Living For The City

Unless something super spectacular happens that just neeeeeds to be reported I’m going to try to take a little break from this thing for a little bit. Maybe a week, maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of hours… who knows?

In the meantime, watch this video Aner just sent me. Put it on mute, though… unless of course you are a certain someone that insisted on singing movie ballads over and over and over and over and over and over again at Sean & Aidan’s wedding in which case turn them shits up!

I’ve seen these ridiculous little key bar end plugs (made for car scratching) floating around the web for the last couple of days, alongside this Pepper Spray for Cyclists that Competitive Cyclist has been selling – I’ve got mixed feelings about vigilante justice (ah, who am I kidding?) but after seeing this exceptionally funny BikeSnobNYC post today and having a brief email conversation with Nick; I’ve decided to enter the arena with a little invention of my own.

Andrew McC and I had been talking about building a laser cutter to make art and then also talked about trying to make a laser bike lane as per the concept put forth by Altitude just because I think they’re cool but imagine, if you will, a mixture of the two!

Basically, you’d have a bike lane being projected behind you as you ride along as per the original LightLane but in this new and improved version, anything that enters that lane gets sliced and diced with more speed and efficiency than even the most advanced cutting tools known to man. You’re going to love my nuts.

“Since moving to London from Paris about 8 years ago, one thing I have never underestimated is the unrivaled ability of the British to jump on an occasion to dress up. Yesterday I took part in the first Tweed Run, a group ride gathering about 150 cyclists, all dressed in tweed, plus fours, flat caps, etc… A lot of them brought their classic bikes along, with some dating as far back as 1909. Our leisurely stroll took us around London, clearly puzzling foreign tourists and locals alike.” -Yorgo Tloupas

As much as I tend to clown on dorky bike things at least a little bit, even the ones I participate in; I love all things old timey, save for the overt white supremacist patriarchy (thanks Bell) and probably a bunch of other things, I’d love it if Toronto had a “Tweed Run” of our very own – especially if I could get my hands on a Farthing to ride for the day… and then keep forever and ever. Any takers?

Via Prolly via Arkitip Intel / Roxy’s Flikr

While doing my morning blog perusal I came upon this post on SFGFC showing Massan‘s HUF Concept going up for sale on Yahoo Japan’s auction site. As it stands – this frame, sans fork, is checking in around 1,400.00 CAD which, given the nature of online auctions, will probably go up in the final moments.

Let’s not forget that a brand new complete Bianchi Pista Concept has a MSRP 1,400.00 and you could buy a Marinoni Pista Cronos (comparable, if not better IMO) for around the same price – even a one off with a fancy paintjob.

Let’s also not forget that if you’ve seen MASH then you know that these guys ride the hell out of their bikes – certainly not a bad thing, bikes should have the hell ridden out of them but it definitely is something to consider when buying a used one.

I suppose I should also take into consideration the cost of living differences between Japan and North America but I suspect that this is still too much money for this standard, used concept with no fork and a cool paintjob – granted, it’s a pretty frickin’ sweet paintjob. Sheesh.

You know what people with too much money should do? Fund world peace? Put an end to world hunger? Invest in alternative energy sources? Sure, those are all good ideas but not nearly as good an idea as buying either one of these for me.

OG Freedom Haters Spark & Rob, along with yours truly are entering the 2nd Annual Vegan Chili Cook-off presented by Left Feet to be held on the 31st of January.

Word on the street is that we’re going up against some pretty heavy hitters (read: actual chefs) but we don’t even give a care. Yeah, that’s right, not even one care.

Today is technically the last day to register but Steve knows that vegans are, by virtue of their very nature, slackers so if you’re interested contact him and see if he’ll let you enter a little late.

The more people get involved, the more chili there’ll be to sample and the more money will go to Out Of The Cold so if you’re considering throwing in your hat, stop considering and just do it, unless of course you can actually cook a mean chili, in which case you should just come out and vote for ours.

Read about last year’s event here.

Some of you might remember a couple of weeks ago my friend Scotty Hammell was raising funds so that he’d be able to throw himself out of an airplane handcuffed, straight jacketed, butt plugged, whatever… I don’t even know at this point but it’s obviously pretty nuts, regardless, and we all love him for it.

Scotty moved to California last week to begin training and he’s been documenting his progress on his blog.

I’ve come to realize that skydiving, especially in the early stages, is all about communication. Communicating while falling at terminal velocity is hard to do. Factor in the safety; all of the checks you have to do at LEAST every five seconds and learning the right form so that you gain muscle memory makes it even harder. One of the exercises in your level one and level two, is while you’re flying, to reach back and put your hand on your pilot chute handle (aka the rip cord) to show your instructor that you know where it is. This was easy and natural the first dive, but the second dive, for some reason I couldn’t find it right away on the second and third attempt. My instructor, seeing that I’m not finding it right away, tried grabbing my hand to show me where it was. This mad me panic and that is NOT good when you’re freefalling. You NEVER want to panic.

So gnarly. Best of luck, Scotty, we’re all behind you 100% of the way.

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On the less dangerous side of things, my boy Tony who recently left my former home at Takeover hit the ground running with Vinyl Download – this is really only useful for you if you’re in a band and/or run a label that releases music in the vinyl format (or know someone that does) so if you’re not one of the aforementioned you need not read further.

From a consumer perspective, the premise is this; you buy a record, you go home and listen to it and it rules but you want to be able to listen to it on your iPod but you can’t because the musically has magically been encased for all eternity in black wax.

Now, unless you have a USB Turntable or something along those lines for ripping Vinyl you’ll probably search the web for a digital version of those songs which in some cases might be a bit of an arduous task, depending on the rarity of the record.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the band or label who released the record had already decided to give you high quality digital files for your listening enjoyment? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an affordable and easy to use piece of software that allowed them to do that for you?

Enter Vinyl Download.

I’m not sure what else is out there in terms of this type of solution but I will say that Tony’s will be well thought out, well built, well supported and you’d be putting money directly into the hands of a really good dude so if you’re in a position to do so, support brother Bennett is his latest endeavor.

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On an unrelated note; so jazzed!

For xmas this year my nephew got me an iTunes Gift Certificate. Apparently he didn’t know easy it is to just steal music these days but he is only a year and a half old so I’ll excuse his ignorance.

Anyway, I figured I’d support my boys in Metz so I bought their EP (you should too) and I also got a bunch of singles including the Chuck Ragan / The Loved Ones split where they do the old switcheroo and cover each other’s jams… I like the Chuck side more than the other but I think that Pretty Good Year is a better song than For Broken Ears to begin with so it kind of makes sense.

In any case, I wanted an opportunity to test out this new Audio Player plugin I just installed so I figured I’d share. Enjoy…

Chuck Ragan, Pretty Good Year:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Loved Ones, Pretty Good Year:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Chuck Ragan, For Broken Ears:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Loved Ones, For Broken Ears:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

On an unrelated note; I necessarily don’t care either way for the movie / product collabo but these new Girl decks give a closer look at some of the characters from the wildly anticipated (see what I did there?) release of Where The Wild Things Are.

Last night, after a night of debauchery and douchebaggery in honor of the McCracken Brothers’ birthday – Sparkles lured me back to the parlour (yeah, that’s right; Grown Man Business right thurr) with promises of karate in the garage but when I arrived all I saw were these really huge (like, 3 feet tall, huge), really striking prints leaned against the wall. I was immediately drawn to them and for good reason, they were now mine.

As the story goes; When Lance retired Team Discovery was trying to decide who was going to replace him as team leader and Toronto artist Tavis Coburn was commissioned to produce a series of posters to promote the various contenders – I think 6 in all. They were pasted up in various American cities and were often removed and sold on eBay but they weren’t really commercially available otherwise.

Well, apparently Tavis gave a stack of them to the folks at Telegramme who showed them to The Sun Dog when he said that he needed some bikey prints for his bud, The Rennick. They said that they weren’t allowed to sell them because of some sort of limitations Discovery had set on them but The Sun Dog can be very persuasive and worked something out with the shop and the artist that allowed them to hang freely in my humble abode.

See, back in the summer Spark was working a home reno project out in Scarborough and I spent a good number of days out there sweatin’ it out with my main man. I never looked at it as anything more than a bud helping a bud as my buds have helped me more times than I can count in more ways than I can count but I guess Spark thought better of it. Seriously, brother Clarke, this was a truly thoughtful gift and it means more to me than words can properly express – I’ll have these forever and I’ll always look at them and think of the buds.

The ‘Hood:

The Rad:

The Unicorns!

’91 Turbo in near mint condition? Less than the cost of shipping alone on an ‘eBay’d saddle? Giddy up! Thanks Andrew. Hey, does anyone remember a few years ago when some Japanese cats released a telescopic rear fender that was made to fit the Turbo specifically? Anyone remember what that was called and who released it? Not that I expect to find one but they were so cool, I figure It’d be worth looking up.

Snagging this up this morning reminded me of the new Selle Italia, er… Selle San Marco, er… Soma saddles that I saw online last week that looked strangely familiar.

They’ve also released a few other slightly recognizable saddles, namely the SLR Ensho, SLR Gel Flow Kamisori, Regal Okami & Flite Hisan saddles.

I don’t think that Soma is trying to hide their influence with any of these saddles at all so I’m sure they looked into it before release but I wouldn’t be surprised if Soma had to cease production as there is definitely some next level You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice type shit going on up in here.

It’s pretty hokey but I guess I don’t really mind the rip all that much; moreso in the case of saddles that have been discontinued such as the Turbo and also because all of the aforementioned are leather saddles and there are a good number of folks on bikes that would rather man made materials.

With that said, I’m sure that Selle Italia will probably reproduce the Turbo if Selle San Marco reintroducing the Concor is any indication.

I am personally quite surprised that the Soma Condor hasn’t yet gone online.

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As long as I’m posting all the same stuff that all the bike blogs are posting this week I might as well add this little gem. As per Tracko’s recommendation, 6:39 is wild. Enjoy.

The latest issue of Urban Velo is now online and features, as in all issues, a solid mix of relevant cultural and technical articles alongside a nice variety of photos to keep you warm in the winter months.

I hadn’t really been following the ‘zine since it’s release in the Spring of ’07 but I’ve been playing catch-up and I’m very happy to see how far they’ve come and am looking forward to seeing the magazine continue to grow.

Download issues 1 through 11 here or buy printed versions (amongst other things) here.

Selectism recently posted a nice little feature on Montana based Freeman Transport – a newly formed bike company with a strong focus on bicycles that are built for travel.

Their bikes are a little bit hit and miss for me aesthetically (probably not their fault, they are built to customer spec) but I really enjoyed the interview and really appreciate their commitment to high quality, hand-made products that are built with local economy and a long life cycle in mind.

As someone that likes to bring his bike with him whenever possible, I’d love to have a bike outfitted with some S&S Couplers and that bike bag is hot as well but I doubt that I’ll have the money anytime in the near future.

Via Tracko

Unrelated note; my coworkers are funny

I got a nice little package from the fine folks at Cog Magazine last night containing a hand wrapped, hand numbered photo annual, hopefully the first of many.

12″×9″ Hardcover, high-quality offset printing, 100+ pages of photographs, English / Japanese captions, silk-screened cover, signed edition of 2500 copies.

The book features photos from, well, a good number of places in the world including North America, Japan & Australia (ok, I guess that’s not ‘a good number’ but you get the point) and has a solid mix of both urban and track cycling. The photos themselves are beautiful and it’s really nice to see them in this format – these are the types of things that I need to get me through the winter and get me pumped for the warmer weather. Sure, I still ride in the snow but you and I both know that it’s not the same… But I digress…

Coverage of the Cycle Messenger World Championships held this year in Toronto is heavy and if you look really, really closely you’ll be able to spot yours truly hanging out on the polo courts. Sometimes it’s hard being so famous, you just never know when the paparazzi are watching.

Get yours here… or just come over and read mine. Bring snacks.