Monday, May 21, 2012

Pay To Come: Why Buy the Cow?

There was a time not too long ago when people thought of New Yorkers as hardy, resourceful urbanites.  While this image persists in certain dark corners of the popular imagination, it is largely obsolete, and the savvy New Yorker appears to have gone the way of the Brooklyn Dodgers and people who say "toity-toid and toid."  Now, people who live in New York have joined the rest of America and become witless consumers, as evidenced by a festival called "The Great GoogaMooga" that took place in Brooklyn's Prospect Park this past weekend:


Here's how the organizers described it:


On May 19th & 20th, 2012, Brooklyn’s historic Prospect Park will transform into an amusement park of food and drink, The Great GoogaMooga. Approximately 75 food vendors, 35 brewers, 30 winemakers and 20 live music performances will be on hand to help us relish some of life’s greatest pleasures—gathering with friends and neighbors to eat, drink, talk, laugh, dance, linger and just . . . be together.


We envision a place where the best chefs and purveyors can serve their food and bring about instant elation. Where everyday food lovers can discover and share amazing new tastes, and where the right slice of pizza can be as treasured/praiseworthy as four-star fois-gras.


And with such an inclusive feel that it will appeal to everyone who eats.

Hilariously, in order to enjoy this "inclusive feel" and the fruits of the 35 brewers' labors, festivalgoers had to first convert their cash into special "Googa Moula," and in order to do so they waited on lines this big:




I'm not sure why you'd subject yourself to this sort of mob scene in a public park in a city that already boasts perhaps the most diverse array of food and drink in the entire world, and in which the cuisine of pretty much any culture you can think of is generally a short bicycle or subway ride away, but I can only conclude that The Great GoogaMooga represents sort of a watershed moment in our popular culture--a Woodstock for the Artisanal Generation which prefers to "douche out" on food in a controlled environment where all the signage is uniformly attractive and quasi-folksy, and in which they can wait on the sort of "epic" lines that make them feel as though they are somehow part of something.

As for me, I stayed as far away from The Great GoogaMooga as possible, though I did pass through Prospect Park at one point and noted that they had valet bike parking:


I suppose that makes it all worth it.

Meanwhile, as people who should know better were turning their real money into Disney Dollars so they could wait hours for a beer and a lobster roll, thousands of Freds were paying something like $200 to ride their bicycles on public roadways in the Gran Fondo New York:


All in all, it was a great weekend in New York City to pay a premium to do a bunch of stuff you can do anytime for little or no money.

Speaking of Freds, a reader in Florida recently spotted the following van:


Which features a cameo from none other than the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork Bret, who plays his role as the token cyclist to perfection:


Of course, the makers of Coco Fit make no representation or warranty that drinking their product will give you the power to travel through time like the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork Bret does, but your chances might improve considerably if you get yourself a DeLorean bicycle, which was forwarded to me by another reader:

It's good to know yet another entrepreneur is answering the increasing demand for unpainted and expensive hybrid bicycles:


And that there's now yet another alternative to the Budnitz:


Budnitz, incidentally, now offers four models, and the latest one is called the "Number Four:"


Apparently, it looks great in small apartments:

We created our compact Model No.4 specifically for travel and big city living. This nimble little bicycle is perfect for navigating traffic, jumping curbs and potholes, rolling into elevators, and carrying up stairs. It turns on a dime and looks great in the corner of small apartments.


This is a good thing, since the corner is where the typical Budnitz owner will consign his bicycle for the duration of its service life.  At most, it should see action once a year for that visit to The Great GoogaMooga, at which point the valet parker will surely appreciate how nimble it is.

By the way, as far as I can tell, Budnitz bikes are only available via their website, which basically makes them Bikesdirect.com for douchebags.

Still, the DeLorean is the clear choice for the discerning time traveler, since you can use it to visit the halcyon days of the fixiebike craze--or, failing that, you can just read the San Francisco Chronicle, which yet another reader informs me is only now just getting around to reporting on it:


If you somehow missed the last ten years because you were living in a small Himalayan village, this article is a perfect time capsule of what you missed, complete with the effusive claims of increased awareness that typified the fixed-gear testimonials of the era:

"Because the constant rotation of the pedals encourages you to have a better rhythm and flow while you ride, I feel that the bike is more of an extension of my body than I do with a geared bike," Guity says. Without the ability to coast or stop quickly, riders must anticipate their moves well in advance, relying on a complex technique of leaning forward onto the handlebars and skidding the back wheel.

If a fixed-gear feels like more of an extension of his body than a geared bike does then he must move very awkwardly.  I wonder if he also relies on a similarly complex skidding technique to come to a stop while walking.  Perhaps he runs into restaurants at full speed and just skids into the table in a crash of chairs and flatware, like a baseball player sliding into home plate.

Those were the days...


96 comments:

Ed said...

First!

Ed said...

Now to read the dang thing...

Chriam said...

Second!

Anonymous said...

Fook Mee

Anonymous said...

Those scientist better check their hypotenuses

Ed said...

No name could quite convey the conceived indulgence, excess, and waste like "Great Googa Mooga"

Anonymous said...

Top 10

Wes said...

Seventh. Where are you Ant1?

Anonymous said...

HGBC 4 lyfe

mikeweb said...

I 'experienced' the Googa Mooga by riding around the people walking all over the park drives.

Anonymous said...

I rode my bike today.

JB said...

Hey-O.

BoringCommenter said...

I made it a surprisingly long way through this article before realizing I'd clicked the wrong thing on my RSS reader and wasn't reading Felix Salmon.

Anonymous said...

I love waiting in lines

Anonymous said...

...and it's 'foie gras', not 'fois gras'. (Their mistake, not bikesnob's).

Anonymous said...

But... but.... I LIKE bikesdirect.com!

Anonymous said...

No, not the B-word again, please!

Top 20!

jt said...

I just finished The Enlightened Cyclist, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I made sure to reset my mental computer before the ride into work today.
I tried reeeal hard to be the shepherd.

jt

Marcel Da Chump said...

The great Googa Mooga

is an extension

of my Booga.

JB said...

People suck.

DerZoots said...

21.
Praise LOB!
Snob is on a hot streak of form agains!

DerZoots said...

Ooooooh. I was 21 on the 21st.
Numerlogistically excellent.

theEel said...

weed.

MIKE VOID said...

Things white people like = The Great Googa Mooga

McFly said...

When this baby hits 88 MPH some serious shit is going to happen.

Kelly said...

That video reminded me of that scene in Blazing Saddles when they were signing up the bad guys to attack Rockridge.

leogodoy said...

Top 50, I guess...

We had one of those "artisanal cuisine" dorkfests here in Sao Paulo the other day, you can see the results here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCXAbjXzh_o

McFly said...

No. 4 is actually a No. 2. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (you see what I did there?)

Anonymous said...

Bret should have reached over and pinched Runnin' Hottie on her turd cutter and said,(ButtHead Voice) "Hey Baby....you want to feel my bar extension?"

Anonymous said...

The Great Googa Mooga asks: If everybody is a dutchbag, does dutchyness exist or does the world invert?
If Facebook turns everyone (but those over 45) into mindless, oversharing sheeptards, do we lose our authority to govern ourselves? Are The Great Googa Mooga and Facebook 1%er plots to infantilize us and usurp our precious bodily fluids?

Kind of like Nascar and Church for secularists.

Help us, Bike Snob NYC, you're our only hope...here, today, on this blog, until BGW and McFly show up with their schtick.

Babe Winklemen said...

Carbon impregnated human muscular tissue bike frames. Product of China. Nothing is stronger or lighter that human muscular tissues stiffened with propritary meteor derived vunder carbon.

$12,999.99

Order soon as supplies are unlimited.

10% D.D.S. discount.

Fukushima Rose said...

lead panties

Anonymous Coward said...

@McFly, for the bike version, it is 46mph, not 88.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure this made the comment rounds already, but here's something my son found for me knowing my daily BSNYC/RTMS/WCRM reading ritual:
http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nor/2896467643.html

grog said...

Nice day for The Great GoogaMooga.

Gran Fondo in my town too. Also googa moula pay to play, so I did sweet singletrack instead. No bike lanes. No green paint. Just dirt, trees and a deer.

Anonymous said...

Good Lob, how many worshipers perished there? Lob is neither mocked nor eaten. A bad day for Lob.

ringcycles said...

Forget Brett, was the low rise shorts, glistening midriff runner babe actually Kara Goucher? She is hot.

ringcycles said...

@Anonymous Coward: that would make the DeLorean bike's flux engagement speed, and Fred WooHoo speed practically the same; coincidence? Perhaps we've discovered the key to Brett's time travel.

Anonymous said...

Tilford is such a badass he races with a seperated shoulder.

Anonymous said...

Mind Like A Steel Trap Alert!!!only amber...

Anonymous said...

Cheque my cewl Duhlorean bicycle
Hillbombing Pohill, foshizicycle

My ride doesn't cruze
two mile trip keeps away the bluze

sure glad itz made of titanium
because I ran into a B2bers bum

Anonymous said...

What is it with all this skidding malarkey?

Fit a brake, ya fud.

hey nonny mouse.

Dr. Freddly Smugg DDS PHD said...

We here at the Tilford Institute of Higher Douche'ametrics & Anal Retentivation Studies have found that 650mm tubes are easier to cram up 'one's back door' than 700mm tubes. And that Pedro's Syntalube makes this FUNction a lot less painful. So if you are into it for the pain factor then do not use Pedro's Synthalube.

700MM tubular tyres will be covered in our next infofacts report.

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

A little recumbabe is better than none!

The Thought Police said...

Anon 12:15, you signed "Anonymous". How cute. We'll be visiting you tonight.

CommieCanuck said...

Snob, he didn't name the bike the "Delorean" because it was unpainted, he named it that because like the Delorean automobile, this project was entirely funded by cocaine.

DELO BLOW

Anonymous said...

My power meter reads 1.21 gigawatts. AYHSMB!!!

Anonymous said...

All Hail the Bicycle Pub! Man's Greatest Creation!

cycle

http://businessonmain.msn.com/videos/newsonmain.aspx?cp-documentid=30956050&wt.mc_id=msneditorial#fbid=FL0rXcd5fgp

Anonymous said...

presumably you've programmed " the time-traveling t-shirt-wearing retro-Fred from the planet Tridork Bret" with all the first words crossed out into a hotkey on your computer, to save you more time for curating your chamfering knife collection?

Anonymous said...

i would've placed higher but i was stuck to a leg. you know how it goes...


balls®

Cipo said...

Chianti/artisANAL goat provelone flavoured crotchless panties with velcro assisted rear enterance panel ...

Dooth said...

Isn't there a disco song that goes:
"get down
googa mooga googa
get down
googa mooga googa
'cuz we're gonna googa
'til we just can't mooga no more"

leroy said...

I went to ride in Prospect Park Sunday morning because I didn't want to freeload the Gran Fondo ride.

After a little more than an hour or so, the park crew put up a couple of barriers in the middle of the hill on the south side of the park to accomodate the anticipated Googa Mooga crowds.

Coming up the hill on the north side, another rider was complaining to a couple of guys in Grumpy Old Wheelmen of Prospect Park jerseys about the treatment of cyclists.

I chimed in that I thought it was awfully nice of the park to set up cyclocross barriers for us.

That got a chuckle from one of the Grumpy Old Wheelmen.

For me, that counts as a good day.

Also the weather was perfect.

Anonymous said...

"There was a time not too long ago when people thought of New Yorkers as hardy, resourceful urbanites."

Nah, people thought of them as dicks.

Who would've douchebag was a step down?

Buffalo Bill said...

I'm late, had to, you know, number two.

Anonymous said...

You had to take a Budnitz.

mikeweb said...

"I get a lot of funny looks when I pass other triathletes on hills,"

-Arash Guity


Ahh, that kind of douchey fake self deprecating boasting never gets old. I bet he also gets funny looks when they coast by him downhill as he's trying to maintain a cadence of 130 just to get near 35 MPH.

le Correcteur said...

Classic, WRM:
By the way, as far as I can tell, Budnitz bikes are only available via their website, which basically makes them Bikesdirect.com for douchebags.

And I made the top 60!

SaddleAmericana said...

douching out on googa moulah and skid stops into tables—all in a day's work...

Anonymous said...

Don't have to worry about the welds on the DeLoreans seat stays failing because there are none. Dodged that bullet!

Anonymous said...

"He's so attached to his mode of transportation that he also uses it in triathlons. "I get a lot of funny looks when I pass other triathletes on hills," he says.

I bet he does!

CommieCanuck said...

Isn't there a disco song that goes:
"get down
googa mooga googa
get down
googa mooga googa
'cuz we're gonna googa
'til we just can't mooga no more"


No, there isn't.

Freddie Dorkson said...

***ATTENTION Dr. Freddly Smugg DDS PHD LSD***

So what's the dope on schrader vs presta re anal stuffing pain levels?

Sans valve caps of course

Dooth said...

commie
thanks, I needed that.

" now I'm gonna boogie,
'til I just can't boogie
no more"

bikesgonewild said...

...@ anon 12:15pm...hey, pal...schtick it where the sun don't shine - scranus...

Rich said...

Doesn't everyone pass triathletes on hills?

Rich said...

Doesn't everyone pass triathletes on hills?

bikesgonewild said...

...coincidentally, i had my first sexual encounter back in the '60's with a famous old exotic dancer who stripped under the name of "the amazing googa mooga"...

...just sayin'...

McFly said...

Mine was in the back seat of a Mustang with a girl 5 years my elder. It was very mechanical. I always wished it would've been a 5.0, but alas it was just an LX.

mikeweb said...

Virginity Monday? Ok.

A woman 15 years my senior named Mann. Seriously. Mann.

Marcel Da Chump said...

Julia...3 years my senior...artist...marijuana dealer.

bikesgonewild said...

...'cougared'...we all got cougared...

...mine wasn't really with 'the amazing googa mooga' but nonetheless, i did get cougared...actually, a few times through the years whilst still a young man...

leroy said...

Do not believe my dog if he tells you that sex is scary for me because my first sexual encounter took place in the dark when I was alone.

He stole that line from Rodney Dangerfield.

wishiwasmerckx said...

Another Rodney Dangerfield, which I have co-opted as my own:

"Foe sex at my age, I like to have two girls in the bed with me. That way, if I fall asleep, they'll still have somebody to talk to..."

Ba-dum-bum...

Fred Scientist said...

Other than Jan Ulrich's skull and LA's ego Cipo's erect manhood is the hardest human body structure known to science.

Scroaticus said...

I am Scroaticus

Anonymous said...

Bret's first time was, oh wait it has not happened yet. Maybe that's where he is going in such a blurred hurry. He rode right by a scantily clad hot girl.

Anonymous said...

She was (and still is) 3 years younger; parked on a helicopter pad, back seat of a Mini.....

No cougars were harmed etc.....

hey nonny mouse

McFly said...

Got to give it up for Dave Z. If he could only have harnessed the power of Bret to will him up to the crest of Mount Baldy. Mount Baldy? That's what she said. Or if he would have been astride the No. 4 Budnitz with its' ergonomic upright seating position and sensible platform pedals...I mean who needs aero when climbing 7000 feet?

Anonymous said...

Haha! you could not sell that "mooga" stuff to me. In Ojibwe m"moo it means Crap!

bikesgonewild said...

..."...pay to come...why buy the cow"...okay...we're on one kinda role so lemme address the title...

...only once @ the old 'mustang ranch' (now gone) in northern nevada...rite of passage for nor-cal young men 'back in the day'...

...absolutely worth every penny (sorry, local ladies), beautiful young mulatto woman (looked like she coulda played bass for 'the artist formerly known as prince', who actually was still called 'prince' at the time & ya, she had his '1999' tape playing in the background but hey, i digress), great crazy sex & we actually hadda fun time together (believe what you wanna believe - i really don't care but i do have a certain kinda charm) back before we hadda worry about aids...

...of course, every time i, we, you have sex, no matter if it's wife, girlfriend or hooker, we pay a price somewhere down the line (but i digress, again)...

Anonymous said...

On a my GF boat at 15 years of age.. neither of us know what the hell we were doing.. Ah, youth.. wasted on the young.

P. Pilot said...

Palm Pilot

How High Can You Fly?

But you'll never never never ...


aaaahhhhhhhgrrruhhhhhh!!!

Older Slutty Girlfriend said...

You can be a little rougher, you're not going to break it.

bikesgonewild said...

...thank you, baby...i was just getting warmed up & i didn't wanna get too 'over the top' too quickly...i know you've got a long way to go, ya ???...

Anonymous said...

Bathroom virginity quashing with a girl my friend may or may not have been having sex with some time before me.

Anonymous said...

Apparently it takes 10 hours to build up a fixie. What's that 9 hours drinking espresso, 45 mins rooting through a parts bin and then 15 mins building?

Anonymous said...

Can't find any other way of sending this through:

A confused bike salesman (it's gotta be a guy) over here in Australia - you know, the place where newsreaders are sure that the cyclists were asking for that dooring.

http://www.gumtree.com.au/s-ad/logan-area/bicycles/old-school-men-s-26-road-bike-vintage-fixie-great-old-bike-mint-/1002481930

Payday loan online said...

We need to focus on our business to get through those obstacles in our life. In my business- xamina@Payday loans online we have been through a lot before we are successful.

The Great Googa Mooga said...

All You Haters Suck My Epic Signage

Anonymous said...

Forget Bret! What about the babe in the sports bra? I'd like to leave some coconut juice in her navel. I hereby dub her Jane, the SBWHWCRLOMTWSW or the Sports Bra Wearing Hottie Who Can Run Laps On My Track Whenever She Wants.

Alchemist said...

new

Mikey B said...

I heard Googa Mooga is giving the money back. They better be I saw people getting in free and getting to hang out with Patton Oswald. Anyway I am new to Park slope (I am by that round about near the 15 st F train if that helps for perspective.) I'd love people to ride with and a place to store my bike.Oh and please don't give me the Brooklyn line of "just leave it outside" I paid too much to get it stolen or damaged from an attempted theft lol. I have my bike in storage in Manhattan but would like to use it more.

Anonymous said...

Last!

Robert said...

What a stupid name for a festival, really gives off "LOL SOOO RANDUM" vibes

Anonymous said...

HD kaliteli porno izle ve boşal.
Bayan porno izleme sitesi.
Bedava ve ücretsiz porno izle size gelsin.
Liseli kızların Bedava Porno ve Türbanlı ateşli hatunların sikiş filmlerini izle.
Siyah karanlık odada porno yapan evli çift.
harika Duvar Kağıtları bunlar
tamamen ithal duvar kağıdı olanlar var
2013 Beyaz Eşya modeller
Sizlere Güvenlik Sistemleri ayarliyoruz
Arayin Hirdavat bulun
Samsung Nokia İphone Cep telefonu alin.
Super Led Tv keyfi

Amatör Porno - Amcik Porno - Anal Porno - Asyali Porno - Bakire Porno - Erotik Porno - Esmer Porno - Fantazi Porno - Gay Porno - Götten Porno - Grup Porno - Hard Porno - HD Porno - Hemsire Porno - Latin Porno - Lezbiyen Porno - Liseli Porno - Olgun Porno - Oral Porno - Rokettube - Sarisin Porno - Sert Porno - Tecavüz Porno - Travesti Porno - Türbanli Porno - Türk Porno - Ünlü Porno - Yasli Porno - Zenci Porno - Kari Koca Porno - Hayvanli Porno