3) Why do you suck so much at everything you do?
Look, I don't know, I just do. What do you want from me?
2) How do you tell the weather from inside now that you've moved and no longer have a view of the ursine man who's always smoking on his fire escape?
Easy, I study the hue and volume of the exhaust fumes emanating from the luxury cars as they drop off children at the elite prep school on the corner. Or, if it's a weekend, I just throw cash out the window to determine how windy it is.
1) Some variation of the following:
@bikesnobnyc do you know of any bike shops in #NYC worth a visit? Over from the UK in December
— Kirsty Medlock (@cyclebybicycle) November 28, 2012
(I just figured out you can embed Tweets, coincidentally just after I figured out what "embed" means.)
I've probably said it before because I repeat myself endlessly and I'll say it again because I repeat myself endlessly: don't come visit New York City and waste your time in bike shops. This is not to say I have anything against hardworking bike shop proprietors. Quite the contrary--I hope they all make a million billion zillion dollars. It's just that, as a gigantic bike dork, I know how important it is to take a break once in awhile from being a gigantic bike dork, and visiting one of the greatest cities in the world is a perfect opportunity to do just that. Seriously, just give it a rest. Go to a museum. Go to the theee-ay-ter. Go eat some of that spicy food that the "ethnics" are so good at making. Go to a trendy bar and rob some hipsters, who are the only group in New York City more haplessly inept than the tourists.
Nevertheless, I do acknowledge that a great city's "bike culture" is worthy of some degree of exploration. The problem is that there's only so much you're going to learn by standing around in a bike shop and watching the staff service New York City's disgusting overabundance of filthy rich Freds. (Or, increasingly, New York City's disgusting overabundance of haplessly inept hipsters.) Therefore, I think what the city needs is a Museum of Cycling, a place where bike dork tourists can satisfy their curiosity in a single visit. In fact, I may open just such a place, since thanks to Obama's liberal regime the government is handing out cultural endowments and grants like Mario Cipollini hands out herpes:
(Mario Cipollini giving Danilo Di Luca his trademark "herpes hand-up.")
By the way, speaking of grants, this portrait was commissioned by the US government and paid for with taxpayer funds:
Some might say that $500,000 is a bit much, but I say that America now has its Mona Lisa.
So right, the museum. Well, once the funding comes through and I get that loft in West Chelsea, I'm first going to buy that Cipo portrait for a million dollars. Then, I'm going to curate (which doesn't require quotes around it for once) such permanent installations as:
Badass Food Delivery Bikes
It's not a truly badass New York City food delivery bike unless the motocross fender is "slammed" against the saddle rails.
New York City's Greatest Freds of All Time
This exhibit will feature all the accomplished professionals who used New York City's stultifying round-and-round-Central-and-Prospect-Parks racing scene as their springboard to the elite ranks of competitive cycling. GFOATS include George Hincapie, George Hincapie, and various other dopers you've long since forgotten if you've even heard of them in the first place.
The Hall of Byrne
The consummate New York City cyclist, David Byrne does not own a car, nor does he own a car, and this exhibit will be dedicated to his many contributions to New York City bicycle culture, including an exhaustive retrospective of his whimsical bike racks:
(Lip. Rack. Now that's good spondee.)
With a typical u-lock you can just about secure the bike by the front wheel only. Now that's good design.
Not only that, but Byrne has committed to designing my museum's bike racks, and he promises they'll be his most impractical designs yet. Here's an early sketch he sent me on a cocktail napkin:
Oh, there's also going to be one more permanent exhibit:
The Sleep-Inducing Bicycle Historian Who Constantly Reminds You That There Used To Be Six-Day Races At Madison Square Garden
Did you know there used to be six-day races at Madison Square Park? Sure you did, people bring it up constantly. And what does that mean? Absolutely nothing. There also used to be a cholera epidemic. Track racing is not coming back. Get with it already.
Anyway, obviously there will also be changing exhibitions that are more in tune with the zeitgeist, and the first one will probably be a series of photographic portraiture called "Ass Cracks Across the Williamsburg Bridge."
Moving on, I find myself moving on in life, by which I mean I'm confronting the fact that I'm getting to be an old fuddy-duddy with an uninteresting lifestyle. This realization creeps up on people in various ways. Some people never realize it. Other people realize it when they discover they need a toupé. (I don't need a toupé, I just stick the hair that collects in the shower drain to my cranium with soap scum.) Still others realize it when they figure out that they need Viagra. (I don't need Viagra since I don't have genitals.) As for me, I realized it when I suddenly discovered I badly wanted a folding bike:
I haven't actually gotten a folding bike yet, but I think it's only a matter of time, and that's a scary notion to contemplate. The thing is, due to geography and new travel requirements I want to be able to get on and off of different trains and stuff yet still have a bike with me, and so all of a sudden I find myself exploring a contraption about which I know little. So, like any consumer, I find myself studying manufacturer websites:
I guess you could say I'm under "life pressures," assuming you consider shopping for a folding bike a life pressure. I'm also under economic pressure, in that I live underneath a gigantic mountain of money and huge amounts of cash do weigh a lot. However, I'm under no environmental pressure whatsoever, since I don't care what my crabon toof pirnt is, nor do I worry about the cost of gas, since even though I OWN A CAR I burn very little gas with it. Really, I have only two concerns, which are as follows:
1) Which folding bike should I get?
and
2) Where can I get a bear suit to wear while riding it?
Feel free to offer answers to one, both, or none of these questions in the comments.
Lastly, bike racing person Barry Wicks asked me to mention some sort of cyclocross beer-and-pushup contest in Bend, Oregon:
I told you I suck at everything.
