chris@canootervalve.com

Trial by Water, and One of the Places I Work

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Oct 262012

Any thought I had of making it through a Portland winter without getting soaked to the core were quickly dispelled on my thirteen mile ride home last Tuesday. The rain started in earnest about a quarter mile from work and varied little the whole way home, allowing me to achieve that unique sensation of feet literally suspended and floating inside my shoes. Big thumbs up to the Showers Pass Elite 2.0 Jacket, though. Glad I bought local on that one.

Speaking of local, BRAIN was in town recently and included a stop at our brick and mortar store, and a little conversation with The Main Man about that store (which shall remain nameless, lest Google insert its ads here on my blog ’cause of something I did, thereby causing a rift in my personal space time continuum). It’s complicated.

They also mentioned Velotech, the parent company. Check out the article if you’ve ever wondered what I do for (part of) a living. There are some other great projects, of course (I’m involved in many things, not even counting my performance enhancing drug, bovine growth hormone powdered shake, and pro peloton bullying enterprise and the skate shoes I sew myself from the pelts of roadkill to sell on Etsy) but Velotech’s the day job. Reading about it in BRAIN’s article probably won’t shed any light on what the company actually is, but it’ll at least put you confusion at exactly the same level as that of my friends and immediate family. Just what is Velotech? Even though of us who work there only know that our jobs seem to involve bicycles.

Have to give a shout out to The Main Man for working an Amazon throat punch into the interview. If there’s one thing that brings all of us together–ecomm bike shops and brick and mortars alike–it’s hating on Amazon and what they’re doing to the bike industry and countless others. Jay is always on point, throwing elbows like a boss. Add his mega-nerd programming skilz, and yes sir, I will go into battle with this dude. Even against the dark, unstoppable armies of Amazon. Let them may rain hell fire down on us. After a winter commuting in Portland, fire from the sky is starting to seem like a good time.

Faceblock

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Oct 252012

I manage some corporate Facebook pages–nothing overly elaborate–but a few places where companies can keep fans updated on events, share media with customers, and offer support and advice. Basic communication.

I’ve advertised with Facebook, too, though “sparingly” doesn’t begin to describe it. Plenty of people have told me how awesome Facebook advertising really is, and I’m sure for some businesses it makes much more sense than others, but I also think plenty of businesses mistake “Likes” for “sales.” They are, in fact, distinct. Facebook is rarely your main sales tool. It’s a means of staying in touch with your customers.

At least, until recently.

So the other day a co-worker alerted me to a little rant originated by George Takei (yes, that George Takei) about how Facebook has started changed companies to actually communicate with their fans. Basically, posts were reaching only a small percentage–about 15%–of fans, but you could pay Facebook to have them reach more.

Checked into it. Seemed true.

Then there was a post from someone purported to work at Facebook explaining that it was all a misunderstanding and that posts pretty much always reached only a small percentage of fans, and the advertising was a way to ensure you reached more.

This appeared legit, but of course didn’t square with reality. So you’re telling me a dude who signed up to pay attention to my page is ignoring my posts, but will click on an ad or something for them?

Lot of fuzzy undefined things there. In fact, Facebook definitely was trying to encourage page owners to pay to promote posts, but were they blocking fans otherwise? If so, this would have to be something they’d just started doing after Zuckerberg’s shareholders had realized they owned part of the world’s biggest free waste of time. Which meant we should have befores and afters, right? Companies that had measured their reach and watched it suddenly drop–like right before they started being asked to pay to promote their posts.

Where were those?

Apparently, they’re out there. And pissed.

Does Facebook own the rights to distribute your Facebook shit? Absolutely. Total dick move to play that card? Completely.

Interesting to see where this all goes.

$32,500

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Oct 242012

I don’t get it.

No, seriously. It’s easy to make fun of UBC’s $32,500 fixed gear bike because it’s ridiculous. But it’s also fascinating that a company would choose to put what’s apparently mammoth levels of materials technology into a fixed gear bike, and that it would do the rounds on sites like FastCompany.com without anybody really talking about what it’s supposed to do so well.

What’s it supposed to do?

Selling the Drama

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Oct 232012

At this point the seemingly endless descent of Lance Armstrong’s character has started to seem a little overwrought. Hardly two minutes consecutive go by without Undead Armstrong staggering back across the world stage, fueled by lord only knows what and strung together with money and rubber bracelets. Most people in the cycling world have long since passed the “acceptance” stage and are ready for Armstrong to just please go away.

But Lance just doesn’t roll like that.

Increasingly, what’s become apparent in all the rush to strip Armstrong of his titles and place in cycling’s history is that here we have an individual who does not go gently into that good night.

No, this is far from over, and the real speculation now isn’t whether Armstrong will disappear from the world stage, but rather how famous he’ll continue to be. Just think of the many upcoming story lines we have to look forward to.

Claiming to Be Broke
Finding Jesus
Reality TV

In fact, the more we see of the post-bullshit Lance Armstrong, the more we realize this is an individual who’d be willing to bring down his entire Livestrong organization, before becoming an obscure and forgotten man.

Why? Because Lance Armstrong’s kind of a psychopath, and, as a very interesting article on Salon.com recently pointed out, psychopaths have a way of taking over.

You should check out the article itself, but one short interpretation suggests that, among other things, psychopaths are simply willing to say and do things that are way beyond the pale, in order to get what they want. They make dime store narcissists and megalomaniacs look downright self-deprecating. Armstrong is one of those guys.

Case in point: he could have made a hell of an effort to save Livestrong by putting as much daylight as possible between himself and the organization. But that never happened, and it never happened for one reason: because Livestrong is all about Lance Armstrong.

It’s why some supporters are asking for their money back and calling the entire organization into question. Livestrong shouldn’t have had to repudiate Armstrong’s actions; he should have distanced himself from the organization completely the minute he became a liability.

But he didn’t. In fact, I don’t recall hearing an apology anywhere in there from Armstrong. At the very least, he owes a dozen personal ones, but all total, he owes many millions more.

Repurposing

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Oct 222012

I’ve long been fascinated with the interesting world that is the fine line between fashion and bicycle manufacturing. Some pretty interesting business models exist there, including yet another shit-bike configurator I discovered yesterday. This one’s German, which means the site selling you $150 bikes for $1000 is clean and slick. You can choose your very own shit saddle and shit stem and shit bar, allowing you to create the ultimate personalized colorway on your ultimate personalized shit bike.

But I’m awarding the lifetime achievement award for turd polishing to SohoFixed.com. From what I can tell, their business model should be the envy of every shop rat and struggling store owner in the world.

Check out the dumpster salvaged bike up top. Apparently, that particular bike was just sold by SohoFixed.com for about $800 U.S., approximately $683.23 more than it was worth. Based on the general condition of components in the detail photos, it’s pretty clear these bikes are being built with used parts. But I suspect SohoFixed had gone even bigger than most when it comes to rebranding shit bikes as high fashion. Free Wal-Mart quality frameset? Check. Parts from the “$10 or Less” bin at the local bike shop? Check. Bike mechanics? Not so fast, there, big spender. Something about the way the bikes are looking–and that’s cleaned up for the photo shoot, mind you–suggests SohoFixed.com might have achieved the ultimate level of shit bike rebranding. Could it be true? Could they have chosen to avoid even the expense of hiring those costly “bicycle technicians” to assemble their bikes?

We can’t be sure, but creating artisanal, one-off custom bicycles out of salvaged parts and then having them assembled by people who’ve never installed a saddle onto a seatpost before no doubt yields a more solid bottom-line for both the company and customer.

I can’t claim to understand how it’s possible for a company to pull something like this off, but more power to them. If the market in London can sustain a business that sells shit bikes at a premium, they might as well be allowed to have at it. And as long as the customer knows what he or she’s getting is willfully pays this much for a second-hand bike, it’s probably a win overall. These things would’ve just ended up in landfills. Now they’re bound for the trendy lofts of the irresponsibly wealthy, which I’m all for making the landfill of the 21st Century.

Pre-Halloween Danzig Update

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Oct 192012

But enough of my yakkin’ about other stuff. I may have found a way to make Danzig even simpler. I can’t quit you, Solidworks.

After a brief (like seven minute) and tempestuous relationship with a linkage arrangement that’d put the rear shock directly in line with the seat tube (sort of tucked inside an oversized seat tube-esque channel or something), I started experimenting with lower shock positions. The whole story is right up there, in all those blue lines (along with some other interesting blue line stuff I can’t go into right now).

Why do I do this to myself? Tough to say. But if the shock could be mounted low enough, I’d be able to take a lot of metal and machining out of the upper rocker. Now I’m sort of obsessed with trying to make it happen.

Somebody really needs to take my laptop away.

Foundations are Not People

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Oct 182012

After a bit of confusion wherein companies scrambled to do the math, trying to figure out if abandoning Lance Armstrong meant advocating cancer or something, Nike and now Trek have finally turned their back on Armstrong.

While it was certainly wise of all companies involved to verify the douchbaggery of Mr. Armstrong before taking action, there still seemed to be a delayed reaction when it came to severing ties.

If anything, it took former teammate of Armstrong, Paul Willerton, and a small group of protestors showing up at Nike’s corporate office in Beaverton, Oregon to help corporate America separate Armstrong from Livestrong. Cyclingnews.com quoted Willerton as saying:

To be fair to athletics we have to look at Lance the person and the athlete and deal with that, without letting everyone say the magic word and pull that cancer cloak over it. I feel that they are mutually exclusive, that just because you support one doesn’t mean that you have to support the other. Nike could make a strong move right now by dumping Lance Armstrong, even if they still need to continue paying LAF.”

And so they did. Nearly all of the sponsors are gone.

More complicated is the relationship Armstrong has among cancer survivors around the world, for whom his status as both a hero and a source of hope is very real. The most disturbing aspect of Armstrong’s fall for grace may be the debilitating effect it has on some of his most dedicated fans–cancer survivors every bit as impressive as Armstrong, but people who found in him a sense of not just hope, but community.

As Steve Madden, former editor of Bicycling pretty eloquently explained, there was a lot of inertia to just accepting Armstrong for years, pinching our noses harder and harder the more the situation seemed to stink, because, well, there was a good cause going on.

But really it’s time to take Lance as his word. I’d always thought he seemed like an OK enough guy–um, doping and cheating and lying and apparently threatening aside–except for the false modesty. To be sure, everything Lance was always Lance, and everything Livestrong was always Lance. And he, more than anyone, took great pains to make sure it stayed that way.

But now it can’t. If there’s a moral to this story, it has little to do with doping and honesty and sports, and everything to do with the Problem of Celebrity. It’s unfortunate that we tend to need somebody like the mythical, imaginary Lance Armstrong. There seemed to be a sense of weightlessness over the past few weeks, as the Livestrong network collectively pondered an existence without Lance at the center of the universe. I was particularly disgusted by Livestrong ads running on Facebook that were very conspicuously worded to combine strong ideas of “support” and “standing up for” with relatively vague objects of that support. The obvious effect was of rallying behind Lance.

Make no mistake, for all the good it did, Livestrong was also a tool in Armstrong’s campaign of deceit and self-promotion. The real question was could it exist without him.

For now looks like it can–thanks to a whole lot of amazing people who might never be celebrities, but who are ultimately far better individuals than Lance Armstrong.

Ass Covering

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Oct 172012

Glenn Beck has launched a clothing company and it’s fucking awesome.

In fact, it’s more than awesome. It’s a sign–loud and clear–to all the poor, misunderstood Ayn Randians out there, that it’s go time. A movement has begun, a movement to “re-shore”–to bring manufacturing back to the U.S., and clearly the hippy bastards have gotten the jump on the true Drivers of the American Economy. Dudes with beards in places like Portland and Minnesota are welding up bicycle frames and selling them to people. People are making their own ceramic tiles, throwing their own pottery, and actually selling those wares on places like Etsy, no venture capital or family connections required.

This is not what the rebirth of American manufacturing is allowed to be.

No sir. The rebirth of American manufacturing will be led by true patriots. Men (sorry, women) who appreciate how things used to be. Before they were born. In movies.

Men like Glenn Beck are stepping up to make sure the shit that gets made in America is every bit as unnecessary and soul-less as the crap we usually buy from China. Stupid hippies. You’re not supposed to actually make shit by hand! You’re supposed to make commercials about how you make stuff by hand.

Preferably commercials as fucking weird as this one (the audio here’s been edited to poke fun at Glenn, but no shit, this is the actual commercial).

No, seriously. That’s a real commercial. You can see it with its actual sound–which is even funnier somehow–at the TheDailyBeast.com.

I can’t really imagine a combination of images, words and music that could better convey: “We don’t understand this whole ‘make shit’ movement even a little bit, but we’re going to capitalize on it aggressively.”

But of everything that’s wrong with this company–the premise, the racially insensitive “Indian Chief” logos, the pathetic attempt to comprehend (let alone “capture”) the actual spirit of doing something with your hands, the sheer bullshit factor and conceit of it all–this is the most amazingly wrong thing:

The “Christmas Sweater.”

Take that, anyone trying to actually make something in America. Glenn Beck, arguably the greatest comedian of the 21st Century, has created a true American company–a company built on principles, true American values, and skulls wearing Santa hats.

As batshit crazy goes, that’s fucking brilliant.

The New Abnormal

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Oct 162012

Rain has finally settled in to Portland. I celebrated by overcooking a turn riding in to work this morning and sliding up to, but not quite into, a homeless guy’s tent. Only a little road rash on my left side. The bike seems to be OK, too, with the exception of one of my precious few remaining ancient Selle Italia SLK non-gel saddles. Down to only three of those, and now one’s a little frayed around the edges. Drat.

Anyway, yesterday I apologized to bike designer Helio Ascari after he sent over some photos of the actual bikes he’s designed (I’d originally questioned their existence.) They’re very pretty bikes. Still, I tend to think of bike designers as people who invent things–from tuning geometry for certain ride characteristics to creating completely original two-wheeled things.

Josh Bechtel is that kind of guy. Like his wild Bicymple or not, you have to recognize he’s made something. Difficult as it is to bring some new creation kicking and screaming into the world, people like Josh deserve a hell of a lot of credit for trying to make that happen.

Apology Monday

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Oct 152012

I took a break from Canootervalve last Friday. Sorry about that. My parents are in town from across the country and we had no fewer than three birthdays to celebrate. Part animal that I am, I spent most of their time here with the laptop on the lap, tapping away at any number of jobs that just never seem to sleep.

While I’m handing out apologies, I also owe one to Helio Ascari, model, nephew of Formula One Champion, and–it turns out–bicycle designer. A while back, I’d kicked Helio in the nards a little over a Wall Street Journal article about his bicycle designs. In fairness to me, in the article, Helio is riding a Pashley Gov’nur, lending an air of confusion to the proceedings.

Turns out, Mr. Ascari really does design bicycles. And they’re actually pretty bitchin’ for high-fashion bespokey bikes–especially the fixed gear.

Better still, Helio’s working with bike builder Gary Mathis out of Ashland, Oregon. I don’t know Gary, but his fashion sense seems decidedly more “I’m the guy who welds.”

So I apologize to Helio. Pretty cool looking bikes.

Design-wise, though, I’m thinking I need to celebrate some hard-core bike nerds this week. Engineering types. That’s on my mind a lot right now, and there’s a new character on the scene that’s done some pretty cool stuff.

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