Special Lies: Innovate or Don't.

I used to worry about the future of humanity.  War, climate change, dwindling natural resources, the endless proliferation of flavored vodkas...  It seemed like we were all on a highway to Hell in a flaming Prius with failing brakes, the stereo playing the breathy musical stylings of John Mayer in a futile attempt to distract us from our imminent demise.

Now I realize I was wrong, and that design douches in colorful studios will soon solve all of the world's problems.  Consider the Clug, which purports to solve the eternally vexing problem of bicycle storage:



Apparently, these particular design douches couldn't find a place for their bikes that didn't block either their ugly painting or their useless tchotchke shelf:

So they had a brainstorming session ("brainstorm" is a euphemism for "circle jerk") and came up with the idea for the Clug:

(Drawing things first legitimizes them, especially if there's a coffee mug nearby.)

Of course, any design douche solution has to perform an identical function to an existing product, only it has to do so far less well.  In this regard the Clug is a resounding success, since it does exactly the same thing as a typical bike hook, which is to say it grasps a bicycle by one wheel and holds it to the wall:

Except unlike the hook it currently only fits skinny tires, and it's not strong enough to get the bike up off the floor where it's out of the way:

(Always a good idea to hang your bike in a doorway.)

Unlike the pathetically unfashionable hook, which allows you to keep your bikes higher up on the wall, thus making it easier to sweep, mop, or vacuum, and also freeing up valuable floorspace for whimsical tchotchke hutches, mid-century modern credenzas, and other forms of home decor:

Unfortunately, regular bike hooks are only rated for uncool low-end mountain bikes and come in a very limited variety of colors, so they're not really a viable option for today's cyclists.

Perhaps most irritably, the Clug is nothing new, and I have almost the exact same thing in my broom closet where it's gripping my Swiffer®:

(All You Haters Grip My Swiffer.)

Alas, I cannot take credit for the installation of this device, for it was already there when we moved in.  (The clip, not the Swiffer.  That's the "Pro SL" model with the titanium shaft, too, it cost me $750 not including the custom fitting.)

Nevertheless, despite all these shortcomings, they've already raised a shitload of Canadian dollars:

I guess I can just go Clug myself.

Speaking of marketing, I recently received the following email:

Hi,

My name is Carlo and I work in the community outreach team at Tug Agency for momondo.com, a new flight comparison site.

We’ve produced a video about New York bike messengers that may be of interest for the readers of BIKE SNOB NYC. Part of the “100 subcultures” campaign, the video describes the scene, everyday life and challenges of the bike messenger community in New York City with beautiful images and in less than 1 minute.

You can find the video here and if you think it’s worth sharing on BIKE SNOB NYC, please let me know and I will send you the embed codes.

Many thanks for your time and hope to hear you soon

Carlo

Alas, I was torn.  On one hand, I did not want to help the Tug Agency give one of their clients a little tugjob by promoting "momondo.com," the new flight comparison site I don't give a flying fuck about.  On the other hand, I did watch the video, and it's completely idiotic, which of course made it worth sharing on my blog, because if nothing else I consider myself a "curator" of bicycle-themed idiocy.  Fortunately, I am also a brilliant hacker, so ultimately I was able to obtain the so-called "embed codes" for the video without first asking Carlo for them--and here it is:



This is top-shelf filmmaking by someone who is clearly intimately involved in the world of the New York City messenger, and I especially like the part about how messengers "whiz down concrete stairs:"

It may not surprise you to learn that bike messengers don't do a lot of whizzing down concrete stairs, inasmuch as most concrete stairs in Manhattan lead only to subway stations--unless they mean "whizzing" in the sense of "urinating," in which case, yeah, a stairwell is as good a place as any to take a whiz.

So what do messengers do when they're not pissing in stairwells?  Well, they're also "cementing a curious bond with the concrete jungle they are kings.  Of."

The narrator, it should be noted, also has a curious bond with the English language.

"The image of a 'ruth-less' renegade moving wildly through traffic is gone," the narrator continues.

So what has become of them?  Are they now merely ruth-less renegades waiting patiently for the subway?

In fact, it's even more complicated:

"They follow a new code, to go with the flow of traffic, bothering NO-ONE."

Really?  I hadn't heard that, and apparently neither have the hordes of salmoning messengers I see on a daily basis.

"If you ever get lost in New York City," the narrator concludes, "THESE are the ones you ask for directions."

Translation: messengers are mostly white people with liberal arts degrees now, so you don't have to be afraid of them anymore, assuming they look like this:

(Never trust whitey.)

Wow, the Tug Agency is sure worth whatever monomondo.com is paying them, and I imagine this tedious, wildly inaccurate, and subtly racist video that has nothing to do with air travel will go viral and send profits into the stratosphere.

Meanwhile, in California, a "safari style nomadic village needs a bathroom/shower trailer to be able to host bike tourists camping on farms and wineries"--or, to translate from the Kickstarterese, some hippies need themselves a shitter:



I was freaked out by the California vibe and the banjo accompaniment and suspect this may be some sort of cult, but I was intrigued by the bathroom/shower trailer, so I checked out a website and learned that I myself can easily become a bathroom/shower trailer entrepreneur:

It seems fairly clear to me that I need to order a Clug, hang up my blogging wheels with it, hook my Big Dummy up to one of these babies and get into the toilet-schlepping business.  Actually, I can't believe someone's not already doing this in Portland.  You have to figure that as the operator of the world's only human-powered bathroom you'd make your entire year's nut during the Cross Crusade alone!

Sure, it would be more of a challenge in New York City, though I'd probably do pretty well if I scored a big client like the Five Boro Bike Tour or the Gran Fondo New York:

(A relieved Fred emerges from the Bike Snob NYC Velo-Latrine.)

Or, as I call it due to its URL (http://granfondony.com/), the "Gran Fondony" [GRAN Fon-DO-ny], which sounds like something you might order at an airport Sbarro:

(A half-eaten and abandoned Sbarro Gran Fondony, its erstwhile owner already furtively depositing flatulence into an airplane seat cushion.)

This year's Gran Fondony took place last Sunday, and it's a testament to my profound isolationism and dedicated Fred avoidance that until yesterday I had no idea that thousands of Freds had amassed mere miles from my home--though as careful as I am not to cross paths with other recreational cyclists I did encounter a different group ride on Saturday.  I'm not sure who they were, but as they approached me their leader shouted out, "BIKER UP AHEAD!!!," and the rest of the group responded by swerving wildly and very nearly putting themselves in a ditch.  Also, at least one of them was wearing a Reddit jersey, so evidently membership in the club required being a gigantic nerd.

Anyway, back to the Gran Fondony, if you want to know who got crowned the World's Greatest Fred, here's the finish line video:

(Instant online results are no longer enough, we now need finish line video.)

Pending the drug test, to the victor went whatever the spoils were, while the rest of the Freds were forced to compete for scraps:

Beautiful Red Lips in Gran Fondo - m4w (Gran Fondo)

Can't get the picture of you out of my mind. Cutting through Rockland on your bike. Deepest red lips. Pow right in the kisser Alice!!!
Tell me what I do for a living and I will treat you to a drink or 7 or 12. Once tipsy who knows.

Yes, when it comes to pickup lines, women love a timely spousal abuse reference.

Simplification by Complification

Well, the EPOGEN® Tour of California came to a close yesterday, which means that Cannondale can finally remove the picture of Peter Sagan's schlong from their website:

(Via a Twitterer.)

I'm not sure why the site designers didn't Photoshop that out, unless it wasn't there in the first place and they Photoshopped it in.  Either way, this look says it all, though exactly what it's saying is subject to debate:

Admiration?  Jealousy?  Lust?  A heady mélange of the three?

We may never know.

In any case, I watched roughly forty-five seconds of this year's race--inadvertently, on a TV in a deli, during that small window before the owners notice that a bunch of European guys are riding around California with salsiccia in their pants and abruptly change the channel--and from that forty-five seconds, I was able to conclude that my sandwich was delicious.  As for the race itself, I learned nothing, so I checked the Internet when I got home and found out that this guy won it:

(Sir Bradley Wiggins was recently knighted for being the most English-looking person in Britain.)

Who then celebrated by attempting to open a bottle of Napa Valley Sparkling Wine Product:

(Sir Bradley Wiggins demonstrating the upper body strength for which road cyclists are famous.)

He failed, though not for lack of trying:

(Sir Bradley Wiggins contorting his noble visage in a baronial grimace.)

Anyway, with the Tour of California now over, I can finally turn my attention back to ignoring the Giro d'Italia, which is currently being led by:

[Consults popular search engine.]

This guy?

That can't be right.  He retired years ago!

Speaking of bygone eras, remember when people used analog u-locks which they opened and closed using these things called "keys?"  Idiots!  Now we've evolved, and the discerning urban cyclists accesses his or her bicycle using keyless entry:

A reader alerted me to this last week, and I did include it on Friday's quiz, but this product is so life-changingly revolutionary and utterly scrotalitarian that I felt it warranted closer examination.

Firstly, its called the "Skylock," which should not be confused with the "Shylock:"

(That guy from that thing as Shylock.)

Shylock, of course, is the controversial crowdsourcing app with which cyclists can search for new bike loans from other cyclists willing to lend them money, and it's been heavily criticized for its often usurious interest rates, as well as drawn the ire of the Anti-Defamation League for its branding:

(Not sure why the filthy contents of his craven Jew sack don't include "endearingly neurotic Hollywood leading men," but then again I'm not a cartoonist or a neo-Nazi.)

No, the Skylock is the new lock which will forever save you from having to reach into your pocket for a key, because instead all you have to do is reach into your pocket for your phone:

See how much easier that is?*

*[Disclaimer: it's not any easier.]

Also, the battery never runs out, because it has a solar panel:

("I charge mine with the rays of sunshine that come out of my ass!")

This is a great design, because Skylock's market research has revealed the following facts:

1) Nobody keeps their u-lock in the bottom of a dark bag when they're not using it.  Instead, 99.9% of cyclists polled hang it on a clothesline in a patch of sunlight where petunias grow and bunnies frolic;

2) Nobody lives in a part of the world where it ever gets cloudy or dark, or where they do most of their bike-locking during the evening hanging out with friends at bars;

3) Nobody who commutes to work ever locks their bike at an indoor bike rack in a parking garage or similar structure;

4) Battery-powered accessories are always fully charged whenever you need them, which is why when you roll up to the bar after dark and remove your u-lock from your bag for the first time in a week it will always be totally operational;

5) The same principle that governs #4 also ensures that your phone is always fully charged and never runs out of juice after a long day or at an inconvenient moment.

6) Even if your phone battery were to somehow die, would you really want to be able to unlock your bicycle?  Of course not!

7) Keys are stupid because they work all the time, even if a cloud of smog envelops the Earth and blots out the sun, and all the world's wireless networks fail simultaneously.**

**[This could easily happen as a result of the international Zionist conspiracy.]

But wait, there's more, because the Skylock will also tell you if you're bike's getting stolen:

This is an indispensable feature, because when you receive the alert and run outside to find the bike gone without a trace (apart from the broken Skylock on the sidewalk) you'll know that it was stolen--whereas, with an old-fashioned analog u-lock, you might waste hours wondering if maybe you hadn't ridden your bike that day after all and trying to remember where you parked your Hyundai.

Okay, I did lie a little bit, because with the Skylock you don't necessarily have to fish your phone out of your pocket.  You can also turn on the "proximity" feature and access the bike by waving your groin near it:

(Can't wait until everyone in Brooklyn is gyrating in front of their mail-order bicycles like they're using invisible Hula Hoops.)

Also, if you don't have your phone, you can "enter a code using the capacitive touch pad:"

Congratulations!  You just bought a $150 combination lock.

Oh, here's that touch pad in action:


You should finally have access to your bicycle in 15 to 20 minutes.

Then, when you crash into a mailbox, it will inform you that you have in fact crashed:

After which it will ask you if you need help:

If you confirm that you do need help, it will take you to the Obamacare website where you can search for a health insurance policy, and if you refuse help you hereby waive your right to sue Skylark.  If you don't press anything, Skylock automatically cues up your pre-selected iTunes "crash mix," and you'll slowly bleed out and die to soothing musical accompaniment.

Best of all though is the obligatory social networking component which allows you to lend your bicycle to others:

Because it's way too difficult to just hand someone a fucking key.

Sharing a bike, huh?  If only there were some system that allowed people to access bicycles in various parts of a city whenever they needed them...

("Don't.  Even.  Say it.")

Oh well, guess it will never happen.

BSNYC Friday Fun Quiz!

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How Awesome I Am Part II: The Search for Humility

Yesterday I talked about how inventive I am, and as it turns out my inventiveness is so profound and far-reaching that my coverage of it must now enter a second day, for a Twitterer just alerted me to this:

Don't Salmon, Don't Shoal: Learning The Lingo Of Safe Cycling http://t.co/W7e9OrWXXu
— NPR News (@nprnews) May 15, 2014

As we already established, I singlehandedly invented the term "salmon" in the context of cycling.  Sure, some of you doubted the veracity of this claim, but I forgive you, since I know how the mind of the cyclist works.  Allow me to explain:

See, inherently, we all have a little bit of the retrogrouch in us, and therefore we refuse to acknowledge innovation.  This is why when a company starts touting its 650b mountain bike, some grizzled guy in jean shorts and sandals has to pipe up with: "New?!?  Ha!  We were riding singletrack on Dutch city bikes back in the early '60s!"  Similarly, when I assert my claim to the term "salmon," invariably someone's going to question the term's provenance and start up with the old "Bah!  You think you invented 'salmon?'  That's what we used to yell at those idiots riding Dutch city bikes on the hiking trails in the early '60s!" routine.

But yeah, the point is I invented "salmon."  I also invented "shoal:"

Got anything so say about that?  Of course you do, and I can already see the comments:

"You invented 'shoal?'  Humbug!  Back when I was riding with the Bumshtuppers Cycle Club out of Texassippi City, East Dakota, we used to say 'shoal' all the time.  We also used two-speed thread-on freewheels that you had to shift with a broomstick, and we used to have to stop and repack them every three miles or else they'd seize up and turn into fixed gears."

Be that as it may, it's abundantly clear to me that I have singlehandedly invented what no less an organization than NPR calls "the lingo of safe cycling," and it's both a blessing and a curse--and the "curse" part has nothing to do with the fact that they don't credit me anywhere in the article:

I don't mind this for three reasons:

1) True geniuses are seldom appreciated in their own time;

2) I am nothing if not benevolent, and these terms are my donation to our culture.  If you like, think of me as a literary philanthropist.  (Or, if you don't like, think of me as a giant douchebag.);

3) It makes me proud that my inventions are so popular it doesn't even occur to people to wonder about their source.  We take them for granted, as well we should.  Similarly, back in the 1500s, someone started using the latin word "scrotum" to mean "purse-like tegumentary investment of the testes and part of the spermatic cord; the cod," but we don't worry about who this person was before we say it ourselves, do we?  No we don't.  We just use the word freely, marveling in its utility, and occasionally modifying it ourselves to form new words such as "scranus," "scrote-face," and "scrotalitarian" (a superlative roughly equivalent to "epic" or "awesome," which I just now invented).  Then, as these words are used more and more frequently they too enter the lexicon, and this ever-evolving adaptability is what makes the English language so scrotalitarian.

No, the "curse" part is that I invented these words so that bike dorks like us could simultaneously chuckle over and vent about the behavior of our fellow cyclists.  I did not mean for "The Man" to use it to keep us down and excoriate us for our "bad behavior," nor am I proud to have inspired an entire genre of tight-ass journalism.  This isn't to say I find the NPR article objectionable, because it's mostly pretty good advice, though the writer clearly does not grasp the etymology of "shoal:"

Shoaling: A shoal is a school of fish. Or a collection of cyclists at a red light. That's where shoaling happens. A cyclist comes up to the light, eyeballs a cyclist already there, thinks, "I'm faster than that person," and moves ahead.

But who can truly judge a cyclist's speed potential? Maybe the person you've shoaled is faster than you and will want to pass you once the light changes. To avoid triggering such unnecessary passes (not to mention road rage), "it's safer for people to wait at the light with everybody else and make the pass in the lane," says Billing. Or if you're really in a rush, just ask the other cyclist: "Hey, I'm late, is it okay to get in front of you?"

A shoal is not a school of fish.  The correct term for a school of fish is "a school of fish."  A shoal is basically a sandbar, and it's a gradual accumulation of sand and sediment carried and dumped by a body of water.  Having basically grown up on a great big sandbar myself, I observed that cyclists deposit themselves at intersections in a similar fashion, ultimately forming long shoals that extend into the crosswalk and beyond.  I understand cyclist behavior because I'm more than just a bike blogger.  I'm a naturalist.

Actually, now that I think about it, my childhood on a giant sandbar also allowed me to watch horseshoe crabs humping, so next time you see a bunch of cyclists standing around without first getting off their bikes, go ahead and feel free to call it a "horseshoe clusterfuck:

(They're "doing it.")

They're particularly common at non-competitive group ride rest stops:

(Horseshoe clusterfuck.)

Though you'll also see groups of four or five fixie riders forming them outside of bars.

[Fun Fact: Horseshoe clustefucks are a leading cause of "chainring tattoos."]

What's particularly vexing about the immense popularity of my terminology is that there's not a similar taxonomy for drivers.  All bike month long it's salmon this and shoal that, but I have yet to see the mainstream media come out with an article imploring drivers not to be scrote-faces.

Then again, I suppose we don't really need to discuss drivers in terms of subtle gradation, since we can paint pretty much all of them with the same roller:

"Assholes."

In fact, I had something of a revelation this morning, when it occurred to me that, when you look at the vast transportation landscape, the one common denominator is this:

Drivers are assholes.*

*[In this case I'm defining "asshole" as a profoundly selfish and/or unaware person who thinks nothing of engaging in behavior that is highly likely to kill somebody else.]

I know this because I'm a naturalist and an observer, and I use various means of conveyance in my native environment, during which I carefully study the behavior of other road users.  Basically, across all transit modes, the only road users who are consistently assholes are drivers.  Here's how it breaks down:

Cycling

Who I encounter while cycling:

Pedestrians

Other Cyclists

Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes salmon and shoal and form horseshoe clusterfucks outside of porta-pottys.

Drivers: They use their metal shitboxes like a coked-up porn star uses his dick, they fling their doors open into you, they harass you, they yell obscenities and slurs at you, and sometimes they run into you, lie about what happened, and don't get in trouble for it, and if you're lucky you don't die.

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction.

Other Cyclists: Sometimes I have to slow down, change direction, or yell out, "Heads up, scrote-face!"

Drivers: If I survive, it makes me feel like a coked-up porn star tried to rape me.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Annoying

Other Cyclists: Annoying

Drivers: Assholes

Walking

Who I encounter while walking:

Other Pedestrians

Cyclists

Drivers

How they behave:

Other Pedestrians: Stop short, walk slowly, fan out three or more abreast, blow smoke in my face, spit, jiggle with each footfall, stand there drooling on their cellphones, ask me for directions when the thing they're looking for is right in front of their goddamn faces!

Cyclists: Whiz by you when you're crossing the street, and occasionally when you're on the sidewalk.

Drivers: Run red lights while you're crossing, bear down on you when you're in the intersection with the right of way crossing with the light, roll stop signs while you're in the crosswalk, "salmon" (damn right drivers salmon!), reverse down the entire street at 40mph for a parking space (a form of salmoning), park wherever the hell they want, hit you and leave you to die, and if they're caught they lie about it, which absolves them completely.

How this behavior affects me: 

Other Pedestrians: Not that much.  Sometimes I have to walk around the jiggly people and the three-abreasters (usually the same people actually).  The worst is the the asking-for-directions thing, in which case they're robbing me of my valuable time, which is why instead of giving directions I usually hand over a dollar and ask them to fuck off.

Cyclists: It makes me want to take pictures of them and ridicule them on the Internet.

Drivers: It makes me feel like I'm getting face-fucked by a horseshoe crab.

What this makes them:

Other Pedestrians: Annoying

Cyclists: Annoying

Drivers: Complete Assholes

Driving

Who I encounter while driving:

Pedestrians

Cyclists

Other Drivers

How they behave:

Pedestrians: Sometimes do stuff like walk out in front of you while drooling on their cellphones.

Cyclists: Sometimes salmon or run red lights.  (You don't really notice the other stuff when you're driving.)  They can also be kinda hard to see at night if they don't have lights.

Other Drivers: Don't stop at stop signs, drive drunk, run red lights, cut you off on the Deegan at 95mph, don't go when the light turns green because they're drooling on their phones, make U-turns in the middle of intersections, honk at you the second the light turns green, honk in traffic even if the reason for the traffic is that someone's lying in a pool of their own blood, honk at everything, take forever to park, double-park wherever and bring traffic to a halt...

How this behavior affects me:

Pedestrians: Very little.  Sometimes I have to slow down or change direction slightly, which is effortless in a motor vehicle.

Cyclists: Very little, because if anything bike salmon are only annoying if you're also on a bike, and as often as cyclists run red lights I really don't notice it while I'm driving.  (Probably, you know, because they run the red lights when there are no cars coming.)  They should use lights though.

Other Drivers: I pull over in front of a church or house of worship (ironically one of the few places you're not allowed to park), drop to my knees, and pray for them all to die.

What this makes them:

Pedestrians: Mildly annoying at times.

Cyclists: Mildly annoying at times.

Other Drivers: Fucking assholes.

In conclusion, while we're all annoying at various times, it's only the drivers who are full-on assholes no matter how you're getting around--even if you too are driving.  In fact, they're even annoying if you're on the subway, where you think you'd be safe from their molestation, but you'd be wrong.  (And yes, I left out other road users such as motorcyclists, longboarders, Rollerbladers, Segway riders, ElliptiGO users, equestrians, and so forth, but I don't have all day, so here's a dollar and you know what you can do.)

Lastly, this Wall Street Journal report made me want to cry:

It's official, we have reached Peak Fred.