Riding Hard: Living With Bike Porn

After two days of spiritually-themed posts my soul is empty and my mind is now focused on more worldly matters—specifically, bike porn. Between photos of new crap from Eurobike and the usual cavalcade of bikes gone bad that is Fixedgeargallery and Velospace, the cycling world is full of more filth than a Congressman’s internet cache. And as a reader pointed out to me recently, people are now combining bike porn with actual porn, as you can see in this not-safe-for-work (and depending on your proclivities and intestinal fortitude, possibly not-safe-for-lunch) link.

So it would seem, like it or not, that as cyclists we must come to terms with bike porn. And I think the best way to do that is to embrace it. Not by looking at it necessarily, but by coming up with bike porn names for ourselves.

What is a bike porn name? Well, you’re probably familiar with the old formula for coming up with your porn actor name: the name of your first pet + the street you grew up on. Well, a bike porn name is the moniker you'd adopt were you to enter the sordid world of bicycle pornography. I’ve been working on various formulas for coming up with your bike porn name. These formulas are far from airtight, and they are discipline-specific, but hey, it’s a start. Feel free to make suggestions:

Bike Porn Name for Mountain Bikers

Try using the manufacturer of your first real mountain bike + the name of your local trail. Using some of the New York area trails and some hypothetical first bikes, this has the potential to yield great handles such as:

The decidedly masculine Titus Hartshorne (Hartshorne Woods, NJ)
The unisexual and bizarre ProFlex Saxon (Saxon Woods, Westchester)
and the brilliantly televisual Ritchey Cunningham (Cunningham, Queens)

Bike Porn Name for Roadies

The best method I’ve come up with is using the manufacturer of your current road bike + the name of either your local monster climb, destination, or group ride. So around these parts that yields aliases like:

The suggestive and tactile Felt Harriman (Harriman State Park)
The taxonomically suggestive Giant Bear (Bear Mountain—in Harriman State Park)
And the just plain suggestive Burley Rocket (The Rocket Ride)


Bike Porn Name for Trackies/Fixed Gear Riders

For the trackies, I think we’ve got to go with using your bike’s manufacturer + the name of your local velodrome. If we hopskotch around the US a little bit, possible monikers include:

The not-so-subtle Giant Dick Lane (Dick Lane Velodrome in East Point, GA)
The strangely ambiguous Surly Piccolo (Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City, FL)
and the perplexing, Pennsylvania-specific, yet undeniably catchy Havnoonian Lehigh (Lehigh Valley Velodrome in Trexlertown, PA)

For the trendier urban riders who may eschew the velodrome, consider using your tattoo design + the manufacturer of your rear hub. Due to the lack of variety in both among this particular set of cyclists it might prove too constraining, but it does yield a few keepers:

Star Formula
Star Wood
Star Promax
Star Ace

...and so forth.

Of course, if that doesn’t work for you, there’s also the possibility of using your saddle manufaturer + your Deep-V color:

Regal Black
Koobi Pink
and of course the great Brooks Lavender

Bike Porn Names for Cyclocrossers

It gets tough with cyclocross, but so far I like the formula of using your brand of canti + the aspect of the discipline that gives you the most trouble. It’s far from failsafe, but it also yields some sultry sobriquets, like:

Avid Remounts
Empella Runups
Paul Pitting
and Spooky Stuttersteps

Again, these are just jumping-off points, and these formulas certainly won’t work for everybody. So if you want a good bike porn name (and who doesn’t) you’ll have to be creative. Thanks for reading, and please accept my apologies.