Swine – Page 3 – CanooterValve

The Shaft

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Feb 292012

I’d rather try to lick a passing bus than read most of what passes for content on the Internet these days, and professional “content marketers” are one of the main reasons. Times are tough, and under tough circumstances no doubt some people are looking down at their degrees, noticing the words “English Writing” on there, and panicking. I’ve been there, and any job is at least a job, but make no mistake: writing bullshit copy for search engine spiders makes you no friend of mankind. You better hope the future robot overlords keep you around for energy generation and amusement, because humans are getting sick of your shit. Churning out high volumes of disinformation is making our world worse.

Let me put this in terms English majors can understand: you know how Tolkien’s Orcs were apparently Elves all physically twisted and morally perverted by dark magic or some such shit? That’s you.

Probably the only honorable thing you can do if you find yourself writing “Ten Ways I Love to Use My Shamwow!” articles is to bake in some self-deprecating humor and definitely avoid taking your job seriously. You’re writing keyword love letters to web crawling bots for crissake! Do you really think your boss even reads this shit? And if the clients contracting you to write it actually had legitimate products, would they really be trusting you to write about them?

We last met content marketers when I mentioned those rad Jeep bikes, and in that case, too, the most disturbing aspect of the article with the contrived sense of “expertise.” These are essentially people writing without any background in or ever cursory understanding of, the subject of their article. Probably the worst thing you can do in that situation is pretend to know something.

Which brings me to the Dynamic Bicycles Tempo Cross 8 “review.”

Right out of the chute, we get this:

In the world of bicycles, innovations are generally small things – changes in the aerodynamics and the like – so when something as interesting as a “chainless” bicycle comes my way, I’m more than happy to get on board.”

In bullshit Internet marketing terms, this is the “introduction.” Establish that you “know something,” preferably by dropping a “term” like “aerodynamics” that you discovered in a ten second Google search. Presto! Street cred: established! Sad little “innovations” like suspension forks, oversized axles, carbon fiber, and disc brakes are going to have to ride in the back seat today, because you don’t even know they exist, and yet you’re doing to be our tour guide to the world of bicycles today, and just what is it that’s so magical about the Dynamic Bicycles Tempo Cross 8 (besides the name)?

It has no chain.

That’s right! We’re talking some shaft drive! The most skin-crawling aspect of these posts is the faux-authoritative tone, and that’s in rare form as we move into the meat of the mighty Tempo Cross 8.

While there have been different chainless bikes throughout the ages (heck, the first bicycle the “penny-farthing” actually had no chain), Dynamic Bicycles has put together a bicycle that works tremendously. From the elegantly refined color scheme, to the quiet gear box, the Tempo Cross 8 was literally everything I could have asked for in a bicycle.”

Wow. That’s a pretty strong endorsement from a random stranger with no discernible bicycle knowledge who cut his reviewer’s teeth on video games.”. Helpful tip for consumers: if the author of a bike review is talking about the “color scheme,” and we’re not reviewing the freaky rubberized texture coat of an Ibis frame or some new “Predator” technology that renders your Spring Classics bike invisible for final kilometer sneak attacks, you’re in the wrong place.

Roll up those pantlegs, though. We’re about to pimp some shaft. Here’s why the triple-named Tempo Cross 8 smokes a “so-called normal bicycle”:

A chain can break. A chain “pop off” of the teeth on the gears. A chain can seriously screw up your ability to have a good ride should damn well anything go wrong – top that off with the fact that fixing it will often be a very dirty job, and you can see why people would look for another solution.”

Yes, chains have clearly proven to be highly unreliable in their continued dominant use over the past kajillion years. But I’m familiar with nicer gearbox technologies and haven’t heard of this strange budget-oriented bike’s clearly revolutionary and car-like transmission. Please tell me more.

Yes, you pump a bit of grease into the gearbox every now and then (in truth, they say every hundred miles – or about once every three years for most people), but even that it cleaner than the grubby chain grease you see. On top of that, there’s no worry of a gear randomly flying off (like a chain might) – making the mechanical side of this bike virtually maintenance free (perfect for someone lazy like me).”

I’m leaving in all the typos, by the way. That’s just a part of all things web content these days, sad as it is, and my interest here is the actual content, or lack thereof. One of my favorite examples of “anti-content” is the implied high maintenance and inherent–apparently explosion-related–danger of a conventional chain. Clearly someone who rides less than 100 miles every three years would have chain wear issues with a regular bike, whereas one with a proprietary transmission few self-respecting bike shops would touch is perfect for such grueling Fred conditions, under which a bike usually receives most of its wear and tear while in the garage.

But our author clearly has serious cyclists in his crosshairs as well, slinging the hardcore lingo. “Sometimes when you’re driving a normal chained bicycle,” he tells us, “you can get a ‘clunk’ when the chain gets pushed by the derailleur, but nothing like that here”–no doubt a result of his superior ability to drive a bicycle. And he goes out of a limb when it comes to the saddle. “I’ve tested out a good number of other high end bicycles,” he asks us to believe, “and one of my biggest complaints has always been that some companies charge you over a grand for a bike, but give you the equivalent of a rock to sit on. Not so with the Tempo Cross 8 – I’m not sure but I think that the seat that comes standard could be the most comfortable bicycle seat I have ever sat upon. It is completely comfortable to sit on, and the bumps on the road pretty much feel like nothing at all while riding on it.”

At this point, I don’t know about you, but I’m sold. But wait a minute . . . the Tempo Cross 8 sounds a little too perfect. Surely there was something this author can tell us he didn’t like–you know, like to gain our trust and seem sort of objective.

The only real complaint I can register on the bike is that just like other high end bikes, the Tempo Cross 8 doesn’t have a standard kick stand. I’m not sure why companies don’t feel like putting kick stands on their bikes, but it’s irritating to have to go and pick one up – especially if you’re dropping close to a grand on a bike hoping for a complete package.”

Here, he has a point. I mean really. What is it with high-end bikes and their persistent, infuriating lack of kickstands? And to think the Tempo Cross 8 was this close to a perfect five star rating!

Personality Tests

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Feb 272012

In my recurring theme of form versus function, I noticed these images from Paris designer Juri Zaech, which I think of as a kind of inkblot test. If you think the image above is generally pretty cool, you might tend to prioritize form over function. If, on the other hand, looking at that “bike” is the visual equivalent of listening to Nickleback for you, then you must have the same visual compulsive disorder that I do. I don’t necessarily “dislike” the image above. It’s more accurate to say it “bugs shit out of me.” I believe the technical term is “gives me the willies.” Disturbing. I don’t know why, but something about completely disconnected bike tubes floating around really bothers me. Would it have been so tough to maybe add paint to the frame and fill in those structurally missing sections? It might make these “word bikes” less “whimsical,” but at least I wouldn’t want to hunt down the artist and force him to weld something.

Here’s another one. Check out this photo:

Fashionable young woman on a fashionable bicycle, or pre-sparkling hippie Nosferatu for a new HBO “True Blood/Sex in the City” crossover project? It just so happens you’re looking at the first bicycle by fashion house Dolce and Gabbana. You’re welcome. Clearly nothing stood in the way of Yo Gabbana Bana’s pursuit of fashion on this bike, including taste and what I can only describe as “bike-ness.” If ever there was a bike for people who frequently get shit caught in their chains, this is it. According to the author of the article, the Editor/Test Rider was quoted as saying, “This bike is absolutely gorgeous! I’m totally besotted! I want one!”

Besotted, indeed.

Quick tip for you fashionistas out there who just have to have it, but can’t pony up the suspected $1000k premium upcharge for a bike made by people who specialize in making sunglasses for muppets: go to Wal-Mart, buy a bicycle for under $100 and some sweet leopard print yoga pants. Everybody knows DIY is the new black, and exactly nothing is more DIY than artisanally resewn animal print yoga pant bicycle tubing covers. So much cheaper than the custom paint applied to this garbage scow of a bike, plus you might be able to find florescent green leopard print (the “Holy Grail of leopard prints). Sure, the Dolt Cabana mobile can technically “function” as a bicycle, but it’s the form here that will clearly be moving units, so to speak.

Finally, ponder your own feelings about this device, which takes the raw functionality of a bicycle and a desk and, in combining them, renders both completely useless.

That’s sort of a brilliant triumph in the particular strain of fashion known as “function deconstructionism.” Not since the combination bathtub-meat locker have two otherwise distinct things commingled so successfully. Still, I’m holding out for the IKEA model, which I hear is translucent green acrylic and filled with live fish.

If I seem a little snarky and function-obsessed this week, it could be that I spent the last few days in Portland, which, compared to most places I’ve been, seems genuinely designed to accomplish stuff. Not only are Chris King and Zen–two of the only places still producing quantities of bicycle components and frames in the U.S.–based here, but so are an endless stream of small builders and blue collar entrepreneurs doing things to make money without first securing a round of VC funding. If you build stuff or want to, Portland really is a little like an amusement park disguised as a city.

Good meetings there, too.

Maybe best of all, I got to endure the company of my old friend, Jason, who was kind enough to put me up during my stay and show me around, and who once again casually dropped a piece of wisdom so profound that I’m still processing its full implications. Cruising through the “Bizarre/Mystical” section of venerable bookstore, Powell’s, Jason went out on a limb and declared, “Hitler ruined high boots for men.” Fashion isn’t often discussed in a city where many women choose not to wear makeup and “business casual” works five days a week, but when it is, it’s pretty good.

The Thin Green Line

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Feb 202012

This weekend news of L.A.’s Spring Street and the infamous Green Bike Lane that Shall Not Be Filmed spread across the country with a speed normally reserved for stupidly large sunglasses and bad music. Really, it’s one thing when America has to tolerate bicycles getting all stuck in the fender wells of their pickups, but the idea that the most famous street in the world for filming movies and car commercials has quite literally gone green, well, that might be too much. This is, apparently, an “Anytown U.S.A.” icon where freakin’ car commercials are filmed for crissake. While I suspect Republican Senator Darrell Issa has already subpoenaed “everyone in Hollywood” and “cars from car companies” to testify to the utter job destruction this has caused and requested a special “grief” round of tax breaks for oil companies, it occurred to me that this green lane might not be all bad.

Not because of the bike thing. Everybody knows that riding a bike to work without barely escaping several life-threatening personal assaults does nothing to promote the more marketable “extreme” side of cycling so vital to the fashion industry. No, I think this strange and accidental new shade of green that renders streets impervious to film crews is a good thing for the most obvious of reasons.

Fewer movies.

At the rate we’re currently creating what passes for movies, by some calculations we will have utterly depleted everything that passes for “culture” in America for 2019.

Think about it. At some point, we’re going to run out of Dr. Seuss and comic book characters and both Starsky and Hutch and the Dukes of Hazard have already been turned into movies. Sure, we can release a Kojak movie, and–I was going to say CHiPs, but, no shit, I think there’s already a CHiPs movie planned for release in 2013–but after that, the resources are nearly gone. Like any resource, prices will go up as the availability of creativity decreases, meaning only the very fortune among us will be able to afford $250 tickets to see sparkly vampires and Resident Evil 19: Underworld, Werewolves and Vampires vs. Zombies, but even that can only last for so long. Eventually, like savages, we’ll be forced to film the cryogenically preserved head of Nicolas Cage starring in Bratz 3: It’s a Mall, Mall World.

No, there’s only so much creativity to go around, and that’s why we need to slow the pace of consumption now, while there’s still time to do something.

We need green bike lanes everywhere. In wrapping nearly every major city around the world in unfilmable green paint, we can at least cause fewer horrible movies to be made while slowing the inevitable end of all creativity as we know it. It’s clear we’ve found something–possibly the only thing–that can stop movies from being made. It falls on us now to take bold steps and act on this technology before movies leave us with nothing. Green bike lanes can save us if we take bold action now.

Or after the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie. Those are awesome.

“Austerity Package”

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Feb 132012

Like many car companies, German automobile manufacturer Porsche has a long and storied history of stripping down and leaping head-first into the murky swimming pool that is the bicycle industry. Unlike, say, Jeep, our infinitely sensible German friends, however, traditionally take the time to make sure there’s water in the pool.

Jeep Shit Bike

I’ve honestly never understood why some car companies choose to license their name to such horrendous and potentially fatal “bicycle-shaped objects,” but I think it says something about American consumerism that there’s even a market for such a thing. A lot of us are dumbasses.

Speaking of dumbasses, the photo for the Jeep “Comanche Sahara” bicycle above was found on a site called Jeep Tech Tips, and is an example of something called “Content Marketing,” the “male-enhancement product” of the marketing world. In short, Content Marketing is the act of paying a mindless tool with no particular interests to write terminally uninteresting and useless text about a product and distribute this anti-information as thoroughly as possible on the interwebs, in the hope of catching the ~~Eye of Sauron~~ algorithms of Google. It’s an odd twist on the B-movie high-school paradigm, where the socially inept nerds try to attract the attention of the vacuous cheerleaders; here, the completely unoriginal and inane are hell-bent on figuring out how to win the affection of nerds who write search engine algorithms.

Hint: It's all about the shoes, ladies.

Eventually computers will write this mindless dreck, or the need to buy a really shitty Jeep bicycle will able to be added directly to our brains as an ingredient in Red Bull, but until then, some poor son-of-a-bitch writes sentences like this for a living:

While I agree that, “The Commando would be more idle for a young teenager (13 or 14 years old),” particularly considering that no one over the age of nine would be able to fit on the bike, I suspect the word our “content marketing” was searching for there was “ideal,” and with that, I have to politely disagree.

The problem with information written to get the attention of computers is that occasionally humans run into it, and accidentally read it. Considering the entire point of writing this shit in the first place is to attract eyeballs, you’d thing there would be a value in communicating information that would actually answer people’s questions, but Content Marketing isn’t about providing information–it’s about getting noticed. In fact, it’s sort of the opposite of providing information.

Consider: “The only performance difference is that the Comanche Toledo has a rear shock.” This refers to the blue bike above, the one that doesn’t have a rear shock. Content written, paycheck in the bank, another productive day over: well done, Content Writer.

Our friends at Porsche, meanwhile, do not put their logos on just any tack-welded piece of heinous shit that comes down the pipe. They go out of their way to put their logo on truly bizarre pieces of ultra-high-tech shit that comes down a hand-laid carbon fiber pipe. Remember the Votec bikes?

You have to admit, they always at least try to do something different, and they’re doing it again in 2012 with the “RS,” a carbon fiber 29er with XTR components and Crank Brothers everywhere. Brakes, of course, had to be Magura (this whole Euro crisis isn’t going to solve itself, you know), which makes you wonder how irked the German luxury brands must be to routinely have to spec Japanese or Italian components on their fashion-accessory bicycles. Speaking of Google, if only Porsche, Audi, Mercedes and BMW had “20% free time to develop your own ideas” concepts in place for employees like those guys do, maybe we’d already have a full German gruppo.

Sadly, at nearly $10,000 for the RS pictured at the top of this post, I think I’d probably stick with a better looking Air 9 Carbon or Highball frame and save my money for the only real Porschycle.

Friday’s Time Travelers and Blood Suckers

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Feb 102012

My hair is rich and full.

So the Court of Arbitration for Sport has decided to ban retired cyclist Jan Ullrich for two years, a shocking blow to Ullrich’s hope of contesting the 2012 Tour de France from a large, comfortable chair at his home in Germany, but also making use of their new time machine, the CAS Doping Offense Win Negator (CASDOWN), to “annul” Ullrich’s results from May 1st, 2005. This move follows the recent reshuffling of race results from 2010 following Tour de France and Giro winner Alberto Contador’s retro-active disqualifications for doping, and begs the question, “Does anyone actually win races anymore?” The newfound ability of the CAS, while honorable and necessary, creates forms of higher math and alternative realities traditionally only found in the study of quantum physics. In a bizarre twist, an engineer at Google today announced that, using a combination of advanced algorithms, urine samples from the past five years, and a brief financial analysis of personal debt levels of the current pro peloton, it’s now easier to predict the 2012 winner of the Tour de France, than to predict the winners from the past ten years.

Critics, of course, are already arguing the CASDOWN system is nothing more than a marketing campaign to try to make professional cycling more popular in places like the U.S. where cycling is currently seen as way more boring than football (real football, the kind played with hands, not feet), but where sports betting, revisionist history, and fleeting celebrity are wildly popular. In addition to wondering who’ll win each of the Grand Tours in 2012, now we can all put money down on results dating back at least into the 2000s. (Personally, my money for the 2005 Tour is on Servais Knaven from Quick Step.)

Many donut-enjoying, rarely-standing-while-climbing “power” riders, myself included, were fans of Ullrich, though, so I’m not insensitive to the human aspect of this result. On that front, I’m happy to report that Ullrich has capitalized even on this setback, by–and I’m not making this up–becoming a spokesperson for a German hair stimulant marketed as “Doping for the Hair.” Sadly, while it appears riders like Ullrich and Contador aren’t obligated to return any prize money or other gains acquired while “not really winning,” it does appear that the riders must be declared legally “non-existent” during the retro-active period of their ban from sport. While the scientific community is still unsure what this actually means for the racers, it seems clear that some form of “undead syndrome” may be occurring, which would partially explain some of the otherwise inexplicable behavior of Floyd Landis, as well as this statement, released by Ullrich yesterday (italics mine):

Shortly before the 2006 tour, I was hit: Suspension, headlines, ostracism, house searches, criminal complaints. I felt abandoned, fallen like a leaf. The whole world wanted to put me against the wall and then I went instinctively to ground, and eventually retired. As I said, I will not complain that not everything was warranted. Shortly after my suspension I wanted to explain my actions publicly but my hands were tied. On the advice of my lawyers, and as is usual in such cases, I have been silent on the allegations. Ultimately, this issue has polluted me for years so much that I was sick and I eventually broke down.”

Did you catch that? While I can’t be certain, I’m pretty sure Jan Ullrich just admitted to being a vampire. In and of itself, it’s a pretty shocking revelation, but like most things in pro cycling these days, it still raises more questions than it answers. While long-term, congenital vampirism would certainly cast a new light on the whole blood doping thing, it seems more likely, in Ullrich’s case, that blood sucking is a result of the ruling by the CAS, not the cause. Clearly, being forced out of existence for a few years by the CAS, and then having to go on living as a spokesperson for German hair stimulants, was really the last nail in the coffin.

Jan Ullrich in human form.

In Brogues

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Feb 072012

For my money, the most exciting thing about cycling’s grand tours is that you never know who’ll win. Even several months after the race is over, it’s still really anybody’s race. Alberto Contador received his two year ban from racing yesterday, and along with it was retroactively stripped of 2010 victories in the Tour de France and the Giro D’Italia. Congratulations to Andy Schleck and Michele Scarponi! Good races, guys. Looked like you’d come up short there for a while, but, upon further review, you each had the biggest moments of your life. Pardon us if we don’t bother to get up.

While probably cleaner than it’s ever been, professional cycling went through the stages “Appalling,” and “Pathetic” a while back, and now never seems to miss a chance to just make itself even more comical. This latest news only twists a knife most of us picked up somewhere along Stage 17, 2006, and haven’t been able to shake since. Ironic that Contador’s suspension fell hard upon the news that Mr. Lance Armstrong was found super-blameless in the World Court of All Final Decisions. Or something. Like many people, by now I sort of want to find out Lance was doping that whole time, just because it would make for an amazing book. If Armstrong really is guilty of doping and orchestrating a mass cover-up, I think it’s safe to say the world hasn’t seen a virtuoso performance of mass mind control and manipulation that impressive since Rasputin. Nobody can resist cheering for a new world record.

As for the future of the sport, I’ve said long ago they should not only give up testing, but have an “open” class. I, who find it tough to watch even the most creampuff of crashes during stage races, and literally avoid seeing crash footage, suspect I’d have no problem tuning in for exploding hearts, spontaneous comas, and whatever else these junkies seem hell-bent on doing to themselves, because, unlike crashes, doping deaths wouldn’t be random and unwarranted. Besides, nothing would finally get Americans interested in the sport like cheering for delusional drug addicts catapulting off mountainsides while waving their arms at imaginary bats. Would certainly pull in the NASCAR demographic.

While we’re at it, I have some ideas for changes to the bikes.

Who doesn’t love rally? Having seen the wireframe Range Rover Evoque bicycle,

it seems obvious that you need a protective cage around your bike, and a co-pilot, you know, to man the weapons system. Besides, if everybody had to pedal enormous metal cages around and survive explosions, flamethrower attacks, and Spartacus chariot wheel-blade assaults during every Grand Tour, Jens Voigt would have already become the winningest pro in the history of cycling. By a lot.

In my more TV-friendly format, the green jersey points would go to the team towing the loudest stereo, the polka dot jersey would (obviously) be awarded to the fastest speed hit on a descent, and the trademark yellow race leader jersey would be replaced by some sweet new Rapha brogue shoes:

You think Thomas Voeckler left it all on the road defending the yellow jersey last year? Imagine a piece of race leader apparel that actually becomes more and more hot, painful, and excruciatingly hip with every second it stays in contact with your body.

Given that I’ve accidentally segued into a new product reveal here, apparently the Rapha shoes will be out by the end of the summer, and will feature deeply ~~depressed~~ ~~repressed~~ recessed cleats for sauntering jauntily into boardrooms with only your general douchiness to set you apart, as opposed to that and the clackings of a uncoordinated tap dancer.

Given that Rapha’s previous partnership with the shoe’s designer, tailor Timothy Everest, was apparently a jacket that sold for more than $600, one can only speculate as to the price of the new shoes.

Or one can hold a contest.

I’m hereby announcing the first ever Canootervalve contest:

Guess the Price of Rapha Brogues

Maybe I’ll bother to code up a fancy voting form to make this more formal, but probably not, so email me your guesses or leave a comment.

He or she who comes the closest to guessing the actual price will receive a genuine Surly frame decal emblazoned with the timeless words, “Just Because We Both Ride Bikes, Doesn’t Mean We’re Friends.”

No purchase necessary to enter. In fact, it’s not even recommended.

The Other Side

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Feb 062012

Position Available, Leicestershire, UK

After reading Friday’s bit about Trek’s tapered steerer tube patent, friends kindly reminded me about the past decade. It seems that somehow I’d misplaced any recollection of the bike industry from the Y2K crisis to year 2010, including Trek’s tapered head tube and fork development. Josh, in particular helped me face apparently repressed memories about Trek’s E1 and E2 head tube standards, and how they have, in fact, maintained that as an open standard.

Somewhere inside that moment where the gears began to engage and my brain’s sad, cheese-clogged synapes started to fire again, this occurred to me: they really have let others use this.

In light the way Specialized recently attacked Volagi, ostensibly for making a carbon fiber bicycle frame that may or may not be painted red (the Volagi frame shape certainly bore no resemblance to anything Specialized had ever made), not to mention the many, many absolute bullshit patents protecting highly dubious claims, Trek’s benevolent stance here seems genuinely nice. Sure, it was a tactical decision to help ensure the design was adopted by fork manufacturers and stuff, and plenty of companies immediately rush to use any perceived intellectual property advantage to cut off development, only to find they’ve painted themselves into a corner. But, still. Trek could have probably been dicks about this, and they weren’t. I think that’s nice of them.

Probably just me, though. A complicated and prolonged search for new employment has me all emotional. I’m currently leaning toward “hearse driver,” provided I can learn to ride on the wrong side of the road and eat .

Yes, self-declared physically unfit British owner of a tandem bike hearse, Reverend Paul Sinclair, recently famous and somewhat , is looking for someone to pedal the recently deceased to their final resting places.

As a naturally morbid personality and recovering Roman Catholic who feels guilty about riding a bike unless it’s also, technically, considered “work,” this would be my dream job, were it not for two things.

First, I find the Queen such a distractingly handsome woman that I have no idea how anyone in the UK manages to concentrate on anything. Just knowing she was near–with that weirdly conspiratorial and overbitey grin of hers–would render me incapable of even making toast correctly.

Second, the hatred for cyclists in the UK is so much more refined than it is in the states, that I’m not sure how one survives there without maybe a bandoleer of Grey Poupon to hurl at passing “lorries.” Case in point, one Andrew Grimes, a writer for The Manchester Evening News, who believes:

It is seldom a good idea to get on yer bike. Hail a taxi. Catch a bus. Drive a car. Walk. Each of these alternatives offers the likeliest chance of completing a journey through a British city without winding up at the undertakers.

Cycling is a relic of cosy, Edwardian rurality, when one could take one’s chances in contest with a lumbering horse and cart. Nobody got his or her skull crushed under the hooves of a farmer’s shire.

But that was then.

Today is the 21st century, burnt tyre rubber time, with a bloke in a tall cabin unable to see the assiduous helmet crouched nose-down on aluminium handlebars, sidling alongside his fuel-stashed juggernaut.

Yet the cycling lobby won’t give up. It never ceases to campaign for more road space – which means clearing goods lorries, buses and motor cars off great swathing widths of our arterial highways—to make way for its insane multitudes of pedalling romantics.”

While I take issue with the Dickensianly be-monikered “Mr. Grimes” regarding the general use of bicycles and his belief that cyclists should stop trying to be so bloody special and just drive a car like any sensible person, I can not fault his prose, which can only be described as the aural equivalent of inserting Jonathan Swift into the arse of William Shakespeare and baking for twelve to fourteen hours at 400-degrees. Fahrenheit, of course.

Even if one dared mount a response to the twisted logic that claims to advocate for the health of cyclists by making them no longer cyclists, phrases like “fuel-stashed juggernaut” overwhelm the reader’s senses with such a flamboyant display of bad poetry as to be almost disorienting. Is fuel actually “hidden” within vehicles, and is the presence of the fuel somehow relevant to the author’s point? Having neither driven nor ridden in London proper, I concede my ignorance in the matter. Perhaps even the slightest brush with a cyclist frequently causes cars in the UK to explode spectacularly. Having located the steering wheel on the wrong side of the vehicle, it’s certainly possible the petrol tanks are somehow located in the side view mirrors.

At any rate, it appears the UK has a a unique strain of an otherwise American disorder, a condition that causes the infected to reduce those with different viewpoints to idealistic children, while they, the clear-minded adults, endeavor to explain How Life Works. One grows up, of course, and learns not to ride bicycles, because riding bicycles is generally very good (it doesn’t pollute and it makes for a healthier population) and because riding a bicycle makes people happy.

And that just won’t do.

Like any truly gifted writer, Mr. Grimes has an innate grasp of the ironic, burying his criticism of less “up-to-date” modes of transportation being pedaled around by “romantics” inside his own peculiarly ancient prose.

It is not safe to ride a bike through high-cabined convoys of juggernauts. To pretend that it is, is to ignore the emergence of all mechanised locomotion since 1912 . . . . I think that all cycling on major arterial roads, especially at peak periods, should be outlawed on pain of jail, apart from in places without traffic lights and where the motorised speed limit has been brought down to 12 miles an hour. At the same time, I am not completely heartless. Obviously, cycling on pavements should be encouraged.”

Yes, “on pain of jail,” cycling should be outlawed in order to save cyclists from themselves–and by “themselves” Grimes of course means their habit of trying to share the road with “juggernauts.” I would submit to the people of London that any man who uses the word “juggernaut” to describe a motor vehicle more than once within the same article, should be driven from the city proper, “on pain of jail,” as a man unfit to process life in the 21st Century. Yes, it’s clearly the cyclists of London who have fallen behind the times, dangerously unaware of the dangers posed by the great, steam-powered juggernauts all around them.

I encourage everyone to read the article, preferably with the following image in mind as narrator.

And yes, Mr. Grimes does indeed conclude with a concession. He is not, “completely heartless,” and suggests cyclists should make use of “pavements,” or, in the slightly less obtuse American vernacular, “sidewalks,” where, he assures us, “granny with her groceries is usually nippy enough to dodge a two- wheeled obstacle crawling past the shop window, even if she cannot always bring herself to knock him down.” I suspect Mr. Grimes himself ultimately lacks the ~~balls~~ballocks to actually affect cycling in London, or anywhere else, but, should anyone cycling on the streets of London encounter the gentleman making his way along a “pavement,” I suggest you heed his advice, get your ass on his nice, safe sidewalk, and make sure he’s feeling sufficiently “nippy.”

Channel You

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Jan 302012

So much bicycle and tech news to get through today, starting with business tycoon and inventor of yellow bracelets, Lance Armstrong, who’s joining the board at tech startup Mobli, a “place” (you’re not supposed to call them web sites any more) where people can post videos and images of their lives so that other people can oogle them. I’ve noticed that blending celebrity with tech startup is the new hipster business model, maybe because all conventional forms of publishing and making money off of content are rapidly disintegrating, and it’s getting tougher and tougher to buy that sixth Ferrari each and every year. Hence we find ourselves entering the age of the human “celebusinesses,” people like Zooey Deschanel who act, sort of make music, and sell us shit based on the fact that we’re almost buying it from Zooey Daschanel. It’s a weird kind of pop-culture feedback loop, no doubt. Mobli offers “channels” that attempt to be peoples’ lives, so you can basically stalk someone without having to actually put on pants and go outside. Given that one of the only things America is producing these days is narcissistic self-obsession, I predict Mobli is going to blow up huge–or at least get a ridiculous amount of VC money before going public and losing two thirds of its value in three days. In going direct-to-consumer with his life, Armstrong joins a roster of Mobli celebrities already investing, on the board, or just ~~inflicting themselves upon us~~ making their lives available for view, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Paris Hilton, and David Arquette. I would have provided more information about Armstrong’s specific “channel,” but once I got to Mobli, I found it impossible to look away from David Arquette’s life.

In other news this morning, Reverend Paul Sinclair is reconsidering the sale of his tandem hearse. According to Sinclair,

I said I wanted to sell it because I was struggling to ride it. But I have had so much interest in it since I said that, and people saying ‘Oh, I’d like to use that’, I think what I should be doing is hunting out someone fit enough to ride the thing for me.”

Rumors that the massive influx of interested buyers was largely the result of a Canootervalve post advertising the tandem hearse could not be confirmed at the time this post was written.

Frame Material: Steel
Head Tube Type: Standard 1-1/8″
Fork Steerer Tube Diameter: 1-1/8″
Seatpost Diameter: 27.2mm
Rear Dropout Spacing: 135mm
Rear Dropout Type: Standard Geared
Maximum Tire Size: 26×2.3-inches
Wheel Size: 26-inches
Front Dropout Spacing: 100mm
Water Bottle Bosses: 1 set, top of downtube
Color: Green
Size: 18-inch (both captain and stoker)

Here’s your chance to pretend to own a truly exclusive bike. This is the only tandem bicycle hearse in the UK. The Reverend Paul Sinclair of Motorcycle Funerals had this unique bike fabricated for addition to his unique line up of funereal vehicles. Unfortunately, Reverend Sinclair does not feel he’s sufficiently fit to operate the hearse, so he’s making it available in the hope that it will one day find a good home. Own a genuine piece of British history that just also happens to be able to transport dead bodies. Should also be able to transport at least two kegs, 4-8 surfboards, children, furniture, and another bike.

Learn more about the bike on the Daily Mail’s site.

$3,522.37

I haven’t forgotten that I’m supposed to drop the little bit of code required to make that “product for sale” box in anybody’s WordPress page (and probably just about any other type of blog post, too). I would’ve gotten to that today, but I was too fascinated with the new clothing line by venerable saddle manufacturer and arbiters of all things “authenticly artisanal,” Brooks.

Word from Bicycle Retailer is that Brooks has controlling ownership of Pedaled, a Japanese company offering clothing for people who’s smugness precludes them owning anything of opulence that doesn’t involve bicycles or coffee. And once you’ve installed your own indoor Peruvian forest and bean roasting facility, about all that’s left is to spring for a $520 jacket. Suck on that, Rapha!

Like all truly expensive hipster-wear, Brooks new Pedaled clothing is displayed hanging from meat hooks, evoking simultaneously a sense of casual durability and a disdain for lofty marketing, with just a hint of unrepressed veganism. When you can finally manage to pry yourself away from the life channel of Lance Armstrong or David Arquette and start looking for pants, you can, of course, purchase stuff directly from Pedaled.com. I don’t know what the mark-up is on a $120 t-shirt, though, so I can’t fault Brooks from cutting out bike shops and going consumer-direct with this new line. Something tells me the new line isn’t targeted at “people who ride bicycles” anyway, so much as “urban cyclists” looking for “outfit solutions.”

Final note: so I changed my logo over the weekend. I’d always disliked the original graphic, and some updated descriptive text was in order, given that bike technology is only one of the topics my rants occasionally veer into. In the process, I noticed that my “theme” had gone wonky. WordPress lets you plug in various themes–the look and feel of your site–but WordPress itself seems to get updated about once every thirty-seven seconds, and that can screw up some more unique themes. The lesson for WordPress users who don’t want to wrestle with this sort of thing? Use a really boring, standard theme, and let your images, logos and overall content be what makes it unique. It really should be the content that people find interesting anyway, not the decorations. Or so I’ve read.

Friday’s Crotch of Luxury and Self-Esteem Check

Bikes, E-commerce, Swine Comments Off

Jan 272012

While enjoying my morning ritual of fourteen cups of coffee and browsing, I was relieved to see yet another place to custom build your own luxury, multi-colored, ~~bike~~fashion accessory. Apparently Villy Customs will let you create just about any color $150 bicycle you’d like for between $400 and $800, thus fulfilling their corporate mission statement: “Luxury. Fashion. Bicycle.” (In that order.)

Because I think a lot about marketing, when I see yet another company with a fancy color-picker feature, I don’t concern myself with the overall shoddy quality of the product or what I suspect to be a woeful lack of customer service (I leave those concerns to the buyers), but, rather, the funny way these companies distinguish themselves from the actual bicycle industry, which apparently sells an entirely different product. See, a “bicycle” is a mechanical device, which needs proper assembly and periodic maintenance, whereas a personalized “Cruiser” or a “Fixie” is actually classified as a fashion accessory, and, as such, apparently needs none of those things. Smartly, the companies offering these fashionable accessories understand that they are “luxury” items in a way that properly designed and functionally assembled bicycles can never be. Cruisers and Fixies that allow potential owners to choose from a rainbow of nondescript components of dubious quality are, in fact, the very definition of luxury. Think of them as small, street-going yachts with chains chattering against improperly installed but festooned-with-painted-daisies chain guards, veritable Bugatti Veyrons of style, oozing down the street with all the passion and aggression a rapidly detensioning and wobbly rear wheel can command.

As such, their companies inevitably have their own marketing pages bolted (threads stripped) right onto their sites. In the case of Villy, this page is smartly filled with the various local morning TV shows that found their products adorable. Who needs function, when Entrepreneur magazine, Modern Luxury Dallas, and Good Morning Texas have featured your business.

Speaking of personalized service, one of my older posts regarding Specialized and the recent nonsense with Volagi received the following comment yesterday:

This is a poor representation of the Specialized brand. I feel Specialized strives to protect it’s intellectual property and it’s IBD network. No other brand is as IBD exclusive as Specialized. They could double there numbers if they sold to everyone and anyone. But they don’t they only want true knowledgeable bike shops representing there brand. Agreed the lawsuit with Volagi is a bit frivolous however if you let one company copy your ideas than soon all will.”

I thanked this person for the comment, and I can appreciate a need to stand up for the many positive things Specialized has done, the clearly great bikes they make, and the support they do offer dealers.

But I had to take issue with both points made in that comment, which are not only inaccurate, but also reinforce dangerous misconceptions about this particular case, and about the relationship Specialized and other vendors have with independent bike dealers. So I replied. And replied. And replied some more. Because, for some reason, I take both of these issues very seriously, and I reject the warm and fuzzy notion that Specialized–or anybody else–bases their relationship with dealers solely on some kind of vague personal respect. It’s an adorable and whimsical idea, but I think the reality has a lot more to do with things like territory, supply chain strategy, and mutual need.

For starters, the intellectual property argument might have some validity if Specialized had actually had any intellectual property stolen, but they didn’t. Just because the battle is over, doesn’t mean you get to rewrite the outcome, or give validity to an argument the legal proceeding dismantled. This whole sad event wasn’t just a bad marketing decision for Specialized; it was a genuine legal proceeding, and its results confirmed they had no intellectual property stolen. The lawsuit wasn’t “a bit frivolous”; it was baseless, and the more we learned about it, the more it seemed like classic intimidation of competition, something I find distasteful. Volagi did not steal anything from Specialized. Your assertion that once you allow one company to steal your intellectual property, others will follow, makes it sound like theft occurred here. What we’ve determined is that it did not.

I’d like to put to rest the bullshit notion that a company like Specialized could “double there [sic] numbers if they sold to everyone and anyone.” I’ve heard this ridiculous assertion put forward in the bike industry time and time again, and it’s the argument of beaten down IBDs with serious daddy complexes: “Daddy only sells through us ’cause Daddy loves us and takes care of us!”

Bullshit.

I applaud Specialized’s business model and their execution–they’ve done an amazing job of working within an established system for selling bicycles. But it’s an established system, not something they’ve done out of compassion, and there are reasons they don’t sell directly to consumers. The point I’ve been trying to make is that if independent bike shops don’t start spending less time drinking Kool-aid and more time learning to read tea leaves, they could find themselves caught unprepared for the inevitable. Specialized has already begun selling “selective” products directly to consumers on-line. Independent bike shops should be hedging against even the slightest possibility of that trend continuing, and blind faith in the benevolence of vendors is not a viable business plan.

I honestly do believe dealer loyalty plays a role in Specialized’s decision to restrict sales of bicycles to brick-and-mortar transactions, but it’s a smaller role than you think. There are more valid business forces keeping them from selling direct. Why doesn’t General Motors sell directly to consumers? For certain products, the benefits of consumer direct sales do not outweigh the expenses. The notion that Specialized, or GM, or any company built on a dealer representative platform could flip a switch overnight and begin selling direct to consumers–if only they chose to–is just not accurate. Believing that glorifies the manufacturer while disparaging the role of independent dealers. If you own or work at a bike shop, think of the work you do to sell and maintain bikes. It’s tremendous. So you’re telling me Specialized, or any other company, could just absorb that workload? Even if IBDs continued to offer some support, the actual expenses associated with turning a B2B company into a consumer-facing enterprise are staggering. There are legitimate barriers there.

But what I find truly bizarre about all of this is the screwy logic that lets presumably good bike shops demean themselves–instinctively, and by default. I have a lot of respect for Specialized and their products. I can understand how any shop would be happy and proud to be able to offer their products. Almost nothing should come before a dealer’s relationship with his vendors–but belief in your own business should. By definition, if you’re a quality shop, doing quality work, you should not believe your vendors sell to you only because they’re being kind. Instead of counting on their continued kindness–even as the market shifts all around them–shouldn’t you be making yourself indispensable? Look at a retail brand like Competitive Cyclist and tell me that putting your brand first doesn’t work. Claiming to add value without being able to articulate that value to consumers is becoming obsolete. What’s great about any shop has to be far more than just what brands they carry, but too many shops still place their own self worth in the brands they sell. So Specialized could “double” sales if they let their bikes be sold everywhere, but “they only want true knowledgeable bike shops representing there [sic] brand.” Look at the word “want” in there. Why have you not replaced that with “need”? That’s what you need to ask yourself.

The Little Things

Bikes, E-commerce, Swine Comments Off

Jan 262012

Sometimes I think that, if I could have three wishes, the first would be for someone to finally drive a stake through the heart of the fashion industry’s fleeting love of bikes, and the second and third would both be for the first to come true, just in case. The image of the $5,000 Bianchi hipster-mobile above comes to us courtesy of a site called “The Pursuitist,” who’s mission is apparently to, “Find and share the good things in life.” Inevitably this seems to consist almost entirely of increasingly elaborate devices designed to take what little soul you might’ve been born with and painfully extract it from your person. According to the article:

Biking is a luxury, and now it has a price tag to go along with it too. Gucci has launched two exclusive Bianchi by Gucci bicycles designed by the brand’s Creative Director, Frida Giannini.

Giannini told us, “The Bianchi by Gucci bicycles perfectly carry forward our codes of luxury while creating a new cosmopolitan aesthetic for those looking to turn heads while on the go”.

However, the Bianchi by Gucci bikes are only available for purchase in London from Gucci’s store at 18 Sloane Street. The white, hydro-formed steel single speed bike (above) costs $5,000 while the black carbon fiber monocoque model (below) is priced at $14,000.”

Yes, as anyone in China can tell you, biking is, indeed, a luxury. I just quoted that in its entirety because I honestly couldn’t bring myself to read through it one more time to pick out only the quotable parts. And no, I don’t have the spiritual fortitude to show you the carbon fiber one, if you haven’t already seen it. I can’t claim to understand what strange force has trapped certain Italian bike companies in the ’80s, but could someone please tell Colnago and Bianchi that most of the pastel-suitjacket-wearing coke addicts who used to represent a market for high-fashion, co-branded bicycle abominations are now either dead or riding Specialized Venges? And everyone knows kids ride Cinellis. Yes, the 21st Century is proving confusing to some companies. Today, managing to have a bike featured on a site next to artisanal mable syrum and $800 amplification horns for iPhones is arguably the most ironic sign of “status” possible.

Still, you have to love how ruthlessly practical bicycles manage to remain, despite the pressure to turn them into luxury items and fashion accessories, probably because you almost always have to actually ride a bike in order to show it off to everyone, and that’s a pretty high barrier of entry for the frail and soul-less.

Besides, everybody knows it’s the #littlethings that really matter. Word in business news today is that McDonald’s is attempting to rebound from their ill-fated #McDStories Twitter social media bloodbath with a fresh hashtag, “#littlethings,” which, hopefully, will be a few more degrees separated from worms in fish sandwiches and “dying inside.” Clearly, some–I’ll go ahead and assume frantic–discussion occurred at Clown Food Central over the past 48-hours, and it was determined that anything even vaguely close to the discussion of actual food products was the real liability in this campaign, and that a new hashtag was needed that was much more difficult to relate back even to their company, let alone the “food.” Hence, “#littlethings.” Brilliant.

Here I’d like to official introduce a new term into the lexicon of social media marketing: to “rainblow.” It means to shield your otherwise disgusting brand, service, or product behind some form of generally recognized piece of undeniable goodness. I believe this is actually one the marketing industry stole from Congress, the original masters of rainblowing our minds by authoring bills with names like the “Children’s Health Act” that actually allows companies to dispose of green, glowing toxic waste by pouring it directly into the mouths of anyone with a household income less than $250,000 a year.

The beauty of the new McDonald’s hashtag is how it boldly says, “Think of the special shit that really matters to you. OK, got it? Now give it to us.” That’s some bold social marketing, right there. It says, “We don’t stand for the shit we expect you to eat. We stand for whatever you think is good . . . whatever matters to you dumbass morons, just think ‘McDonald’s!’ when you picture that.”

Speaking of social networking and the Internets, I haven’t forgotten the official wrap up of my e-commerce how-to segment. All put together, the actual ad is going to look like this:

Frame Material: Steel
Head Tube Type: Standard 1-1/8″
Fork Steerer Tube Diameter: 1-1/8″
Seatpost Diameter: 27.2mm
Rear Dropout Spacing: 135mm
Rear Dropout Type: Standard Geared
Maximum Tire Size: 26×2.3-inches
Wheel Size: 26-inches
Front Dropout Spacing: 100mm
Water Bottle Bosses: 1 set, top of downtube
Color: Green
Size: 18-inch (both captain and stoker)

Learn more about the bike on the Daily Mail’s site.

$3,522.37

Next, I’ll be walking everyone through the exact little bit of code necessary to create that product listing, and then we’ll be able to start testing that buy button. Before then, I either need to make a tandem hearse to sell, or find something else I need to get rid of. Preferably something smaller than a tandem hearse or a Big Dummy, and easier to fit into a box and ship. #littlethings

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