Portland is a place that brings otherwise different things together: office buildings and mountains; personal independence and community spirit; bright green hair and middle age. But the most interesting combination I’ve seen has to be beer and haircuts. Bishops on Mississippi not only serves Miller Lite with their haircuts; they stay open until 9:00pm on Saturdays and 7:00pm on Sundays. I’d argue that no other place in the world would think to combine the convenience of sitting around drinking all day with the practicality of cutting hair while sitting around drinking all day. And lest the ladies be left out, apparently many of the hair salons in this same part of the city serve wine, regardless of the time of day. It’s an innovative kind of place.

Speaking of innovative, I was also recently invited to one of those incredibly exclusive private sales web sites, TouchOfModern.com. Actually, I was following a link to a particularly hip-looking bike and decided it looked silly enough to warrant giving the ultra-exclusive sale club site my email address so I could see it. It immediately asked for me to give it the email addresses of three friends. Unable to quickly think of three friends I disliked, I tried to back my browser out of the whole sordid mess and assumed my sign up to be a total failure. But they got me.

Now I can’t seem to escape TouchOfModern.com, which keeps showing up in my email at all hours of the night like some digital F.Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda, asking me to just come out for one more drink and to maybe see a chrome lamp with tassels that’s 40% off this week only. But when it comes to online shopping, I prefer to drink alone, or while having my hair cut.

But the bike I was hoping to learn more about–and for which I have polluted my email for some time to come–is this, the Schindelhauer Viktor.

Exclusive at it is, even you can visit Schindelhauer’s site to check out the Viktor for youself. Especially powerful is the one-sentence manifesto Schindelhauer includes in the brief description of the bike: “Waiver of all superfluous details is the ideology of the hard-minded purist.”

Damn straight. But you pay a premium to be deprived of conveniences these days. The Viktor–a 6061 aluminum frame with a Kalloy post and equally regal shit components everywhere else, all whitewashed the obligatory “Urban White,” will set you back just under $1700 by my Euro conversion calculations. More if you want fenders. You could, for a few hundred bucks less, get something like a Focus Urban 8 with gears and disc brakes and a seat post clamping system that didn’t die out with Czech-made track frames of the ’80s, but where would the style be in that? How hard would your mind be then?

I, of course, can get a Viktor for only $1525, plus $20 shipping and a strict no returns policy, because I have been invited to TouchOfModern.com, though I can’t remember my password.

The Schindelhauer’s Viktor was also apparently the recipient of a prestigious “Red Dot Design Award,” which I’d naively assumed to be presented by a paint company, given the quantity of paint used on the Viktor. But, no, Red Dot is the real deal, an organization that helps mankind discern the subtle differences between a wrench and “an elegant tool with completely new characteristics.” For my part–and getting in on the spirit of things–I would like to award the first ever Canootervalve Divine Excellence in Dramatic Copy Writing Fortitude award to Red Dot, for their other-worldly attempt at explaining the existence of wrenches.

In the world of manual work there are many areas and work steps in which by now age-old tools such as the wrench are essential.”

Ah, yes. That world of manual work is always using age-old wrenches. For a second there, I was worried the entire design industry had lost sight of function completely and was just glorifying anything more mechanically complex than a pet rock. Clearly, though, this is proof they still understand what’s going on out there in the world of manual work.

I think I need another haircut.