Bike Snob NYC

This puts a whole new spin on the incident, and while I don't believe in telling strangers what to do, in this case O'Brien's advice to "Get a light" was probably warranted. First of all, as a respected figure in cycling who was even quoted in the New York Times just two weeks ago, I'd argue that O'Brien is entitled to give other riders pointers on the fly. After all, people pay him hundreds of dollars for bike fits, so the Fred on the Trek should have been grateful for the free advice. That's like bumping into a dentist on the subway who takes a quick look at your molar and saves you the time and money of making an appointment. Secondly, in these trying economic times, you really can't blame a shop owner for trying to drum up business. O'Brien's utterance of "Get a light" may not have been an admonition at all. Rather, he might be having a big sale at his shop, and he simply identified the one item the riders didn't have and as such might be most interested in buying. Had Fred and Wilma simply listened instead of flying into a rage, they might have heard the rest of the sentence: "Get a light--50% off this week only at Chronometro!"

(UPDATE: Assailant has been apprehended!)

Speaking of big, big savings, it's that time of year, and as such various periodicals are publishing their holiday gift guides. A reader informs me that USA Today, the Ryan Seacrest of newspapers, has even produced one for bike commuters. In addition to such items as a $70 Ralpha t-shirt and a $500 Castelli jacket, they also suggest a Rock Racing t-shirt:

A Rock Racing T-Shirt ($15 and up, shop.rockracing.com) shows the world that you back the iconoclastic bike racing team owned by Rock & Republic fashion mogul Michael Ball. 

Now that's a gift. In fact, I was so excited by it that you'll notice I tagged it with the BSNYC/RTMS Pleasantly Surprised Holiday Gift Lady, a distinction reserved for only the best presents:

And who wouldn't want to back fashion mogul Michael Ball and his iconoclastic bike racing team? After all, the King of Pants is as generous as he is iconoclastic--so much so that he's recently been granting "10-minute Q&A sessions with select publications," such as Bicycling and Pez. Actually, Pez managed to get 15 minutes, and the drama and excitement that surround a brush with Ball is palpable in the intro to the interview:

The BlackBerry alarm rings at 05.30 and the red light is flashing; I've got mail - it's from Rock Racing's Sean Weide. "I can get you 15 minutes with Michael Ball - as one of only five media representatives who will be interviewing him tomorrow. He can talk about Rudy, the 2009 roster, Tyler, etc." Wow! Let's see what Mr. Ball had to say.

I must admit that Ball's considerable savvy is clearly in evidence here. It's very hard to get noticed in the world of fashion, where Ball is overshadowed by vastly more successful and douchey characters like Marc Jacobs. So wisely, Ball bought his way into the much smaller and quieter world of domestic pro cycling, where people actually think he's a "mogul," where having a few Cadillacs seems impossibly lavish, and where he can be stingy with his time when dealing with the very media on whom his team's livelihood depends. (I'd like to see Ball try his "I can get you 15 minutes" tactic with Vogue or even Women's Wear Daily. "15 minutes with who?")

Which is not to say Ball doesn't deserve respect for sponsoring a cycling team, or for winning the Stars and Stripes jersey, or for employing some young riders. It would just be nice if it didn't all come with so much ego, hair product, and general smarm. But hey, if Ball needs to grease the wheels of cycling with his own unctuousness to make things happen, then so be it. (Plus, I already had my face time with Ball, when I got his autograph.)

At any rate, let's say you're looking to buy someone a t-shirt for the holidays but the person you're shopping for doesn't back the iconoclastic bike racing team owned by Rock & Republic fashion mogul Michael Ball. Well, in that case, you can always get them a BILF t-shirt on eBay, which I was alerted to by a reader:


"Bicycle I'd Like to F**K American Apparel T-Shirt. Colors: Black, Red, Blue, Olive Sizes: MENS: small, medium, and large WOMENS: small, medium let us know what size(s) you want via email. thanks. "

There's certainly no question this t-shirt warrants a carefully-placed BSNYC/RTMS Pleasantly Surprised Holiday Gift Lady:

Personally, I think it's strange to want to have sex with a bicycle. If it's simply a question of wanting to have sex with things that are thin and cold, you can always go trolling for models in the nightclubs of LA with Michael Ball instead. But I suppose I'm in the minority when it comes to my aversion to velophilia, because the demand for BILF t-shirts is so high that another company is making them as well:

You'd have to be a real pervert to wear this one, though, since it means you're sexually attracted to left-hand chainring bikes on which the chain inexplicably passes through the rear triangle and drives a right-hand cog. Also, the bike either has front and rear pie plates or extremely high-flange hubs. The only "sensible" thing here is the bar height, which is level with the saddle and which Grant Petersen would doubtless find highly titillating.

By the way, the same company will also sell you plenty of other extremely witty and irreverent shirts, such as: the "10 Reasons Why My Bike Is Better Than My Girl" shirt; the "Team MILF/Director Sportif" shirt (which I may order for Michael Ball); and of course the hysterically funny "I'm With Wheelsucker" shirt:

See that? It has a picture of two cyclists on it, with an arrow pointing to the wheelsucker. The people at Velotees don't miss a beat.

But there's more to cycling gifts than t-shirts and Rapha stuff--even if it's 30 days of Rapha, which would cost you approximately $96,000 and is kind of like going on a Dom Perignon bender. This Ralpha jacket alone goes for $750:

You don't have to be a fashion mogul to see that they copied it right down to the shoulder panels.

Yes, Rapha may be the first name in ultra-luxury cycling apparel, but Cadence is right on their heels. Cadence's winter collection is nothing short of remarkable, in that it takes garments that are impractical for cycling and adds little flourishes which are supposed to make them functional but instead just make them complicated. Take this scarf:

I don't understand the scarf as a cycling garment, mainly because they flap around in the wind. There are also other ways to keep your neck and chest warm on the bike that don't make your head feel like an egg in a loose nest of billowy fabric. I suppose Cadence are attempting to ameliorate the flap factor by putting a little slot in it so you can cinch it, but in doing so they seem to have also limited the ways in which you can wear the scarf and maximize its effectiveness. In any case, ineffectual scarfs are an essential component of the "hipster" wardrobe, so I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable.

How do you make an item that's not particularly good at keeping you warm a little bit warmer? You add a superfluous dickey type thing. That way your American Spirit-ravaged larynx will stay slightly warmer than your chest. Brilliant, and perfect for when the mercury dips below 65 degrees. (Brrr!)  I wonder if it's compatible with the scarf? I don't see any slots.

My favorite garment by far though is the arm warmer with thumby slot. (This winter it's all about the slot.) I like it so much I gave it a BSNYC/RTMS Pleasantly Surprised Holiday Gift Lady. The advantage of this design is that it keeps the top of your hand warm while leaving your fingers exposed to the elements and making it inconvenient to wear gloves--perfect for maintaining knuckle tattoo visibility on slightly chilly days. The only thing that would make this better would be if Cadence also sold little individual wool finger cots so you could warm your digits on those rare occasions when knuckle tattoo visibility isn't essential.

Actually, like Rapha, Cadence also seem to be mining 80s pop culture, because I could imagine Madonna wearing some of this stuff during the "Like A Virgin" era. (I think the arm warmer would look great with lots of those black rubber bracelets.) And as you can see from this photo, forwarded to me by a reader, she is a serious roadie:


Expect to see visors (hopefully with slots) in Cadence's Spring collection.

Other cyclists can be annoying. Take the cyclist I shared the bridge to Manhattan with this morning. As I ascended, I was overtaken by a rider on a color-coordinated track bike which was as free from dirt as it was from brakes. He passed me handily and I thought nothing of it, thinking that was the last I'd see of him.

[excerpt]

While his lady partner, who's clearly in denial over the disaster her life has become, had most likely attired herself in the Queen of DeNile chemise:I'd also be willing to bet good money (and by "good money" I mean Euros) that at least one of them was wearing one of those inexcusable roadie babuskas:

The roadie babuska is the cycling equivalent of sporting a Members Only jacket with no shirt underneath, and you should never, ever wear one, no matter how much pate-wicking you may think you need. Then again, you also probably shouldn't tell people you don't know to "get a light," or to "wear a helmet," or to "get a brake." While all of these things are good advice, and while it's perfectly fine to endorse them, it's almost always best to refrain from doing so directly to other riders in situ. This is not to excuse Fred and Wilma's wanton behavior by any means, but it is really annoying. Even though I believe with every molecule in my body that you should never wear a roadie babushka, I wouldn't approach a stranger and tell him he should take that sweaty disgusting dishrag off his head. And even though I wanted to tell the guy on the bridge to "get a brake," I knew it would have been foolish to do so. Being annoyed by brakeless riders is curmudgeonly; telling off brakeless riders on the street is just pain douchey.

Speaking of roadies and douches, I noticed during my recess that Franck Vandenbroucke is on yet another team:

Franck Vandenbroucke is the Mavic Ksyrium freehub of professional cyclists in that both are constantly squealing and failing, yet people continue to invest money in them for some reason. You'd think after the famous "those drugs were for my dog" incident (which was, admittedly, sublime in its absurdity) cycling would have closed the door on Vandenbroucke once and for all, and that people would realize by now that he's long gone from enfant terrible to plain infant. But you'd be wrong. You'd also think people would have realized he looks uncannily like Ruprecht from "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels," but to my knowledge this has yet to be acknowledged by the cycling press:

Indeed, failed promise is addicting. Despite being a failure whose Wikipedia page reads like the treatment for a John C. Reilly movie, cycling fans wax nostalgic about the fact he won Leige-Bastogne-Leige like ten years ago or something, and that he cocked his handlebars at a jaunty angle. Why? Because he's a "natural talent." ( "Everybody did it, and so did I," he said about doping. "It is the truth and it does not diminish the value of my victories.") I suppose this makes sense though. We all know the real villains in professional road cycling are the ones with the audacity to to win a bunch of races, stay out of trouble, and be successful. And that's not what bike racing is about.

Then again, I suppose there's nothing wrong with recycling. The professional road racing world is still trying to recycle Vandenbroucke, and the fixed-gear world is still trying to recycle front wheels. We've already seen them breathe new life into the Spinergy Rev-X and the Aerospoke, and now they're moving on to the wheelchair wheel:

If you're a competitive wheelchair athlete who's upgraded to a Zipp or something, you'll be happy to know there's a burgeoning market for your old take-offs.

Yes, the guy with the scary eyes totally wasn't wearing contacts at all, was he? That's because he was a drug addict, and he was selling you a stolen bike in order to purchase more drugs. That would explain the scary eyes and $20 price tag. Welcome to New York City! I'm guessing you haven't been here long, because if you had: a) you would have realized that; and b) you would have held fast at $5. In a way though, it's sort of charming that one person's drug-addicted thief is another's Bike Fairy flitting about Williamsburg and selling cheap bikes. Did he look like the dad from "Alf?" I heard he's been having hard times, and it's entirely possible he's moved into freelance bike retail. (By the way, don't blame "Alf" dad for the "curse." There's no such thing as a curse, but there is such a thing as a crappy bike.)

Naivetee notwithstanding, I like the "Cycling Project." In fact, I like it so much I went ahead and made my own entry based on this not-safe-for-work link, forwarded to me by a reader:

"I ride a bike because I have an ample bosom and people pay me to straddle them in my underpants! XOXO, Sophie!"

Compulsory uniqueness aside, it's too bad computers can't feel pain, because if they could maybe they'd have told BMC's Swiss precision engineers that the top tube of their Cross Machine (over $3,000 for frame and fork) digs into your shoulder when you carry it. (Carrying your bike is an essential part of cyclocross.) In fact, the latest issue of Cyclocross magazine says, "it creates a sharp underside for shouldering, quite opposite of the common practice of flattening the tube for comfort on run-ups," and that the "pointy shape was uncomfortable enough to make me consider going back to my early days of 'cross and using a woman's shoulder pad under my jersey." But while the computer couldn't feel the pain, it could tell the engineers that those t-section carbon nanotubes were ever so slightly stiffer than simple round tubes. Also, the computer told them it would cost them a whole lot more money to change the shape of the top tube on the 'cross frame than it would to simply use the same ones they use for the road bikes. And that's precision you can feel--digging painfully into your collarbone.

But even though I don't particularly care for BMC's bikes, the owner of the one above shouldn't really care. First of all, he's got a track frame, not a 'cross frame. Secondly, anybody can buy a bike, but not everybody can own a bike. And when you own your bike, you really don't care what anybody thinks of it. So own that BMC, and I hope you rock and/or run it for years to come. (I think you "rock" a track bike when it's got risers, but you "run" it when it's got drops.)

Moving on, the proprietor of Zlogblog has sent me the following photos, in which the heretofore mutually-exclusive worlds of unorthodox handlebars and u-locks have collided with enough force to forever change the landscape of fixed-gear cycling as we know it:



That's right, you no longer have to carry your u-lock in your oversized messenger bag, rear pant pocket, or holster. With this revolutionary technique, the lock is now an integral part of your ride! Not only does it afford you additional hand positions, but you don't even have to remove it to lock the bicycle. (Though of course your lock will now only be as effective as your allen bolts.)

Then again, everybody knows that cutting-edge urban cyclists are now ditching locks altogether. Great Commuter Race champion Jamie Favaro has forwarded me the following photo, which proves that disease is the new theft-deterrent:

Unfortunately, though, this rider made a poor choice of diseases, since everybody also knows gratuitous insensitive AIDS references went out in like 1990 when that idiot from Skid Row rocked that t-shirt. If you're going to try this, at least use a different disease. My personal choice is botulism, since my own Ironic Orange Julius Bike is generally slathered in spoiled mayonnaise anyway. (Even if the thief is wise to the fact that it's only a misconception that spoiled mayonnaise causes food poisoning, funky mayo is still in itself a sufficient deterrent.)

So if some guy with scary eyes who looks like the dad from "Alf" tries to sell you a bike covered in mayonnaise for $20, you can safely assume it's mine. Even though he's taken it from me, I still own it.

Things, as they say, are tough all over. Usually I try to ignore the the problems of the world, choosing instead to focus my concern on the world of cycling, and for the most part I've been successful. (While millions of people must live without food, clothing, or shelter, I find myself worrying more about the fact that thousands of fixed-gears are being ridden without bar tape, brakes, or foot retention.) However, the signs of collapse are everywhere, and even I can no longer ignore them. What speaks more articulately of economic crisis than a "Marshal Seized" notice stuck to a tinted SUV window?

Once again, the time has come for me to take a short leave of absence.  This one will commence immediately at the end of this post and will continue until Monday, December 1st, at which point I will return with regular updates.  If this displeases you, I implore you to at least take solace in the fact that there are encouraging signs from the Chris King Headset Composite Index.  When we last checked on November 14th the CKHCI was at 71.53, and it is now at 72.21:


Then again, everything's sexier in sepia:

And yes, this image is perfectly safe for work--not only because it's sepia-toned, but also because it's pre-20th century.  While sepia alone can't always legitimize a photograph, any art historian or porn-monger will tell you that pornography automatically becomes art after 100 years, no matter how explicit it may be.

If you live in New York, then you love being miserable. And if you love being miserable, you probably also love cyclocross. So if you're a miserable cyclocross-loving New Yorker (or a miserable cyclocross lover with access to New York) you'll be "pleased" to know that there will be a cyclocross race on Staten Island next Sunday, November 30th. Shrouded in mystery, Staten Island is a magical place--not only because it is perpetually 1987 there, but also because it manages to make its neighbor New Jersey seem sophisticated. Also, Staten Island is ordinarily an irony-free zone, but if you're the type of person who gets uncomfortable without it I expect the organizers will bring plenty. I understand they've even secured waffle and bacon sponsors, and as everybody knows bacon is currently the ironic meat of choice.

Not only that, but this very weekend is the Whitmore's Landscaping Super Cross Cup in Southampton, LI. You may recall that this is the event at which you can win a Richard Sachs cyclocross bike. What you may not be aware of is that the promoter gets very defensive when people imply that the Hamptons air is too rarified for 'cross, and even goes so far as to assert that Long Island is "not even an island, even though it’s called Long Island. It’s a peninsula." This struck me as an absurd claim--until I learned that the Supreme Court actually did rule that Long Island is a peninsula back in 1985, which is nearly as mind-bending as that geared singlepeed. In any case, there's ironic 'cross on Staten Island, as well as UCI 'cross on an ironic peninsula.

With that out of the way, I now present you with a quiz. As always, study the item, think carefully, and then click on your answer. If you're correct, you'll know if. If you're wrong, you'll see this Columbia Sportswear commercial with a unicycle in it that I saw while watching "The Chocolate News."

Ride safe this weekend,

--BSNYC/RTMS

1) Thursday morning in Brooklyn--what's going on here?

--Fallen tree + Amateur traffic direction = Clustercoitus

--There's a sale at Macy's

--Ridgewood, Queens has just been declared the "next hot neighborhood" and all of Boerum Hill is moving there en masse

--Word's gone out that a nearby bike lane needs obstructing

2) Which booming trend is not in evidence in this photo? (Warning: answering correctly reveals a person on a toilet.)

--The vintage Italian saddle trend

--The Bullhorn-Equipped Road Bike (BERB) trend

--The disc-specific 29er rim trend

--The "vintage" GT triple-triangle trend

3) What is this jersey?

--A worldwide campaign to save lives

--A worldwide campaign to embarrass cyclists

--The maillot vent for the most flatulent rider in the Tour de France

--Court-mandated after that unfortunate misunderstanding at GapKids

4) What's going on here?

--The rider is modeling Rapha's new $400 "Derelicte" knee warmers

--The rider is modeling a pair of plastic rain chaps

--The rider is sporting an essential component of the modular maillot d'incontinence

--The rider is racing cyclocross and he got tangled up in the course tape

5) Where can you buy this $4,300 Ferrari bicycle?

--Wal-Mart

--Hammacher Schlemmer

--Brookstone

--Toys 'R' Us

6) What's the most likely explanation for the above?

--Someone is both smug and anachronistic

--Someone is on the way to a Grover Cleveland rally

--Someone is on the way to Williamsburg to do some ironic cycling

--Someone is on the way to Colonial Williamsburg to do some period-correct direct-drive freestyling

7) What would really tie this p-far together?

--A top tube pad

--An Aerospoke

--A pair of MKS track pedals

--All of the above

8) What kind of contest is taking place above?

--A trackstand contest

--An irony contest

--A contest to determine which rider has most effectively sublimated a need for attention into front wheel form

--A crotch-numbing contest

9) Professional cyclist Sylvain Chavanel was recently injured in:

--A tragic Beaujolais-opening incident

--A penny-farthing accident

--A cyclocross-related groin pull

--A tragic oyster-shucking incident

On Tuesday I ran a number of cycling-related websites through the Genderanalyzer, which yielded some interesting if not entirely accurate results. Of the sites analyzed, the most masculine by a huge margin was Lance Armstrong's Twitter, at 93%. Well, I recently discovered that another cycling-related site is sitting right on Armstrong's wheel in the masculinity department, coming in at a resounding 89%:

I'm not sure what kind of e-pheromones Son of Zone Baby is exuding to elicit such a positive result (besides the fact it has "Son" in the title of course), but if you're looking to read something that will put some hair on your chest, go check it out.

Meanwhile, the blog you're currently reading is holding fast at 52% female, which while not entirely accurate is at least consistent. I for one value consistency over accuracy, which it so happens is the same rationale used by many devotees of friction-shifting. Besides, regardless of whether you're running/rocking male or female reproductive organs, when it comes to being successful the real determining factor is moxie. And like this blog, moxie is gender-neutral. Take this messenger-versus-model race, forwarded to me by a reader:


There's a long tradition of pointless, apples-and-oranges, mismatched exhibition races in our culture. Jesse Owens raced against a horse, Mario Cipollini raced against a horse (though rumors he subsequently bedded it are unsubstantiated), the TV show "Top Gear" pitted a Ford Mustang against a horse, and even I raced against a Smart (but only because no horses were available, probably because the ASPCA got wind of the Mario Cipollini incident). However, I was immediately skeptical about this particular mismatched exhibition race when I heard the messenger, Al Busano, claim that he delivers over a thousand packages a week.

This is a bold claim to say the least. Even if Busano works ten hours a day, seven days a week, he'd need to deliver over 140 packages a day in order to meet that number. That's 14 packages an hour, or roughly one package every four minutes. Either: 1) Busano is omnipresent; 2) Busano delivers mostly interoffice correspondence; or 3) Busano is inflating his number. In any case, even if he is rounding up by a factor of ten, he should have no trouble beating a fashion model on a skateboard, right?

...even if her "secret weapon" is apparently the ability to employ her legs in conjunction with her labia while riding a skateboard, and even if she's wearing the notoriously arresting Sue Ellen Mishky blazer-with-a-bra-for-a-top combo that made Kramer crash his car into a pole in that "Seinfeld" episode:
Well, if you were pulling for the mendacious messenger to defeat the skateboarding model rocking a prehensile vagina, I'm sorry to say you were disappointed. Personally, I suspect the contest was rigged, and that the people at Style.com somehow stacked the odds in favor of the model. If they'd really wanted a close race, they'd have made her race against Mario Cipollini, though had they done that there's a good chance the competitors never would have gotten on their respective forms of wheeled conveyance and the video would have taken a decidedly pornographic turn. Or else, they could have used one of the female messengers from this recent New York Times article. My personal choice would have been German emigree Carmen Burkhart, described in the article as "a slight, tight-bodied 43-year-old who smokes and drinks only hot coffee for hydration, even in the summer:"

(Carmen Burkhart: weltschmerz in motion)

In a match-up like that, the smart money would clearly be on the wiry dehydrated nicotine-and-caffeine-addled Teuton over the ditz on the skateboard. Not only that, but the video would have been way more entertaining to watch.

But competing in phony races isn't the only thing that takes moxie. It also takes moxie to maintain your bicycle's drivetrain. And since moxie seems to be a non-renewable resource in our culture, the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company is finally bringing to the mass market a drivetrain that requires no moxie whatsoever in order to maintain:

The carbon fiber belt drive bicycle drivetrain is nothing new--we've already seen it from Spot--but Trek is wisely marketing it to the commuter rather than the racer (though Travis Brown has been running and/or rocking one too). While I've been critical of Trek in the past, I have to say that I'm not only in favor of the belt drive commuter bicycle, but moreover I feel as though Trek is doing me a personal favor with it. I've voiced my irritation over the fact that so many commuters are unable to lubricate their drivetrains before, so a bicycle that will run quietly without lubrication is nothing less than a godsend to me. I can only hope that the lubricant-impaired take to this system en masse and I never get stuck behind another squeaky, rusty, non-shifting drivetrain ever again. After all, Trek's fellow Wisconsinites Harley Davidson have already successfully shown the world that when convenience and low maintenance are more important than performance a belt drive is the way to go. (They've also convinced an entire generation of dentists and lawyers to ride around on overpriced flatulent motorcycles while wearing leather chaps, but that's something else.) And the rest of us don't even have to give up our chains--apart from the metaphorical chains that bind us to our irritating noisy-biked cousins, that is.

Not only that, but while killing off the noisy chain the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company may have unwittingly dealt the coup de grâce to the already-withering colored deep-V trend as well, since the new belt-drive District comes with high-profile rims of orange:

No way colored deep-Vs can survive this with their street cred intact. I never thought I'd say this, but thank you, Trek. Thank you.