Enhanced Performance: Oiling the Squeaky Wheel

Firstly, regarding The Great Meh BSNYC Free Scat Contest!, I'm pleased to announce that my "curatorial" responsibilities are officially over, for I have now chosen a winner, and communicated with that winner, and communicated with Performance, and given Performance the winner's email address, which means that they can now communicate with each other and I don't have be bothered by either of them ever again. Indeed, choosing the winner was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I've competed in the Singlespeed World Championships and been to Banff, Canada, so that's saying a lot. Generally, though, submissions fell into one of four categories:

Abject Misfortune

These were the stories that were so horrible I found myself frozen with indecision. While I had intended to give the bicycle to a theft victim, these tales also usually included elements such as serious accidents and even kangaroo attacks. I was afraid to choose from among these stories since, if any of them were false, I might deprive someone truly in need. Plus, even if they were all true, it seemed arbitrary to compensate one victim while alienating another, and I also doubted that something as minor as a free Scattante would make the slightest difference in their lives. So ultimately, I elected to disappoint them all.

Obvious Bike Junkies

Just like a real junkie always needs one more hit, a bike junkie always needs one more bicycle, and in either case anybody who's been in "the game" long enough can spot one several kilometers away. The typical bike junkie submission ran along these pathetic lines: "I live in Portland, Oregon. I currently have 7.5 bikes. (Still waiting on an eBay auction to end so I can finish my monstercross build.) Two weeks ago when leaving for work I noticed the tire on my winter commuter was flat. Running late, I borrowed my wife's cyclocross pit bike instead, which was subsequently stolen. I then gave my wife my winter commuter to replace it, so I now need a new one so I'm not forced to use my summer commuter instead. (It's an early 90s Richard Sachs road frame I relegated to commuting duty when I noticed slight wheel rub marks inside the chainstay.)" I excluded these immediately.

People Who Almost Nailed It But Then Inadvertently Insulted Me Somehow

Generally these people probably deserved a free Scattante but then they admitted that they didn't really care for my blog, or else revealed they would use the bicycle in an irresponsible manner of which they mistakenly thought I would approve. In the words of a famous television character, "No soup for you!"

People With Straightforward Stories Who I Liked And Who Really Deserved It

Having extirpated the above submissions, I was left with a relatively manageable number of people who could honestly use this bike, and whose bikes had been stolen despite their having taken every precaution against it. Of these, one tale particular appealed to me for its humor, simplicity, and apparent honesty. It came from a high school senior in Santa Fe, NM named Sergio Gonzales. Sergio has no car, and he had been getting around town on an old road bicycle he built up himself. He used his bicycle for errands, commuting, and recreation--until it was was stolen when a thief cut through the bike rack at school. I suspected I had found my Steven Koren, and so after much soul searching (by "soul searching" I mean watching TV) I decided to award him the bike.

Subsequently, I've gotten to know more about Sergio, and it turns out he wants to be a doctor. "Ultimately," he says, "I want work in rural areas, possibly on reservations or underdeveloped countries, as a family practitioner." This strikes me as an admirable goal, and I only hope this Scattante serves him well as a metaphorical gap bike as he goes on to attain the metaphorical Serotta of his dreams. Of course, it is possible that Sergio is actually a 39-year old bike junkie, and he's just tricked me out of a free bike, but at this point that's Performance's problem. I prefer to think that Sergio Gonzales will win a Nobel Prize one day, and when he delivers his acceptance speech he will dedicate it to me. Giving is the greatest gift of all--as long as you get something back.

In all sincerity, thanks very much to everybody who submitted, and I only wish I had more bikes to give. Unfortunately though, I don't, and you can and should blame Performance for that. Anyway, in the world of cycling there's always a contest going on somewhere, and instead of giving up hope you should just brush yourself off and enter another one. For example, I noticed recently on Twitter that Bicycling magazine is giving away a trip to Italy to participate in the Eddy Merckx Granfondo (a granfondo is like a regular fondo, only grander):

If you're serious about winning you shouldn't wait to enter, because I hear they've already received some compelling submissions. Here's one in pictogram form from someone who only identified himself as "MC:"

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If I'm reading that correctly, it means that someone who may or may not be Mario Cipollini uses olive oil to style his hair with a knife-shaped comb, wrestles scantily-clad ladies in it, and pours it all over his pasta, but does not use it for "male enhancement." It hardly bears repeating, but nobody knows oil like Cipo.

Also, speaking of stolen bikes, a reader recently alerted me to the fact that a "brakeless bike bandit" has stolen a famous fixed-gear in Seattle:


Brakeless Bike Bandit: A San Diego man vacationing in Seattle reported his bike was stolen at Harvard Av E E Roy S on January 23rd. This, of course, was no ordinary bike. The man's bike, according to the police report, was apromotional bike used in the filming of "Death Pedal," a movie about fixies. The police report says the bike is purple with the words Death Pedal written in yellow along the side of the frame. The report does not indicate whether the stolen bike had brakes.

This is a huge blow to the world of fixed-gear freestyling, and I'm sure the police are working around the clock to restore the "Death Pedal" bike to its owner, regardless of overtime costs. After all, it is absolutely essential to the "sport" (I love it when they call fixed-gear freestyle a sport--it's like when Urban Outfitters calls a Republic a bike) that the constant stream of fixed-gear videos continues uninterrupted, for if it stops even momentarily attention will wander elsewhere, never to return. Sure, the designer flannel set is still poring over videos of "Midwest Mayhem" like it's the Zapruder film, but eventually even they will start to notice how unimpressive it is, and all it takes is one BMX video to make them all defect. For this reason, the architects of the scene continue to labor increasingly over new videos, and as you may have seen on sites such as streetwear enthusiast and fixed-gear impresario Prolly's blog the long-awaited New York City contribution to the canon, "Empire," is supposedly about to "drop." Here's the latest trailer:

Even "aggressive" cycling in the city is really just, well, cycling in the city, and to me it's about as thrilling as watching somebody "aggressively" clean up a beverage spill with a roll of paper towels. As usual, the attitude of the film comes almost entirely from the soundtrack, and in this case it's the Cro-Mags, a band chosen to evoke the gritty New York of the 1980s. To me, though, the inclusion of the Cro-Mags only goes to underscore how non-gritty this whole business of riding around in the latest fashions is ("Look! He's not using a bike lane even though an ample one has been provided by the city! That's crazy!"), and I really think they should have gone with more appropriate music. More fitting soundtracks include:

The "epic" cinematic approach;

The appropriate "retro" approach;

and the thought-provoking "collabo" approach.

To me, all of these scores worked much better than the Cro-Mags, but they still weren't perfect. Finally, though, I found a score that was. It has everything: a fast tempo that matches the high cadence fixie-spinning; a nod to "alternative" popular culture; and, most importantly, wacky sound-effects that coax out the latent comedy inherent in the film.

Here it is: "Empire" as it was meant to be.

Now that's more enhancing than an olive oil injection. The video may require a shot of music, but the song stands quite erect by itself.