Crappy Bikes: The Gift That Keeps on Taking

This evening, I will be heading into the big city to Sid's Bikes on the western portion of the 19th Street in Manhattan. Usually when I visit a bike shop, it's to test ride dozens of crabon fribé bicycles for the better part of a busy Saturday afternoon without actually buying any of them. (Bike shops love this, especially when you demand a free water bottle afterward.) This time though, I'll be a judge-slash-commentator (or "judgentator") at the "Bicycling Magazine Bike Repair Challenge, Sponsored by Park Tool," which takes place tonight at 6:30:

I won't go so far as to say I was forced to into jury duty by the merciless staff at Bicycling, but I will say that I have no intention of writing "laterally stiff yet vertically compliant" 100 times again, which is their standard punishment for insubordination. Plus, it does promise to be entertaining, and if you're in the area I would implore you to attend, if only to take advantage of the free drinks and opportunity to heckle the nine contestants who one can only hope are comically inept when it comes to bike repair. By the way, I only just noticed that among the prizes is a "premium membership to local advocacy group, Transportation Alternatives," which is certainly nothing to sneeze at, on, or near. If you're the sort of person who likes to go on and on about what's wrong with our city's streets and how they're not "livable" enough for you, premium membership in TA is nothing less than your "license to kvetch." Combine that with a membership in your local food co-op or community garden and your smugness factor will go through the roof (and it will be a green roof, naturally).

Speaking of smugness, I will of course be arriving to the affair via chauffeur-driven Big Dummy (the chauffeur of course being me, since my helper monkey Vito is highly susceptible to road rage and is one more Access-a-Ride driver face-chewing incident away from landing on death row at the local animal shelter). Here is my Dig Dummy carrying a lengthy package which may or may not be a Festivus pole:

Either that, or it could be a leg lamp.

If you've been contemplating Big Dummy ownership I invite you to examine mine and even ride it, provided of course you leave me with a valid driver's licence, credit card, or cash deposit at my discretion, depending on how shifty you look. (Your "tarck" bike is not an acceptable deposit, for should you abscond with the Dummy my only recourse will be to sell it on Craigslist for pennies on the dollar.)

Speaking of commuting, I was forced by circumstance to ride the subway yesterday, which reminded me of how out of touch you can become when you do not ride it on a daily basis. Not only do you miss all the latest dermatologist ads, but you also don't stay abreast of all the latest handheld electronics. For example, until yesterday I thought playing games on your iPhone was cutting-edge subway entertainment, but now people are actually watching Devo videos on personal TVs:

Yes, that is in fact the video for "Whip It," and I happened to take the shot right at the moment when he whips the bra off the mannequin:

If you had told me back in 1980 when the "Whip It" video "dropped" that one day I'd be watching it over somebody's shoulder on the Q train I probably would have abandoned society right then and there and gone Amish.

Speaking of farm life, a reader recently forwarded me the following image of possible 2010 Tour de France winner Andy Schleck "whipping it good" with a sheep or a lamb or a calf or something (I don't know my lifestock and would have totally failed Amish school), via this blog:

There's no telling what Alberto Contador would have come up positive for had he eaten that particular piece of mutton.

Of course, with the holidays rolling around, you're probably already shopping for presents. As such, you might want to give the gift of a leg lamp, or a personal TV so your loved one doesn't have to go without Devo videos for 40 minutes, or even a farm animal, which I understand is the trendy gift of choice among the urban "Americana backwoods revival" set. Or, if you're a big company like Ikea, you might want to give all of your employees bikes:

I must admit I was impressed by this--until I saw the bicycle:

(Somewhere, a hipster with cognitive dissonance is saying, "At least it'll make a good polo bike.")

It's incredibly depressing to me that, in an attempt to encourage "a healthy lifestyle and everyday sustainable transport," Ikea chose the very embodiment of America's complete failure to understand the bicycle: the department store mountain bike. Sluggish and impractical on the street and virtually useless on the trails, bikes like this fail both as transportation and as recreation. Granted, this is the sort of bicycle you tend to see being ridden on the sidewalks in the sorts of areas in which most Ikeas are located, but that doesn't mean they need to promulgate that theme. It seems to me Ikea could have at least saved themselves the shipping costs and just given each of its employees a $60 Walmart gift card so they could buy their own crappy bikes, or else just encouraged them to ride to work on a Verksam swivel chair, which probably handles about as well as the Ikea bike while being twice as practical:

(Note fenders on casters and armrests for easy "portaging.")

Then again, it could be that Ikea's plan is to passively discourage their employees from riding to work--kind of like when you "accidentally" give someone the wrong number at a bar. I certainly wouldn't put that past the Brooklyn Ikea, which at one point opposed a bike lane in front of their store:

The bike lane since went in anyway, but at the time it was certainly confusing. Situated in Red Hook at the terminus of the Great Hipster Silk Route, you'd think encouraging more people to ride there would be what is colloquially called a "nobe rayner," inasmuch as they furnish the homes of roughly 90% of Brooklyn's "hipster" community. Apparently though, the guy who manages the store for the company that believes in "a healthy lifestyle and everyday sustainable transport" thought that riding bikes in front of that store was too dangerous:

“It seems dangerous to officially encourage bikes to the front of Ikea,” Baker told Community Board 6 on Thursday night.

It must be incredibly confusing to work at the Brooklyn Ikea, where one day your manager's saying it's too dangerous to ride a bike to work, and the next you're getting a crappy mountain bike for Christmas. It's also confusing to get emails from casual designer cycling clothing manufacturer Outlier, who inform me that among their winter offerings is a "six foot scarf:"


I really can't imagine many cycling garments less practical than a scarf that's longer than you (or at least me). I hope Outlier have a good legal team, because some unfortunate hipster's going to get this thing stuck in his Aerospoke and choke himself to death. Fixed-gear riding: if the "hill bombing" doesn't kill you, your wardrobe will.

Meanwhile, another reader spotted the following sign in Brooklyn recently, which indicates that Outlier's arch-nemesis in the race to create the world's most expensive cycling-themed pants, Rapha, may actually be "dropping" a "collabo" with Jehovah:


Apparently Rapha have transcended "epic" and are moving on to "apocalyptic." Clearly the "Rapha-ture" is upon us.