Alright, with $625 in the (bike) bank from selling 718C_003, its time to double-down and build 2 at once, as there is obviously a market for my wares. The things in my favor are:

Economy forcing more people to consider biking
Flyness
Team Lope-inspired workmanship
Hi-Klass logo and the appearance of an actual company
Excessive hipster concentration of nabe

..and once nice weather hits, you can add that as a positive to the equation.

I did have a legit question…what are the fewest teeth that Team Lope considers adequate/fly for a crank?

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1. Co-Opted: Bike Culture
2. Hipster City Cycle
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I was struck by three references in things I read or saw over the last few days that were WRONG: scary to think this is how the non-riding world sees us, and in the last case, scary that people took the art installation seriously enough to respond to it, both non-riders AND riders.

A. Fixed Gear Riding [Read, any 'genre of riding other than your own] is [INSERT PUT DOWN]

Lung and I talk all the time about how cliquey bike culture can be. How many riders who ride a certain bike a certain way, are not only dismissive of another genre of riding, but actively berate it, when the bike genre, and the riding thereof, is STILL biking and therefore awesome, and it’s the clique they are responding to, not realizing they themselves are perpetuating the very same stigmas they mock in the other. In the last few years, it’s been non-stop mockery of fixies. I’m not talking about BSNYC, who’s JOB it is to mock bike trends. I’m talking about vocal riders who take the time and effort out to not only mock the bike, but the rider, in a strereotyped, character assassination. Now, I’m first to admit that I’ll take swipes at some bike genres. But I’m actually not: I’m swiping the assholes within the genre that allow for the strerotype, not the genre itself. I’m bored to tears by young trendies on fixed gears. I’m aggravated by kitted up roadies who push you off the road or get in front of you and make a point of it. I’m annoyed by Pinnerelos on Ferraris/Fieros. BUT. I don’t assume all fixed riders, road riders, or expensive bike-on-expensive car havers are assholes. Just SOME. So, anyway, I digress. I’m disturbed by how whenever I seem to read an article about a fixed gear anything,
these haters come out of the woodwork and span the comments section with assassinations of fixed gear culture, the bike itself, and anyone who would be so stupid as to ride them. Seriously, researching this or that on bike forums, it goes like this:

- fixed-related technical question, like dropouts or gearing or whatever
- 3 on topic responses
- 3,333 assassinations and mockeries of fixed gears and their riders, by non-fixed gear riders

What makes me laugh is not just that these people are so empowered by their relative anonymity on the supernet that they are willing to say mean things and be public dicks, or even that they are mis-assigning their view of the streotype with all riders of that genre, butmoreso, that there seems to be an apparent minority of MULTI-GENRE riders like the Team Lope manner, at least among the vocal. Like everyone is locked into one style and one way, and don’t ride more than one bike, and don’t wear whatever the hell they want to wear. It’s amazing.

Anyway, hate comments, that’s the bullet point here.

2. Bike Commuting = Ridicule

On a recent show I watched, a character who is emasculated by others for driving a cute little Red Miata, is shown, when his car is totaled, riding his bike for a commute instead of the previously mocked car. He gets to the house and mentions that he never realized how angry cars get about bikes until he rode… makes some joke or other. Later buys a Smart car, and is ridiculed for THAT. Now, on this show, it’s not the show mocking his choices, but the other characters, so the implication is that the people are stupid, themselves. However, i noted the recurring meme: that in a driving society, the ‘normal’ reaction to a small car, and in this case especially, a bike commuter, is inconvenience, anger, irritation, etc. The status quo assumption being made there in that script was that it’s normal for people to be agitated at a bike, it’s silly of that character to be surprised people tried to kill him, and that clearly, riding a bike was a downgrade (temporarily) from car status, but not a reasonable alternative. Even the small cars were ridiculed, but still. The meme is there.

Similarly, a ‘Free Credit Report" commercial shows a world in which everyone is traveling by bike. They look a little embarrassed about it, but they’re putting on a cheerful face, like ‘it’s not so bad!’ you have tandems, old Cope bikes, a road bike rider a few MTBers, and the whole thing is a set up that without good credit, you can’t afford a car, therefore you will be relegated to riding. Again, this meme strikes!

Similarly, in 40-Year Old Virgin, through the first two acts of the film, Steve Carrel’s character’s use of a MTB and dorky helmet are used to suggest his childlike nature and low-budgetness as a potential mate. Granted, in the third act the tone changes and we are led to view his ways as unique and appropriate in their own way, but he still ends up in a bike accident for his troubles. Again, the meme strikes!

In Rushmore, Max rides around on two different 10-speeds in the film. While Wes Anderson’s loving approach to all things quaint and curious and vintage implies that these are cool objects, like much of what he filmed, nonetheless, in the escalating war between Max and Mr. Blume culminates in Blume running over Max’s first bike with his Bentley and tacoing the wheel. This was a reminder that bikes are weak, and int he Rochambeau of vehicle interactions, car crushes bike. That said, at least here, Max got back at him by cutting his brake lines, and again, the bikes were treated as cool objects of vintagephemera. But still, Max was a poor kid with a 10-speed. The scene made a point that immediately responded to some people who I’ve watched Rushmore with or talked to about the film, in a way that the director surely didn’t intend, and surprised me as a rider. I saw it as a fuck yewwwww to Max, in that generally irrational way that Max’s response (cutting the Bentley’s brakes) was: a scary, unrealistic response to the plot’s emotional angst, that no sane person would really do. Yet, people I talk to, who don’t know I ride? Have actually said they have wanted to run over a rider and taco THEIR bike… a commuter or biker that pissed them off. Sure, maybe an asshole messenger weaving around in traffic or an asshole roadie riding three ride in the lane, or an asshole TL commuter skitching your car, but still. They emphasized with BLUME.

D. FUCK CARS! NO! FUCK BIKES!

The war between bikes and cars is alive and well, as item no. 2 described, in the media. But similar to posts described in item A, I notice the similar overreaction and vitriol in articles about bikes in non-bike specific venues. Where item A was about bikers hating on other bikers, this one is bikers hating on cars, hating on bikers. And in this specific case this weekend, it’s all over an art installation intended to provoke, and I’m saddened how well it worked.

In general, someone posts or writes about being aggravated by trouble with cars while riding their bikes in traffic, and they get a response of pages and pages of not only hateful attacks on bike commuters, but even threats of violence and despicable descriptions of how drivers wish they could kill riders. Take the same statements, turn them back on the authors and substitute bikes for shopping carts and riders for their mothers, and they’d be apeshit. What??? You are inconvenienced by mother’s shopping cart maneuvering politics at the store, and you want to kill her with it? OUTRAGE! And yet, this is what they are saying about bikes and riders. And so the battle of words (and unfortunately, physical attacks) flares up from there. Bikers responding to the car people rants, vice versa, vice versa again.

Specifically, this weekend an article was picked up and cross-posted all over the place about someone who developed a bar end plug with a key blank in it, so that, theoretically, if a car got too close, they’d get keyed. Setting aside the obvious fact that this wouldn’t WORK in the first place, it’s also obvious that the designers of this concept product were making a point, so to speak. I don’t think it was that cars get too close to riders and should be punished for it as a defensive weapon (it doesn’t even protect the rider anyway, even if they didn’t drop the bikes on contact, hypothetically) but rather, designed to spark interest in, and explore the reaction to, the controversy of bikes vs cars. I think the purpose was to get people fired up. And boy did it work. I looked at four different cross-postings of this concept design on four different sites, none of which being bike sites (or car sites) and the reaction was 3 riders laughing at the conceptual awesome, 33 riders overthinking it and critiquing the desgn (Ihave chopped bars, I have drops, I have bullhorns, what about physics, etc etc) and 3,333 driver types describing how they’d like to Blume a bike with a Max still on it. Shudder.*

So, setting aside Sight’s predictable gag here about riding bikes, we have got to find away to deflate the rhetoric about riding to people who don’t and to genre riders. I, for my part, acknwledge that some riders are unpredictable and dangerous in traffic or are dicks; I describe riding different bikes and demystify the ‘genre exclusivity’ of any one; and I wave apologies to cars (and other bikes, and pedestrians) if I fouled. Know whumsayin?

* I admit to being disappointed, mid-way through this draft write-up, to discover BSNYC commented at length on this concept and took it too seriously. I would have hoped he’d detect it’s obvious art-installation objective. Not that he wasn’t funny…

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If and when any of us non-meet our non-maker while riding? THIS will be our TL ghost bike.

http://judturner.com/new_work_gal/new_gal30.html via bb

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THIS is ciamillo’s "absolute zero" custom brake-building program. $500-something dollars a pair, and 100% worth building a bike around.

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Happy Birthday dude! Hope you get to spend it with the fam, not freezing, and with much unwise caloric intake!

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Among ALL the world’s steampunk trikes, you see.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27631022@N … 549479254/

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Who knew? They’re RIGHT! Just look to far left or far right (generally far right) on any given Critical Mass event…

http://www.paleofuture.com/2007/09/fren … -1910.html

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Look, you know my current project is a folder, and how much I love they. You ALSO know that if I can rig a comfortable means to carry it on my back through for those slim take-it-but-dont-ride-it0-but-dont-pack-it needs.

But nay.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5134466/folding-bi … of-gravity

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I’ve seen a lot of bike parts. I haven’t seen them all, however.
This auction, ongoing, is for tyre savers from the 70s. Click through to see how they are supposed to work.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi … EL:US:1123

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Sure, we’ve seen those young hipster catalogs from Urban Outfitters, with some hipster girl carrying a track bike, but really, this goes too far. It makes no sense whatsoever.

I mean, had it been a cute brunette, that’d be SOMETHING at least.

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