Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Fixedgeargallery...of more disembodied hands.

A reader recently sent me this fixedgeargallery link, mostly because of the enthusiastic preamble:

This right here is my boo... we've been dating since september. She's a KHS Flight 100 With Velocity Aerohead and Nitto Bullhorn handlebars. She's got hips like woah, and a booty that's clappin'. You're site's chillin. I vibe hella and it's my classic peep during Art History. I'm going to be in LA Feb. 15 - 24th with a homie and we wanna ride bicycles. Do me up an email if you read this and are down.

Obviously any readers in Los Angeles who also vibe hella and are available during this window should contact him.

But it wasn't the owner's enthusiasm and use of colloquialisms I found noteworthy. Instead, it was the disconcerting hand you can see if you look closely at the crankal area:





Now, this isn't the first time I've come across something like this, but I find it no less disturbing the second time around. This photo is obviously a two-man job, and I can't help but wonder who he enlisted to hide under that counter and grab that pedal. If only I had a pair of 80s Greg LeMond Oakleys with x-ray lenses, perhaps I could find out. But failing that I can only speculate.

Could it be a woman in a tantalizingly short jean skirt?



Probably not. Our KHS owner has made his taste in women clear from his entry, and I think this one might be too slender for him. On the other hand, he does seem to be a fixed-gear freestyler. And fixed-gear freestyling is to regular riding as flair bartending is to regular old bartending. Perhaps one of his buddies is a Flair School graduate:



Then again, as dexterous as flair bartenders are, they just don't have the raw upper body strength necessary to balance an entire bicycle with one hand like that--especially a bicycle made of unwieldy steel tubing. His accomplice surely must have had more brawn:



Of course, February is Black History Month. Pehaps this is not merely your run-of-the-mill fixedgeargallery entry. Perhaps this is a bold political statement:



Or perhaps not:



In the last post, I even went so far as to suggest as the hand could belong to an aging Pete Townshend. So perhaps this one belongs to his friend, aging Mick Jagger.



But regardless of who it is, they sure went through a lot of trouble, and you'd think they could have at least moved the microwave.

104 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL

Anonymous said...

howdy

kurtz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Are all the regular posters West Coast types?

Anonymous said...

It's me. Duh...

Anonymous said...

totally purged.

Anonymous said...

Funny! Thanks for the post and the laughs!

Bun E said...

It could be the peak of the "slow jerk"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgMbU-we1o

Chunk said...

Maybe I'll holla at him over the weekend just so I can lead him on a ride that ends with a fall off a very high bridge.

Anonymous said...

whats he doing with the other hand under the table? Beating his personal best?

Anonymous said...

the black history one is the best. for fit, rather. the arm looks like it would actually contort to that hand position.

ps, this one was kind of boring. we have read a similar post to this as you have already stated.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Anonymous 11:57am,

Thank you very much for your prosaic comment.

--BSNYC

Anonymous said...

ha, Prosaic means unimaginative

Anonymous said...

Reminds me of last years Cycle Sport America mag with all the team bikes. Some of them would have a index finger on the rear wheel holding up the bike for the picture.

Cameron said...

Nice Work Snob. I'm a big fan of the "how am I going to make my bike stand for this picture without leaning it or holding it..." conundrum that i witnesses in so many of these pics.

Anonymous said...

I laughed my ass off when I scrolled down to the Tommie Smith photo.

Anonymous said...

It could be "thing" from "The Addams Family"
http://www.addamsfamily.com/addams/remote1.jpg

Anonymous said...

AMAZING. gimme those xray oakleys...

Jim said...

Snob, you're way off base.

That's the Hand of Fate. I'd always heard of it, but had never seen it until now. I didn't realize that the Hand of Fate was actually the result of a fixed gear maintenance mishap. Hang on to that blog entry - in time it will come to be like the Zapruder film or the Oregon Bigfoot tape.

BTW, the Hand of Fate's little brother, the Finger of Fate, can be found here: http://www.zweknu.org/blog/index.rhtml?s=p@602&c=T&ft=T#p602

Timothy J said...

John Carlos is trying so hard to help Tommie hold up the bike, but can't reach from the third place step. Maybe if he had finished second.....

Chris said...

It's amazing how some inarticulate hipster can scratch his ass or pick his nose and pull out a ho-hum bicycle.

Pappy said...

Truly hilarious M. Snob, truly. My co-worker heard me laughing in the outer office.

piehole said...

Now we have proof the Black Panther salute at the '68 Mexico City Olympics prophesied the great fixed-gear apocalypse.

Thank you Bikesnob for bringing this long overlooked prediction to light.

erik k said...

nahh.. it was probably just some random midget

Anonymous said...

BSNYC,

I would like to pay you a complement but i'm not sure how to word it. Do I say that you vibe hella or that you ARE vibe hella.

Thoughts?

Anonymous said...

you can then compliment me on my spelling of the word complement.

BikeSnobNYC said...

Robs,

I don't know. Vibe hella sounds like something a bike shop would try to sell you a carbon fork to cure.

--BSNYC

Bobby said...

What I'd like to see are the outtakes from that photo shoot.

A guy that in love with a KHS obviously doesn't have enough room left in his heart to love someone/something else and no doubt took that photo himself.

I just wonder how many times his loving bike fell on his head before he got the right pic.

Anonymous said...

"Now you know the scene, your skin starts turning green
Your eyes no longer seeing life's reality
Push the needle in, face death's sickly grin
Holes are in your skin, caused by deadly pin"
----HAND OF DOOM---------

Anonymous said...

ummmmm......REO Speedwagon sucks?

Anonymous said...

Aww shucks, BSNYC, you old softie. Just in time for Valentine's Day Eve, you post a young art student's profession of his love for his bike.

Here's a poem he can ink on a card he makes for his beloved tomorrow.

"Roses are red,
My bike is blue.
I ride it sans brakes,
Now I'm red, black and blue too.

"Its hips are like "woah,"
That's how I stop.
I just shout out "woah,"
And sail o'er the sweet flop 'n chop.

Or would he offend his beloved by calling its Nitto Bullhorns a flop 'n chop?

Anonymous said...

Have cycle colloquialisms been given a collective name?

Did the photographer simply hit the timed shutter release button and dive to hold the pedal him/herself?

But, seriously, do you know what happens to flair school grads?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgaUtrEN-Co

Prolly said...

Somehow I knew this post was coming...

MINGUStheMECHANIC said...

Judging by his words this kid obviously grew up in a very tuff thug infested suburb and has always been DBL.
Listening to this kid talk to someone who actually speaks this way would probably be like watching a fixed hipster converse with someone who actually knows something about bikes, follow me?

Poppymann said...

I know I'm getting old, but what the F*ck did that guy say in the ad? What the hell is vibe hella? It may just be a panacea from the bike shop or some kind of Swedish rap star.
Please, someone track down this person and eliminate him! Do it for our language, and to keep him from inflicting the next wave of street art upon us! If anything, do it for the children!!!

Poppymann said...

Ok. Urban dictionary says that Hella is some kind of Norcal superlative. Whatever, but "vibe" is short for dildo. So, methinks these two rough and rowdy guys aren't out to "mack on the ladies" as the kids say.

Please someone kick this guy in the nuts!

Anonymous said...

Vibe Hella?

I thought he wrote "Nutella."

Who wouldn't be down with creamy chocolate hazelnut goodness?

But oh dear me. It might be time for reading glasses.

Anonymous said...

I still like the two mini-cans or amagroovies.

Anonymous said...

ka_jun: the two mini cans were definitely the best!

mtic said...

Snob, you are a scoundrel! I beat my personal best on my commute this morning (first sub-90 min ride). But no thanks to you, the triumph is, ummm, disappointingly prosaic. And no, I am not the Seattle Bike Porn Thief: http://tinyurl.com/yts8dc

Anonymous said...

Hell yeah dude, LT on the snob, SD represent!

Anonymous said...

I want to know why he left the light on in the dingy brown perspex shade when he clearly had either a powerful flash or a photographer's lamp. That's so like environmentally uncool.

LK said...

Hand of Doom?

I suggest the newly sponsored Lemond/Oakley X-Ray Spex version of "I'm a Poseur."

Can't any of these guys "ride" a bike? All the photos could just cut off their heads.

Back to the sofa.

Anonymous said...

You exclude the possibility that that hand is not human, and is simply a well-shaved chimp hand, or shaved hand of Robin Williams.

On the other hand, you might as well make good use of parts left over from the illegal organ trade in Asia. Hand bike holder, ass-crack bike parking stand. etc. I'm even typing this with my penis typing wand eating peanuts from my nutsack nut sack.

JimmyNick said...

Did I hear there's a hand holding a stiff crank? Where am I -- the library?

bikenerd said...

I think his 'vibe hella' could be remedied by a set of Bontrager BuzzKill handlebar plugs -

JimmyNick said...

Snob, I give this post a hand:

http://tinyurl.com/2thh7j

And my name is pronounced Franken-STEEN ...

Anonymous said...

Not the hand of fate, Jim, but a rare glimpse of the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, caught in the act of bringing seller and buyer together (and possibly failing).

Laughed a lot, bsnyc.

Anonymous said...

great, another douche giving los angeles cyclists a bad name. Like we need another one of those here! oh wait, actually there are only about 30 cyclists in l.a. now so i guess i should just be thankful for every precious one of them.

Anonymous said...

Even a good Coors-induced poop drizzling on old Leroy won't shut him up... Poems and Nutella? Does the Leroy-dex skyrocket after usage of such nonsensical hullabaloo? SHUT THE FRONT DOOR ALREADY, MOTHER-FATHER!

Anonymous said...

dear bike snob,
thank you for making fun of him,
i <3 you,
Pete

Matthew Reamer said...

Yeah, it was definitely Thing. This is Pugsley's bike.

Anonymous said...

How embarassing. The gent is from Vancouver! Nobody says things like 'hella' here unless they go to the effort of buying into every pop culture fad they stumble accross. Why such a felow would ride a fixie is beyond me.
M Burdge

Anonymous said...

Malibu's Most Fixed

Anonymous said...

commiecanuk

Don't you wish you had a prehensile penis like mine, so you could type with your hands and use your pecker to feed youself.

Anonymous said...

Oh. . .the hand? In the picture?

Who cares?

I mean, I guess I would have cared, had the commentary been good or funny, or at least witty. How's that for prosaic?

I know I know: it's hard to think of funny stuff day in and day out. Which is why not everyone can do it. How many times does the blog have to be prosaic before people stop remembering to read it? Three licks.

I once laid a multi colored mini tile bathroom that, when finished, looked pretty prosaic.

I like to read prose. Hey, Ichabod Crane is one of my favorite literary characters.

And one other thing: pro Zayek Noah was never as good a tennis player as his younger brother Yannick.

How's that for hilarity?

Unregistered Coward said...

Band of the Hand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_the_hand

Unknown said...

This post hella good! I enjoyed the progression: first a smile at the first image, then a bigger smile and on until I was laughing out loud. Good work, Snob!

Anonymous said...

Dude sounds Hella Stupid.

Anonymous said...

I am clearly not "cool" enough to get this guy

Anonymous said...

Those pic are fantastic! LOL!!

Anonymous said...

Where's bikesgone wild creepy post of the night? That's one sick old fuck.

Ev said...

DIS POST ROK

Anonymous said...

fucking fantastic!!!!! I almost killed over from laughter that turned to a scratchy cough (due to being sick already) but holy fuck amazing.

Anonymous said...

Q. How many Norcal residents does it take to change a light bulb?







A. Hella

Anonymous said...

pdxjen: keeled over.

that is all.

Anonymous said...

Haha, thats a good one, however i'm sure this is the guy :)

http://hjem.nathue.dk/~haj/hitlerhand.jpg

Unknown said...

The hand is white but the language is idiotic urban ebonic hip hop. I cringe when I consider the culture some of our youth are embracing.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous 7.18am,

It's a bit cheeky of you to correct people's spelling when you haven't even learned to use capital letters yet.

That is all.

Anonymous said...

Hella is ok, it was in the domain of the dork, but Eric Cartman brought it back..but only allowed in the context of "tits", as in, "that pista is hella tits".

Anonymous said...

Someone quoting King Missile?

Anonymous said...

HA! I nearly soiled myself... in a good way I promise!

Anonymous said...

I found out who owns that bike:

http://usuarios.lycos.es/julibud/wp-content/napoleon_dynamite_13.jpg

Anonymous said...

Here's the full link:

http://usuarios.lycos.es/julibud/wp-content/
napoleon_dynamite_13.jpg

Anonymous said...

Dear BSNYC:

The disembodied hand problem may be solvable. The following might be the artistic alternative for properly displaying cycles for sale:

http://www.signals.com/cgi-bin/hazel.cgi?ACTION=SEARCH&SEARCH_MAXHITS=12&SEARCH_SPEC=cast+iron+hand

Anonymous said...

I vibe hella too.

Anonymous said...

so good. these must be the best additions you have made. asides the sarcasm.

so good

Anonymous said...

Can nae wait for the free-association for THIS
http://commutebybike.com/2008/02/18/swobo-del-norte-seen-in-the-wild

John said...

good call on the distracting microwave in the background. it seems he went to a lot of trouble to get just the right pic (recruit friend to hold the bike juuuuust right, etc) but then he picks some random place to take the pic. surely, there's a plain wall around somewhere that would be a better background? how many times do you think the word "dude" was spoken during this photoshoot?

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Bike Locks said...

If only I had a pair of 80s Greg LeMond Oakleys with x-ray lenses, perhaps I could find out.

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