Tooling Around: Just So You Know, We're Coasting Now

(Via here.)

It's lonely being the only real city in the United States.

Who, after all, can New York City sit with at the great big cafeteria table that is this country?  To our south is Philadelphia, which is basically just a slightly more bustling Albany.  To our north is Boston, which I suppose is pretty cosmopolitan for a college town, but come on.  There's also Washington DC, which succeeded New York City as the capital of the United States because the government didn't want to compete with anything culturally interesting.  It was a wise move, because to this day Washington, DC is basically just the government and Dischord Records.

Moving farther afield, you have places like Toronto and Montreal, but Canada is little more than a socialist experiment, and the jury's still out on whether or not it will succeed.  Similarly, you have whatever "cities" are in the South and Texas, but those places are little more than right-wing theocratic experiments, and the jury's still out on whether or not they will succeed.  Chicago?  A creepy 80% New York.  Los Angeles?  A gigantic suburb propped up by the porn industry.  Seattle?  It was briefly relevant in the 1990s, but now it's just Portland's older brother--the one that was in a fraternity in college.  As for Portland, it's a town at best.  New York City has suburbs that are bigger cities than Portland.  In fact, if you put Portland in Westchester County, it would be the place where hipsters moved after they got priced out of Hastings.

Inevitably then, New York City must turn its sights eastward for kindred urban spirits, and it finally finds one in London.  Like New York City, London is a global capital.  Furthermore, London's history and culture is far richer than New York's.  That's why it's so profoundly disappointing to receive an email like this:

Hello,

As your site focus on bicycles I thought this might be of your interest:
Here is a menswear lookbook video filmed in London to the "H&M for Brick Lane Bikes collection".
Please share online on your blog/ twitter / facebook etc.

Here's the video:



Firstly, if you're trying to promote something in your video, don't make people watch another ad first.  That's like successfully soliciting a free handjob and then adding, "Oh, by the way, before you begin, can I have a quarter?"  Secondly (and I realize I've touched on this before), you're London, one of the most important cities in the world!  How can you not know that nobody is riding the fixie bikes anymore?!?  It's over!  Finished!  Done!  I don't know what you've been up to, but the rest of us all got together, had a big meeting, and agreed that we're simply not doing this anymore:

This is a huge let-down.  I mean, seriously, the Trispoke/Aerospoke/Whatever in the front and the spoked wheel in the back?  That's the "tarck mullet," and it's about as au courant as a LiveStrong bracelet.  Even a Philadelphian would be embarrassed to ride a bike like that.  By the way, the hallmark of any "street" cycling clothing collection is plenty of pointless pockets:

I know when I'm riding I like it when my phone is banging on my thigh.  In fact, in my privileged position as a bike blogger, I've occasionally received some pieces of "casual" cycling wardrobe, and all of these items, whether they're great or not so great, have one thing in common: lots of stupid pockets in weird places.  For some reason, when you're walking or driving or taking the train you're allowed to use normal pockets in normal places, but as soon as you straddle a bicycle these designers think you're going to start secreting bric-a-brac all over your person like some kind of dandy drug mule.  Still, I guess extra pockets isn't a bad thing, since the worst case scenario is that you don't use them.  Maybe the same thing goes for a little throat dickey:

He's nonplussed because he's lost his throat dickey:

By the way, I realize the idea here is that you can wear the clothes on and off the bike, but do you really want to look like this when you're off the bike?

At least if you wear Lycra and you pop into the store most people get that you're in the middle of a ride, whereas this whole "half-assed athleticism" thing really just makes you look confused.  And again, I can't stress this enough, stop with the skidding!

I promise you, we're all coasting and using brakes again, and it's fantastic.  Plus, all the money you save on tires will keep you in tiny throat dickeys for years.  If you simply must waste tires, the method currently in vogue is to ride around the city with cyclocross knobbies that will never see dirt.

Meanwhile, last week I posted a video on "handlebar maintenance," and the same people have now made a video on proper chain tension: 

BITCHY TUTORIAL VOL.2 "CHECK YOUR TENSION" from GASH-ROUGE on Vimeo.

I hate to be the typical nit-picky bike dork, but they forgot the part where you lubricate the chain with your vagina.

Speaking of bicycle maintenance, Kickstarter inventors seem finally to be moving away from the bicycle light and instead focussing their creative energies on the multitool.  Here's one from London that's ideal for the fixie you ride because you live in London where that sort of thing is still done:

I like the versatility, but I love the fact that you can very easily lose everything:

Which could be why he's being totally trounced by the Fix It Sticks guy:

 

Who has raised like two and a half times more money than he asked for:

Unlike the inventor of the Bike Crib, who has fallen well short of his staggering $65,000 goal:

It just goes to show that it takes more than a killer video to fund a product.  Sure, the inventor easily reaches Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" speed:

Sure, he shows off his hairy legs:

And sure, he even manages to land a celebrity cameo:

But then he tells you that you need a Bike Crib while demonstrating that you absolutely don't need a Bike Crib at all:

Indeed, the only time you might need a bike crib is if you're not anywhere near your car, in which case you'd have to go back to the car to get the Bike Crib anyway, at which point you might as well just lean the bike on the car while you're there--unless he planned to outfit the Bike Crib with backpack straps so that you could wear it on your person at all times.  I'd love to see someone dressed in head-to-toe H&M cycling clothing arrive at a café, slip a Bike Crib off his back, plop it on the sidewalk, mount his fixie to it, and then start working on it with the Nutter.  Then, his friend would show up and clap him on the back in greeting, causing him to lose all his Nutter bits down a storm drain, which he'd eventually retrieve by using a Strong Like Bull magnet on a string:



And to think there was actually a moment there when I was losing faith in America...