Spoils of Victory: Jousting with Legitimacy

While I'm not ready to make a formal announcement, I may have a winner for The Great Meh BSNYC Free Scat Contest!, and should be able to confirm this in the next day or so. Obviously, when you're giving away a prize as substantial as a Scattante, you can't just hand it over--you have to draft a lengthy press release, subject the bicycle to rigorous fatigue testing, and file reams of paperwork with the IRS. In the meantime though, as an amateur contest "curator," I've taken an increased interest in how the "pros" do it, so I was interested to learn that Ridley is giving away a bike to the person who comes up with the best way of colors:

As you may know, I dabble in bicycle design, so naturally I shifted into the big ring and sprinted over to the Ridley Colour-O-Matic 2000(TM) to create my dream crabon fribé (pronounced "CRAY-bon free-BAY") technicolor crotch chariot. I chose a Noah something-or-other, which defaulted to a lovely lavender design evocative of a tube of Propolis & Myrrh Tom's of Maine toothpaste:


My first instinct was to smear the thing with color like toddler with a full suite of fingerpaints and a case of ADD, but then I realized that in doing so I'd be competing with thousands of other people doing the same thing. See, watching the professional peloton may be like looking at a sponge painting while on peyote, but this is because professional riders are promoting companies, and while the riders compete with each other the companies are competing for your attention. However, amateur road bicycle enthusiasts forget that professionals look this way because they have to, not because they want to, and among the non-recessed cleat set garishness has become the norm. So, cunningly, I decided that I would set myself apart with a simple design consisting mostly of a single tone. If Coldplay could find success by being monotonous, why couldn't I? Here's what I came up with:

I was quite proud of myself, and my new bicyle almost looked like something I wouldn't be embarrassed to ride. However, while you'd think that no color combination could be more straightforward than uniform black, the Colour-O-Matic 2000(TM) instead warned me that "This colour combination can cause technical problems," and then froze up completely like a malfunctioning STI lever. Consequently, it was back to the drawing board for me, and interestingly the Ridley site had absolutely no problem processing this ghastly metallic-green-to-blue fade:

I guess subtlety and road cycling go together like Shimano freehubs and Campagnolo cassettes.

Speaking of things that lack subtlety, cyclists don't get more outrageous than tall bikers, or freak bikers, or "outlaw bicycle gangs," or whatever you call people who ride two children's bikes welded together while wearing soiled denim vests. These are the people behind "Bike Kill," a proud tribe who once spraypainted "Bike Culture Not For Sale" on a Brooklyn clothing store and who are not afraid to sport facial tattoos while using up their "anytime minutes." As I mentioned awhile back, despite their ostensible aversion to "selling out," one tall bike enthusiast was developing a tall bike jousting game for the iPhone (cost: $2.99), and as of last week it's officially available for download. Here's a gripping behind-the-scenes video of the making of the game:



This is the biggest thing to hit freak bikedom since Amazing Larry appeared in that Jared Leto video:

I've never been tempted to weld my Scattante to my Ironic Orange Julius Bike, and I'm certainly not pining for some lost era of freak bike integrity, but I must say there is something sad about seeing these people appear in celebutarded videos and exchange their denim vests for motion sensor suits so readily. As any time trialist or cyclocross racer will tell you, once you've donned a full body suit you've officially crossed the rubicon of bike dorkitude. Furthermore, a "subculture" loses all "street cred" the moment it is distilled into an "app." You can exist in the margins of society, or you can exist on the iPhone, but you simply cannot exist in both places at the same time. In the "street cred" hierarchy, the whole tall bike thing has fallen beneath bike polo and fixed-gear freestyling and currently hovers somewhere between tweed rides and 24-hour mountain bike racing. Now that tall bike jousting has become the stagediving of the cycling world, I would advise all freak bikers dedicated to the "outlaw" lifestyle to abandon tall bikes and instead take their shoddy fabrication skills and poor hygiene off the streets and into the water where "society" will have a harder time of stealing it. A subculture based entirely on battling each other in small water crafts would be much more difficult to render in "app" form. Of course, the true measure of an outlaw is remaining committed to your lifestyle even when it ceases to be obscure, but you have to admit, "Canoe Kill" sounds even more outrageous than "Bike Kill."

Meanwhile, as tall bike jousting becomes increasingly legitimate, the winners will certainly start demanding lavish prizes. One possibility is a trophy made from a Trek Madone, which one reader informs me you can now purchase on eBay:

I look forward to an age when the top professional tall bike jousters conduct lengthy interviews in trophy rooms full of plaques like this. Also, for the person who is as enthusiastic about home improvement as he or she is about cycling, the Madone headtube plaque makes a great grout float. Laterally stiff yet vertically compliant, it provides precise handling that transmits grout to the space between the tiles where you need it most. Here's another one that actually comes with the fork:

Just think of the possibilities:

I'm not sure where the seller is getting all these Madones. I'm guessing either they're raiding the Dumpsters over at The Great Trek Bicycle Making Company, or simply dentists' "gap bikes" which they sell for pennies on the dollar as soon as their new Serottas come in.

Sometimes, though, a head tube glued to a piece of wood simply isn't enough, and you want an entire bike. That's when you turn to Craigslist. Here's an "extreamly light" that will "turn haeds as you breeze past the peleton:"


MASI Team Issue 3V Record 10 - $1500 (Greenport)
Date: 2010-01-30, 11:56AM EST
Reply to: [deleted]

Masi Team 3V made with Reynolds 731 tubing with a Reynolds Carbon Fiber Fork 60 cm c/t.. 2005 Campagnolo Record 10 Shifters, Record Rear Derailleur, Record Front Derailleur, Record Wheelset with Record Cassette 13x26, Record Crankset 175mm, Record Brakeset, Chrous Headset and bottom bracket. Deda Handle Bars 44 and Deda Stem 120mm. Thompson seat post and Selle Flite Saddle. Very Low Mileage and extreamly light make this the bike to turn haeds as you breeze past the peleton 631 477 [deleted]

This bike is so vintage that the seller has lapsed into Middle English.