Living For The City

Gym… Tan… Laundry… Chatroulette!

Pauly D, Vinnie, Ronnie & The Situation were ALL in attendance and fist pumping up a storm!

Life changing event. Srsly.

…but no one seems to care!

See you fuckers on the boat!

So yesterday, being blisfully unaware that it was four degrees outside and I could have really enjoyed the day, I spent the bulk of the day in bed watching Rome on my laptop…

I did take a brief break from my laze about to pick up this amazing Pendleton Blanket from the Ace Hotel Portland from my bud Nick… But that only made getting out of bed in my freezing cold room that much harder!

Hearing that today was going to hover around six degrees (!) I figured that it might be a good day to take advantage of the unusually warm weather and get out on the roadie… then again, yesterday was an usually good day for Sean at the shop so he asked if I wanted to hang out and help him out a little today which in turn would help me work off what I owe for said roadie.

All kinds of buds were out and about…

Stu, Amy & Eve stopped by…

Wonger stopped by and ended up spending the day… salesman of the year.

Ben Turner stopped by. Boy that feller has really good taste in clothing… I fully should have switched shoes to make the pic complete…

Speaking of which, Bikes On Wheels now carries Vans Originals so go on in and get some!

My old friend Chris stopped by with his new pup Oscar… I can’t believe I forgot to snap a pic of that little tyke! In any case, here is a sampling of the goodies that Chris brought for me, for which I am very grateful!

All in all, bummer to have missed the day outside – happy to have spent it amongst good friends.

Brother Lemoine is in town, hanging with Sparkles and doing all kinds of cool stuff like shooting The Constantines (who we went to see Saturday night and were incredible! Thanks Chris!) so we’ve been taking him around and making sure he meets all the right folks and sees the right things while he’s here… For a coffee aficionado like Marc, the first stop naturally had to be Sammy’s.

I don’t think he was disappointed. Oh, look who.

Killer, Ben & El Papi Churro rolled by the Henry’s Outlet closing sale and our man Johnny Blaze hooked me up with this little guy for a buck!

What do you think I’m going to turn that into?

Yeah, I’m pretty predictable. I only wish that they had more of them! A line of 5 or 6 of these would look awesome down the center of a long, narrow room; the likes of which this city is full of!

This morning while I was walking down the street I got a call from my buddy Jason from work…

J: Hey man, what are you doing today?
M: Just getting a coffee, gonna go back and clean the house.
J: Would you want to hang out with Shadow for a bit?
M: Sure, what are you up to?
J: Um, while Anna’s water just broke…
M: Be there in 5…

Shadow’s gonna have a new little sister when she gets home in a couple of days! We’re all pushing for the name November (November Raine) but I think the lucky couple has settled on Pudding… Pudding Raine. It’s got kind of a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Congratulations to Jason & Anna!

I got my Josh Keyes print in the mail last night and she’s a beaut!

In a single week, Tiny Showcase & Josh raised $28, 155.00 for Partners In Health’s Haiti Relief Effort from the sale of the prints, $15 at a time… Not bad!

Mine found itself squarely at the center a new collage wall I’m starting… I wanted a big piece for this wall but that’s probably not gonna happen so like Voltron a whole bunch of little guys will come together to make me happy…

I still need to find somewhere to put these fine gents photographed sometime in the 1930′s, probably at the Mutual Street Arena or Maple Leaf Gardens.

L-R: Frank Bartell, Tony Beckman, MaxHurley, Reggie Fielding, Jules Audi, Lew Rush, Torchy Peden.

I’m not nerdy enough to figure out exactly which race these were taken at given that most of these guys were at pretty much all those races but I am nerdy enough to have tried for a couple minutes before realizing it really doesn’t matter.

…it’s almost spandex season!

Beyond my Rocky Mountain which I ride maaaaaaaybe once a year, it’s been several years now since I’ve owned a bike with gears or the ability to coast but, as much as I love my fixed wheeled bikes and ride one every day, I knew it was only a matter of time before I ponied up for a new road bike… Hey, I’m gettin’ on in years you know!

Last week when Sean called about this here carbon jobbie that he could score for me at well below half of retail (I expect retail is a little inflated, in fairness) I just couldn’t turn it down…

I need to swap out some of the yellow stuff for black, swap pedals and do a small brake upgrade and she’ll be road worthy! I’m pretty stoked…

Granted… this is what I’d really, really, reeeeeeally like…

…but I’ll take what I can get and I can appreciate that bikes like that cost money that I don’t have and investing in a bike like that means being willing to put the hours in on it to make it worth my while. Baby steps, Matty, baby steps.

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Update: Much better!

New pedals and then she’s done for the time being!

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Update: Scored a lightly used set of Easton Circuit wheels for next to nothing (in fact, I may even make money on the deal in the end) so those will go on next week and if I’m a good boy an Ultegra cassette is going to go along with them… GD bless accidental upgrades.

I don’t know what it is about a little bit of white stuff on the ground that causes the mental retardation of many Toronto drivers to multiply tenfold?! Take ‘er down a notch, you big re reeeees!

There was a time in my life when I’d go see live music at least once a week, often more… but I’m old and don’t care much any more so I’d be hard pressed to go see someone play once a month, if that.

Well, last night Chuck Ragan rolled through with The Cavaliers, Dave Hause of The Loved Ones & Tim Barry of Avail. I missed the Cavaliers which was a bummer, I missed Hause which was an even bigger bummer and I caught Tim Barry which was the biggest bummer of all. Nah, I’m buggin’, I didn’t hate it that much but as much as I liked Avail I can’t really get into his solo stuff.

Now, I’ve missed seeing Chuck Ragan at least a couple of times since seeing him with Hot Water Music about a decade ago… at the now defunct Reverb with Elliot & Buried Alive.. Weird line up… awesome show, but I digress…

I’ve had mixed reviews of Chuck’s live show but this particular show, last night, was pure magic. He played most of jams I wanted to hear most and played them in the way that only a well-seasoned, road-beaten punkman turned folkman like Ragan could.

Leatherface in a couple of weeks! Doomriders / Red Sparowes in April?! Woah momma!

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In other news…

InfoGraphics nerds take note; last week I got my 2008 Feltron Report in the mail and it’s pretty sweet… Hopefully my 2009 pre-order will show up soon!

I love that Nicholas Felton has documented his life in this way… It’s nerdy and probably at least a little bit weird but I like it and his design sense / data visualization is spot on.

Killer had his big photographic debut this weekend when some of the fine folks from Dandyhorse Magazine swung by to shoot for a Bikes On Wheels feature in an upcoming issue. I hope they get someone really handsome to write the piece.

We are 138! We are 138! We aaaaaaaare 238?! At least part of why I ended up in this particular house is that it’s address is 38… Now, I figured that if I split the house in two, even if I had to number the units backwards, I’d live at 1-38… Hey, when you find yourself turning into a grown up you find different ways to stay punk!

The plan is to have Aner hand paint the doors and mailboxes and whatnot but I figured at .25c a piece I’d snag ‘em anyway! The Public Butter strikes again!

Snagged some new duds, granted they’re just t-shirts but there are very few days that I don’t wear a t-shirt so I’m always happy to have more… Thanks Tobin and Matias for the amazing Injun Buried Inside jammer.

I don’t know what made me think of it but I just remembered the weirdo ninja socks that Toby brought back for me from the CMWCs in Tokyo last year… Apparently they were the official socks of the event… Weird.

I’ve been playing a lot with lighting lately, as anyone that reads this blog from time to time can tell, but most of what I’ve been doing relies on lamp kits and whatnot so this weekend I picked up a bunch of spare parts to do a little tinkering…

Easy peasey.

Speaking of how fancy I am… Even though we weren’t talking about how fancy I am… Look how fucking fancy I am!

Clearly inspired by ripped off from Smash‘s display at this year’s IDS.

Bumout! I needed that…

I was puppy sitting this weekend with my favorite office pup Shadow so I don’t have much to report other than she’s a GD sweetheart…

…and it’s cold outside.