Seriously, Why Not Just Spell It "Wensday?" I Mean Come On.

I used to think the United States in America was the world's bestest country in the world.  But then I got older and learned about this place they have up north called Canada, and it turns out that Canada is beating us at everything.  Their Pacific Northwest is more smug and weed-addled than our Pacific Northwest.  Their French-speaking population is vastly more pretentious than our French-speaking population.  And the Mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, is a bigger idiot than any big-city mayor we have down here in Canada's scranus:

(I will heretofore refer to Rob Ford as "Robs Fords," as his considerable girth technically qualifies him as plural.)

If you recall, Fords had the following to say on the subject of cyclists:

"And what I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you're going to get bitten," said Ford speaking in 2010 as a Toronto city council-member.

"And every year we have dozens of people that get hit by cars or trucks. Well, no wonder: roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes.

"My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it's their own fault at the end of the day."


I'm not sure what comes out of his heart when it bleeds, but I'm assuming it's some form of custard.

In any case, now a reader tells me that Fords has been caught reading while operating one of the only vehicles large enough to contain him:

Here's how he explained it:


Reporter: "Sir, there's a picture that went out on Twitter this morning of you reading while still driving on the Gardiner [Expressway]."

Ford: "Yeah, probably. I'm busy."

Reporter: "So you read while driving?"

Ford: "Yeah, probably, yeah. I'm try[ing] to catch up on my work and you know I keep my eyes on the road, but I'm a busy man."

Reporter: "You don't see a problem doing that on the Gardiner?"

Ford: "Well, I'm busy. I got to be — I don't know what that has to do with a trade mission, but anyways. Ridiculous questions sometimes, seriously."

This further debunks his "swimming with the sharks" comments, since "sharing" the road with people like this is less like swimming with sharks and more like swimming with distracted manatees.  I'd also add that my heart bleeds hummus for obese mayors from Toronto who get killed because they were reading recipes they printed out from "Bon Appétit," but it's their own fault at the end of the day.  And even the police are taking him to task:

"Finally, on behalf of all the citizens of Toronto that value road safety, Mr Mayor... please get a driver. It is obvious that you are busy enough to require one and no amount of money you are saving by not having one is worth the life of one of your citizens."

In fairness to Fords, it's not an issue of money.  It's more about finding a driver who can be sealed in an Escalade with Fords and not lose consciousness due to all the flatulence.  Plus, the records shows that he's actually an excellent driver:


Ford in July admitted he drove past a streetcar's rear doors, and was then confronted by the operator of the streetcar.

In October, Ford was accused of illegally dialing numbers on his cellphone and talking on it as he steered his gold minivan westbound along Dundas Street West near Spadina Avenue.

And last July, the mayor denied accusations that he gave the middle finger to Ottilie Mason and her six-year-old daughter after the mother accosted him for talking on his cellphone while driving.



That little six-year-old snot had it coming I'm sure.

Meanwhile, by now you've probably seen the video that's taken the Internet by storm, in which a Portlander engages in some "artisanal policework" and busts the guy who stole his bike:



I'd like to be happy for the guy who got his bike back, but to be perfectly honest I thought he was kind of a jerk about the whole thing.  Sure, I'm glad he retrieved his property, and sure the thief deserves whatever he gets, but this video is also less like watching justice being done and more like watching someone go "BOOSH!" for nine minutes.  Then again, I shouldn't be surprised, since absolutely nobody does "hissy fits" like people from Portland.  Anyway, here's how it all went down.

First, the bicycle's owner makes a big deal about how he's up at 6:30am because he has to go to Seattle to recover his stolen bike:

If you're reading this in Portland, you'll be stunned to learn that this really isn't in any way noteworthy, since 6:30am is when a lot of people in the real world actually start their day.  (I mean, I don't, but people with actual professional lives do.)

Then, he and his friends get minus three thousand smugness points for driving from Portland to Seattle:

On my first BRA tour, I failed to take the train from Seattle to Portland, and nobody in either city would let me hear the end of it.  You can be sure I learned my lesson, since being lectured by Pacific Northwesterners is worse than being waterboarded.  Also, if nothing else, the Hardy Boys here missed a great opportunity to turn this into a quintessentially Portland film by including a folksy montage of evocative train shots accompanied by banjo music.

Once in Seattle, the rightful owner of the stolen bicycle outlines a lengthy plan that made me feel sorry for the friends he roped into this:

He also adds that he's "trying to chill out and think of a plan and not be emotional about it," though in a stressful situation like this nobody's above suspicion--and that includes grandpa pushing the shopping cart:

"This guy's going down for a felony," he concludes, while squinting sherriff-like in the sun I didn't think Seattle had:

And here's the guy who's "going down:"

Shifty and rat-like, you can tell he realizes this sale is easy.  Too easy.  That's when the plan goes awry and, despite his earlier assurances, the rightful owner gets like totally emotional about it.  And when Portanders get emotional, they act out things they've seen in movies:

"You're under citizen's arrest!," cries the bike's owner, which is about as effective as pretending to be Spider-Man and shooting webs out of your wrists.

As the "perp" flees, we get a glimpse of his girlfriend, and perhaps my biggest problem with this film from a narrative perspective is the lack of female character development:

Who is Jessica?  How did she get wrapped up in all this?  How was she "involved?"  Was she turned on by Rat Face and his audacious Craigslist caper?  Are they a Tarantino-esque pair of tandem outlaws?  Or is she simply a naif who unwittingly stumbled into the dark and sordid world of Fred-dom gone bad?

Alas, all we'll ever know is that she's the proverbial "one who got away:"

Also, the film makes too much use of the "shaky cam" conceit, as in the scene during which the rightful owner cries, "I got your face on camera, asshole!  You are fucked!," and his friend Simon follows the "perp" in lukewarm pursuit:

The "black screen" effect on the other hand does ratchet up the suspense considerably, and also heightens our awareness of Rat Face's utter stupidity:

Between amateur policing and poor legal advice, the Internet is clearly unraveling our social fabric faster than a cheap chamois.

Finally though, the actual police arrive on the scene, and the cop has that look of weary resignation people get when they're dealing with someone from Portland:

Meanwhile, the chase continues on foot, and the rightful owner begins to taunt the perp:

"This is how it goes down everybody, this is why you don't steal from bicyclists." Yes, because they will annoy you to death.

And the taunts continue as the perp is finally arrested in the parking lot of a Safeway:

This is where I thought the owner went too far.  You got your bike back, and you got the pleasure of seeing the person who may have stolen it actually getting arrested, which is something few bike victims will ever get to experience.  Given this, the jeering is just gratuitous.  Plus, Rat Face is totally going to go "Cape Fear" on him.

And then comes the Big Reveal, when we finally learn that the bike in question was...a Fuji:

That's it?  A Fuji?  Sure, there's nothing wrong with a Fuji, but given the buildup and the Portland backdrop I was expecting something a bit more exotic.  This is like if the car in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" was a Hyundai instead of a Ferrari.

Anyway, after this there's a little more gloating:

And, as the cineastes say, "Fin:"

Again, I'm glad the guy got his bike back, but it seems like there was a way to edit this down to about 45 seconds and not make the owner look like a vindictive nutcase.

Speaking of smugness, another reader has sent me this video, in which a vegan boasts about breaking his bamboo bike:

"I just wanted to kind of bring up the whole issue here with people who think that vegetarians and vegans and raw vegans are really weak," he explains:

Actually, most people don't think vegetarians and vegans are weak, they just think vegetarians and vegans are annoying.  He's also incorrect in saying that cyclists are strong.  Cyclists have physical proficiency in exactly one thing, which is propelling a bike, and once you take them off that bike they're mostly just spindly and useless.  Sure, there are some cyclists who try to develop strength in other areas, and those cyclists are called "triathletes."  Unfortunately though they just wind up like the dog who saw his reflection and make a complete mess of everything.

Nevertheless, this particular vegan wants to prove that vegans are strong, and his proof is that "I broke, literally, my bamboo frame on my bike:"

Wow, really?  You broke your crudely constructed frame made from twigs?  This is a feat of strength akin to tearing three plies of wet toilet paper.  Here's a closer look at the rolling bird's nest:

Fortunately, the frame is not a total loss, since he can at least use the tubing to make some delicious vegan bamboo soup.  Instead though he tells us that, "It's gonna go as a trophy piece in the hostel," as he surreptitiously shows off his ink:

So has he learned his lesson and decided to get a frame made out of something that can withstand his strength, like metal or even candy canes?  No, he hasn't:

"I will have another new bamboo bike," he declares.

Then he goes on to humiliate the locals:

Silly foreigners with their wacky "languages..."

Painting the Town: Homogenized Exuberance

In yesterday's post, I mentioned Walmart, that friendly neighborhood store where you can buy oversized bikes, right-wing literature, and munitions, all at unbeatable prices.  So what's the opposite of this lethal, mass-produced, more-more-more ethos?  Why, it's life in Portland of course, as you can see in this video that was forwarded to me by a reader:



This video is an important anthropological document, because it encapsulates the Five Pillars of Portland Society, which are as follows:

--Making things pretty
--Making friends
--Hugging
--Being inclusive
--Being so profoundly self-satisfied it's disgusting

Yes, apparently in Portland people like to get together and paint intersections, though the Smugness Union requires that they stop every 15 minutes in order to snuggle:

("Hug break!")

You also have to hand it to Portland for being so resourceful, since they've managed to portray themselves as an inclusive culture despite the fact that it's one of the most ethnically and ideologically homogeneous societies on Earth.  That's not to say there isn't some diversity though, and some people there actually spell their names slightly differently:

(In Portland, Annes and Annies somehow manage to live together in perfect harmony.)

Though it's tough to disagree over anything when you're constantly stultified by communal art projects and overly earnest folk music:

("After this I'm playing at a same-sex dog wedding.")

Nevertheless, even Portland is not immune to discordance, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some bike dorks start complaining that the pretty pictures are distracting attention from their precious bike sharrows.

Speaking of Portland, awhile back I mentioned that some Portlanders were making a leather bike handle.  As far as I'm concerned, a bike needs a handle like an aquarium needs a toilet.  Nevertheless, Stevil Kinevil informs me that the handlesmiths have since managed to raise $20,000:

Now, I've spent some time in Portland, and I know from experience that they will look at you askance if you so much as ask for a shopping bag in the grocery store.  Yet for some reason it's perfectly fine to for a cow to die so that you can have a handle for something that is already basically a giant handle.  I mean, what vehicle is more intrinsically portable than a bicycle?

(This is how it's done.)

This is not to say I have a problem with using cow parts for stuff, it's just that I don't understand how they managed to raise $20,000 in a city where only like 46 people actually have jobs.  (The Portland economy is sustained almost entirely by people who work for bike companies and then buy stuff from their employers with their employee discounts.)  But I suppose that's the power of Kickstarter, and still more proof that entrepreneurship now works on the "What About Bob?" model.  Indeed, every time I watch a Kickstarter video all I hear is "Gimme, gimme, gimme, I need, I need:"



In fact, I recently heard from another would-be bicycle accessory maker who will be launching his own Kickstarter on Thursday.  It is for something called the "Barbasket," and here is the video:


Barbasket from Chris Luomanen on Vimeo.

Like most Kickstarter projects, this combines elements from other accessories that already exist while simultaneously solving no problems whatsoever and creating some new ones.  See, if you want a removable bag for your handlebars, you can already get these things called "handlebar bags."  Or, if you want a basket you can take inside with you (or just leave at home), you can opt for these things called "removable baskets."  Meanwhile the Barbasket manages to require cumbersome proprietary handlebars while at the same time being really small:

Tellingly, the design concern behind the Barbasket is called "NRML:"

And it's clear that their though process was a bit clouded when they came up with it:

Though if you want a dedicated six-pack carrier that requires a pair of special handlebars then give generously.  Plus, the gratuitous handlebar loop looks like a great mounting place for that second leather bike handle.  Sure, you might have to take the beer out of your pouch in order to use it, but don't worry, you can always relocate that beer to the frame with yet another leather handle:

None of this would be a problem if people would just suck it up and ask for a bag at the store.

Sure, some people might think having an exquisitely-crafted leather handle for everything on a bicycle makes it beautiful, but I think it makes it look like it belongs to a metrosexual bike cowboy.  Still, it's better than this "flaming turd bike," as forwarded by another reader:

(Feces in motion)

At this rate I'm pretty sure it's only a matter of time before we start seeing leather bike locks, which will of course result in a dramatic uptick in bike theft, as well as a concomitant rise in polite vigilantism:

As I've mentioned, I belong to the "Your Bike Is Your Problem" school, and that extends to stopping bike thieves.  Firstly, I don't care enough about someone else's bike to interrupt a criminal with heavy cutting tools.    Secondly, even if I did care about it, chances are the owner doesn't care about it in the first place:

Res waited for the owner, but they never showed. She then went to the police, who told her that they couldn't help her. So she plastered these flyers up near the Starbucks. Res writes via email that she's reached out to Trek and is giving her the serial number on the bike, which may help them reunite the black bike with its owner.

As far as I'm concerned, Res should just keep that bike.  She earned it.  I probably wouldn't have even looked up from my Venti Soy Mocha Doucheaccino.

Lastly, in do-it-yourself research news, some Australians have proved that riding with headphones isn't actually that dangerous:

Conclusions


Based on these relatively simple tests, it is fair to conclude that:


1. A bike rider with ear-bud earphones playing music at a reasonable volume hears much more outside noise than a car driver, even when that driver has no music playing.


2. A bike rider with in-ear earphones playing music at a reasonable volume hears about the same outside noise as a car driver with no music playing, but more than a car driver playing music.


3. A bike rider with in-ear earphones playing music at a reasonable volume hears about the same outside noise as a car driver with no music playing, but more than a car driver playing music.
Ear-bud earphones set at a reasonable volume still allow riders to clearly here the warning sounds of other riders.


Put that in your ear and smoke it.

Self-Preservation: There's No "Me" in Smugness

Hey duders!

Somewhere in the snowy wilds of Canadia, where the men are moose, the women are hosers, and the back bacon runs free, one solitary man is still upset that I pretended to think that Ryder Hesjedal is from the United States, for I recently received the following email:

Nope, i can assure you that you really dont know how to tell a joke. Just stating something absurd is not telling a joke. There has to be a hook beyond the pretence? of ignorance. You may want to review your semi-pro rating. Hopelessly amateur may be closer to the mark.

I enjoyed this tremendously, since indignant emails about inconsequential matters are my favorite form of prose.  As a bonus, this one even features the old question-mark-after-the-misspelled-word-that-the-author-couldn't-be-bothered-to-look-up, which we in the semi-professional writing trade call the "lazy-man's spell check."  In any case, if he doesn't like absurdity for absurdity's sake I only hope he never sees a Steven Wright routine, because he'll be hunting-and-pecking away at indignant emails for the next ten years.

Speaking of false claims concerning one's nationality, the good people of Portland (or, more accurately, its environs--or at least Oregon) have been duped by a wily Australian (or, more accurately, Faux-stralian) bounder and grifter:

Here's how the elaborate caper "went down" (to employ the hardboiled language of police procedurals):


An Australian man on a bike tour through Oregon has learned first hand how supportive and compassionate our community is.


On Sunday, Salem resident Chad Butler was on his way home from participating in the Sisters Stampede mountain bike race when he came across a man from Darwin, Australia named Ian (no last name given) whose rear wheel had been badly damaged after being hit by a van.


Naturally, upon hearing that a person with a bike was in trouble, the smug people of Oregon all put on their helping pants:


After offering to help Ian himself, Butler then made an appeal for others on the OBRA list to step up:


"I'm hoping I can help him find a heavy duty 700c touring wheel. Being that he's currently without the ability to access his bank, I'm willing to be his benefactor, but I'm hoping to find a killer deal amongst our loving OBRA community. Bring it on guys. This fella started his bike journey here in Toronto and has pedaled his way all the way to Oregon, a mecca of U.S. cycling, only to find bad luck. I think we can change it around."


To be a recipient of this kind of assistance is to be, in an odd way, a victim.  Sure, people are coming to your rescue, but they're mostly coming to your rescue to further inflate their bloated sense of how wonderful they are, so what you really are is sort of a smugness piñata being bludgeoned with kindness and bike parts.

As it turns out, though, this man was no unwitting piñata.  He was in fact a professional huckster and confidence man who knew all too well how to extract the sweet, sticky nectar of smugness from the people of Oregon.  Indeed, after BikePortland published the original story, commenter after commenter logged on to share similar encounters with the same individual.  There was this one:

This probably sounds crazy. I am 99% sure that the "Australian named Ian" from today's front page story isn't who he says he is...


I ended up helping him fix a flat tire (he said his hands were pretty useless since his Golden Glove boxing days), and he laid on a sob story about someone stealing his wallet from his bike trailer, and having to wait for cash to be forwarded before continuing his journey (sound familiar?). I lent him $20 as he left camp, and he took my address to mail me payback. I left camp shortly after, and passing through Ashland saw his bike parked outside a bar. I walk in and he is drinking and playing video poker!!

And this one:

This sounds all too familiar to me as well. I helped out a similar fella probably 9 or 10 years ago (same small stature same penchant for tale telling) claimed he had toured all over the country and had actually stopped at Specialized bike's headquarters where he became fast friends with Ned Overend whom he fondly referred to as "Nedley". I actually drove him to a shop in Salem from the side of I-5 where he had his wheel repaired and since he had no money I ponied up the ten or so bucks with the promise that he'd pay me back. Never saw him again until (I think) now...

And this one:

Wow! I ran into this guy at Standish-Hickey in August 2010 in the middle of a tour to SF. The guy showed up with a can of Budweiser, a copy of USA Today ("rubbish" he called it) and said he'd been robbed in Eugene (bags stolen while he used a gas station restroom) and was going to high-tail it straight down 101 to the Australian embassy. He was wearing dirty old bike shorts (in fact, he was generally covered in dirt) and had a cheap 4-man tent without a fly.


Best of all, this huckster doesn't even have to bother to look the part of the long-distance bicycle tourist:

(When not grifting, "Ian" plays Homer J. Simpson at children's birthday parties.)

This is because the Religion of Smugness expressly prohibits its members from inferring anything from someone's appearance, even if it's in their own self-interest to do so.  This is why they get taken by people who claim to be riding from the North Pole to Tierra del Fuego but look like they've just hastily slipped on an ill-fitting jersey in the bathroom of a greasy spoon.

Of course, one might argue that it's always better to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I'm not so sure.  Maybe I'm just a cynical New Yorker, or maybe I'm just a plain old-fashioned misanthrope, but if I were approached by a man who looked as though he's just had a hot date with a hot open turkey sandwich and who spun a baroque tale of misfortune in an ersatz Australian accent I suspect I might be disinclined to help.  Then again, I'd probably also be disinclined to stop and help if I were to witness a zombie attack, which is what a reader tells me other cyclists failed to do in the case of that horrific face-eating incident in Miami. (And yes, if you're reading this outside of the United States, it's officially come to face-eating here in Canada's Dockers.)  Anyway, here's what happened:


In the Herald video (http://hrld.us/N9GlGB), a naked Eugene walks west on the sidewalk alongside an off-ramp of the causeway. A bicyclist speeds past Eugene just as he turns to something in the shade, in an area obscured by the tops of palm trees.


After a couple minutes, Eugene rolls Poppo's body into the sun and begins stripping off his pants and pummeling him. Later, the footage shows Eugene pull Poppo farther up the sidewalk. Though the view is partially obstructed by the mass transit rail above, Eugene appears to hunch over and lie on top of Poppo.


The footage shows a bicyclist slowly pedaling past the men about halfway through the attack, followed by a car slowly driving on the shoulder of the ramp. Cars regularly pass by the scene from the beginning of the attack, but their view was likely obstructed by a waist-high concrete barrier.


Two more bicyclists cross the scene before a police car drives the wrong way up the ramp nearly 18 minutes into the attack.


Notice how the article implies the cyclists simply ignored the attack while at the same time providing a ready-made excuse for the drivers, as though people who ride bikes are somehow worse people who drive cars.  If anything, though, this horrible tale underscores our shared humanity regardless of what sort of vehicle we operate.  The truth is that, whether we're straddling our crabon Fred chariots or tapping at the gas pedals of our bloated SUVs, we're all unified in our compulsion to get as far away as possible from two naked men writhing underneath an overpass.  It's one thing to stop and ask a stranded cyclist if he needs help fixing his flat or offer a stalled motorist the use of your cellphone; it's quite another to stop and try to ascertain whether two pantsless people are making love or just eating each other alive.  You can call this self-preservation instinct mercenary if you like, but I choose to find it oddly comforting.

But while cyclists may shy away from zombie attacks, they have no inhibitions when it comes to telling other cyclists what to do.  In particular, cyclists love to bark orders at each other, and one of the most popular orders is the admonition to "Hold your line!," which I heard recently in Prospect Park:

There I was, piloting my smugness chariot and taking great pains to ignore any zombie attacks or hapless Australians that might be hiding in the bushes, when I heard those words: "Hold your line!"  At first I thought they were directed at me, which was perplexing since the long wheelbase of my smugness chariot makes any kind of weaving almost impossible.  But then the riders pictured above appeared, and I realized that one of the Fredericas (possibly the one with the pink hot pants) was yelling at the guy on the hybrid.  This seemed wholly unnecessary, for not only was there plenty of room on the park roadway, but hybrid guy also appeared to be adhering to his "line" quite linearly.  Really, telling strangers in the park to "hold your line" is for the sort of people who need a "tactile signal" to tell them where their handlebars end.

Most of all, though, I was disappointed because both riders were wearing fanny packs, and I'd like to think that there's a greater sense of community and respect among people who wear butt-pouches.  Given the amount of derision they're subjected to, you'd think they'd at least look out for each other.

Swollen Ranks: Who's #1?

Are you am amateur bicycle racer?  Do you sheathe yourself in Lycra and straddle the crabon pony?  Do you refrain from desserts and alcohol so as not to compromise you mid-pack finishes in local training races?  If so, you should know that "serious leisure male cyclists may experience hormonal imbalances that could affect their reproductive health:"

I learned of this from a fellow Tweeterer, and my first reaction was disbelief, since I don't see how there could possibly be such a thing as a "serious leisure male cyclist."  Aren't "serious" and "leisure" mutually exclusive?  Then again, I suppose it's a perfect clinical term for "Fred," since "serious leisure male cyclist" does evoke the sort of person who considers himself an elite athlete because he holds a Cat 4 racing license and who has to pay a coach to force him to ride his crabon bicycle.

In any case, here's what the researchers have discovered:

"Plasma estradiol and testosterone levels were significantly elevated in serious leisure male cyclists, a finding not previously reported in any type of male athlete," notes Leah Fitzgerald, Ph.D., FNP-BC, assistant professor at the School of Nursing and principal investigator and senior author of the study.

In other words, "training" makes Freds grow boobies:

Estradiol is a form of estrogen and, in males, is produced as an active metabolic product of testosterone. Possible conditions associated with elevated estrogen in males include gynecomastia, a condition that may result in the loss of male pubic hair and enlarged breast tissue.

As does chamois cream:

The study found an association between an increase in estrogen levels and increasing years of chamois cream use, particularly for male cyclists using the cream for more than four years.


Researchers also released this photo of a man in the advanced stages of Freditosis:

Sadly, it's unlikely that "serious leisure male cyclists" will be dissuaded by this research, for to find a more delusional group of people than amateur male bike racers you have to look to the more esoteric religious sects or the leadership of North Korea.  No, the fact is that it's only a matter of time before elevated estrogen becomes a point of pride for Freds, and they begin bragging about their balding mons pubises and robust man-breasts the same way they already like to show off their tan lines and share leg-shaving tips.  "Man-maries are so PRO!," the Tweets will read, and they'll be accompanied by Instagram photos of preternatural he-bosoms barely contained by $250 Rapha Alpe d'Huez Merino Climbing Manzierres.

Speaking of Rapha, they certainly stand the most to gain from this, because not only can they start selling bras to Freds, but hey can also tap the burgeoning transsexual market with their bosom-swelling, pee-pee shrinking, estrogen-elevating chamois cream:

(Chamois Cream: Turns Freds into Wilmas.)

Meanwhile, in other Fred news, Fred-dom's periodical of record has officially deemed Portland, Oregon the #1 bikey city in the United States, and her rain-soaked residents are positively brimming with pride and smugness:

I'm not sure it's fair to call Portland a "city."  New York is a city.  Chicago is a city.  Portland's mostly just a handful of trendy businesses that have sprung up around a sawmill.  I'm also not sure being #1 anything according to "Bicycling" is something to brag about, since it's sort of like getting a card from grandma informing you that you're the "#1 Grandchild."  Plus, as much as I love the good people at "Bicycling," they're not exactly the most cosmopolitan bunch, and while nobody's better at ranking identical Taiwanese crabon bicycles I'm not sure they're qualified to be ranking cities.  Having a bunch of people in Emmaus, PA judge cities is like having a bunch of Orthodox Jews judge a pork rib competition.  Still, I guess we should leave the people of Portland to their celebrations since it's really all they have.  I mean, take away the bike stuff and Portland's just a suburb of Beaverton with a few coffee houses and quirky donut shop.

By the way, if you want to find out how the rest of America's cities ranked, you'll have to click through the world's largest slideshow:

Sadly, "Bicycling" have to resort to these sorts of ploys since people who accidentally click on the pop-ups account for 78% of their print subscribers.

As for me, I don't have time to click through a bunch of slides, since I have a blog to run.  (I don't mean this blog, which takes almost no time to run.  I'm referring to my other blog, "Wet Hot Fred Boobs," which is extremely time-consuming, surprisingly lucrative, and tremendously popular in Japan.)  Still, I wanted to find out how my hometown finished.  So I picked a number and clicked on it, and amazingly I guessed exactly right:

I know I'm biased, but I think New York City should have placed a bit higher.  After all, we're world leaders in so many areas of cycling:

--World's most Fredly bicycle racing club (CRCA);
--World's most self-important retired professional bike racer (John Eustice);
--World's most heavily-trafficked Fred corridor (Route 9W);
--World's most nonexistent car (David Byrne's);
--World's largest bicycle clustercoitus (Five Boro Bike Tour).

I could go on, but the longer this list gets the more I want to move to Portland.

Of course, there's one area in which New York is untouchable, and that's the potential for interactions among different cultures.  Consider this for example:


Hasidic Dude For Shikseh Bike Riding Partner - m4w - 28 (North Brooklyn)
Date: 2012-05-21, 9:34AM EDT
Reply to: [deleted]


Ok, this is not exactly a missed connection to a particular person, but I am a real hasidic dude who is looking for a multi cultural bike riding partner/expiriance. I do like to ride down to Coney Island and fort Tilden and Im sure there's a non religious girl who is wants to have a conversation wih someone totally different and learn a thing or two about he culture. I am down for drinks too, but really the weather is so beautiful and this is te time of year. 

Alas, it was only a matter of time before the constant parade of "muffin tops" caused a member of the Hasidic community to stray.  I'm sure he's eager to teach a willing shikseh "a thing or two about the culture" as well.  He's going to singlehandedly dispel that sheet myth once and for all.

Morning in Portland: The Smells of Smugness

There's nothing quite like waking up in Portland.  This morning, I was roused by the gentle sounds of artisanal cobbling as the sweet smells of Stumptown coffee and smugness wafted in through the window.  (This is much more pleasant than the way I wake up in Brooklyn, which is to the cacophony of trash collection as the itinerant gentleman who lives on my fire escape sings "Daisy Dukes" by the 69 Boyz.)  Then, once I was up, I headed outside to engage in my favorite Portland activity, which is purchasing small items and then insisting that the clerk bag them in plastic for me.

When I returned to my hotel, there was a young woman of maybe 20 standing outside and surrounded by luggage.  She had a fine head of dreadlocks and was dressed like a member of the erstwhile band Babes in Toyland, and she was alternately sucking on a lit cigarette and spitting.  Just then, a well-off-looking gentleman who was almost certainly her father emerged from the hotel and mentioned something about how it was time to leave, to which the Babe muttered an incomprehensibly surly retort, probably along the lines of "Screw you, Dad."

"Oh, no, that's OK!" the father figure replied apologetically. "You can finish your cigarette."

I looked for evidence that I had stumbled onto a "Portlandia" shoot, but then I remembered I was actually in Portland, and that this is just the way it is here.

Speaking of traveling and being spoiled, yesterday I sort of mock-complained about my grueling BRA schedule, and a commenter had this to say:


Anonymous said...


Poor Wildcat. All expenses paid to travel to the West Coast. Ride a bike for an hour, talk to hipster d-bags for another hour, then spend the rest of the day doing nothing.


Sounds rough.


APRIL 9, 2012 4:19 PM

This observation is certainly warranted, but in my own defense I will say the following:

1) To be perfectly fair, I don't spend the rest of the day doing nothing.  Instead, I spend it engaged in the act of air travel, which I shouldn't have to tell you can be rather tedious.  (Especially when you exude that "I'm smuggling contraband in a bodily orifice" vibe as I seem to do.)  Sure, I could be doing nothing if my sponsor Brooks had hooked me up with a sweet luxury tour bus, but despite my cajoling they wouldn't go for it.  I had a good pitch, too--the bus was going to underscore how comfortable Brooks saddles are, and it would have been called "The Taint Talk Express:"

(When the Taint Talk Express rolls into town, the chamfering parties go all night long.)

2) Also, I believe very strongly in complaining, no matter how idyllic or cushy my circumstances may be at any given time.  In fact, I subscribe to the dictum "I complain therefore I am."  This is because the moment you're no longer able to find something to complain about is the moment you become complacent, and the moment you become complacent is the moment you surrender your humanity.  One night you actually go to bed happy, and then the next thing you know you wake up 20 years later and you're living in Portland like some sort of dreadlocked Rip Van Winkle.

Fortunately though, I am a cyclist, and the world of cycling furnishes me with much to complain about. For example, I recently received an email from someone who is looking to raise the sizeable sum of $75,000 in order to fund his enterprise:

"What is this enterprise?," you may be asking if you haven't yet bothered to click on the link.  Well, it's a speaker you put on your handlebars, and the inventor explains it thusly:

Headphones always fall off when you‘re biking, ruining your rhythm and becoming a hazard.  Let SleekSpeak’s wireless technology set you free!  Connect to the speaker via bluetooth with your smartphone or MP3 player and start biking to the beat.  When you are riding with friends you can connect to their SleekSpeaks and become the DJ for your whole crew.

Say what you will about people who ride with headphones, but at least they have the decency to keep their musical preferences to themselves.  On the other hand, if this thing takes off I could find myself subjected to all manner of neutered "indie" warblings emanating from the similarly neutered fixiebike cockpits of Nü-Brooklynites.  Incidentally, if you're wondering how it works, basically it's a "hipster cyst" that makes noise:

If bikes weren't built to have wires, why does his have cable guides?

Anyway, if you're still not convinced, here's the promotional video:



First, we see a rider.  Let's call him "Hilpster A:"

As you can see, "Hilpster A's" earbuds are falling out of his ears, and they eventually get caught in his front wheel:

I admit I've ridden with earbuds before.  Granted, I almost never do it, but on the occasions that I have I've never, ever have I had the problem shown above.  Sure, maybe I have prehensile ears, or maybe I clean them so infrequently that the adhesive properties of my earwax buildup keeps the earbuds securely in my head, but we might also need to consider the possibility that the above rider is uniquely hapless and is probably also the type of person who used to constantly stab himself with a pencil in gradeschool and who still can't use the bathroom without getting his "pants yabbies" caught in his zipper.

Meanwhile, as "Hilpster A" is futzing with the "vintage" Cannondale cyclocross bike he picked up on eBay, "Hilpster B" zips by:

Bobbing his head happily like a davening Rebbe:

Only without the sense of rhythm.

"I love bi-keen," effuses "Hilpster B," and his expression leaves us with no doubt that this is true:

Indeed, if you're only going to put one thing on your cockpit, forget the brake lever and let it be a "Hilpster PA System:"

Also, freeing your ears from headphones leaves more room for pretty flowers and voluminous scarves:

Then, once you get to the park, you can have a soundtrack for your impromptu hilpster photo shoots:

Yes, nobody loves cameras more than hilpsters, and you can't ride a bicycle past a crappy building or a crumbling wall in Brooklyn without finding a hilpster standing in front of it and taking pictures of it with $2,000 worth of photo equipment.  I'm not sure if this is because they're enamored of urban decay, or if they're simply looking for new neighborhoods to gentrify, but I suspect it really doesn't matter because they're both essentially the same thing.

Of course, when they're not photographing urban decay they're simply photographing each other, and there's no ambiguity as to why this is:

Yes, you are awesome.

Really, the only thing hilpsters love more than cameras is hanging stuff from their carabiners, and of course the "Hilpster PA System" lends itself to this application quite well:

So be sure to help the inventor reach his $75,000 goal, so that you can put a gigantic mushy cube on your handlebars instead of being without music for 20 minutes:

Still, I'll readily admit that using your bike as a PA system is far better than using it as a means to justify your own prejudices, as in this cringeworthy opinion piece which was forwarded to me by a reader and which manages to invoke both bike theft and the Trayvon Martin shooting:

Basically, this person's crappy bike gets stolen:

It was a beautiful and sunny day, and I planned to ride my bike around the city. The bike, a sharp silver-blue hybrid from L.L. Bean, was only a year old, but had already taken on great literal and symbolic significance for me. In 2008 I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and the chemotherapy caused some nerve damage. The doctor says it will slowly go away but exercise will be a big help.

And despite having no evidence whatsoever, he decides it must be the work of a black person:

The students at Catholic University were on Easter break. That left the neighborhoods around the university. Since the time I was an undergrad at Catholic University in the 1980s, most of the crime that has occurred on campus has come from those neighborhoods, which are predominately black. As sure as it took the D.C. cops forever to get to the parking lot to file a report, I knew that the odds were very high that a black person had taken my bike — maybe one of the kids that had been described.

That's the finest piece of detective work I've seen since Mavic absolved themselves for the R-Sys debacle.  Anyway, after considerable hand-wringing, the victim finally experiences catharsis:

In that moment, I had a change of consciousness. Why was I assuming that the kid who stole my bike was acting out of some terrible pain, as if he had been directly under the lash of Bull Connor? What if he has a car, a nice apartment, a hot girlfriend and good health?


What if he is just a selfish asshole?


I decided that I’m just going to let go of my white guilt. We’re all human, we all experience pain in our lives. And black pain is no different than white pain.

I think we all knew from the beginning of the story that the person who stole the bike was a selfish asshole, and by the end of it we know that the writer is an asshole too.  The only thing we still don't know is what color the bike thief actually was.  But really, that doesn't matter, as long as the guy who lost his L.L. Bean bike doesn't have to give Trayvon Martin the benefit of the doubt anymore.