance though. After all, who among us has not discovered some new pleasure, and become so excited about it that we mistake this excitement for discovery? I know that was my experience when I tasted chocolate-dipped haggis for the first time. "Have you tried this?!?," I shouted exuberantly as I attempted to foist forkfuls of the stuff onto complete strangers. "It's amazing!" Little did I know artisanal chocolate-dipped haggis trucks have been all the rage in Brooklyn for like months now, and in my enthusiasm I came off as a total foodie "noob." Now, I know better, so I munch my chocolate-dipped haggis while wearing the appropriately fashionable expression of world-weary detachment.

Speaking of bicycle racing, that was one of the things I opted to do this past weekend instead of going to the Cycling Caps and Shants Film Festival. Even though I harbor no illusions as to my ability and enter races with little ambition beyond enjoying myself and not falling down, I'm usually excited before a race. I'm also always just a tiny bit nervous, mostly because I'm anticipating a state of anaerobic distress. Anyway, this was a mountain bike race, and as I stood there resting on my handlebars and awaiting the mad scramble for the holeshot, one of my fellow riders pointed to my arm and asked, "Has that been there from birth?" He was referring to a mole.

"I dunno," I replied.

"Well, you should really get it checked out," he pronounced in a dire tone.

One of my favorite things about bike racing is that, for the duration of the race, you set your troubles aside and focus only on riding your bike. Well, so much for that. Riding my bike was now the last thing on my mind, since apparently I had skin cancer. Basically, his words had the same excitement-quelling effect as slipping on a Larry King mask just before lovemaking. Then, my mind immediately shot to my recent return from Gothenburg, Sweden, when my driver had uttered these chilling words to me:

"You will die very soon. Mark my words. You will die very soon."

Sweet merciful Lob! It now became clear that he had put a curse on me and manifest a malignant mole upon my person.

A few rows ahead of me, a rider was wearing some sort of yellow LiveStrong helmet and glasses combo, and I resolved to push my way up to him and rub my moley arm all over his head and face in the hopes that his accessories might serve as a curative. Unfortunately, before I could get to him the race began, and like pretty much everybody else who was there that day he rode away from me rather easily.

Needless to say, I continued to reflect on this throughout the race, and at one point it occurred to me that perhaps it had been my fellow rider's plan to "psyche me out" all along by effectively transforming my race into a real-life "Seinfeld" episode. Furthermore, maybe I wasn't his only victim. For all I know, he could had been going from rider to rider and sowing seeds of doubt and fear in each one of them. "Hmmm, do you have a family history of glaucoma?," he might have asked as he peered into someone's eyes. "Did you just go to the bathroom again? Frequent urination can be a sign of adult onset diabetes."

In any case, if his intention was to undermine me he needn't have bothered, since in a race you can always count on me to undermine myself--and as usual, I did a commendable job of it. As for the mole, I suppose it couldn't hurt to go to the doctor, though I think I'll just take a picture of it and put it up on Twitter or Facebook instead. [Is my mole dangerous? If "yes," click the "Like" button!] Yes, here in HMO-merica, we're big believers in the power of amateur Internet diagnosis-by-consensus. Stuff like hands-on treatment and "universal health care" is for Canadians and communists.

Anyway, given my poor performance, I briefly flirted with retiring from cycling and taking up something less tiring. But what? For a moment, I considered origami:

But then I realized that the "origami culture" is probably just as cliquey and judgmental as the "bike culture." Consider the following:

Highlights of the exhibition included folded-paper versions of an Academy Award statuette, a miniature Buddha and a 15-foot Tyrannosaurus rex constructed by a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All were completed without the aid of scissors or glue.

“We’re purists,” said Wendy Weiss, 44, of Holyoke, Mass.

Clearly scissors and glue are the brakes and derailleurs of the crafting world, and just like fixed-gear riders the scissorless-and-glueless set are way too self-righteous about not using them.

I suppose I could always sandbag as a Cat 6 racer, but frankly I don't think I could afford the equipment. As we saw last week, Cat 6-style flat-bar road bikes are becoming very exotic, and via the Twitter I've learned that cyclocross bikes are following suit:

2010 Stevens Team Cyclocross Bike (santa clara)
Date: 2011-06-24, 3:04PM PDT
Reply to: [deleted]

2010 52 cm Stevens Team Cyclocross Bike

* Sram Red Components
* Custom built Velocity wheels with Challenge Parigi-Roubaix 700x28 Tires
* Ritchie WCS Flat bars, Seat Post and Stem
* Fizik Arione Saddle
* Speedplay Stainless Zero pedals

8 months old and ridden less than 1000 miles

Over 4500.00 invested with receipts.

Great straight bar road bike. World class Cyclocross frame . Just a tad too big for me.
Best fit probably 5'7"-5'10". Weighs just under 17 LBS. Outstanding frame and components for the serious biker.

Serious inquires please call Joe @ 408-621-[deleted]


Good thing he kept the receipts. I hear shame is tax deductible now.

Creative Class: The Selflessness of Consumerism

Recently, I was reading the June 27th issue of The New Yorker, which is like totally crazy, since it's only the 22nd. My best guess is that it fell through a wormhole in time, which would explain why the magazine was sort of wet and wrinkly--though that could also be because I do the majority of my reading in the bathroom. Anyway, in this Magazine from the Future is (or will be) an article by Nicholas Lemann called "Get Out of Town: Has the celebration of cities gone too far?," and it's sort of a roundup of various books about the state of cities and urban living in the 21st century.

One of the writers Lemann talks about in the article is someone called Richard Florida, who puts forth the notion of a "Creative Class." The "Super-Creative Core" of the Creative Class apparently consists of people like scientists, architects, academics, and artists. Then, the rest of the Creative Class is made up of "managers, lawyers, accountants, and so on."

"The key factor in determining whether a city is successful," explains Lemann of Florida's idea, "is how significant a cohort of the Creative Class it attracts." Furthermore, he adds that "you would have thought it was dull Babbitts who made a city commercially successful, but no--it's kids with scruffy beards and tattoos who have alt-rock bands, script iPhone apps, and wait tables in vegan restaurants."

In other words, Lemann is saying that the Creative Class consists of the people commonly referred to as "hipsters."

Now, Lemann may be simplifying Florida's concept a bit. Firstly, I've never met a hipster scientist--unless you consider "mixology" a science. Secondly, I'm not so sure it makes sense to lump accountants in with the Creative Class, since a creative accountant is technically a member of the criminal class. Still, what Lemann is saying (or at least what he's saying that Florida is saying) is that hipsters make cities rich:

What's the connection between them and prosperity? (Their parents are probably asking the same question.) They generate an atmosphere of cultural richness and innovation that attracts more obviously productive types, who have lots of choices about where to live and will pick places they find exciting and attractive.

Here in New York City, gentrification is one of our most popular spectator sports, so there's nothing new to us about the concept that trendy neighborhoods ultimately attract people with money. What I did find intriguing, though, was the idea that hipsters "generate an atmosphere of cultural richness and innovation," and it's one that's both comforting and disturbing.

Increasingly, people either like to say that the word "hipster" is no longer relevant, or that it's petty to make the distinction. However, I think it's foolish to ignore a pop cultural phenomenon that's so readily apparent, and that for better or worse will define this time period in the same way hippies defined the 1960s or yuppies defined the 1980s. Moreover, I'd argue that most people have a visceral reaction when they enter a neighborhood like Williamsburg and see, say, a recent Bard graduate loitering in front of a high-end coffee shop with a $4,000 track racing bicycle and a set of brass knuckles tattooed on his arm. It's hard not to be amazed at the irony.

However, for me at least, the idea that these people are simply "generating an atmosphere" somehow makes my own reaction less visceral. Previously when I saw someone like that, I thought they were appropriating a lifestyle with which they had no experience in order to fool people into thinking they were "authentic," and I found this simultaneously humorous and infuriating. Now, though, I realize they're providing "atmosphere," and that they're kind of like real-life movie extras whose purpose is to foster prosperity by visually enhancing a neighborhood so that it attracts "more obviously productive types."

Sure, this notion may be depressing, but at least it makes sense. These people aren't cultural con artists. Rather, they're unwitting dupes who serve as attractive ground cover and eventually become the cultural mulch that fertilizes neighborhoods for the wealthier people who will inevitably supplant them.

They're certainly doing their job well, too. The person with the expensive bike and the expensive brass knuckle tattoo is ideal fauna for the streets of Williamsburg, and he looks just as at home in front of an old building covered in "street art" as he does in the lobby of a building full of overpriced "luxury lofts." His "ink" is the sort of stylized criminal imagery that denizens of such neighborhoods feel comfortable referencing since they enjoy the aesthetics yet are confident that they'll never actually have to encounter it. He's exactly the sort of bandit a wealthy urbanite wants to encounter: he looks like a hoodlum, but the most subversive act of which he's capable is making them a sub-par latte.

For the same reason, I was similarly vexed by the "bike culture," which is certainly a subculture of the Creative Class and which seems to communicate almost entirely in the language of Product. It's a world of "dropping" and "swooping" and "re-ups" and "bike checks" and "edits" depicting the worst sort of two-wheeled fatuousness. Naively, I once thought, "Don't people ever tire of the new shiny things? What's so interesting about a portrait of a bicycle belonging to a person who can barely ride? Since when did product promotion become art? And how many bags is is possible to own anyway?"

But then I realized something: being attractive urban fauna is work. It's essential that people be told what to ride and how to ride and what to wear what to carry and how to carry it. It's also essential that they see pictures of other people doing it so they can copy the bikes and the bags and the clothing and the tattoos, so that the "atmosphere of cultural richness" strikes exactly the right heady balance that makes lawyers want to buy condos. Really, it's incredibly selfless of people to spend so much time, energy, and money on primping so that our cities become more attractive to people with money. Thank you, human wallpaper, for doing what you do so well.

Speaking of Williamsburg, the Brooklyn Paper reports that it now has more bike shops than Park Slope:

In the spectator sport of New York City gentrification, you're supposed to hate Williamsburg because of all the hipsters, and you're supposed to hate Park Slope because of all the yuppies and babies. Therefore, publications like the Brooklyn Paper must occasionally stir things up with titillating passages like this:

Silk Road’s Brendon Nicholas is not surprised — he argues that Williamsburg has more commuters while the Slope is riddled with “club riders” who train for cycling races or travel in packs like feral mammals around Prospect Park.

It's worth noting that all Brendon Nicholas said was "club riders," and that the reporter seems to have added the "travel in packs like feral mammals" part. Also, evidently it never occurred to the reporter that the people who ride in Prospect Park come there from other neighborhoods--including Williamsburg. However, I was interested to learn that the hipsterization of the Rockaways seems to be driving Williamsburgers away from fixed-gears:

“You don’t have as much here, you have more leisurely riding where people ride out to the beach on a road bike,” said Nicholas. “We’re seeing the trend toward single speed bicycles with breaks — bicycles that coast.”

Once they started riding more than two miles at a time, it had to happen...but "breaks?" Evidently the Brooklyn Paper uses the same style manual as the New York Post.

Anyway, in addition to calling Park Slopers "feral," the Brooklyn Paper claims that Williamsburgers are the better commuters:

Williamsburg has long been home to the city’s most committed commuters.

More than 6,200 people ride over the Williamsburg Bridge each day according to city transportation studies — nearly equaling the number of riders who cross either the Manhattan Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge each day.

If the Williamsburg Bridge sees fewer cyclists than either the Manhattan or Brooklyn bridges, how then is Williamsburg "home to the city's most committed commuters?" Anyway, how do you know where the people who ride over the Williamsburg Bridge are actually from? I use it fairly often, yet I don't live anywhere near the place. But perhaps the most confusing passage in the article was this:

Bike shops in Williamsburg and Greenpoint sell many fixed gears and single speeds while Park Slope shops often sell 21 to 27 speeds to riders who need to climb the neighborhood’s hills.

Ah yes, the famous hills of Park Slope. Who is selling new bikes with 21 speeds anyway? I think the only place you can get one of those now is Walmart:

Speaking of bikes that will help feral yuppies conquer the hills, a reader has forwarded me the most ridiculously Cat 6-tastic bicycle ever "curated:"

Here's what it was designed for:

Specific parameters: Stealth commuter. Half country roads, half urban Boston. 13 miles each way. No fenders. Titanium.

Gruelling. And here's the backstory:

One of the wonderful things about this build was how much freedom we were given (within a specific set of parameters) to create this bike for it’s owner. Alongside the basics of geometry, fit and construction we dealt with interpreting more ethereal parameters like feelings, attitude, likes, dislikes, design sense, specifics of the environment and a lot more. It was a long conversation(s) and it really became one of those magic moments that we strive for as framebuilders. Really getting to know someone, in an intense biomechanical/psychological kind of way.

I wonder why it took a bunch of "long conversation(s)" for this person to tell the builders that he wanted the world's most expensive Specialized Sirrus. It seems to me he could have communicated that in a single text message. Anyway, when you interpret "etherial parameters like feelings, attitude, likes, dislike, design sense, specifics of the environment and a lot more," you apparently wind up with a hybrid bike with Di2:

Yes, it has crabon wheels and electric shifting integrated into the handlebars, but it doesn't have fenders. I also don't know where he's supposed to carry his stuff, but maybe someone's sewing him a $9,000 LeSportsac.

If it were my bike I'd get "If it rains take the bus" engraved in the top tube.

Urban Exploration: I Once Was Found But Now I'm Found

(Okay, I removed the album cover.)

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a Kickstarter pitch involving a bicycle brake light. While I may have made light of this pitch, I assure you that I take the matter of bicycle illumination very seriously. Apparently, so do the French police, because they recently busted Giro d'Italia winner and indiscriminate meat eater Alberto Contador for training without lights on his bike:

Clearly French authorities have been taking their cues from the NYPD, though they're also woefully behind, since while they're still pestering cyclists the NYPD has moved on to more serious matters like arresting people for not playing chess:

Anyway, despite--or perhaps because of--the fact that he has won their eponymous tour three times, the police would not allow Contador to continue riding. Instead, he was forced to train in the French manner by giving up and putting his bike in the car. I'm sure Contador was not pleased, but to his credit he still managed to flash a desultory "fingerbang" before climbing inside:

Presumably Contador will be better prepared in the future, because bicycle blinky light concern Knog have just announced that they will make their first foray into Pro Tour sponsorship by providing him with a fingerbang-compatible "hipster cyst:"

The above model in the limited edition Giro d'Italia maglia rosa colorway will be available for only $175, though if you're handy you can also retrofit an ordinary pink "hipster cyst" to your own fingerbang by, well, placing it on your index finger.

Speaking of hipsters, not since the Europeans came to the Americas has a group of people proved so profoundly adept at "discovering" places that were already inhabited. Since arriving in Williamsburg way back in the 1990s, these bold urban pioneers have bravely explored the city astride fixed-gear bicycles festooned with "hipster cysts," and over the years they've discovered and settled exciting new neighborhoods that nobody knew existed except for everybody else.

In turn, these expeditions provide essential narratives for periodicals such as the New York Times, whose greatest journalistic strength is reporting on the unlikely corners of the city in which douchedom manages to take root. The latest installment in these Gentrification Chronicles is this article about how hipsters have found the Rockaways:

If you've read my book (and no, you cannot have your money back), you know I have a special connection to and affection for this peninsula. As a child, I rode her streets on my Tuff Wheel IIs; I thrilled to the undulations of the roller coaster at Playland; I pulled killy fish from her waters in a bottle baited with bread; and I pulled her tenacious ticks from my unmentionables.

For this reason, I had mixed feelings when I read this article. On one hand, I was pleased that people are finding what really is a beautiful place that in some places could stand to be beautified further by newcomers; on the other, I was horrified that it could be becoming "the new Bedford Avenue:"

Arriving by single-gear bicycle, Zipcar and the occasional skateboard, they’ve turned the once- neglected beach community into an anti-Hamptons, where polo games and Champagne galas have been replaced by bungalow barbecues and piña coladas at old Irish pubs. “The boardwalk is the new Bedford Avenue,” said Mr. Kaye, 34, referring to the cafe-clogged commercial spine of Williamsburg.

I can't imagine I'm alone in finding the prospect of an ironic Hamptons rather daunting. In particular, the big draw for hipsters seems to be Fort Tilden, a beach once touted in an Outlier press release as being "secret" and "accessible only by bike." Well, apparently the secret that was never a secret is now out, and hipsters are now flocking there so they don't have to cope with the sickening sight of children:

“I didn’t see one kid,” said Chris Martin, 27, a skateboarder and photographer from Williamsburg, who car-pooled to Fort Tilden on Memorial Day. “It was awesome.”

Take note Chris Martin, 27 year-old skateboarder from Williamsburg: when you look around and you don't see a kid, the kid is you.

Of course, no article about an up-and-coming gentrification hotspot would be complete without the dreaded "A" word:

Instead of freezer-burned hot dogs, Mr. Selig has created a kind of Brooklyn Flea by the sea, recruiting artisanal-minded vendors that send chowhound devotees into a lather.

Or without describing something totally mundane as a "movement:"

A unique scene has also emerged at Rippers, the boardwalk burger place near 86th Street that is a joint venture between Roberta’s and the Meat Hook, a butcher shop in Williamsburg born out of the nose-to-tail movement.

You may think "nose-to-tail movement" is simply a set of instructions for how to pet a cat (they don't like it when you pet them with the tail-to-nose movement), but you'd be wrong. Actually, the "nose-to-tail movement" is pretentious for eating a whole animal:

I've noticed a recent culinary trend in my Brooklyn community where restaurants are choosing to purchase entire animals raised naturally on nearby farms, butcher in house, and use most of their parts in the establishment's cuisine, leaving little animal to waste.

In other words, the "nose-to-tail movement" is a self-importantly nü-Brooklyn version of the "Clean Plate Club."

By the way, in other New York Times hipster news, Rockaway is also hotbed for bike polo:


Sure, the article is from 1902, but I have a feeling it may be poised for a comeback.

In any case, at the very least the people of Red Hook, Brooklyn can relax, since it looks like the New York Times has found another unique and transit-starved waterfront neighborhood to entertain itself with--at least until the summer's over. Also, if the hipsterization of the Rockaways continues, we should be in store for some exciting bike lane drama:

Just make sure your "single gear bicycle" and/or beach cruiser is equipped with a "Rockaway handgrip," as in this photograph sent to me by a reader:


Here's a closer look:

Actually, the reader spotted the bike in Salt Lake City, but it's a catchy name nevertheless.

Lastly, when I receive an email from a reader with the subject line "'fully loaded' touring bike pr0n," you can bet I'm all over it like hipsters on a childless beach:

"Fully Loaded" is clearly the "Barely Legal" of the beard-and-pannier set.

The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: Soul Erosion

Most Americans are familiar with the famous painting, "Washington Crossing the Delaware:"

In it, the man who would become our nation's first President looks ahead with determination and resolve as he fords an icy river and leads his men into battle:

The event depicted in this painting took place in the year 1776, and the painting itself was rendered by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze in 1851. For most of us, this seems an impossibly long time ago. Nevertheless, even today, we can still see similar bravery in the face of uncertainty all around us. Consider this guy:

Like George Washington, he wears the expression of a man undaunted. Also like George Washington, he has funny hair. But it is here that the similarities end. For while Washington was crossing the Delaware in order to confront enemy forces in Trenton, New Jersey as well as carrying the very fate of our nation on his shoulders, this guy was salmoning through a red light across Lafayette Street:

The fact that the street he's crossing is named after a hero of the Revolutionary War only serves to underscore the irony.

Nevertheless, commuting in New York City can indeed feel like a war: cars vs. bikes, pedestrians vs. pedicabs, hang gliders vs. roller skis... However, it turns out that when you divorce yourself from your own vehicle of choice and take a pigeon's-eye view we're not really at war at all. Instead, we're just a bunch of idiots who don't look out for each other, as this video forwarded to me by a number of readers shows:

3-Way Street from ronconcocacola on Vimeo.

I've long suspected it, but this proves conclusively that New Yorkers are the most mobility-challenged people in The United States of Canada's Undercarriage. If you've ever wondered why most of us are so annoying, it's because each time we need to leave our homes and go someplace else we lose little pieces of our souls. Our humanity is like a little hunk of bread floating in a bowl full of hungry goldfish--after awhile there's just nothing left.

Yes, commuting takes its toll on us both physically and psychically. In fact, sometimes it takes both tolls at the same time--like if you were to get hit behind by a truck while avoiding a health care advertisement parked strategically in the bike lane:

Sometimes irony hurts the most.

Speaking of irony, it would appear that here in New York we're in the midst of actual, literal salmon season:

Similarly, bike salmon season is also in swing, and at this time of year you're liable to see entire schools of the creatures:

And, obviously, this prize fish:

Often when I encounter such a specimen, I fantasize about hooking him, reeling him in, and placing him on the cargo deck of my Big Dummy smugness flotilla. Sadly, I was not riding my Big Dummy yesterday when I saw the aforementioned salmon and his regal hairway, though that did not stop me from ogling another one I saw locked to a bike rack:


As I stood there admiring my fellow smugmonger's smugness upgrades (which included a centerstand, stoker bars, and evidently hand-curated guardrail) I came to a sudden yet oddly comforting realization:

I have become a gigantic dork.

Another realization I had a few blocks later was that something like three-fifths of New York City bike lane traffic consists of non-bicycles. Consider the following photo, which depicts two cyclists (I'm counting myself), a guy pushing an empty hand truck, a pair of guys towing a household appliance, and an older gentleman in a motorized wheelchair:

First I passed empty hand truck guy, then I totally "wheelchairsucked" for awhile:

Once the guy in the wheelchair passed the appliance haulers, I then launched my own attack off his wheel, dropping the entire sad peloton at the green light ahead.

Though I did meet my match a little while later, when I got stuck behind a balloon "portager:"

I would have given almost anything for a samurai sword at that moment, for I could have punctured his entire payload with one flick of my blade.

Meanwhile, I haven't heard very much about the bicycle crackdown in New York City lately. This could be because it's finally easing up a bit. Or, more likely, it could be because this is the time of year when the sorts of self-important people who would ordinarily write impassioned screeds about how the ticket they got on their bicycle is a gross miscarriage of justice are instead preoccupied with fair-weather activities such as hosting artisanal "ethical meat" barbecues.

However, a reader tells me that the city of Chicago is now experiencing its own crackdown, though it's of a far kinder and gentler nature:



Giving out warnings instead of tickets? Explaining to people what they're doing wrong? Cooperating with the Department of Transportation?!? That would never work in New York City, precisely because it's the sort of thing that might actually work. Plus, the police doing the down-cracking are actually riding bikes themselves:

Silly Chicago police. Now that's just crazy. How are they supposed to arrest the cyclists after dooring them?

Lastly, in a bit of exciting Fred news, one Fred has embraced the art of hillbombing "edit" curation, and the results are spectacular:

I'm not sure why this Fred is using two computers, though it could be that he's jury-rigged some sort of kludgy flux capacitor-type device and wants to travel through time like his patron saint. I'm not sure he was successful, though at 53 seconds we do learn that 46mph is the exact speed at which a Fred goes, "Wooo-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

That's what you call a Primal scream.