“The bicycle superseded by the automobile, the automobile compelling attention to the necessity for good roads, and with good roads throughout the country we may again see the bicycle coming into its own. Who will make the first move among the big manufacturers?”
—Louis M. Fisher, Former Secretary of the Associated Cycle Clubs of New York, in the New York Times on March 3, 1912
Dear Mr. Fisher,
Almost 97 years after you asked that question, I am pleased to report to you that the bicycle has indeed finally come into its own. And as for big manufacturers, the one responsible for this is, of course, the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company. Behold, the World's Greatest Madone:
It has rear-view mirrors to remind us from whence we came, and a rack to carry all that we've learned from history forward into the future. It also has a compact crank, Zipp 808 tubular wheels, and toe clips and straps. (Actually, scratch that--the rider has ditched the pesky straps.) It's steered by mountain bike bars with a gentle rise, and secured by a flimsy combination cable lock. I'm not sure what that piece of paper hanging of the bars is, but it's probably either a speech that will unify the entire cycling world in eternal siblinghood, or else the turn sheet for some charity ride.
My faith in cycling and humanity, considerably shaken after exploring the Times archives, has been restored.
Sincerely,--BSNYC
118 comments:
first
YES I FINALLY WON!
yes!
turd
Nice bike!
True Greatness!!
aw yeah
holy shit! that is a freak bike if there ever was one! Damn! I just ate lunch and now its all over the floor! mutha'phucker!
i love how there is a presta to schraeder adapter on the rear wheel. the owner can inflate those conti sprinters up to 150 psi (or higher on race day) at his local gas station.
A.L.H.S.M. top ten
damn, should have just spelled it out:
all you haters suck my top ten.
Wow, I thought my winter commuter bike was an insult to a good dirt-jumper frame and wheels... but that thing is so very wrong. I feel much better about myself... thanks snob!
Now that was the Monday RTMS fix I was jonesing for. While the articles/responses in Part I are loaded at somewhere around 98% pure irony, it's just not the same high that I get from the pure Snob smack.
Whoa, hope I have room on my back for a tat of that bike!
It's not like my hair is gonna grow back anytime soon.
Top twenty... I guess. P-Burgh's got some sweet whips too.
http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/bik/990023215.html
I don't really follow cycling news or people very much... can anyone tell if Bart Kaufman is more likely a pro rider, bike desgner, or is he the owner of that bike?
If I see a name on a top tube, is it liekly the owner's name?
Fuckin A!
And here I was getting snarky when my shop's football-coach clientele asked for aero bars on their Madones
I feel much more zen about the whole thing now
Dig the flipped stem also...
are those flames a standard option or could this be
PROJECT ONE??
From Dave Zabriskie's Twitter:
turning 30 in a few hours. watching 24. just shaved my head.
Drinkin beets
Just got done installing a mirror on the bike. It should be great. Now I can see when some one is going to clip me. 8:03 PM Jan 2nd from web
He's turning 30, he's eating beets, and he's installing mirrors. I'm sure that there's a reaction occuring between the beets and the DZnuts. This HAS to be his training bike.
front brake quick release is open!
NOBR AKES
i welcome the idiot who buys a bike like that in the same way i welcome the idiot who gets a tattoo. lets me know to be on my guard...
As usual, we aren't prepared for whatever the future will bring.
I dig the rig. If only it had a color matching pie plate (rear...or front...or both) along with redundant power meter systems (I have goosebumps) then I would truly feel that the future has arrived. Someday.
be sure to click on the the Trek to view it in all of its eyesore/painful glory
Finding a matching cable lock was a bitch. You know what all you haters can do.
I can only think the Mr. Kaufman represents that time of American life & lore known as the Midlife Crisis. Decided to flaunt the capacities of his Platinum card to compensate for the lack thereof in the southern equator of his personal frame. Although, you can almost say he has all the hipster whips beat in the department of ludicrousity by aethetics, and definitely knocks 'em out of the ring with coinage spent.
Also, somewhere there is a Trek materials engineer crying over the clamping of the rear rack to the carbon stays....
Top thirty!!!
Bart Kauffman, you're my hero.
I'll be looking for you on the Greenway. Or rather, you'll see me... in your mirrors... ;)
I’m pretty sure that slip of paper on the bars is the receipt. He can show everyone how much paid for the bike, and when goes to he it he can ask for more than the MRSP since he custom built it.
I wonder if that Madone will be in the 2009 or 2010 lineup at Trek?!
Missing a Paris-Roubaix fork. Then it would be complete!
its ok with me
if you can take a gt pantera and put drop bars on it like ricky done than you can do anything
unless yor canadian
I don't know if I should laugh or cry....
No bell and no lights on that cool bike. Maybe it's still a whip in progress.
I just want to say that tattoos are for deranged pedophiles and drunk Swedes.
ah, the mad one... the bike the freds worship. will trek offer this as a limited edition only, or will it be a full blown production bike? *cringe*
yes it's hilarious...
...it's also quite staged, I'm sure.
FIRST!!! GET IT IM NOT REALLY FIRST!! IT IS IRONY PEOPLE GET OVER YOURSELFS!
can we talk about tattoos again?
Jumpin' Jesus.
This is my real facial expression--make of it what you will.
Can't...Look...Away...
It only needs a crabon fiber kickstand to be complete....
this looks like the result of a bet made between sales staff in a franchise store. i remember xtr spd pedals going on 100 dollar bikes sometimes. this bicycle bears the hallmark of an expert salesman through and through. do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face and sell all that gear? bonuses are often relative to value of accessories bundled with a bike sale. the adrenaline rush from fencing all that extra kit, and doing it without getting caught by the boss must have been a topper.
ant1st!
bart,
your bike is safe in my neighborhood of bed stuy, what with that sturdy lock and cable of yours. give me a heads up when you come to the hood and i will personally check up on it....
this bicycle represents (in essence) what people actually use on a daily basis. i would say that this bike is actually a very average capture of what one would expect to find waiting for a new gear wire in a workshop, on any given weekday. your entire blog only covers average really, hence it's success.
I am only surprised it doesn't also have an SRM crankset
The shop I haunt has personally been responsible for at least 3 Madone Flat Bar Conversions(MFBC for the sake of brevity). At least they were 5.1's...
This however takes the whole idea to a much sicker level. I certainly am mentally vomiting at this moment.
Someone please steal that bike and throw it under a bus.
this gives me an idea. I am going to take my Madone add a flat bar, canti brakes, fat tires, and suspension fork which make it a..........mtn bike.
One of the ten greatest bicycles I have ever laid eyes on. I salute you, Bart Kaufman! (or whoever stole Bart's bike, realizing it wasn't bedazzled to it's full potential).
paint it one color black to hide the ugly fonts
too much 0rnament keep the ornament to your hairstyle
paint it one color black to hide the ugly fonts
too much 0rnament keep the ornament to your hairstyle
Oh.
My.
Gawd.
tubular tires on deep profile carbon wheels??? WTF! that says "Criminal hedge fund controlling Fred" all over it. Burn him at the stake!!!!
My guess is it's a bike store prank. If some dweeb were to spend that much on a bastardized riser bar conversion I suspect you'd see better pedals and a nicer rack on the bike. Guys who are dweebs enough to put a riser bar on a Project one would have Nokon housing, carbon bottle cages, and Brooks toe straps (or at least something leather through steel clips and MKS pedals)
anon 9:11
Don't forget the aerobars.
It must be Snob's runner's up prize for the Boston Whaler Fixamitosis Great Bike Porn Contest of 2008/2009.
you know what! the owner of this bike can do whatever he wants with it. As long as he doesn't get a tattoo then everything is good.
This thing infuriates me. I bet this guy drives a Mercedes with a cow skull (avec horns) taped to the grill.
If you're not going to put a $5,000 rig to good use, for fuck's sake give it to someone who will.
I just thought that I would probably give up cycling if someone riding that bike ever passed me.
Maybe the owner just did that to fuck with the heads of stuck up cyclists, and he just takes it out to get coffee and pass roadies doing their roll out.
Maybe it'll turn into the Frankenbike thing, and we'll get to see the Man with the Dream in the end.
Maybe it's that guy's new bike?
My head just exploded.
come on guys, I just wanted to fit in...
I guess I will take Grant up on that Rivendell that he measured me for. then we'll see whose laughing.
whose = who's
sorry I have had a long day at Goldman Sachs...
the posts of the last few days have shown bsnyc to be the pied piper of a bunch of grumpy, anonymous freaks who cant get with the new styles and trends that are sure to last.
i dont care what anyone says on this board that bike has to be a fake. no one could possibly think that up. no. one.
i sure hope he remembered to put lots of slime in them wheels
tattoos are not the new fashion for sane people! there are insane people around so it may appear that tattoos are mainstream...they are not! tattoo are for feeble minded people
see bart's bike?
bart's bike's blue.
it'll take your nut...
like it did to lancey-poo
This bike is amusing whatever it's true colors.
It's no more ludicrous than a fixed gear that starts with a cheap frame and has thousands of $'s worth of high end parts added to it. It's certainly more useful.
If its purpose was to piss people off it's a great success. No points for difficulty though. Let's face it, when it comes to the impropriety of bikes among this crowd you can cause a scandal just by having your quick release lever at the wrong angle.
I know, without a doubt, what that paper taped to the bars is - the fucking receipt. Its a receipt printed off of the Trek-owned "Ascend" point-of-sale software.
Is Bart Andy's brother?
Whoever thinks this bike isn't real hasn't worked at a bike shop. He probably set it up this way for his first triathlon. You know - "I'm not sure how into it I'll be, but my sales manager says I need a really light bike. And those 808s will take at least a minute of my 30k." A shop I worked at set up a Trek Y-Foil with flat bars for a guy. God, I wish I had a photo of that.
The piece of paper taped to the flat bar sez: "Is my bike cool? (I need to know-I got it for Christmas)..."
...bart kaufman my ass...
...yer all looking at lance's new ride for the upcoming season...a little older, a little wiser & a bad back that needs to be accommodated w/ a little more upright position...
...a rack for all the baggage he's carrying, mirrors to look back on his 'maybe' checkered past...clips n' straps just 'cuz he's now old school...a lock 'cuz there's bound ta be a few more choco-mocca-latte' stops this time around...
...sweet ride, juan pelota...kick ass for all us old geezers...
DOUCHESTRONG
(Seriously... This makes me wish Lance were sponsored by Huffy.)
RTMS,
i noticed you havent plugged the OC in a while... now that he is singing in the latter half of the ten minute clips, including some love ballad for you, i was wondering if you could plug him again. his videos are only getting 10-20 views now...he could use your help
So... was the shop out of wicker baskets, or what?
Well while wrenching away the days, I myself have built a handful of such bikes my own self, ,that was before workin' at Brooklynbikeandboarddotcom of course.. Back wwhen I worked in a lil' place called Asspen. Yup there's a lil shop out there called ajax and since everyone knows that specialized are the best, light years beyond trek obvi, and only the silliest of Asspenites would ride a trek!) We, the esteemed ajax s-works hybrid team would, get it on for all sorts of rich white people. Carbon riser bars hi-a-top high rise shorty stems, atop steer tube extenders on carbon steerers, with a set of flat bar integrated brake shifters with campy carbon levers, shifting long cage deraileur's and ti 12-34 cassettes ; mirrors/bells/computer/saddlebagZ
And when I had my way with these fine denizens of performance bicycle purchasing, as I so often did, S-works Bar Ends.
You can all be happy that I'm now available at Brooklyn Bike y B to make it right for you.
we have a person working at a bike shop who gleefully builds abortion worthy bikes and doesn't see any problem taking a bike that was designed for a particular riding position and then bastardizing it so that the handling will be drastically effected...what is next? selling tattoos to go with the abortion bike?
okay, it might be real, but no shop should clamp a rack on with p-clamps directly onto carbon fiber no matter how fucked the owner of the bike might be. There's understanding making a buck because the guy who bought this bike had a bucket full of cash that he was going to spend on a bike somewhere so it may as well be at their shop but if it is a real spec and some shady ass shop clamped rack mounts directly onto carbon they should lose their Trek account.
at Anon 1:59am
dude relax. he is only using the rear rack to transport his team's bowling balls. the carbon under those p clamps should easily hold the weight.
I have a gut feeling that the owner of this deranged bike may be into tattoos and Prince Albert piercings
Are you kidding? The shops selling Treks are the only shops that would sell this contraption!!
I ride a schtock Trek mineself but dis bike is Drek. Me, I like deh basic bike. So why vud a nice Jewish boy like Bart Kaufman make such a mess from a bike? Maybe he vas tinking of Mr. Glass and went a bissel meshuginah?
Oysh.
Throw some front shocks on that thing and you've got a deal
Need to repair your bike? Then why not visit www.smbbearings.com/BB_BRGS.htm for a great article about replacing your bike's bottom bracket bearings, the photos are a real help too.
That bike is a creature.
In a couple of years, that front wheel is going to need to be re-trued. oh wait, wrong day.....
I don't feel as though " the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company" is as much responsible as the shop that thought poorly while building it.
All You Haters Suck My Droopy Bike Tattoo.
Gladly
Worst waste of a Madone ever.... owner should be denied bicycle privileges for life.
That bike is starting to grow on me. While it reminds me of the ridiculous frankenbikes I've seen, this one achieves a similar purpose but does so without sacrificing beauty. As far as ironic (insert drink here) bikes go, this one might be the prettiest. Bart Kaufman is a genius.
I wonder if the Madone work of art belongs to the same Bart Kaufman who donated the LeRoy Neiman prints to Indiana University.
http://tinyurl.com/8w2atn
In the meantime, we must salute this forward thinking, free spirit.
So as another famous Bart once sang:
Everybody if you can do the Bartman.
Shake your body turn it out if you're bad man.
Ah front to back to the side yes you can, can.
Everybody in the House do the Bartman.
http://tinyurl.com/9m8bd9
MC Pee Pants said:"the posts of the last few days have shown bsnyc to be the pied piper of a bunch of grumpy, anonymous freaks who cant get with the new styles and trends that are sure to last.
You've only been reading for the last few days. Before that he was a pied piper of a bunch of tattooed freaks with Mantyhose fetishes. The readership changes daily.
Everyone knows mirrors belong on helmets, mot handlebars
The only thing it's missing is its size sticker.
Jokes aside, I bet that damn thing is fun to ride. Who's ready to admit that with me?
I think the bike's half fake, half real. It was flat bar conversion done by the bike shop (the receipt is surely from a Trek dealer using the Ascend point of sale), but someone took a couple extra liberties for sake of photo.
...the thing that's scary & makes me think it's real is that if a shop rat was goofing just for a photo shot, they wudda put tape under the p-clamps so the finish wouldn't get marred, no ???...
...could be the real deal...
I would ROCK that treck atrocity!
treck = trek
schrader adapter on rear valve too
I'm sure it's real. If you walk into a shop and say: "I want the lightest, fastest flat-bar hybrid you can get me, cost no object". This is what you get.
One of my wife's relatives, very much into bikes, wanted to get his wife the trickest lightest bike as a gift.
Except she liked the position of her rigid MTB, tried and hated clipless pedals, and needed hillclimbing gearing. Since at that time no manufacturer made a super-trick lightweight "hybrid" to fid the bill, (and he could afford to be very generous with his $) she ended up on...
An Orbea Orca with a mix of XTR/D-A, swept-back bars, flat pedals, and a suspension post.
Lighter than anything I've ever owned, for sure.
This is the perfect compliment to that bike.
I think the douche at the Trek store that sold this abomination should be held responsible. Notice that the bars are still below the saddle despite all the height that spacers, flipped stem and riser bars had to offer. The bike was likely sized improperly to begin with, and that was the not fred's mistake.
That bike is like watching your mom and dad have sex. If that's your sort of thing.
I met this guy! Check out the pics I took.
http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=503688
That guy is our customer (when he's in Indiana, where he's actually from.)
He is....."well off", to put it mildly.
His Indiana bike is a Cervelo Soloist Carbon set up exactly the same way.
I'll be sure to bookmark your blog
way cool bike!
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Changeparts
I just ate lunch and now its all over the floor! mutha'phucker!
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This is not a Trek, it's a Shrek.
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