Knogging a Dead Horse: Product Test Follow-Up

Further to yesterday's post, you may remember that I mentioned I had experienced a one-in-three failure rate with the Knog Frog lights I received. Well, I've since learned from Knog that there was a faulty batch way back in January 2008, and this batch was recalled and rectified. However, there were still some bad Knogs in their sample stock, which found their way to me.

I'd hate to be responsible for promulgating a misapprehension that Knogs are unreliable, especially after the people at Knog so generously helped me customize my "whip" for free. After all, fairness is more important to me than maintaining both my irascibility and my risibility, and a company should not be judged by the samples they keep laying around for freeloading Knog-grubbers such as myself.

Rest assured I have no intention of becoming a serial product-tester or some kind of Zinnian or Huangian product reviewer. However, given the circumstances I did think it was fair to give Knog a chance to redeem themselves. I also want to maintain the good will that exists between me and the companies whose dorky products I ridicule. So I devised a quick test. Here is a pink Knog Frog, which does indeed look very much like something that has been excised from someone's skin and is awaiting biopsy:

First, I held the Knog under a stream of running water in order to simulate the conditions it would encounter on the fenderless seatpost of a fixter's bike. (Fixters hate fenders.):

It held up admirably.

Next, I compared it to a competing light modeled after an animal: the Serfas Guppy Light. (I just happened to have one lying around. Yes, I've already admitted to owning both plastic toe clips and a Serfas Guppy Light, and it's only Tuesday!) While the Knog grips to just about any surface like the malignant growth that it is, the Guppy clings tenaciously to it by means of a flimsy elastic cord. Here's the Knog in a bowl of water, and the Guppy awaiting submersion. Surely the Guppy is fishlike in shape and name only, and surely it will be extinguished when I send it to join the Knog down in Davey Jones's Locker at the bottom of my cereal bowl:

Well, not exactly. It survived the submersion test:

Incidentally, it was also buoyant--kind of like a Cheerio. I had to hold it under the water to properly administer the test.

At this point I realized I had a good old-fashioned product shootout on my hands, so I selected a third contender. I decided to go "old school" for this one, since now that p-fars are hot again people are surely in the market for more "period-correct" forms of illumination. I chose a candle:

Here is the candle mounted on my Empire State Courier. (The Empire State Courier has apparently found a niche in my stable as a product testing bike. I also used it last night to go to the store to buy juice, so I suppose it's also now my "juice bike." This is a nice complement to my Ironic Orange Julius Bike.) Like the Knog, the candle can be mounted just about anywhere, which already gives it an advantage over the Guppy. But would it survive the water test?

Of course not:

So I'm hereby awarding first place in the bike light shootout to the Knog Frog, with the Serfas Guppy and the candle tied for second. (The Guppy may be water- and windproof, but the candle scores major retro points.) You can rest assured that if you buy a Knog Frog you are not only buying a waterproof light that's better than a candle, but you're also going to look like a raging hipster.

In other product news, it appears that the riser bar grip of choice for the fixter set, the Oury, has been demoted from grip to spacer:


This is a sad day indeed for the Oury people. As everbody knows, the further towards the middle of the handlebar a grip migrates the more irrelevant it becomes. This almost certainly presages an irreversible slide towards the dreaded "Stem of Obscurity." After that, the only hope is that the grip will one day become retro and re-emerge on the business end of the bar. (Unless this particular owner is simply deciding how narrow he wants to cut his bars. In that case it's possible the Ourys will prevail after all.)

Incidentally, I noticed in yesterday's comments that some readers are confused by the initials "RTMS," by which I occasionally refer to myself. These of course refer to the days when I was apparently "jumping the shark" (which happened sometime between my second-ever post and today's, depending on who you ask) and decided to change my name to an unpronounceable symbol. That unpronounceable symbol was actor Rip Torn's Mug Shot:

Well, I mention this not only because someone asked, but also because I just learned from a reader that Rip Torn has just pleaded "not guilty" to the very crime for which his mug was shot, which was drunk driving.

As a big fan of Rip Torn, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt--not with regard to the drunk driving (something tells me Torn can put it away), but with regard to the claim that he was driving a 1994 Subaru with a Christmas tree tied to the top. Surely an actor of Torn's stature and vintage would either engage a fancy automobile and a chauffeur, or else dispatch some sort of assistant or domestic to fetch his yulephernalia for him.

Naturally none of this is to diminish the seriousness of drunk driving, which is a deplorable practice. Furthermore, if Torn is in fact guilty I'm dismayed that he's sullied his image which I'm using without any sort of permission or restitution in order to promote myself. (I suppose I'm tearing a page out of the Performance catalog in that respect.) After all, his poor behavior reflects poorly on me as well.

Speaking of awful drivers, the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commissioner wants to mount cameras on cabs to detect reckless driving. As a cyclist who's molested (not sexually) by cabs almost daily I'm all in favor of this. Sure, it may be unnecessary in that everybody already knows taxi drivers are reckless (it's sort of like conducting an investigation to determine whether ice is slippery and cold), but we might as well get it on film anyway. Of course, the drivers themselves are against this, and the head of the Taxi Worker's Alliance says that, "I thought in America the law was you're innocent until proven guilty." Well, this may be true, but we are talking about taxi drivers. I once saw a taxi in a Starbucks on 8th Avenue in Manhattan. Not a taxi driver buying a coffee in Starbucks, but an actual taxi that had been driven into the storefront. Something tells me that it wasn't the Starbucks's fault. And if somehow it was and the Starbucks was jaywalking or something, I'm sure the driver would be very pleased to have a video record of what would otherwise be a very implausible story.

Yes, we live in a topsy-turvy world in which professional cyclists on whom nobody's lives depend are tested weekly for drug use, yet taxi drivers who are capable of killing people both inside and outside of their cabs in an instant decry having video cameras mounted on their cars. So again, I'll go on record as saying I'm in favor of it--at least until a taxi-mounted camera catches me doing something illegal on my bike and I get in trouble for it, at which point I will decide it's unconstitutional and an invasion of my privacy.

Colorway Me Badd: Excessive Demands

The Memorial Day weekend is now behind us like Levi Leipheimer is behind in the general classification of the Giro d'Italia, which means we've now leaped forward into summer just like Carlos Sastre leaped into the top three yesterday in the general classification of the Giro d'Italia. Like many American cycling fans, I was sorry to see Letle Viride slip back yesterday, though we can always take solace in the fact that while his place in the GC may be tenuous his position as the official Road ID spokesperson remains secure. If you've been following the Giro on Universal, you've already seen the Road ID commercial countless times, but just in case you haven't here it is:



While I commend Leipheimer for endorsing a responsible product, I also think that roadies shouldn't be the only ones to benefit from it. There are many other types of cyclists who could also use something like this but who also don't think bracelets or road racers are "cool." As such, I'm proud to announce that I'll be endorsing a version for "hipsters," the Fixie ID:

Get your own knuckles at the knuckle tattoo gun.

Unlike that dorky nursing home-style bracelet, Fixie ID is applied to the knuckles and enhances both safety and street cred. Fixie ID is also permanent (as are the typos, unfortunately) and unless you try to brake with your knuckles it remains legible in even the most disfiguring accidents. Sure, the eight-character limit doesn't allow you to include detailed contact information, but hipsters rarely venture outside of their neighborhoods anyway. And there is sufficient room for feeding instructions:

Get your own knuckles at the knuckle tattoo gun.

See? This hipster will eat eggs and cheese, so bring on the omelettes! Stay tuned for the commercial, complete with catchy motto: "Fixie ID: It's Who I Pretend to Be."

Speaking of bracelet magnates, I was checking in on the Twitter of one of Letle Viride's domestiques when I noticed something intriguing:

I immediately headed over to noted basketball handler Shaquille O'Neal's Twitter for more information:



...and eventually I found it:


One aging celebrity athlete challenging another to a race of some kind? What could this mean? Unsure what to make of this, I consulted Dennis Hopper:



As usual, he's got his finger on the pulse, and his tongue on the blotter acid.

Of course, a new race for Armstrong means only one thing: a new custom inspirational theme bike from The Great Trek Bicycle Making Company. Everybody's seen his Giro Shepard Fairey Obey monstrosity--in fact, it freaked Dennis Hopper out so bad he emptied out a fire extinguisher on it. Well, apparently Trek isn't even waiting to find out what kind of race this is, because they've already released images of Armstrong's new "Shaq Killer:"


As you can see, every visual element is intended to not only sting Shaq but also to mock the entire sport of basketball:

The TTS (Top Tube Shacks) that decrease in size as they make their way towards the rider's crotchal region are themselves enough to send Shaq into a spiral of self-doubt, but taken together this bike should bring the giant to his knees. Yes, this race is going to be as ugly as a Lance Armstrong one-off theme bike. All You Haters Cup My Fruit.

And as if that wasn't bad enough, Trek even released this viral video:



Poignant and demoralizing.

It just so happens I know exactly how Shaq feels, as I too was demoralized recently. Yes, on the very eve of my slaycation, I secured my bicycle to a pole. However, I was in a hurry, and in my haste I forgot to de-Knog it. (As you may recall from my Scattante review, I'm sitting on a rubbery mountain of Knogs, so I figured I might as well use them.) Yes, here in New York City people actually steal the lights off of bicycles, and I'm sorry to report that when I emerged from my bikini waxing my most favoritest Knog "hipster cyst" was gone. So I beg of you, if you hear or see anything of this Knog, or if someone on the street tries to sell you one at a price that's too good to be true, let me know immediately. You'll know it's mine because it's black. (It was originally lime green, but I had it powdercoated.) Also, I couldn't be bothered to change the battery so it barely worked anyway. Here are some nostalgic photos of the wonderful times we shared together:


This is my Knog on a teapot shaped like a camel.



This is my Knog on a small bottle of Grand Marnier.




This is my Knog being used as a capo, just moments before I picked up the guitar and sang a folk song about how much I love my Knog.

Oh, and to the thief: you may have taken my Knog, but you'll never take my memories, for they burn as brightly in my heart as the first time I switched it on. Also, the Knog you took was down my pants a few times. (You really can put those things anywhere!) So the joke's on you.

Speaking of things that come in lots of "colorways," I was recently checking in with fixed-gear freestyle impresario Prolly's blog, where I learned that a new urban fixed-gear tire has "dropped," and it comes in more "colorways" than a Knog-strangled extremity:



Ever ride home in the rain to be alarmed by something and when you whip into a hockey stop, your bike kicks out from under you, landing you on your ass and your bike in the street?

Ever ride home in the rain and crash because you had to whip into a hockey stop? Me neither. That's because I rock something like this:


Sure, the "colorways" leave something to be desired, but this accessory does eliminate the need for hockey stops, lacrosse stops, lawn bowling stops, and any other inconvenient and ineffectual sports-themed stops you might find yourself forced to perform on a brakeless bike. Incidentally, I'm not sure what purpose a "directional tread" serves on a wet road, since bicycles do not hydroplane--though I suppose those cosmetic sipes are useful in that once they disappear you should probably refrain from hockey stopping until you've replaced it with a brand-new pink tire.

Well, it's good to see that the bicycle industry is addressing the needs of the fixed-gear rider, even if those needs are based more on "colorways" than they are on the excessive demands they're placing on their equipment. Actually, I'm not sure relying too heavily on one component because you've omitted another one constitutes an "excessive demand"--really, it just means your bike's not finished. It's like wearing two sweaters and no pants. Maybe I can start leaving off my tires altogether and some company will come along and make a super-thick inner tube. Or has that happened already? I can't keep track.

But don't expect brakes to make a comeback anytime soon; after all, when you ride with brakes you can't come up with cool names for your stops. I'm fine with that, though. It only expands the market for the Fixie ID.

Conspiracy By Mail: The Hidden Dangers of Online Bicycle Retail

I am extremely fortunate to receive many emails from readers. Of these emails, a large number of them contain links to new cycling-related products. I'm especially grateful for these, because I seldom leave my home (I now do all of my cycling on a Virtual Reality Trainer as I find actual cycling tedious) and as such I rely on email for news of the outside world. However, I'm alerted of some products more frequently than others, and one of the most oft-forwarded products recently has been the Knog "Love Hate" Glove.

This is hardly surprising, since I've made no secret of my fondness for knuckle tattoos. But while I've been aware of the Knog "Love Hate" Glove for some time, I was not aware until recently that you can now purchase a pair from the Secret Website:


Obviously, this is fantastic news. But I was surprised to find that when I clicked the "More Info..." link in the description it displayed the following warning:


"PLEASE NOTE THE PACKAGING OF THIS ITEM CONTAINS IMAGES THAT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE."

Now I was intrigued. What images could Knog possibly have included in the packaging for a pair of gloves that would warrant this sort of warning? Well, I didn't have to wonder for very long. It just so happens that when Knog sent me all those "hipster cysts" back in December, they included some other items in the package as well. And one of those items was a pair of "Love Hate" Gloves. At the time, I just tried to ignore them in much the same way you'd try to ignore a dead cockroach in your lunch after you've already eaten half of it--there's nothing you can do about it anyway, so your best bet is to just push the plate aside, excuse yourself from the table, and pretend it was never there in the first place. And that's what I did with the gloves.

But now that I knew the package actually contained inappropriate imagery, I made straight for the box, rummaged around wrist-deep in "hypster cysts," found the gloves, and tore the package open. Sure enough, in addition to handwear, it contained this:


As you can see, it's a picture of two people, both of whom appear to be women, sensually brushing lips. Furthermore, the woman on the right is wearing a piece of "body jewelry" in her lip. ("Body jewelry" is said to make sexual contact more pleasurable, which makes it the "Zertz" of the body modification world.) Naturally, I was appalled to discover that Knog's entire product line is simply a cheap ruse to smuggle sapphist erotica into America. Moreover, I was disgusted that one of our most trusted online retailers is complicit in this scheme. They may have included a warning, but I'm sure you'll agree it's completely insufficient given the true nature of the image. After all, it depicts two people of the same sex with portions of their faces touching. If anything, the Secret Website's "warning" only serves to titillate young people, whose mattresses are probably hiding virtual mountains of Knog packaging.

I suppose it's wrong of me to expect more from the company that invented the Porno Patch, but at least they were up front about that. These giant pornographic Breathe Right strips are another story altogether. I can't help but suspect that this may have something to do with the fact that Knog is an Australian company. Sure, once upon a time our countries had something in common--after all, we were both a part of England. But then, the supercontinent of Pangea began to separate, and ever since then we've been drifting apart. Now, we couldn't be more different, as one look at our respective national heroes sufficiently proves:

They both share dominion over the animals, but there the similarities end. Crocodile Dundee's lack of refinement, erudition, and couth is in stark contrast to Ace Ventura's suave intellectual sophistication. Indeed, it would seem that the Coriolis effect has wreaked havoc with the Australian sex drive, resulting in the Knog/Secret Website pornography-smuggling affair, photos like these from Fyxomatosis, and, of course, the Robbie McEwen sex scandal. I only hope the damage caused to the collective psyche of our nation's youth by a photograph of two women making gentle nasal and labia superfluos entafada/labium inferius contact is not irreparable.

Fortunately, things over at the Secret Website's sibling company are far less insidious--or are they? I recently received the latest Performance catalog in the mail (Performance catalogs are like cold sores in that no matter where you go or what you do somehow you'll keep getting them) and was delighted to discover that, with the election but a memory, Democrat and Republican jerseys are finally on clearance:



Now this is what our nation's youth needs--patriotism, not porn. But take a closer look:

Of the two jerseys, only the Republican jersey is available in the small size. Clearly, some sort of conspiracy is afoot here. I'm not sure where it's headed or who's behind it, but it obviously involves young people, Australia, politics, and porn.

BSNYC Interview: Dave Koesel of Felt Bicycles

(In an "Australian Interview," it is customary for the interviewee to strike the interviewer.)

In yesterday's post, I commented on a pair of new marketing videos from Guru bicycles. I did so not because I have any problem with Guru as a company or because I have any problem with their products. They're just a group of people who make and sell racing bicycles. Similarly, while I often make fun of bicycle marketing in general, the truth is even the most mendacious bike company probably wouldn't register on the scale of corporate unscrupulousness or greed. I mean, there are companies in this world that have sold poisonous baby food, so telling a bunch of recreational cyclists that a bike will make them faster really isn't all that bad. As cyclists, we need people to make bicycles and sell them to us, and marketing is an integral part of that process. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just that sometimes this marketing pushes the boundaries of truth, in which case it becomes offensive, or else the execution of the marketing veers off into the realm of the ridiculous, which was the case with the Guru videos. And as far as the execution of marketing goes, it's a creative endeavor like any other, and I believe strongly that all creative endeavor is subject to criticism and ridicule. Even more importantly, marketing is the art of making people want things that they don't really need, and this is inherently funny.

I'm not really a part of the bicycle industry, but I write about cycling so even I participate in bicycle marketing. Beyond this blog, I write a column for "Bicycling" magazine, and while they let me write whatever I want they are arguably a marketing-driven publication. Also, not too long ago I wrote some text for the "2010 Knogalogue" (Knog are a bunch of Australians who invented the "hipster cyst"), which you can download and read from Knog's website. (Just turn the sound on your computer off first--Knog follow the European Internet tradition of assaulting visitors with music.) You may enjoy what I wrote, or you may be disgusted that I engaged in a "collabo" with Knog. Either way, Knog simply wanted their catalog to be entertaining, so they traveled the world and took a bunch of pictures and then asked me to write some text about those pictures. Making fun of Knog in their own catalog sounded like fun to me, so I agreed. I'm sure some readers will feel differently, but in all, I think it's mostly harmless.

Last week, I wrote a post called "The Irrelevancy of Time," and it elicited a strong reaction. Clearly, while we all have different thresholds for marketing, many of us have strong feelings about the way bicycles are designed and sold. In fact, one reaction came from Dave Koesel, the road brand/product manager at Felt (I used their "Fixie" line as an example in my post) who took issue with some of what I had to say. As we corresponded, it occurred to me that this would be a good opportunity to have a person actually involved in producing both high-end road bikes and urban fixed-gears explain to all of us the process of designing and selling them. So I asked him if I could interview him, and he graciously agreed.

Be assured my intent here is not to promote Felt; rather, it is to provide some additional insight into a subject that comes up frequently on this blog, and to allow readers to draw their own conclusions. If this is insight you don't want, then I hope you'll at least forgive the departure. And if you do want it, and on top of that it also makes you want to buy a Curbside, all I'll say is I recommend at least taking off the top tube pad. It's basically just the trendy bike equivalent of a pie plate.

Thanks to Dave Koesel for taking the time to respond, and thanks to everyone else for reading.

--BSNYC/RTMS

What's your background in cycling, and what's your favorite kind of riding to do today?

When I was a young boy, my father would come home every summer with a bike he’d collected from the side of the road destined for the city dump. We would disassemble the bike and rebuild the hubs and headsets, free the chain of rust, and even attempted rebuilding a freewheel. My dad always was able to repair whatever was needed to make it functional. He built race cars and made metal sculptures among other fabricating talents, and repairing a bicycle was a good lesson for me he’d insist. My bikes would often have one or two of his custom touches, like handmade handlebars, or welded in top tubes and new paint jobs to convert a girls frame to my own. I remember turning 12 and being given the freedom to leave the neighborhood for the first time. I’d ride all over the county exploring new roads and discovered the joys of getting around by bicycle. I began racing just for fun in an occasional duathlon or MTB race in my early teens. I was seriously hurt on a mountain bike ride and later decided to focus on road racing during my college years. I’ve spend the last 15 years racing on the road and track and I still enjoy competing occasionally, although my favorite rides today are getting out on the local MTB trails with my kids and their friends: introducing them to the same joys I discovered around their age.


What's your background professionally?

I started working in a small mom and pop bike shop in high school and eventually managed the store until moving away for college. I began road racing more seriously in college where I went to work at a high end pro shop in Ann Arbor, MI called Cycle Cellar. It was a great place to work with the very best equipment and mechanics on staff. It was there where I learned steel frame fabricating skills, and while I never sold any of my frames, I did build a couple road frames, and a full suspension MTB frame. I moved on from Cycle Cellar and together with Dennis Pontius, Gary Guzialek, and James Huang (of cyclingnews.com fame) opened Two Wheel Tango. I worked at Two Wheel Tango through the late 90s when I began my own independent sales representative group. I worked with a variety of brands including Colnago, Ciocc, DeBernardi, and Orbea bicycles, several clothing lines from Craft, Nalini, and Biemme, and component brands Ritchey, Tufo, Zipp, and many other small specialty brands. During this time I continued to race on the road, track, MTB, cyclo-cross and even a few tandem events. I had been upgraded to a Category 1 but realized I didn’t have the talent to make bicycle racing my career and stopped racing consistently in 2002.

How did you come to Felt?

In the winter of 2001, Felt had emerged with a line of complete bicycles and I reviewed what their plans were for sales representation at the Interbike show. I had an interview with company president Bill Duehring and began working with Felt in 2002 as a sales rep for Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. After growing the territory and looking to expand my coverage in the area, I was offered a sales management position in Felt’s Lake Forest, CA office. I accepted the job and moved to SoCal in October, 2005. After a year as the regional sales manager, I began to contribute to the product development of some of our emerging categories for Women, Triathlon, and track. One year later I was promoted as the product manager for all the road models and was the product liaison for our professional cycling teams and athletes. As my tasks encompassed areas of product development, sales and marketing, I earned the title of ROAD Brand Manager.

What's the history of Felt, and how large is the company in terms of employees and volume?

We’ve got this covered here on our site.

What are Felt's long-term goals as a company?

From the very same link above:

"Our mission is quite simple: To design, develop, and deliver the best bicycles in the world. Period."

If I'm a road racer, why should I buy a Felt instead of a Specialized, Trek, Cannondale, or Giant?

Now here is where I could get into trouble with our sales and marketing guys, but the fact is you shouldn’t buy a Felt instead of a Specialized, Trek, Cannondale, or Giant if one of those brands makes a model that better suits your fit requirements, better meets your budget, or has a retailer with greater after sale service. Buying a bike is so much more than a downtube decal. Felt makes 4 different geometries in our ROAD line up. F, Z, AR, and ZW models all have different fits, design intents, and a wide range of models, but even our extensive line up doesn’t cover every possible option. Does Felt make comparable model to most of the ones offered by these brands? Of course. I feel the Felt AR1 may be the best example of technology in our industry. The design and execution of that model amazes people outside the bike biz. From the CFD and wind tunnel development of the frame, fork and seatpost shapes, to the Shimano Dura Ace Di2 group, the bike represents what bicycle technology is capable of. I think the Felt Z85 might be among the most versatile and the best bang for the buck road bike on the market. Our women’s line of road bikes range from $700 to $7000 and we offer full carbon models with women under 5’0” tall. I could go on and on going into details about each bike in our line. Despite our coverage in the road segment, it is possible that some people simply want the integrated seatpost of a Giant TCR advanced or the LiveStrong Livery of the Trek, or perhaps the Specialized suits a need for a 105 bikes with a triple crankset. Maybe aluminum is your frame material of choice or Campagnolo your favorite group. Cannondale offers a few high end models with these options.

Felt has a long history of making high performance road bikes, if one of our models suits your needs, you’ll be very pleased and soon agree we’ve done our homework. Felt isn’t the only brand making innovative bikes. Nor is Specialized, Trek, Cannondale, and Giant. It is crowded at the top and emerging brands like Kuota, Ridley, Focus and others are making nice bikes as well. It is a great time to be shopping for a road bike. Consumers have plentiful choices, each with their list of advances.


Felt started out as a pretty specialized brand but now has as wide a range of bikes as any of the big bicycle companies. (Felt has a café and a cruiser line!) What's behind this approach?

You can sit on a one-legged stool, but 4 equal legs offers a much more stable platform. With a line of high performance road models, we only appeal to the dealers that can support a full line of bicycles and a 2nd high end brand, or a dealers that only focuses on ROAD, limiting our dealer base and sales options. BMX and Cruiser sales are a big part of our brand, and the beach communities and the shops these models are sold in are often a different outlet that our performance models. When we introduce a line of bicycles, we make them uniquely Felt. That is to say, even our aforementioned cruisers and Café models use our own frame designs, with our frame shapes, tubing profiles and wall thicknesses, and other proprietary parts.

You had some issues with my post called "The Irrelevancy of Time." What were they?

I was surprised to see you come down on the brands and guys that market and grow their brands, while you embrace other products that seem stagnant and use some clever spin to explain why they only offer one model or one product altogether claiming they are “keeping it real”, when it may be just as accurate to say they are “keeping it undercapitalized."

There are countless examples of annual innovations in cycling and the jump in selling price only reflects the technology used to produce and develop these bikes now. 10 years ago there were a handful of guys designing with FEA [Finite Element Analysis], now it is commonplace along with CFD [Conceptual Fluid Dynamics], Fibersimulation Layup, wind tunnel testing ($15/minute in SDLSWT), and advanced composite materials.

From the Competitive Cyclist blog:

The most important thing written about the bike biz in 2009?* From an unexpected source: Bikesnobnyc. He's not his usual cynical-comic self here. Rather, it's his take on something that has long driven us batty: The bike industry's annual need to issue new model years on everything. Please, industry, quit devaluing our inventory investment in August every year!

*[This strikes me as kind of like making the best burrito in New York City.]

It would seem at least one retailer feels that a yearly cycle works against them. What do you think?

Model years seem to be a necessary evil. We suffer the same fate as the guys in retail stores with carryover inventory being sold below our cost at the end of the year. While many of our models do not change year after year, we do update most of our performance line as the component brands introduce new products, technology advances, and market conditions evolve. It would make more sense to me to introduce new models in January of that model year, not June/July/August. Sales are soft in January for much of the country and inventory levels could be kept low for reduced overhead in the slow months and ease of inventory for tax reasons. Stopping the influx of new models during the busiest part of the selling season is logical, but it takes a unanimous effort on the part of everyone industry-wide. We can’t seem to agree on a bottom bracket standard, let alone a universal product launch date.

In 2007 Felt introduced the Curbside. How did that bike come to be?

The Curbside was a creative exercise executed by collecting ideas from a couple decades of fixed gear riding and emerging color, fashion and cycling trends. Felt has made a track bike for about 15 years. Jim Felt used to hand build custom oversize aluminum rigs for customers in the 90s and when it came time to launch the Felt brand globally, the Tk2 was a great addition. The Tk2 developed a fan base among fixed gear riders, but it was never intended to be a well mannered bike on the road. With ample toe clip overlap and super steep angles, the bike just wasn’t suited to novice riders. As single speed mountain bikes grew in popularity and many Felt employees spent their off-season on their fixed gear road rigs, we decided it was time to make a purpose built single speed road bike. We blended the handling of our F-series road bikes with a slightly taller BB and the sloping top tube of our Z-series frames. We developed an FSA road crankset with the outer chainring replaced with a cyclo-cross style guard. Wheels were assembled with flip-flop sealed hubs and bulletproof ACS Chrome-moly BMX freewheel and genuine Dura Ace track sprocket running on a KMC Rustbuster chain. Long reach front and rear brakes were added to the frame to allow for huge tires (up to 35mm) or fenders. We added our BeerNuts tool so the lack of quick releases didn’t prevent a speedy flat tire fix.* Finally we sprayed on matte gray paint with small understated graphics, the perfect camouflage to blend this new bike in with the rest of the urban landscape. I had ridden a variety of fixed gear “Franken-bikes” for commuting and logging winter miles for 15 years and never had a bike with so much utility. My Gitane Track bike was never drilled for brakes and was plagued with French threaded everything, My 3Rencho couldn’t fit tires bigger than 22mm tubulars, My Panasonic rusted through those super thin Ishiwata 019 tubes after only a couple Michigan winters. This new Felt model was named the Dispatch, and the initial reaction from our dealers was mixed. All of them understood the concept, but many of them asked for a version that was closer to the bikes they saw in downtown SanFran, or Chicago, or at the beach in SoCal. The Curbside was the evolution of the original concept and used the bright contrasting colors, cut down MTB handlebars, and as an homage to our Slipstream Argyle, a custom saddle and matching top tube pad.

*[When it was introduced some people pointed out that the design of the Curbside's track end required either a socket wrench or Felt's special tool to loosen or tighten the axle nuts.]

Felt's "Fixie Series" now consists of four bikes and a frameset. One would assume this is due to substantial sales. Can you share any numbers, or at least give us a sense of the growth in this segment?

Like the first two models, these later models were built on the demands of dealers and consumers. Our Brougham provided a Chrome-moly frame offering with real cold-forged 144mm BCD track cranks. The Gridloc was the culmination of two years of working with Sturmey Archer on the development of the re-introduction of their 3 speed fixed gear hub.

Who buys Felt's "Fixie Series" bike? Is there a particular age, gender, or city with which they are especially popular?

I think like most of our models they appeal to a wide audience. They have been well received by our dealers in all of our major markets in the USA as well as Japan, Australia, Germany, UK, Canada, etc.

Part of the fixed-gear trend's appeal seems to be that riders enjoy customizing their own bikes, and the Felt line-up would seem to pre-empt this behavior by pre-customizing the bikes. Do you think this is a danger, or is this what the market seems to want?

Our complete bikes are an out-of-the-box alternative for retailers and consumers that would prefer to buy a packaged product. For those that want to build up a frame with their own parts, we make our Brougham, Gridloc, and Tk2 as a frameset. I understand that a large part of the fixed gear market is creating something unique. I admire the guys that spend time finding a vintage Masi or Merckx frame and adding their own creative touches. I know that for some a new frame doesn’t appeal to them and the thought of a complete out of the box bike is out of the question. Some people are the same way with their computers or houses or hamburgers. I am thankful there is room for both.

It would seem that a bicycle as simple as an urban fixed-gear doesn't necessarily need to be updated as frequently as a competitive road or mountain bike, and aesthetic changes are easy and cheap for the rider to make. Do you think that allowing a bike to become "venerable" or "classic" by leaving it unchanged for a few years can increase it's appeal in that the bike does become "dated?"

The fixed gear models do not follow the normal pattern of Interbike introduction and 10 month model years. Our Curbside went two years without a color update, and the Brougham has only ever come in gloss black, although we are adding a raw color later this winter, but the black bike remains as it was introduced a couple years ago. I’m not sure a bike can become “classic” without other historical factors. A 1972 Chevelle SS could be considered a classic, so could a 1972 Corolla, but I doubt the same person would find them to be equally representative of a classic 1970s performance car. There is little chance anyone would consider a 2007 Corolla a classic.

What do you think the future will bring for urban fixed-gears?

I expect the growth to continue and for more brands to use these models as a medium to express a more creative outlet. Initially there was a “race to the bottom” it seemed with many brands trying to find ways to create a $259 fixie. Now there are new bikes like the Gridloc, Roll, Ritchey Breakaway...

Are you noticing any new trends now?

I am pleased to see the variety in the offerings and the influx of new brands making Urban Fixed Gears their medium for creativity.

Will Felt make a fixed-gear freestyler?

Felt is fortunate to work with amazing BMX street riders like 2 time X-Games Gold Medalist Scotty Cranmer and Josh Betley. Both of these guys are riding Felt fixed gear bikes for some high speed urban transportation. If we were to tackle the freestyle segment, you can be sure our experience with BMX, Street and Flatland bicycle production the last 10 years will pay dividends.

What are a few of your favorite bikes ever?

That’s a tough list to create. I’ll narrow it down to just bikes that I’ve owned. I could name hundreds of models that have inspired me and that I’ve admired over the years.

Royal 3 speed (made in England by Raleigh IIRC)
Gitane/Omelenchuck mid-1960s Track bike
Eddy Merckx 7-11 Track bike ridden in ’92 Olympics
Croll Custom 853 Road bike
Jim Felt T2 TT bike
Coppi Galaxy Altec
GT Superbike III prototype
GT Titanium Edge Track frame w/ Hooker Fork
Colnago Custom Rabobank Dream Cross bike
Ritchey BreakAway Steel Road bike
Felt DA Track prototype
Felt Tk1 prototype
Felt F1 2009 Tour de France edition
Santana Fusion Tandem

Your Monday Inspiration: The More Things Change, The More They Get Brittle, Old, And Crumbly

There was a discarded cicada larva shell on the tire of my Big Dummy this morning:

(Larva.  And what appears to be bird feces.)

I've been parking the bike outside lately, so who knows how long the little fucker was clinging there.  In fact, I'd just ridden the bike a half hour before, and I doubt the cicada crawled onto the tire, out of its shell, and then oozed off in that short amount of time.  More likely, the crisp, vacated little thing has just been spinning round and round on there for days until I finally happened to notice it.

It's currently Hot As Balls™, and the cacadas are belting out their cacophonous staccato cry from their throbbing abdomens.  I've been hearing that sound every year for my entire life, and it means the "dog days" are upon us.  It's the sure sign that summer's thrilling promise is essentially over and you're just going to bake listlessly in the heat until school starts again.  (The dreadful back to school feeling never leaves you, even when you don't have to go to school anymore.)  The cackle of the cicada fills me with a wistful dejection--especially when it mixes with the sound of lawnmowers, as it did where we lived when I was a kid, and as it does where I live now.  "Suburban ennui," I suppose you could call it.  It especially reminds me of the kid in day camp who would put cicadas in his mouth, let them crawl around on his tongue, and then bike their heads off.  He's a veterinarian now, I G--gled him.

He might even be your veterinarian.

(Dr. Meh-ngele, DVM)

Besides boyhood memories, cicadas also evoke the idea of cycles, and cycles can be either inspiring or depressing, depending on your mood when you're thinking about them.  For example, the whole chrysalis-to-butterfly thing usually makes people happy.  (Unless you're Jame Gumb.)  But as I contemplated the familiar cicada larva shell and the hopeless life cycle of this stupid insect, I thought about my own life cycle as a cyclist, from exuberant child to BMX racer to adult Fred to crusty, brittle old crank who rides a Brooks:

As I stood there and stared, I realized I was looking at myself:

Yes, this is me, and it's a more accurate rendering than any smartphone "selfie."  Hunched over the bars, hollow inside, resigned eyes looking hopelessly forward in a look of pain that transcends Rapha-esque suffering and attains actual despair...  This, I realized, is who I am:

Then I flicked the little fucker into the street and went home.

Hey, you know what else is a hollow shell?  The Tour de France:

It was another incredible display of strength by Froome, who one by one dropped all of his rivals until he was alone with teammate Richie Porte and Alberto Contador (Saxo-Tinkoff). With 7.5km to go, Froome jumped and Contador could not respond, and the maillot jaune holder set off in pursuit of Quintana, who had attacked on the lower slopes.

I know we're supposed to believe that this dominant Ventoux performance is different from all the ones that came before it, but the wheel of Tour de France history is littered with the crusty shells of past champions, so when you're a crusty shell like I am it's increasingly hard to make the investment.  Really, it's just awkward at this point, as Jason Gay's last Wall Street Journal column articulates well:

Bike racing can be riveting, almost gorgeous—those TV helicopter swoops over French châteaus should be bankrolled by the ministry of tourism—but the sport's leadership has been infuriatingly prideful and stubborn, allowing traditions to erode into punch lines, undermining racers and teams actually trying to win the right way. Cycling fans can get righteous about this ridicule (at least bike racing—unlike your flaky sport—is doing something about its doping!) but the core emotion is a kind of scarred sadness that comes with taking a pounding for too long. If you love this beautiful, maddening sport, you just want this beautiful, maddening sport back.

You know your sport's in trouble when the nicest thing people can say about it is that it has pretty scenery.  I give it ten years before they dispense with the riders altogether and the Tour de France just becomes this:



In other news, remember Old Man Budnitz and his overpriced line of singlespeed hybrid-style bicycles for douchebags?


You know, the guy who says stupid stuff like this?

On the other side of the equation, a bicycle is crap when it is made without love by crap corporations run by crappy, cynical people.  A big bicycle corporation knows with precision that their brand new crap aluminum frame will creak and rattle after just a few weeks.

Okay.  Mine creaked immediately.  Nicely done.

Well, a reader forwarded me the following story, which offers a window into Old Man Budnitz's "creative process:"

After awhile he approached us with an idea of helping him build a bike company under his own name. He wanted us to make him replicas of the bikes we had already made with the potential to go over seas and have them massed produced. As you can imagine we felt like this wasn't the best idea for our company and went against why we build these bikes with our own hands here in Colorado in the first place. Nothing against bikes made out of country and in Asia as many are high quality and almost all are handmade by skilled workers. It just sounded boring and not our style. So we told him we weren't interested. Mr. B however is a man with money and the means to do as he pleases so he took our bikes had them replicated(kind of) at another American bike company and now has some being produced over seas.

Classy...though Old Man Budnitz has a different explanation:

People have been asking where we found original inspiration for our bicycles. 

Above is the 1946 BSA Paratrooper folding bicycle — the twin-cantilever design we use has actually been around for almost 100 years.

Twin top tubes serve an important function, combining vertical flex with horizontal stiffness. Modern frame tubing (and materials such as cro-moly steel and titanium) have allowed us to fine tune the ride of each of our models differently.

Swedish Army versions of this bicycle also served as inspiration for our No.2 Paratrooper Limited Edition, currently for sale on our site now.

Yeah, right.  Either way, I sure hope Old Man Budnitz builds plenty of "vertical flex" into his douche chariots, because you're going to need it to dampen the grand mal seizure-like "douche chills" you'll experience while riding it.

Speaking of douchebags, remember the guy in the Daily News who said Citi Bikes are bad because more people get killed on bikes than in mixed martial arts tournaments?

("More people get killed by public transit than in cockfights so we shouldn't have the bus."--This Idiot)

Well, the New York Post has out-stupided their tabloid arch-rival by a factor of ten by skipping the physical trainers and going right for the underwear models:

“I don’t like the mix of buses and taxi and bikes altogether. Who’s going to get hurt? Me!” Alessandra Ambrosio (center) said Wednesday during a cancer-research fund-raiser at SoulCycle studio in the West Village.

The Brazilian bombshell said she rides her bike in LA but wouldn’t dare rent one in the Big Apple.

“I’m just a little concerned with safety, being on a bike with crazy cars in the middle of the street. I like sports away from traffic,” she said.

She feels safer riding a bike in LA?  Like Los Angeles LA?  Wow.

Anyway, I fear the tabloids may have reached the outer limits of both relevance and lack of intellect when it comes to asking people for their opinions on Citi Bike, because if they haven't then this is the next logical step:

Scoff if you want, but that tapir has a Pulitzer and sits on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.

Lastly, longtime BSNYC/RTMS/WCRM sponsor Knog is having a contest and they want you to know about it:

"Facebook competition time - Yay!...or more appropriately, Tres bien! 

The Tour de France is in its centennial year and as a fitting tribute Knog have put together a one-off Tour de Knog cycling kit for one lucky punter to get their hands on. This kit includes; a set of Blinder Road lights, a Knog cycling Jersey, cycling cap, patch kit, spare patches, 12-tool kit and a Milkman lock.
All you have to do is head over to the Knog Facebook page and click on the competition link to enter. 

Bon chance mes amis!"

Now you know, so there's no excuse not to win.

(Unless, like me, you're not on Facebook.)

BSNYC Friday Fun Quiz!

Yo duders!  #killmeandeveryonelikeme  Do you feel betrayed and disgusted by your professional cycling idols?  Well, before you get too judgmental, keep in mind that this is what the Tour de France would look like without any performance-enhancing drugs:


le coq sportif - Collection la Grande Boucle 2012 from Le Coq Sportif on Vimeo.

A reader forwarded this video to me, and while cheating may technically be "wrong" I'm starting to think that maybe we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater here.  I'll take EPO-addled attacks over fey fixie fashion cavorting any day.

Speaking of bikes, did you know that people in America fucking hate them?  Well, it's true.  Actually, I should clarify that.  Not only do they hate bikes, but they also hate people who ride bikes, and special lanes for those people to ride bikes in, and even little racks on which to park the horrible things.  Consider this proposed bike rack in Brooklyn that would replace one car parking spot:

No big deal, right?  Wrong:

Here's the problem people have with it:

"The transportation will be disrupted...and anyone hit by a car or bike coming out of that parking lot for bikes has to fend for himself," worried Eliseo Ruiz, the transportation committee's chair. "It looks like this is just going to be storage for bikes."

Yeah, good point about bikes flying out of that rack and hitting people.  If you've ever walked by a bike rack you know how cyclists are always unlocking their bicycles, lifting the rear wheel off the street, whipping the RPMs up to like 12,000 RPMs, and then peeling out of there like fleeing criminals.  Also, another good point that it's just going to be storage for bikes--which would obviate the whole "getting hit by a bike" thing since "storage" generally implies "leaving something where it is."  Really, the best and most convincing anti-bike arguments are the ones that fly in the face of physics and are completely self-contradicting.  For reasoning this brilliant you have to go back to the proposed Brooklyn velodrome, which people in Brooklyn Heights don't want because it will attract too many people and nobody will use it.

Meanwhile, in legal news, the family that's suing Strava for a cyclist's death is now getting countersued by Strava:

Flint Jr.’s original electronic signature, given when he joined the website, “excludes Strava from responsibility of legal claims or demands,” according to an article on the website of Bicycle Retailer and Industry News.

If you'd rather read that in legalese, here you go:

You have a Strava account, ipso facto you're a giant Fred, ergo there's no mea culpa on Strava's behalf, en toto, ad nauseum, etc.

I had a year and a half of law school at Chuck E. Cheese's.  Cost me a fuckload of tokens.

I should point out that I don't blame Strava for this person's death, nor do I think they should be held responsible.  But that doesn't make me dislike Strava any less.

Lastly, yesterday I mentioned hero worship, and when it comes to celebrities and professional cyclists and so forth it's important to remember that you're more important than they are, which is why this guy makes them take his picture:

Here's his process, which he's employed with an impressive number of notable personages:


1. Never acknowledge their celebrity.  You are simply asking for a favor by having your photo taken.

2. No autographs or photos with or of your subject.  No “I loved you in Look Who’s Talking 6.”

3. Get in, get the shot, say ‘thanks’, and get out.

And here's a really bad photo taken by Jeff Goldblum:

By the way, despite Goldblum's shitty photo skills you may recognize him from this infamous Dario "Smell of Steel" Pegoretti interview:



As well as this Ritte von Finkelstein video via All Hail the Black Market:



I enjoy his work.

And now, I'm pleased to present you with a quiz.  As always, study the item, think, and click on your answer.  If you're right then buy yourself something nice on me on your own high-interest credit card and then I won't pay you back, and if you're wrong you'll see some fancy riding.

Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and stay hydrated, unless you're made of wicker.


--Wildcat Rock Machine

(The boat is professional cycling.  It's a metaphor.  I went to a college.)

1) Shitstorm 2012!  Which long-time pro cycling sponsor is finally like, "Fuck it, we're out of here"?

--Rabobank
--Quick-Step
--Liquigas
--Circus Lupus, the Circus of Wolves

("Shit, we forgot the dinosaurs!")

2) Fill in the blank: "____ are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila."

--Cows
--Pigs
--Bees
--Lobsters

(She's freeclimbing...but is she freebuffing?)

3) What is "freebuffing?"

--Cycling on technical terrain with a long-travel bicycle
--A technique recommended by Lennard Zinn for polishing crabon frames
--The female equivalent of "going commando"
--A doping technique by which cycling team soigneurs repurposed sanitary napkins as cutaneous testosterone patches

(Exhibit A)

(Exhibit B)

4) Knog accuses Abus of copying its "sausage lock."  Abus claims there is "no reason" for any "customer confusion."  Which is which?

--Exhibit A is Knog, Exhibit B is Abus
--Exhibit A is Abus, Exhibit B is Knog
--Both Exhibit A and Exhibit B are Abus
--Both Exhibit A and Exhibit B are Knog

("I pass it through the frame, both wheels, and the saddle rails for total security.")

5) For $25,000 Mario Cipollini will personally valet your bike and lock it up with his own "sausage."

--True
--False

6) Who would win in a fight to the death, actor and bicycle enthusiast Matthew Modine or Chinese philanthropist Chen Guangbiao?

--Matthew Modine, because he'd go all "Braveheart"
--Chen Guangbiao, because he can hurl a crabon bicycle with deadly accuracy
--David Byrne, in a devastating sneak attack
--Forty-seven highly-trained attack monkeys on EPO

7) These shoes have no:

--Laces
--Soles
--Tongues
--Clits

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