This Wednesday, Treat Yourself To Something Nice.

Yesterday I wrote all about clothes, and then I got this email from Outlier:

Hey Bike Snob,

We used to think we wanted perfection, but what we really want is the transcendent. We want to make clothing that transcends the bullshit of the market. Clothing that transcends the disposability of fast fashion and the exclusivity of luxury. Transcends the unnecessary divisions between functional and social, between urban and outdoor, nature and technology, work and play.

Sorry, what?

Let's read that again:

We used to think we wanted perfection, but what we really want is the transcendent. We want to make clothing that transcends the bullshit of the market. Clothing that transcends the disposability of fast fashion and the exclusivity of luxury. Transcends the unnecessary divisions between functional and social, between urban and outdoor, nature and technology, work and play.

Yeah, no, I still don't get it.

Apparently they don't either, but they've made a t-shirt in the meantime, and it costs about $100:

We're still a long way from home on this journey but if we have anything to show for it, it's the Ultrafine Merino T-Shirt (and V-Neck). A simple t-shirt made from 17.5 micron merino, nature's finest performance fabric.

There was a time not so long ago when I thought the cotton t-shirt was just about the most basic and versatile garment ever invented, but evidently I was wrong by a dozen or so microns and about $80 or $90.

"But merino doesn't get stinky!," someone will no doubt point out.

What?  Who cares?  What the hell ever happened to doing your goddamn laundry once in awhile?!?

By the way, I don't mean to pick on Outlier, who are a local concern and do very good work.  (Three years ago they gave me some pants and they're still going strong, though I have no idea how the pair they gave to my erstwhile intern are doing, since after scoring free pants and a free bike he pretty much disappeared.)  It's just that I am who I am, I smell how I smell, and that's that.

Hey, for me, splurging on a t-shirt means buying one that doesn't come in a three-pack, but I seem to be part of an increasingly small minority.

Speaking of yesterday's post, I also mentioned my massive urban cycling "street cred," and yesterday I cycled urbanely all the way to Brooklyn, a borough whose "street cred" is rapidly going the way of the t-shirt three-pack.

It was blustery, like an aging blogger complaining about artisanal t-shirts (only with cold air instead of hot), and so I elected to ride my Fred Sled since I wanted as little bicycle as possible to slow me down.  This is a pretty accurate representation of how I was riding:



Except that suddenly, in the middle of Manhattan, my tire exploded with a mighty BLAM!, and when I stopped to examine the damage I found a gash like a bass mouth (or at least what I imagine a bass mouth to look like, because it probably won't surprise you to learn that I don't fish):

(To spare you the sight of my disgusting fingernails I've used Technology to give myself a French manicure.)

Anyway, I'm generally pretty good about scanning the pavement ahead of me and avoiding anything big enough to do that to a tire, but not this time.  You might think I'd be annoyed, but a flat like this is oddly satisfying.  No searching for some tiny bit of metal lodged in the rubber, no inflating the tube until it is comically oversized and trying to hear the soft hissing of the puncture over the sound of traffic, no irritating pneumatic ambiguity.  Instead, the tire's fucked, and that's that.

So what did I do?  Well, needless to say, given my massive "street cred" I simply sewed the casing back together with dental floss, booted it with a MetroCard for good measure, put a new tube in there and was on my way.

Just kidding!

No, fuck that.  It happened about a block and a half from a bike shop so I bought a new tire.  Not only that, but the guy in the shop offered to actually put it on the bike, and as an "urban cyclist" with massive amounts of "street cred" I was horrified at the idea of having a bike shop install a tire for me, but the guy was so goddamn fast that the "No, thank you" was hardly even out of my mouth before the tire was on--label perfectly aligned with valve stem no less--and he was kicking my ass out the front door.

The rest of the day passed without incident, apart from the legions upon legions of fuck-tarted motorists doing stuff like running lights, preening and de-lousing their pubic thatches while idling in bike lanes, and drifting across multiple lanes of traffic while communicating in a series of grunts with their fellow fucktards on their mobile phones.

By the way, I think the cabbies have been emboldened by the fact that they let that leg-severing driver off, because I watched one of them attempt to run a red light at a major intersection and he only stopped after being shouted at by the all the pedestrians already in the crosswalk.  So I figure it's only a matter of time before they start driving around with leg talismans on the hood, like Vyvyan in "The Young Ones:"

But make sure you don't ride your bike while playing music, because they'll put you in jail:

 

Silly cyclist!  You're only allowed to play deafeningly loud music from a three-ton SUV with tinted windows, everyone knows that!

In other news, ever since the first caveman installed a primitive hinge in a coconut shell, humankind has dreamed of perfecting the foldable helment--and now one man in a city with a big Ferris wheel believes he has finally done it:



Here it is folded and looking like a plastic fish:

Though I notice there are very few pictures of it actually unfurled and atop someone's head, possibly because it will make you look like your head is being humped by a plastic armadillo:

Given the London bike share system is sponsored by Barclays, I'm surprised they didn't just attach a helment to every bike with a ball chain, like they do with the pens at a bank.

Speaking of London, the city is reeling from a recent series of cyclist deaths, and mayor Boris Johnson is on the defensive:



Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, says cycling in the capital is 'getting safer' despite a spate of fatalities. Johnson insists that London has seen an overall decline in the number of cyclist deaths since he took office. The mayor says he will consider banning lorries from driving in the capital during peak hours

I'm sure many Londoners are angry with him, but if it's any consolation, most American mayors would rather be caught smoking crack than considering putting any additional restrictions on truck traffic.

Same goes for Canadian mayors, but that's obvious.