Anals of Commuting: The Indignity of Trying to Share a Bike

("No Dial Tone" should replace "In God We Trust" as our national motto.)

I love Citi Bike.

In theory.

In practice, however, I'm trying really hard not to fucking hate it.

Consider yesterday.  It was cold.  Cold enough to freeze your bike's nuts off:

Though I don't use mass-produced nuts on my bike.  Instead, I "curate" my own artisanal bicycle testicles from veterinarian-quality Neuticles:

(Yeah, that's a fake dog ball.)

In any case, all of this is irrelevant, since I didn't have my bike with me yesterday.  Instead it was just me, a pocket full of Neuticles (sung to the tune of this hateful song), and various errands to run.  Things were going well--for awhile.  Then, I got greedy, and attempted to shave a few minutes by taking Citi Bike instead of the subway.

Well that was a mistake.  First of all, I didn't have any gloves with me, which I certainly can't blame Citi Bike for, but I will anyway.  (You know, because they're blue.)  "Big deal," I said to the pedicurist as she tended to my cuticles.  "I can ride for ten minutes without any gloves."

Minutes later, I was flying down 5th Avenue, one frozen hand on the bars and the other in my pocket, thawing and fondling my Neuticles.  Then, once it thawed, I'd put that hand on the bars and thaw out the other one.  The worst part about all of this alternating was that whenever a cabbie cut me off I didn't have a hand available with which to give him "the finger."

By 23rd Street or so my game of rolling pocket pool was no longer working and the only way I was going to thaw out my hands was either by going inside, or else by slicing open a dog and warming my hand in its guts.  Scanning the sidewalks for unattended dogs tethered to street signs, I didn't find any, and fortunately for just about everybody I eventually made it to my destination and immediately remembered why I hate Citi Bike, which is that there's never anyplace to put the fucking things when you're done with them:

So there I was with a pair of frozen hands and a goddamn stupid Citi Bike, unable to go inside.  But then--a Festivus miracle!--I noticed an empty dock:

So I docked the bike.  It didn't take.  I docked it again.  No good.  I rammed it and rammed it and screamed, "Take it!  Take it, you fuck!"  But alas, it was broken, possibly the victim of vandalism judging by the condition of its touchpad, and certainly no better now for all the ramming to which I'd subjected it:

So back on this stupid piece of shit bike, and off to the next dock, which was also full:

And by the time I found an actual functioning station with an actual functioning dock that was actually empty I was nowhere near where I needed to be and I'd spent more time that I would have on the subway--which, it should be noted, is also toasty warm, and the only people playing pocket pool are the perverts.

Again, I love Citi Bike in theory, and it seems to remain extremely popular, so I hope they keep it and expand it, which probably they won't.  But at this point I can't imagine I'm going to renew my membership, because apparently I'm the unluckiest schmuck on earth when it comes to Citi Bike, and I get dockblocked and flim-flammed pretty much every time I attempt to use it.

In fact, the sad irony is that I'd have had an easier time parking an actual car than I did docking that fucking Citi Bike, and I'd have wound up much closer to my destination to boot.  It's important to note that I don't feel this is the way it should be; rather, it's just the way it is, because the city, state, and country subsidize and masturbate motorists at the expense of everybody else.

Also, we've got all these bike lanes now, which means there's plenty of free parking for cars at all times:

But I should stress yet again that I remain pro-Citi Bike.  I mean, even if I don't renew my membership and never use it I still want it there.  More bikes is more better, after all.  I feel the same way about nature.  I like trees and animals and stuff, but that doesn't mean I want to fuck around with them.  Sleep in a bag in a tent if you want, but I'll stick to my mansion, thank you very much:

(I find the scent of chlorine soothing.)

Meanwhile, over in London, Barclays is going to pull the plug on their "Boris Bike" sponsorship:

Barclays is preparing to ditch its controversial sponsorship deal for Boris Johnson's flagship bicycle hire scheme, delivering only half the £50m the London mayor had claimed the bank would pay.

The bank's logo has covered thousands of "Boris bikes" since the scheme began in July 2010, for a promised total payment of £50m, in an arrangement that has drawn criticism over the manner of its awarding and the modest sums raised for widespread branding across the capital.

Barclays' decision comes in the wake of increased public concern about cycle safety in London, with a mounting death toll. In July, Philippine De Gerin-Ricard, a 20-year-old French-born student became the first person to be killed riding a Boris bike.

But don't worry, British cycling clothing company Rapha is in talks to take over the sponsorship.  However, this will necessitate some reduction in the system, which will go from 570 stations with 8,000 bicycles to three (3) custom steel race bikes, as well as one (1) grainy video per annum.

By the way, it's been remarkable to see how completely Rapha have taken over the Fred market, and when I venture out onto 9W (the local Fred corridor) I never cease to be amazed at how that vaguely fascistic-looking arm band has become the new US Postal jersey:

You can't tell me you haven't noticed.

Anyway, since we're talking London, I'm not sure why the bike share system can't just be Dumpsters full of folding bikes placed every half-mile or so.  Londoners are mad (mad, I tell you!) for folding bikes, and since the bicycles themselves occupy a place in the material spectrum somewhere between umbrellas and actual bicycles I think having what amounts to giant communal umbrella stands all over the city would probably work out pretty well--provided they also offered the requisite high-vis vest:

(Mad, I tell you!)

And yes, I can assure you people would not be tempted to keep the bikes.  Take it from me.  I have a folding bike, and I'm about as attached to it as an empty MetroCard.

Alas, I can't say I'm too optimistic about the future of everyday bicycle cycling in big cities, particularly here in New York:

For the city's bike culture to continue to grow, Mr de Blasio's administration must not only be as supportive as the Bloomberg administration but as competent. There are doubts, not least because Mr de Blasio received strong support from the taxi lobby. But if the bike lanes are allowed to fade, there will be a reaction from the increasing number of city cyclists and their supporters. While attention is now focused on who will head the police department, and then education, a large group also awaits word of Ms Sadik-Khan's replacement. In the meantime, they're watching the writing on the road.

Yeah, we're screwed.  De Blasio is totally a lackey of the leg-severing taxi lobby, who actually have money, and he knows that all you have to do to get the bikey vote is give them spoke cards, since they're mad (mad, I tell you!) for spoke cards:

Ironically, 75% of people riding around with Vision Zero spoke cards are still registered to vote at their parents' houses in Connecticut.

Really, my question isn't whether or not de Blasio will let the cyclists down, because I'm reasonably sure he will.  Instead, what I really want to know is, "Can I have your mountain bike?"

TinkTailSold 

Hi, Mr. de Blasio.
If elected, will you ever bike to work?

deBlasio 

Unfortunately not, but let me tell you a story and I'll explain why I give you that answer. In 1990, I was in Seattle with my brother Steven, and we both bought mountain bikes, and we went on an amazing bike trip through western Montana, which is a really beautiful place… best seen by bike. Then I brought my bike back to Brooklyn, and although there were a few years when the kids were younger when I used it a lot, in recent years I almost never have used my bike. That's the sad truth. So I don't think it's likely I'll be using it to get to work, although I really appreciate and admire people that do, And I want to make it easier for people who do.

I mean, come on, it's not like you're using it.

Lastly, awhile back I declined to accept a pair of pants from Swrve, and evidently they still haven't gotten over it:

A while back, we saw the Bike Snob suffered yet another crotchal region blow out of his cycling jeans (they weren’t from us) and thought we’d blow his mind with the amazing prowess and durability of our Cordura Jeans so we tweeted him an offer for a free pair. As longtime fans and purveyors of his books, it would have been an honor to know he was roaming his new suburban home in a pair of our jeans.

But alas, he declined in favor of a cycling kit kilt and we’ve been stuck with a pair of jeans of in need of a home ever since.

So come on down to our pop up shop and win the jeans* the Bike Snob didn’t want!

Wow.  So my apparent loss is your gain, but anybody who would be honored to have me in their pants is deranged.

Anyway, I didn't mean anything personal about it.  I've just reached that sad point in life when I can no longer get excited about pants.

***Gratuitous reminder you can now order a Walz/BSNYC Hat-'N-A-Book Combo for the holidays, get used to it!***

This Wednesday, Treat Yourself To Something Nice.

Yesterday I wrote all about clothes, and then I got this email from Outlier:

Hey Bike Snob,

We used to think we wanted perfection, but what we really want is the transcendent. We want to make clothing that transcends the bullshit of the market. Clothing that transcends the disposability of fast fashion and the exclusivity of luxury. Transcends the unnecessary divisions between functional and social, between urban and outdoor, nature and technology, work and play.

Sorry, what?

Let's read that again:

We used to think we wanted perfection, but what we really want is the transcendent. We want to make clothing that transcends the bullshit of the market. Clothing that transcends the disposability of fast fashion and the exclusivity of luxury. Transcends the unnecessary divisions between functional and social, between urban and outdoor, nature and technology, work and play.

Yeah, no, I still don't get it.

Apparently they don't either, but they've made a t-shirt in the meantime, and it costs about $100:

We're still a long way from home on this journey but if we have anything to show for it, it's the Ultrafine Merino T-Shirt (and V-Neck). A simple t-shirt made from 17.5 micron merino, nature's finest performance fabric.

There was a time not so long ago when I thought the cotton t-shirt was just about the most basic and versatile garment ever invented, but evidently I was wrong by a dozen or so microns and about $80 or $90.

"But merino doesn't get stinky!," someone will no doubt point out.

What?  Who cares?  What the hell ever happened to doing your goddamn laundry once in awhile?!?

By the way, I don't mean to pick on Outlier, who are a local concern and do very good work.  (Three years ago they gave me some pants and they're still going strong, though I have no idea how the pair they gave to my erstwhile intern are doing, since after scoring free pants and a free bike he pretty much disappeared.)  It's just that I am who I am, I smell how I smell, and that's that.

Hey, for me, splurging on a t-shirt means buying one that doesn't come in a three-pack, but I seem to be part of an increasingly small minority.

Speaking of yesterday's post, I also mentioned my massive urban cycling "street cred," and yesterday I cycled urbanely all the way to Brooklyn, a borough whose "street cred" is rapidly going the way of the t-shirt three-pack.

It was blustery, like an aging blogger complaining about artisanal t-shirts (only with cold air instead of hot), and so I elected to ride my Fred Sled since I wanted as little bicycle as possible to slow me down.  This is a pretty accurate representation of how I was riding:



Except that suddenly, in the middle of Manhattan, my tire exploded with a mighty BLAM!, and when I stopped to examine the damage I found a gash like a bass mouth (or at least what I imagine a bass mouth to look like, because it probably won't surprise you to learn that I don't fish):

(To spare you the sight of my disgusting fingernails I've used Technology to give myself a French manicure.)

Anyway, I'm generally pretty good about scanning the pavement ahead of me and avoiding anything big enough to do that to a tire, but not this time.  You might think I'd be annoyed, but a flat like this is oddly satisfying.  No searching for some tiny bit of metal lodged in the rubber, no inflating the tube until it is comically oversized and trying to hear the soft hissing of the puncture over the sound of traffic, no irritating pneumatic ambiguity.  Instead, the tire's fucked, and that's that.

So what did I do?  Well, needless to say, given my massive "street cred" I simply sewed the casing back together with dental floss, booted it with a MetroCard for good measure, put a new tube in there and was on my way.

Just kidding!

No, fuck that.  It happened about a block and a half from a bike shop so I bought a new tire.  Not only that, but the guy in the shop offered to actually put it on the bike, and as an "urban cyclist" with massive amounts of "street cred" I was horrified at the idea of having a bike shop install a tire for me, but the guy was so goddamn fast that the "No, thank you" was hardly even out of my mouth before the tire was on--label perfectly aligned with valve stem no less--and he was kicking my ass out the front door.

The rest of the day passed without incident, apart from the legions upon legions of fuck-tarted motorists doing stuff like running lights, preening and de-lousing their pubic thatches while idling in bike lanes, and drifting across multiple lanes of traffic while communicating in a series of grunts with their fellow fucktards on their mobile phones.

By the way, I think the cabbies have been emboldened by the fact that they let that leg-severing driver off, because I watched one of them attempt to run a red light at a major intersection and he only stopped after being shouted at by the all the pedestrians already in the crosswalk.  So I figure it's only a matter of time before they start driving around with leg talismans on the hood, like Vyvyan in "The Young Ones:"

But make sure you don't ride your bike while playing music, because they'll put you in jail:

 

Silly cyclist!  You're only allowed to play deafeningly loud music from a three-ton SUV with tinted windows, everyone knows that!

In other news, ever since the first caveman installed a primitive hinge in a coconut shell, humankind has dreamed of perfecting the foldable helment--and now one man in a city with a big Ferris wheel believes he has finally done it:



Here it is folded and looking like a plastic fish:

Though I notice there are very few pictures of it actually unfurled and atop someone's head, possibly because it will make you look like your head is being humped by a plastic armadillo:

Given the London bike share system is sponsored by Barclays, I'm surprised they didn't just attach a helment to every bike with a ball chain, like they do with the pens at a bank.

Speaking of London, the city is reeling from a recent series of cyclist deaths, and mayor Boris Johnson is on the defensive:



Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, says cycling in the capital is 'getting safer' despite a spate of fatalities. Johnson insists that London has seen an overall decline in the number of cyclist deaths since he took office. The mayor says he will consider banning lorries from driving in the capital during peak hours

I'm sure many Londoners are angry with him, but if it's any consolation, most American mayors would rather be caught smoking crack than considering putting any additional restrictions on truck traffic.

Same goes for Canadian mayors, but that's obvious.

My Wednesday Is Your Wednesday.

Well, winter is fast approaching, and you know what that means:

Every crappy periodical in New York City has to run through its backlog of stupid bike articles before the big freeze.

To that end, New York, which is a magazine about New York City written entirely for people who live in Westchester, has run this hard-hitting exposé on how many cyclists don't stop at red lights:

On a recent afternoon, we sent Daily Intelligencer intern Nikita Richardson to the relatively quiet Soho intersection of Greene and Prince to surreptitiously observe what bicyclists did when confronted with a red light.

Poor intern Nikita Richardson.  Three pedestrians killed in New York City by drivers on the sidewalk on Monday alone, and this putz Dan Amira has her standing outside the Apple store counting bikes.  So what did she find?

In the time she observed the intersection, only 13 out of 89 bicyclists on Prince Street stopped for the red light, a total of 14 percent. 

Big deal.  Back when I had a real job I used to ride through that intersection daily on my commute and I always saw drivers going through the red light after it had changed, just like they do at every intersection in the city--but of course Dan Amira didn't have Nikita the Intern count any of that.  Instead, he made up some bullshit about how motorists don't run red lights until he was forced to append this correction because evidently they run over a million red lights a day, which surprised even me:

*The sentence "Few motorists would dare blow through a red light, even if it appeared safe to do so" has been removed from the second paragraph. A 2000 report indicates that drivers in New York City run 1.23 million red lights each day, which is more than a few. 

Moron.

If Dan Amira had been investigating the Watergate break-in with Woodward and Bernstein he would have been the one sending an intern to find out if anybody stole any towels.

Speaking of hard-hitting journalism, a number of readers have written to let me know that Competitive Cyclist has interviewed the "Assos Man:"

Conspicuously absent was a question about how many carrots you have to eat in order to turn bright orange, though they did ask him this:

Over the course of your modeling career with Assos, we’ve seen some amazing poses, with my favorite being the invisible cycling position pose. Could you walk me through a typical photo session? What level of collaboration is there for creating the aesthetic of a shoot?

Let us just say that the poses came about in a far more natural way than one would think. The reality is that my job is more mannequin than model. My role is more technical than aesthetic. It is of fundamental importance to Assos that their clothes are shaped for the cycling position and not for standing up straight. So, we have always tried to create photos that respect this. Erwin, of course, needs to not think about me, but about the product, and how the photos can be used in catalogs and on the website without having to retake them all.

Right.  "Natural way," huh?  That makes sense.  So I guess they fed him a lot of binding foods and just Photoshopped out the toilet later.

Anyway, cute idea and all, but wake me up when they interview this guy:

Over the course of your modeling career with Wikipedia, we’ve seen some amazing poses, with my favorite being the one where you're standing there dolefully, your arms just hanging by your side like a couple of dead wiener dogs. Could you walk me through a typical photo session? What level of collaboration is there for creating the aesthetic of a shoot?

I ache.

End scene.

In other apparel news, clothing company Outlier sent me a promotional email with the subject line "Doublebag It," which I only opened because I thought it said "Douchebag It:"

Hey Bike Snob,

It's the traveling time of year, when the seasons get deep, the deep get packing.

We made the Doublebag as a simple way to separate your clothes while traveling. A lightweight supplex bag with openings at both ends and a movable partition in the middle to keep your dirty laundry from spoiling your clean. Dirty laundry in one side, clean in the other. Once you start using it you may well find it an essential travel tool. 
WWW.OUTLIER.CC/DOUBLE

A $50 bag to separate your clean and dirty clothes while you're traveling?  What do they think those plastic bags from the deli are for?  I'm perennially amazed by the anal retentiveness exhibited by urban males of the gentrifying class.  Outlier should follow this up with a $100 sanitary "ass gasket" made from high-performance technical fabric for use on airport toilet seats.  Actually, it could be part of a whole kit, and it won't be long before travelers in the Jet Blue terminal are entering the men's room with so much hygienic equipment you won't know if they're going to "drop a deuce" or deliver a baby.

Of course, if keeping your clean and dirty clothes separated qualifies as a major problem in your life, you'd probably be at home in Portland, where a reader informs me the cycling community has hit a metaphorical bump in the road in the form of a handful of literal bumps in the road:

There are five bumps placed about two feet apart and they're made up of thermoplastic strips about an eighth-of-an-inch think. That might not seem very high, but on a bicycle the bumps can definitely be felt — especially for riders with narrow tires. We've heard a lot of feedback so far that not only are the bumps jarring but many people swerve into the adjacent vehicle lane to avoid them.

Here's one critique cited in the article, in which someone who clearly reads too much "Bicycling" magazine thinks his aluminum frame isn't laterally stiff yet vertically compliant enough for this new piece of road furniture:

I commute on my trusty aluminum frame road bike and feel every last bump on the new rumble strip, so count me in as someone who swerves to avoid them; I think if they weren't quite as bad I might slow down instead. I asked a friend and she tells me she hates them (and she added an unusual expletive to quantify the extent of her hatred).

As intrigued as I am by that "unusual expletive" (Was it "frumunda sauce?"  Because that would be pretty unusual), I'd think Portlanders would be excited about this since it would give them all excuses to run out and get new custom Breadwinner steel artisanal commuting bikes specially designed for smoothing out speed bumps.

Then again, this being Portland, it seems to me they could have come up with a much better solution for slowing down cyclists as they approach a shared sidewalk--namely, a cyclocross barrier that would force riders to dismount.

Anyway, I'm sure they'll figure it out, because they always do.

Then they'll have a theme ride about it.

Meanwhile, here in New York City we don't need speed bumps because they're built into our shitty infrastructure:

Girl with glasses and awesome bike who fell infront of my house - m4w (BedStuy)
You fell on that gnarly section of Lafayette by Nostrand. I didn't see you fall, I just saw you sitting there with your bike lights still on looking pretty dazed, and I got you a rag for your face blood. Anyways, is your shoulder still messed up? You should sue the city so they finally fix that section (it's been messed up since I moved here), that would be rad. Email me and let me know if you're okay and not missing any teeth or anything, for someone who just fell off their bike you seemed pretty cool.

"Face blood," eh?

Good thing she crashed in front of a doctor.

BSNYC Friday No Quiz, Just Depression Because I'm Bummed Out And So Should You Be!

Another day, another child killed by an Escalade:

But, you know, it's the victim's fault because she wasn't holding mommy's hand:

The girl was not holding her mother’s hand as they crossed the street near 5th Avenue and 55th St. in Sunset Park around 3:15 p.m., sources said. The little girl drifted into traffic and was crushed by a white Cadillac Escalade, sources said.

So, take a deep breath and say it with me now:

No criminality suspected!

Now, I may be suspicious by nature, but when I see a little girl dying in the street I actually do suspect criminality.  I know, call me crazy, right?  So I looked more closely at the picture:

First of all, the windows on that car are more tinted than Lindsay Lohan's sunglasses, which is illegal in New York City.  Fine, not a smoking gun, but it's a start.  Next, I looked up the license plate number, which is also legible in the photo.  The system only gives you information on parking tickets and red light camera violations, but I found that this particular vehicle had received three tickets for not having a valid inspection:

The most recent of which was issued this past Saturday:

I considered the possibility that maybe I'd looked up the wrong plate, but the system is pretty clear on the fact that these tickets were issued to a white Cadillac.

Okay.  Even though we're talking about a dead child for fuck's sake, let's give the owner the benefit of the doubt.  Let's say after last Saturday's ticket he went and got his car inspected, and so he was operating his car fully legally when he ran over the child.  (You know, apart from the windows.)

No.  Fuck that.  I'm pretty confident that tub of shit Escalade should not have been on the road.  And I don't want to let the driver off the hook here, but I also suspect that if they'd towed the shit tub after that third ticket it would now be sitting in the impound at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and not on top of a dead child.  If someone can't be bothered to get their potentially deadly $60,000 car inspected in two weeks then they shouldn't be allowed to have it.  At the very least, you'd think that a dead child would be more than enough to arouse suspicion of criminality, and that maybe someone would, you know, look into it.  I found this stuff in about 19 seconds while sitting around in my underpants drinking coffee.  What else was he doing wrong?  Are we not even going to investigate the possibility?

I'd love to see a mayor with the balls and/or vulva to admit that if you cracked down on all the assholes with expired inspections, no insurance, suspended licenses, out of state registration to save money when they actually live in New York, and so forth, you'd take a shitload of dangerous drivers off the road.  Three tickets for no inspection?  Tow that shit!  "Oh, boo hoo, it's hard having a car in New York City."  No shit, asshole.  It should be hard, and if you can't hack it then don't drive.  You're asking a lot of the city and its residents to accommodate your car.  You should be creeping around town at 20mph with your valid paperwork on hand at all times, petrified at the idea of making contact with anything.

Sadly, instead, all you need to do is strap on your stupid bumper protector, mash your foot to the floor, and let everyone else clean up after you.  It's actually surprisingly easy to own an operate a car in New York City, even if you do it by the book.  You can park your car for free here, which is insane.  Even if you get a parking ticket a month you're getting the deal of the millennium.  Market rate for real estate in Brooklyn is something like $750 per square foot, so you do the math for what a parking space is worth.  (No, seriously, please do the math, because I can't.)

Also, look at this car:

I have a car.  I've pretty much always had one in New York City.  It's registered and insured--to me, at my current address.  Ironically, the reason I've always had a car is that I'm a cyclist, and I wanted to be able to get myself to races.  (Bike racing makes you do really dumb stuff, like shave your legs, spend stupid amounts of money on crabon, and own a car in New York City.)  Also, like many bike dorks, I like operating vehicles with wheels, and I actually enjoy driving.  (You know, open road driving, not city driving.)  Therefore, I like to be engaged in the act of driving while I'm doing it.  My car has a manual transmission.  It has four doors and a hatch, but it's small (miniscule by American standards), and it's pretty low to the ground.  If I go over a bump I feel it.  The engine is small (miniscule by American standards), but with a manual you can work the motor hard when you need to, and anyway, any car that can carry three cars on the roof at highway speed and still have a little left over is more than enough power in my Haggadah.

On my recent vacation to Mt. Tampon, I rented a car, because you can't really get around there without one.  The car was what is called a "compact crossover."  Yeah, "compact" my balls.  (Actually, please don't compact my balls.)  I was sitting higher than I would have been on the roof of my own car, which made anything happening in the immediate vicinity of the vehicle ambiguous at best.  The windows had a slight tint to them which made me feel like I was driving stoned or wearing sunglasses at dusk.  Besides that, the stupid shape of the windows made visibility poor, and I really couldn't see out of the rear window at all.  Hence, the car came equipped with a backup camera system.  Holy shit, is that weird and annoying!  Forget being detached from the driving experience--it's like wiping your ass with a series of levers and pulleys.  (Or an "aubesian"--which, come to think of it, would make a great model name for a "compact crossover.")

Seems to me you should need to get a special license for any vehicle that requires using a fucking camera to operate.

Anyway, I fucking hated this car.  I especially hated it the couple of times I had to drive it into the city when I had to drive this stupid loaf with its poor visibility through intersections and crosswalks.  It was like walking around in a fat suit.  And then I look at that white tub of shit, which could easily drive over my rented "compact crossover," and all I can think is no fucking way.  Giant trucks driven recreationally without inspections in the second-most populated county in America?  (That's Brooklyn.)

Yeah, no shit people are getting killed.

In any case, sure, I guess I'm part of the problem with my car and my free parking and all the rest of it (uh, my car's OK, but any car bigger than mine is BAD!), but you have to wonder when, how, or if people are ever going to refuse to accept that it's okay to kill people here with a car.  Even I didn't think about it that much before starting this blog.  Hey, a story like this may ruin your day, but at least it didn't ruin your life.  (Yet.)

On a lighter note [SMILEY FACE!!!] Robin Williams went on the "Daily Show" and talked about riding bikes:


Not sure about the helment crap or the little "push-them-off-their-bikes" gesture Jon Stewart made, but this is about as enlightened as bike-related conversations get in mainstream America.

It's Wednesday Which Means The Week's Effectively Over At This Point So Why Even Bother?

As I mentioned, I've become a Satanist, so yesterday evening I cued up the old Slayer record and laid out some firm tofu to sacrifice to my Dark Lord.  Just as the twin-pronged guitar assault of that guy and that other guy reached a fever pitch, the room filled with smoke and Satan Himself appeared before me, resplendent in a flannel shirt from Uniqlo and a fetching hat made from a dead baby.

Anyway, long story short, it turns out Satan actually doesn't care much for Slayer, and His two favorite artists are in fact Billy Joel and Vampire Weekend.

He did like the tofu, though.

Also yesterday, I made the bike commute, and with my recent vacation still fresh in my mind I saw the city with new eyes--and those eyes wanted to cry because holy crap what a dump:

Every so often I'd look down and see the dust of Mount Tampon still clinging to my bike and this would elicit yet another wave of heaving sobs:

I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that there were actual legal mountain bike trails just over the highway, but then I remembered that last time I'd ridden on them I'd interrupted an anonymous sexual encounter, and between that and the preponderance of human feces I've sort of crossed it off the list.  (Well, off the riding list anyway.  It's still tops on my list of places to go for "down-low" sex tinged with the odor of human feces.)

Oh, also, we have these new lime green taxis now:

The deal with these is they operate uptown and in the "outer boroughs" where yellow cabs fear to tread, and they are allowed to pick up street-hails, which the old-fashioned car service technically can't do (but often does anyway).  They're called "Five Boro Taxis" or something like that, and while the one in the front is a real one, the one directly behind is an impostor that is cunningly painted in a similar hue, which seems to be what a number of car services are doing now.  In any case, if you travel mostly by bike none of this is likely to affect you, apart from the fact that the new color is much easier to spot when they're double-parked in the bike lane, which is where livery cabs spend 75% of their time.   (The other 25% of their time they spend actively trying to run you over.)

But while the streets of New York are a bit of a let-down from the slopes of Mt. Tampon, there's still nothing quite like riding here, because in the course of an ordinary commute you're likely to see global events unfolding right before your eyes.  (Unless your commute takes you through Brooklyn, which is basically now just Portland with shittier drivers.)  For example, the United Nations General Assembly is currently assembling here, and all over midtown police are using their laser vision to make sure young women aren't secreting weapons in their undergarments:

Yes, it's that magical time in New York City when, for a week, you're actually more likely to get run over by the armored Maybach of a visiting potentate en route to a strip club than by a taxicab or limousine ferrying cocaine-addled investment bankers to a strip club.

The other hallmark of the General Assembly is that the drivers start complaining:

(OK, this is from last year, but whatever, it's the same this year.)

All due skepticism of the United Nations as an organization aside, these people actually have some pretty important stuff to discuss, so it's the height of arrogance and stupidity when some putz from New Jersey gets his khakis all in a bunch because it's harder for him to drive his SUV to his job doing who-gives-a-shit for who-gives-a-fuck.  Obama may be clogging up traffic for a few days with his motorcade and his "Audacity of Hope," but I'd argue that the "Audacity of Fucktardation" that most of these drivers subject us to on a daily basis is a far greater inconvenience for the people of this city.

Also, compounding all of this is that we're also in the midst of Sukkos Mania!, and Mitzvah Tanks are thundering through the streets and spewing out Compulsively-Observant Jews who then engage in a sad parody of revelry, as if partying lamely in ill-fitting black suits is somehow going to convince other people to join them:

If you want to know what's happening there, basically Compulsively-Observant Jew #1 leaves the Mitzvah Tank with his tickle-stick and joins Compulsively-Observant Jew #2 by the Cabinet of Dr. Caligaristein, DDS (also known as the "sukkah").  Then, they both step inside, and the giggling begins.

Incredibly, I survived the General Assembly, Sukkos Mania!, and all the usual fucktardation (some of it mine, I did almost crash while using my smartphone again) and got to where I was going.  Then, at one point in the day, I looked outside to check on my bike and saw that someone was loitering on it:

It's one thing to just lean on a bike rack and inadvertently touch the bike, but this fucker is holding my lever, and I'm pretty sure the other hand is on the saddle too:

I'm not particular about my bike, but this goes way beyond familiar.  This is like chatting up someone's wife with your hand on her breast.

But, you know, it's okay because he's smoking, and he's probably talking about art:

Fucking Brooklyn.

Anyway, as soon as I saw this I ran outside and unlocked the bike, and the smoker apologized with what seemed like sincerity, so all was well.

Plus, the joke was on him anyway, because that's the lever I operate with the hand I use to "adjust myself" while I ride, and I never wear gloves.

(Come si dice "frumunda" in inglese?)

Speaking of that bike, it's my travel bike, and a few (well, maybe two) people have asked about it in the comments, and even though I'VE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THIS I'll go through it again, partially because I'm too lazy to find the old posts in which I described it, but mostly because I'm a bike dork at heart and kind of like talking about this stuff:

The bike is a Surly Travelers Check, which is just a Surly Crosscheck with S&S couplings, which are the things the green arrows are indicating.  Surly no longer offer the Travelers Check as far as I know, and indeed mine has like a hundred feet of headset spacers because they didn't have many frames left and I got one that was a little on the small side.  (I knew I could make it work, and when it comes to packing bikes I figured smaller is better anyway.)  I think there are other bike companies that offer S&S couplers as an option, and obviously you can always get a custom bike with them or get your favorite bearded framebuilder to insert them into your steel bicycle for you.

Ritchey/Dahon also have a bike that comes apart in a similar place, but the joint seems very dainty, and I'm not sure how the tiny screws would hold up under repeated fastening and unfastening, though for all I know my concerns are unfounded.  I do think it would be nearly impossible to strip an S&S coupling.  Most importantly, a Crosscheck (which is basically what it is) seemed like the best bike for travel, since you can do a Fred ride on it with skinny tires, or else put these on it and you've practically got a mountain bike.  (Also, horizontal dropouts, singlespeed if you want, blahblahblah.)

Here's the case I use:

It's unwieldy when you carry it like a suitcase, and I once wore it as a backpack with the bike inside and almost died.  However, the advantage is that it's soft, so once the bike's out of it it's light and you can fold it up and stow it.  (Theoretically you could put the bike together at the airport, throw your stuff in the case, and ride to where you're going.  I've never done that though, because there's a time and a place for taxis and trains, and that place is the airport.)  And most importantly, it meets the airline standard for regular luggage, so I just check it through without telling them there's a bike inside.  To date, I have not incurred any oversized luggage or bike fees.  (It weighs something like 42lbs with a bike, accessories, shoes, and suit of stretchy bike clothes inside, and I think the airline cutoff is usually 50lbs.)

The bike gets scratched in the case, but I don't care.  Sometimes the brake levers get knocked out of whack in transit, but that's a thirty-second fix.  Sometimes too the wheel needs a bit of truing, but that's a five-minute fix.  Here's what I have to take apart to get it in the case, not necessarily in this order:

--Undo the S&S couplers
--Undo the cable couplers
--Remove rear derailleur from hanger (just in case)
--Remove pedals
--Slide stem off steer tube, loosen face plate so I can rotate the bars a bit for optimum stowage
--Pull seatpost (obviously)
--Remove bottle cage
--Remove wheels (no shit)
--Remove skewers from wheels and air from tires

And I think that's pretty much it.

I like the bike so much I not only travel with it, but also commute with it now that I live in the almost-suburbs and prefer to ride something a little more efficient than my old city bike.  I also use it to go recreational bicycle cycling on mixed terrain (to the extent you can do that in New York), and have even used it in a cyclocross race--and while I finished pretty much DFL, I wouldn't have finished any better on a crabon bike with Dugast Flying Douchebag tires and dick breaks anyway.

The only problem with the bike is it needs a compact crank, because when I put it together I was still delusional.

I think that about covers it.  Happy travels.

I love you.


--Wildcat Rock Machine

Really? It's Too Early For This Crap.

Like most people, it takes me awhile to warm up in the morning, and a lot of shit has to happen before I'm ready to face the world.  I need coffee.  I need an elaborate rum-based cocktail, such as a mai tai.  I need a bowl of Lucky Charms, which I enjoy on the toilet.  Finally, I take a leisurely walk around the grounds of my estate while dressed like a country squire, and only then am I able to conduct business with a clear head.

Sometimes though, I make the mistake of checking my email or my Twitter before I've done all of these things.  This was one of those mornings, and as I futzed with my phone I found a Tweet from this fucknugget:

@bikesnobnyc Bikes in NYC are a big problem. Take a look at this report. http://t.co/EAL7PKgwQX
— PoliticalSub (@PoliticalSub) August 6, 2013

"Who is this putz?," I wondered, and so I checked out his other Tweets:

Evidently he'd been spending the morning Tweeting at everybody about his stupid video.  It's annoying enough to wake up to some mushy shitbag singing about how he hopes cyclists "get hit by a car and die:"

(Mushy shitbag.)

But it's twice as annoying when he's crowing about it all over the Internet, like some fuckwitted hybrid of Paul Revere and Mark Russell.

Anyway, I would have ignored all of this, but then I checked my email and there he was again:

All of this before 8:00 in the fucking morning!  Yeah, I see what he's going for here, but I really don't take kindly to shitty comedians hoping I get hit by a car and die before I've even had my fucking coffee.  Here, watch it again, and try not to want to punch everyone in it in the mouth:



"Who is this asshole?," I wondered, and so I inserted my Google Ass. (Yes, I made the first group of testers for Google Ass, which is the suppository version of Google Glass.  It's a little uncomfortable, but the upside is that nobody knows you're using it on the subway.)

"OK Ass," I intoned, "Who is Todd Dakotah Briscoe?"

Here's what my Ass told me:

People may complain about cyclists in this city, but you know what's an even bigger nuisance?  Talentless NYU graduates who move to Brooklyn and desperately wave their hands for our attention by wishing us dead as they struggle in vain to land a gig on the "Daily Show" or SNL.  Too bad he doesn't realize there's a serious fucking problem in this city with drivers killing pedestrians and cyclists and subsequently receiving what amounts to police protection after doing so, especially since he should know better:

He’s especially interested in telling stories about characters from diverse backgrounds and stories with positive portrayals of the LGBT community.

Wishing cyclists death by car is about as funny as wishing members of the LGBT community death by hate crime.  And since nobody with a brain thinks either of those things is even remotely funny, I don't think this video is going to go very far to advance his comedy career--though it might land him cocktails with that faghag Dorothy Rabinowitz.

Anyway, I certainly don't hope Todd Dakotah Briscoe gets hit by a car and dies, but I do hope he gets priced out of his shitty Crown Heights apartment, has to move to Amsterdam to join some stupid improv group that does lame English-language sketch shows for stoned American backpackers, and then he gets hit by a bakfiets and breaks his toe.

Still, I suppose listening to "Daily Show" rejects wish death upon you is better than being garrotted while you're riding, which a reader informs me has nearly been happening in Northern Ireland:

Mountain bikers using Gortin Glen near Omagh have reported that they are encountering dangerous obstructions across their trails.

Omagh mountain biker Noel Mullen, who uses the glen's trails, said the first traps began to appear about a year ago.

At first, mountain bikers found trees had been pulled across the trails.

But more recently, ropes and fishing line have been found, some tied at head height.

"We would be coming down the trails at 20 mph and there's no way you'd see the fishing line until it's too late, until it gets you," Mr Mullen said.

"If it hit you in the throat and you were going at 20mph, it would seriously hurt you, it would slice you open.

Awful.  You know who thinks that's hilarious though?  Fuckwit here:

Anyway, I can't help wondering if these booby traps are the work of the International Recumbent Conspiracy:

First they create a climate of fear, and then they tell you that on an offroad recumbent you'll limbo right under those deadly fishing lines--or at the very least you'll kick them out of the way with your feet.

Yes, cyclists face many dangers: murderous drivers, wilderness booby-trappers, bike thiefs, shitty comedians...  Fortunately, another reader tells me that the Transit Police in Boston may have found the solution to some or all of these problems, and this solution is cardboard police officers:


“We’re not tied up taking stolen bike reports here so we are more available to respond to more serious crimes that require a police response,” Silen said.

We totally need this in New York City, because if the police don't have to take stolen bike reports they can spend their time doing more important work, like ticketing cyclists.  Actually, I don't think it will be long before the NYPD starts placing cardboard police officers every 20 feet in the bike lane.  Then, when you swerve to avoid it, a real cop will write you a ticket for leaving the bike lane.  Still, I may make up one of these myself and place it next to my bike whenever I lock it.  I think an "offroad version" would also work for thrwarting mountain bike trail booby-trappers.  It could look like Sasquatch--or, even more frightening, Dorothy Rabinowitz.

(How quickly would you void your bowels if you saw this in the woods?)

Anyway, good job by the local news in Boston of totally blowing the cardboard cutout thing.  Now that they know it's fake, those thieves are going to be all over those bikes like Todd Dakotah Briscoe on a cronut.

Lastly, here's an important announcement via Craigslist:

hipster girl wants to makeout with dirty hipster boy - w4m - 25 (bk)

thick, heavily tattooed hipster girl who is phd track is looking for a heavily tattooed hipster boy to neck w... hopefully you have tattoos, ride a bike, love making out, fingering and eating pussy if it gets that hot and heavy and just grinding on eachother.. i have d cups, a bigg ass, wear a lot of skirts and dresses, am very smart and cute, have my chest and hand tattoos and am looking for a cute boy around my age in brooklyn to make out and hangout tonight and through the summer hopefully.. any takers?

You can get a PhD in track?