If you're using the concept of the "active lifestyle" to sell cars, why top them with crappy bicycles?
Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against crappy bikes. In fact, if you want to get technical, any bike that gets ridden regularly is by definition a good bike. Nevertheless, we're talking about marketing here, and appearance is important--so important that "food stylist" is an actual career. So how does this even happen?
I mean I realize Subaru doesn't sponsor IMBA anymore, but someone there has to know that nobody's driving a pair of department store bikes into the mountains like that. And perhaps most vexingly, I'm reasonably certain the same bikes are on both cars, which means they're just moving the same crappy bikes back and forth for each shoot. It's just weird is all I'm saying. They might as well just use cardboard cutouts of bikes. The only thing missing from the whole ersatz "active lifestyle" tableau is a dog, and they should have used something like this:
Even so, I maintain I'm a person of my word. For example, yesterday I vowed to fuck off for a jorts ride--and that's just what I did!
From my Bronx abode and back this extremely mellow and pleasant mostly-dirt-with-some-token-singletrack ride is around 30 miles, and I daresay it would make a pretty good Fondon't route. (Indeed, previous Fondon't routes have utilized much of this terrain.) And it was quite good to get back on the Jones SWB complete:
Which continues to be one of my all-time favorite bicycles:
Since taking delivery last summer I've changed virtually nothing on this bike, nor to I feel the need to do so. (Though some new tires are probably in order for the season.) Being the terminal weenie I am I occasionally catch myself contemplating the acquisition of some sort of fattish-tire drop-bar "gravel" whatever, but the fact is that for any terrain beyond what a regular road bike with 28mm tires can handle the Jones is pretty much ideal. It's not at all onerous to ride for miles at a time on pavement, and it's also a perfectly capable mountain bike. In all, I stand by what I said in my official "review," which is that if I had a whole week off to do nothing but ride, this is the bike I'd choose.
Finally, in my last Outside column I mentioned my formative years as a BMX racer, and in the process of curating it I dug this out of the closet for inspiration:
I'm 99% certain that's the last bike race I ever won.
If you'd like to see this trophy for yourself, it's currently mounted on the hood of my car.
...I win!!! Trophy, please?
ReplyDeleteiPodium
ReplyDeleteAnnoying cyclists rutted out the dirt road under the silver Subaru -- more evidence that motorists are under assault by the powerful, radical, freedom-hating bicycle lobby.
ReplyDeleteSELL OUT!
ReplyDeleteClearly NOT the same bikes on both cars - the one has white forks the other does not. Why the fuck do I care!
ReplyDeletejealous of your jorts ride, although today's commutering ride was just about perfect, except for the part of work waiting at the end of it
peace love and fancy underwear
Remember when the Subaru slogan was, "Inexpensive, and built to stay that way"?
ReplyDeleteNot anymore, folks.
And did you read that "small cars " (like the Ford Fusion) and sedans are being phased out for....trumpets, please....SUVs (surprise, surprise).
A giant SUV Range Rover was in the parking lot next to me the other day (my car is petite), all gleaming plastic and metal - not a speck of dirt on it, nor will there ever be. And it'll never have any bikes, even crappy ones, on the top.
Madness, this is all madness.
Just when I thought I could say “forget it” to Strava, I set a personal record on yesterday’s ride. Now I’m resigned to being ruled by my ego, and, therefore, I must reach the number 1 spot on all segments, regardless of my age (55 yrs) and bike (lugged steel) and attire (pants and sneakers).
ReplyDeleteJust driving by. Checked the flooding in Missouri's Chamois and thought of you.
ReplyDeletehttps://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?gage=cmsm7&wfo=lsx
Marketers divorced from reality shocker.
ReplyDeleteBut really, I'm more annoyed when they get something I do right, but the models still wear those shit-eating grins that no one you'd ever want to talk to wears.
Such nice pics of your ride. Doing your part to destroy preconceived notions of NYC.
Oh great.
ReplyDeleteNow my dog won't shut up about how he's an essential element of an active lifestyle tableau and deserves a raise.
Is it just me or does anyone else think it's odd that a non-working breed insists on a paycheck?
SELL OUT!
ReplyDeleteThe one thing the car is useful for (schlepping through traffic) is something nobody wants to do. So they can't show that. If you're the ad agency, having arrived at that rather elementary principle, you are immediately both shut out of, and freed from, reality. You suddenly have a whole continuum of fanciful scenarios open to you.
ReplyDeleteSome campaigns stick to the only-slightly-implausible (city street, no traffic), while others take full advantage of the unreality to portray fanciful travels to faraway lands, where our hero, Consumer Unbound, engages in brave adventures / tough-guy challenges / rapturous delight / peaceful serenity depending on the target demographic.
So the bikes can be anything, because first of all, the people who know better, already ride them. For everybody else, it needn't be too vivid because it's just one more unfamiliar and exotic thing you'll never do with the car, along with splashing it violently through streams (where fish are trying to spawn, thanks a lot for all the silt, asshole), climbing over boulders to get to the top of dramatic mountains, and deviating from the home/work/shopping triangle in any way ever.
All this is somewhat obvious but I ran it down anyway for my own benefit. I do that a lot.
Damnit, I've never won a trophy that big.
ReplyDeleteI can't vouch for its accuracy, but a certain internet search engine claims that less than 10% of SUVs ever leave the pavement.
ReplyDeleteWondrously bucolic route judging by the (too few) photos. Perfect for jorts riding, but next time you post a travelogue of your jorts ride, could you include a photo of the jorts? After all, jorts are an integral part of a jorts ride.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it'd be nice if the nomenclature for such rides could be "Jorts Jaunts" or "Jolly Jorts Jaunts" or "Jolly Jones Jorts Jaunts" if you're riding that rather fetching bicycle featured in today's blog or if you're a psychotic cult leader who's moved from Guyana to the Caribbean, you could call them "Jim Jones' Jolly Jamaican Jones Jorts Jaunts" or if you're the son of god...
A while back I picked up a drop bar "all-road" bikes with the idea of having just one all-around bike. I quickly realized that they are not particularly great on the road or the trails. So I sold that and just got a flat bar bike with wider tires for the trails (All-City macho man) to complement my road bike. Also use the MM to commute every day. It's fun to wear normal clothes and ride more upright and on trails for a change and it makes me appreciate the road rides even more. Why have one bike when you can have two? Imagine having a second partner that you could spend time with when you get bored of your main-squeeze, just much less complicated. For me purely theoretical, but still.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t even come close to podium-ing but I bought myself a trophy from the antique (junk) store anyway. So I’ve got that going for me. Re WCRM twitter feed: That local firefighter truck, parked on the sidewalk, was embarrassing, even by my lBama standards.
ReplyDeleteSubaru has occasionally got the boats right for kayaking commercials. They've also put flatwater boats on a car going to a whitewater river, which is just good comedy. But while their marketing is questionable, and their engines are known to have problems (thank for the free rebuild, company formerly known as Fuji Heavy Industries!), my Subaru is definitely less beat to shit than my Honda Fit was from the rutted out West Virginia roads and Vermont salt and gravel, and I don't have nightmares about losing my oil pan miles from the nearest paved road. I think I can manage to forgive their marketers.
ReplyDeleteI use an upside down Wald 867 cruiser bar as a dirt drop on my no suspension 29+.
ReplyDeleteI've used many dirt drops and I like the Wald better, and, MTB controls slide right on. It's funny because the Wald was never designed to be used this way.
Subaru is a strange bird. They make all kinds of questionable styling decisions (orange “accents, wth?!) so you will fit right in.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I came in second in a one mile foot race once. My trophy was large, but the winner’s trophy was so comically large that he couldn’t close his trunk lid!
I don't know about anyone else, but that weird looking stuffed(?) dog on the skateboard thingy is the stuff of nightmares.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the only time I've owned a Subaru was the used one we bought for my daughter a couple years back.
ReplyDeleteAfter a few weeks it became obvious that head gasket was blown or the head cracked.
It went back to the dealer on a flatbed. At their expense. And they gave me my money back.
That dog looks like Teddy Salad.
ReplyDeleteSell out now, before it's too late
ReplyDeleteLast night's commute was pure NYC Fun City.
ReplyDeleteI cruised across mid-town on 45th Street whistling Dolly Parton's 9 to 5. (I have no idea why or how that got stuck in my head,)
Some guy in a Honda started honking at me from behind after I crossed Sixth Avenue, heading towards Times Square.
He was so far behind me at first, I didn't think he was honking at me. I slowed down and looked to make and he honked a little more.
I gave him my politest WTF look, but moved over and let him pass.
Twenty yards later, I rolled past him as he was stopped behind eight other cars waiting for the light at Times Square.
I gave him my best Jack Benny hand-on-the-side-of-the-face-eyes-rolled-upward.
How does anyone think a car can get across midtown faster than a bike? I could have gotten a pretzel and still been faster.
On an unrelated note, on the West Side Highway bike path, I saw a guy and his bulldog riding separate motorized skate boards.
One of the great things about NYC is that you've never seen it all. Never.
Advertising art imitating real life. Next time you see a $100,000 to $200,000 motor home it will inevitably have two crapppy bikes hanging off the back. Maybe if you could just finance a better bike?
ReplyDeleteAnd of course our Mr. Tenovo, being a Subaru owner himself, is apparently blind to the most laughable aspect of Subaru's recent ad campaigns: the fact that no one is actually driving to the tops of mountains in their mom-mobile Subaru Foresters. Forget about the department store bikes.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 2:37pm,
ReplyDeleteThat is not true! Every summer we vacation upstate and the house we stay in has a very steep unpaved driveway. When we arrive I turn off the traction control and back the car up the driveway so we can unload it. There's no way I'd be able to do that without the ground clearance and AWD of the Subaru, and with any car I'd be forced to walk that extra 10 feet every year, which is COMPLETELY UNTHINKABLE.
Seattle Lone Wolf,
SALAD, as in...?
--Tan Tenovo
Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, yeah!
ReplyDeleteToyota was running a RAV4 ad with mountain bikers (actual mountain bike racers in real life), one of whom was riding a Yeti, the other something equally expensive and likely to be seen on top of a car in this high altitude square state. So that part they got right. But the closing scene was of them splashing through mud on a road that is closed except for emergency and service vehicles (and also apparently to advertising companies that hopefully paid the county lots of money for the privilege.)
ReplyDeleteHalf credit.
Although I own a four-wheeled shit-box, I hate the automobile and everything it stands for. I use to think of my automobile as a necessary evil. But now, I just think all automobiles are just evil and that I made a deal with the Devil in order to spend most of my life driving to work in order to work to drive. I got road head once from a girlfriend but then I peeled out in her front yard when we broke up. That's when it dawned on me that I was your typical asshole motorist. I don't pull shit like that anymore but I still own a car.
ReplyDeleteSubaru didn't use cardboard cutout bikes, because these were cheaper.
ReplyDeleteSnobby will have that trophy put in his casket with his corpse when he croaks. And there will be a photo of it on his gravestone. WOW, look at you!!!!
ReplyDeleteCommenters are all dicks
ReplyDelete"not at all onerous"
ReplyDeleteHigh praise indeed!