BSNYC Friday Fun Quiz!

"Puffery."

I only learned what it meant yesterday, but already it's clear that it's the driving force behind the American culture.  Consider this woman, for example, to whom I was alerted by a reader, and who wants $6,000 so she can marry her bicycle:

 

Of course, the first thing I did was show this to Mario Cipollini, and as we watched it together he had only one question:

(Spoiler alert: she doesn't.)

So what do you get for sending this kook on a bike trip?  Nothing!  Well, you get some shitty art or something.  Scoff if you will, but this "puffery" shit works, because she's already made over $1,800--which, I might add, she gets to keep even if she doesn't make her fundraising goal:

The power of puffery is formidable indeed.

Then, while still reeling from that, I saw the following Tweet:

.@bikesnobnyc you should ask the Whitney if they can put your AYHSMB rim in the Biennial, like they did this copycat: http://t.co/Yl5cOAhxDJ
— Alan (@akgerber) February 28, 2014

Yep, someone put some stickers on a fixie wheel and made it into the Whitney:

Not only that, but the New York Times said she's "revitalizing abstract painting" in the process!

“Untitled,” 2013, by Laura Owens, one of the women revitalizing abstract painting.

Wow.  Firstly, what's abstract about this?  It's a fucking wheel.  Secondly, can you imagine what the critic who wrote that would think if she saw the Fixed Gear Gallery?  She's probably shit herself in amazement.

Of course, as the Tweeterer astutely points out, this is a total ripoff of the world-famous and iconic "All You Haters Suck My Balls" wheel, which I first posted about way back in 2008:

(Photo: "Sucka Pants")

So basically, she totally ripped it off, and her only artistic contribution was placing the wheel in front of a hastily-painted banner that looks like it was based on a pair of Jams:

It should be noted, however, that the above is merely a detail from "Untitled" (she couldn't even be bothered to come up with a title!), and here's the complete work:

Which is also a total rip-off, in this case from "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure:"

Which in turn was a Hitchcock parody (well, that scene was, anyway), and thus the snake has devoured its tail.

By the way, she doesn't just do aero wheels, and she's also flirted with box section rims:

Hmmm, now where have I seen paintings like this before?

And that's how you puff your way into the Whitney.

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 whoop-dee-doo, and if you're wrong then you'll see the days when cycling had style.

Thanks very much for reading, ride safe, and may your puffery be fruitful.


--Wildcat Rock Machine

PS: Buy a hat, you lowlives.

Thank you.

(Is this the new doping?)

1) Among pro cyclists looking for a competitive edge, EPO and blood transfusions are out, and __________ is in:

--Foraging for herbs
--Freebasing caffeine
--Huffing gas
--Drinking horse semen

2) These guys are:

--Demanding Citi Bike in Harlem
--Protesting Citi Bike by preventing people from using the station
--Launching a Kickstarter in order to complete the half-finished DayGlo conversion process on that sweater
--Taking this armoire, and that's all there is to it

3) Urban sombreros are out; urban teepees are in.

--True
--False

4) A rider is suing Citi Bike for $15 million because:

--The bikes are too blue
--Using the system caused him to become impotent
--Using the system caused him to lose his senses of taste and smell
--A Citi Bike station in front of his townhouse reduced the home's value by $15 million

5) Why is this woman smiling?

--She got her bike back
--She feels fantastic about being a Portlander
--She interacted with a homeless person and lived to tell about it
--All of the above

("He was giving me the thumbs-up but he didn't really mean it, and that's when I soiled myself."--The Driver)

6) In Portland, flashing an ironic thumbs-up actually qualifies as "road rage."

--True
--False

(Conan O'Brien's doing triathlons now?)

7) A triathlete will get a tattoo on his ass if you buy him a bike for an Ironman.

--True
--False

***Special Cycling American Style-Themed Bonus Video***

Have a delicious weekend.

What are your plans for this weekend? The babies were sick this week, so we're counting on this weekend to be a pick-me-up. My aunt is coming to visit, and I'm excited for the Oscars! Alex and I actually met at an Oscars party seven years ago, so it always feels like an anniversary of sorts. :) Hope you have a good one, and here are a few celebrity-themed posts from around the web...

A song to kick off your weekend.

The Olympics, frame by frame.

The key to a great turkey sandwich.

If "Her" took place in 1995.

Great GQ article about being an Uber driver for a week.

Writing on trains.

Lupita's makeup is always stunning.

Celebrities re-imagined with tattoos.

Is anything cuter than these bloomers?!

Stubbornness can be good.

The 35 orangest men to grace a red carpet.

What if Disney princesses met their princes on Tinder?

Another reason to love Seth Rogen.

The anatomy of a painting.

And congratulations to my friend Gemma on her wonderful new book!

(Photo of Anton's muscles from Instagram)

A phone call with B.J. Novak (!)

I'm so excited to tell you that this week, I was lucky enough to chat with this bearded fellow! Here's how our conversation went down...
Read More >

Put a cap on it!

Did you know you lose 99.9% of your body heat from your head, and if you don't wear a hat at all times you will die?

Well, here's a new hat that may just save your life:

(Get it here.)

That's right, the chapeaumeisters at Walz have engineered a special black-on-black (or "murdered out" if you're a douchebag) BSNYC edition of their Urban Wool cap.  It's subtle--as subtle as the "b" in "subtle."  It's comfortable.  It's stylish on the bike, off the bike, and even during that awkward in-between moment when you're half-on and half-off the bike.  And it tells the world you read the greatest cycling blog ever written, but that you flip over to this blog when the greatest cycling blog ever written is having server troubles.

Buying this hat will solve every problem you have in your life, plus it will make me a rich woman (I'm already a rich man, but I'd like to try being a rich woman for awhile), so buy 500, or just one if you're a cheapskate.

[By the way, now that Walz are offering two BSNYC caps, that means we've technically got a "collection," which means I'm going to have to hit the tanning beds and shoot a "lookbook."]

Of course, I know what you're really wondering, and it's this:

"Will Walz sell me a Bike Snob Daily News cap?"

Remember Bike Snob Daily News?  The one who hated riding a Citi Bike because it didn't offer her the magic carpet ride of her exquisite SE Draft?  No?  Well, I wrote all about her last May, and earlier this week I was feeling nostalgic and read her "review" again.  It's especially funny nearly a year later, since Citi Bike turned out to be a success.  This has required writers like Bike Snob Daily News to find new angles from which to undermine the program, and she's done just that:

(Via Streetsblog)

This is a very cunning article because it:

1) Oxymoronically criticizes bike share because it's been too popular;

2) Associates bike share with the transplanted caricatures who are gentrifying the city into complete and total unaffordability, to wit:

“We need an affordable way to get to work,” said Benjamin Stelly, 24, Buckley’s live-in boyfriend, a studio director who hails from Texas.

Alas, they've played right into Bike Snob Daily News's hands, having evidently rolled up their pants in order to place their feet right in their mouths.  An affordable way to get to work from Harlem?  Absurd!  It will never happen:



Well-played again, Bike Snob Daily News.  I think Spike Lee just read that article and plotzed.  An anti-Citi Bike rant should be forthcoming.  I doff my Walz cap to you.

In other cycling news, Lance Armstrong may have to return that SCA Promotions bonus, but at least FRS drinkers can't sue him because they didn't win the Tour de France:

Court win

While the SCA ruling is a further blow to Armstrong as he faces several lawsuits, a Los Angeles judge dismissed a fraud lawsuit, ruling that he engaged in mere "puffery" and not illegal false advertising when claiming that FRS energy products were his secret weapon for success.

In 2013, Armstrong was sued by a group of FRS consumers who sought more than $5 million from FRS and Armstrong for misleading them into buying their products, which include energy drinks.

Armstrong claimed the products were his "secret weapon" behind his seven consecutive Tour wins when in fact doping was his real secret weapon, according to their suit. The plaintiffs argued that if they had known the truth about his doping, they would not have bought FRS products.

I was shocked to learn that people actually purchased and drank FRS, and I was also amused to note that apparently "puffery" is actually thing:

Puffery is a legal concept that relates to advertising, a notion that companies can make exaggerated or boastful subjective claims about their products and not be held liable for literal definitions about them.

I'm just glad to finally have a word for pretty much every aspect of bicycle marketing, as well as a title for the new magazine I'll be launching:

Actually, depending on production costs, I may go with "Puffery and Fluffery" and include a gratuitous nude centerfold in every issue.

Speaking of puffery, no city likes to puff itself up more than Portland, and a reader recently reminded me of this touching story:

This story hits on every essential Portland smugness story plot point, among those being:

--Person who does not own a car;
--Person who bought bike at co-op;
--Person who completely failed to lock bike and was subsequently crushed;
--Interaction with scary homeless person;
--Touching glimpse into scary homeless person's humanity and subsequent realization that they are people too;
--Renewed faith in a city where, apparently, you can be completely out to lunch and everything will just fall into place anyway.

Of course, it's not all benevolent homeless bike fairies in Portland, and sometimes they have to deal with...Bicycle Road Rage!

It's adorable that The Oregonian thinks any of this qualifies as "road rage," and only in Portland could somebody be threatened by a passive-aggressive thumbs-up:

("His ironic thumbs-up terrified me," said the driver.)

I think Bike Snob Daily News should move to Portland.  She'd be a great fit for The Oregonian.

Playing games at home

During this never-ending winter, we kept getting into ruts at night, where we would make dinner, flop on the sofa and watch TV. But now that we've seen every episode of House Hunters International, we needed something different...Read More >

Today's Wednesday Is Made From 100% Reclaimed Water Tower Wood

Yesterday I tried that Fly6 camera again, and on the way home I figured I'd try it on the front of the bike for a change:

I had to put it upside-down in order to account for the fork angle, and I wouldn't use it at night because few things annoy me more than "light salmon" (people who use red lights up front or vice-versa), but otherwise it worked fine, because why wouldn't it?

One or two commenters yesterday expressed a wish to see actual moving footage, and once I've wrapped my tiny mind around how to edit and upload short videos maybe I'll do that, but in the meantime I can assure you that you're not missing anything.  For example, the most exciting thing that happened to me on my return trip was that I dropped a bag of chips:

They fell out of the pocket of my Inspector Gadget jacket, forcing me to turn around and rescue them from the wheels of an approaching Subaru.

Then, when I got home, the cat used the Fly6 to take a "selfie:"

Coincidentally, this is also the very first thing I see every morning, which is why I'm slowly unraveling.

By the way, what with the Internet age and the global appropriation of "messenger culture," "urban cycling," and all the rest of it, there is only one (1) remaining style of bicycle that is (at least as far as I know) unique to New York City, and that is the food delivery bike:

New York City food delivery bikes tend to be mountain bikes or hybrids, and the GT "triple triangle" frame is especially coveted.  The extra-high "cat in heat" fender and taped frame are typical hallmarks, but this particular bike had a couple of interesting features.  Firstly, it had a side-pull brake conversion in the rear:

And no front brake at all in the front:

I may sound like I'm being catty (again with the cats?) but I'm totally not, because again I think these bikes are probably the last remaining bit of cycling uniqueness in New York City.  Even our bike share bikes are the same as everyone else's (apart from the sponsor):

(Same bike, different bank.)

There was a time when a bike with super-narrow handlebars and a front Aerospoke was a uniquely New York bike, but that was many years ago, and the style has since gone global and is now pretty much completely out of style--though you do still see it in barf-worthy promotional videos:


Patagonia Bowery Surf Shop NYC from Indoek on Vimeo.

Look at those bars!  I've written with pens longer than that.  Seriously, what year is this?!?

Though I guess you need bars that narrow to clear those bollards at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge:

Couldn't be more than five feet, after all.

Still, if your handlebars are shorter than your brake lever, get longer handlebars:

Wait, why am I even saying this?  Nobody does this anymore except for him.  Take his friend, John the Baptist, for example:

He rides a skateboard:

And what about his other friend, Jason Schwartzman?

He also rides a skateboard--but it's a tiny skateboard, which has a secondary use as a doorstop:

And together, they all work at the Patagonia store, which is what this video is promoting:

I'm old, so this is incredibly fucking depressing.  See the black awning currently shielding the John Vulvanus store?  Well, that was once CBGBs, which makes the Patagonia store what was, in my day, the "CBGB Record Canteen:"

(I could not for the life of me find a photo of the CBGB Record Canteen, so here's an older picture without it.)

Look, I know things can't stay the same, and admittedly the Record Canteen was a poor business model.  See, it was foolish to buy a record before a show, since if you brought it inside it would get smashed.  And while theoretically you could always buy a record after the show, the fact is that when your ears are ringing that loudly it's hard to think about buying records.  It's kind of like shopping for wine with a hangover, or browsing the Nashbar closeouts after a 140-mile "epic."  Sure, if you're really far gone you may be up for it, but most people just wanna go to bed.

Now, though, you can go to that same storefront and buy a surfboard from "reclaimed water tower wood:"

And they'll put your surfwax made by a husband-and-wife team in Red Hook in an artisanal reusable shopping bag:

Then after work they'll go surfing:

And camp out on a rooftop:

Inside a ready-made designer teepee:

Yeah, seriously:

No wonder Spike Lee is so angry.

Speaking of the globalization of pretty much everything, the New York Times is onto fat bikes now, which means random people at work are going to start asking you about them:

Where trails are too soft for regular mountain bikes, or too sparse to protect skiers from subsurface obstacles, fat bikes are filling a gap. Riders do well on mixed terrain, including on trails where the snow is too thin for skiing and on south-facing pitches where dirt is exposed during a low-snow winter. “It’s opening a new way to be outdoors,” Chris Estrem, a Ketchum physical therapist, backcountry skier and world bicycle traveler, said. “It’s made me a better mountain biker. I want to ride it all the time. I love it.”

Apparently, they're taking off in Idaho because there hasn't been enough snow to ski.  Meanwhile, here in New York we need them this winter because there's too much snow, which means the fat bike is now the official bike of climate change, and thus the final harbinger of the apocalypse.

Who'd 'a thunk it...