BSNYC Product Retrospective: Scattante Empire State Courier and Sundries

("A Very Tarcky Christmas," spotted by Helen in Aspen, CO)

Further to yesterday's post, in which I mentioned Mario Cipollini's all-consuming fear of an increasingly androgynous professional peloton, one commenter has offered a compelling view of the future based on the shocking evidence that Cipollini has brought to light:

Anonymous said...

In 500 years time the genderway indifferent Shepollini will not so much be remembered as an ancient pro cyclist, but instead will be revered by the predominate sub species (Homo sapien shemaleien) as the Adam and Eve of their kind. Shepollini will also be regarded by history as the founding fathermother of the distant futures most popular sport: Cyclocrossdressing. Some historians will contend that the practice of cross dressing on bicycles began before the emergence of the Shepollini bloodline during the single speed mountain bike racing era, otherwise known by future academia as "The Second Dark Age" due to the stagnated and regressed state of cycling at this time, but popular mythology will attest otherwise.
When some smug person tells you that cycling is the transport of the future, don't listen. It will in fact be the tranny sport of the future. And I should mention, Shepollini says that wet chain lube is categorically better that dry chain lube, for hair styling. ce

December 14, 2010 7:31 AM

I have very little reason to doubt that pretty much all of this will ultimately come to pass, and if in 500 years "the genderway indifferent Shepollini" is in fact not lauded as the founding fathermother of not only a new cycling discipline but also a completely new form of humanity blessed with two sets of genitals, I will eat a Rapha hat.

(Founding Fathermother Mario Cipollini fertilizes a new Earth with his hair drippings.)

Speaking of intensely spiritual creation myths, the holidays are now upon us. This means people everywhere are begrudgingly exchanging gifts they can't afford, motivated entirely by the socially-imposed sense of responsibility that drives our retail economy. In fact, even I have just received a gift, which was packed in actual marshmallows:

This is certainly the most stomach-turning packing job I've ever seen (and that includes the time at an old job when someone accidentally mailed us his own trash), and had it spent another day at my mailbox the rats almost certainly would have gotten to it and I'd be posting this from the bubonic plague ward at Beth Israel Medical Center. (This is the only place left in town where you can still get a decent bloodletting.)

The package, as it turns out, was from online Fred supply dispensary Performance, and it contained the items you see below:

As well as a "LiveWrong" bracelet, which I immediately placed on my Edgar Allan Poe bobblehead:

(Enter discount code "NEVERMORE" for big, big savings on gothic poetry and half-shorts.)

I was especially pleased to receive the lights, which are USB rechargeable. I've already been using similar lights from "hipster cyst" pioneers Knog, and I don't mind saying that I highly recommend USB rechargeable lights from the manufacturer of your choice. Not only do they liberate you from the hated disposable battery, but they also give you an excuse to spend more time on the Internet while they charge, which means that browsing online pornography for hours on end has finally been transformed into an act of bicycle safety.

Also, Performance included this. I have no idea what it is, but I'm assuming it's a prototype for a new Forté-branded singlespeed conversion kit that's even more crappy than the one they already offer:

Either that, or it's a pizza cutter with ceramic bearings.

Most significantly, though, Performance packed a chain rivet plier and lockring tool to celebrate the second anniversary of my Scattante Empire State Courier--an occasion I had forgotten, and of which they reminded me when I emailed them in the spirit of the season to tell them to never, ever send me a box full of fucking marshmallows again.

It's amazing to think that when, way back in September of 2008, Performance "dropped" its line of "urban" fixed-gear-ready Scattante singlespeeds and, in the process, stole material from my blog for their marketing copy, the cycling world reeled with disbelief. "This is the end!," cried the "bike culture." "Performance selling 'fixies' and quoting some blogger whose 15 minutes ended months ago in order to do it? Surely, the shark has been jumped!" Little did we all know what would follow: the closing of the fixed-gear "culture;" the Urban Outfitters bike; the Walmart bike. (By the way, if you're wondering what happened to my ironic intern, the short version is that I told him he could keep the Walmart bike pending his analysis of it and I never heard from him again, which means he either decided not to follow through with his review, or else he's met with some sort of catastrophe. Either way, he can kiss that BSNYC letter of recommendation goodbye.) In retrospect, Performance's take on the trend seems positively sincere and "OG" in comparison.

In any case, all of this made me pine for those bygone days of innocence, and to think fondly back to that day two years ago when I first opened that box from Performance and thought to myself, "Those dorks have a lot of nerve." I also thought it might be edifying to look at that Empire State Courier once again, and to see what's become of it today. Here's what it looked like in 2008, totally "stock" apart from the "hipster cyst" outbreak:

And here's what it looks like today:


Here's the view from the front:


And here's a disembodied hand:

As you can see, a mere two years in New York can make something look quite defeated and haggard, which goes a long way towards explaining the shattered appearance of all those recent Bard graduates in Williamsburg. For purposes of fit and comfort, I have replaced a number of components with stuff I had lying around--except for the fork, which I was forced to replace after encountering an obstacle in the bike lane and hurtling headlong into the back of a Bud Light truck. The bicycle also had both front and rear brakes until my cockpit was stolen some time ago, after which I only bothered to replace one, which is generally sufficient as the bicycle is fixed of gear. (The freewheel that came with the bike made a displeasing rumbling sound.) Speaking of theft, notice that in New York we actually have to chain our saddles to our bikes, which should give you a good idea of the sorry manner in which we're forced to live our lives. Also, here's what happens to a bike after repeated locking with a heavy chain:


This is a good thing, because it acts as camouflage--as you can see the bike begins to blend into the background.

If you're wondering why to this day so many "hipsters" and practitioners of "cycle chic" in New York seem to have such pristine bicycles, it's either because they don't really ride them very much, or because they've only had them for a few weeks and they haven't been stolen yet.

One development of note between the inception of the Empire State Courier and our present day is the proliferation of Velcro foot retention straps, arguably inspired by PowerGrips, pioneered in their current form by companies like Hold Fast, and fueled by the continuing growth of "fixed-gear freestyling," whose practitioners still refuse to simply ride BMX bikes even as their bicycles grow increasingly more BMX-like by the day. While most most fixed-gear freestyle by-products are mostly undesirable (endless videos of BMX-inspired tricks performed awkwardly), I thought that new forms of foot retention might be the exception, and so awhile back I bought a pair:

I've been using these on my Scattante for a little over a year now, and while I haven't exactly been thrilled with them they're also not so bad that I've bothered to take them off. On the plus side, they work well with smooth-soled, low-profile shoes such as sneakers when the weather is dry. On the negative side, they don't really accommodate the wider lug-soled winter shoes I prefer to wear when it's really crappy out, which was why I wanted to try them in the first place. Plus, they don't work particularly well in the rain, when even though they're synthetic they seem to get soggy and droopy which makes it hard to slide your foot in (though maybe that's just because my shoes get soggy, or because I'm generally a soggy and droopy person). In fairness to Hold Fast, they've changed the design somewhat since I've bought these so maybe they're better now, and I don't doubt that for fixed-gear freestyling they're the fixie-riding bee's blown knees, but I'm sorry to report that based on the ones I have they're not quite the "use them with every shoe you own" solution I'd hoped they'd be.

Anyway, I already had a gigantic USB rechargeable "hipster cyst" growing on the ironic crabon handlebars of my Scattante:

So I put the PerfAxiom lights on my enormous smugness flotilla:

As for which brand of light is brighter, I cannot say, since my method of determining whether or not a light is bright enough is to simply turn it on and look at it, and if doing so makes me wince in pain and see spots for the next 20 minutes then in my estimation it is bright enough. I'm happy to report that both the Knog and the PerfAxiom passed this test, and that lawsuits against both companies are pending. I also acknowledge that I am something of a "light whore" and would never turn away a free one. After all, lights are like condoms and tampons--necessities that we really shouldn't have to pay for:

Much less necessary is a headset spacer with an integrated bottle opener, but as a semi-professional bike blogger I need this to infiltrate "bike culture" events since most of them these days have a three bottle opener minimum:

(After 11 months I have yet to open a single bottle with this apparatus.)

In any case, while I enjoy the WiseCracker for its novelty value, I can't help thinking that if "bike culture" would promote lights half as much as it promotes bottle openers, then the Great Hipster Silk Route would not be thronged with totally invisible cyclists as it is now. (Though admittedly the "muffin tops" of the paler ones are eerily iridescent.)

And finally, here's the view of the Scattante Empire State Courier that the "Cat 6" racers get before they attack me and "drop" me:

Maybe I should cut back on the marshmallows.