Living For The City

I have a long, drawn out account of my thoughts on this weekend and all that transpired half-written but I don’t know if I’ll ever bother finishing it and/or posting it. I’ve read a lot of articles this week that do an excellent job of explaining what happened and how/why it all happened but this little blog entry sums up my feelings pretty well in very simple and relatable way.

The bottom line is that the script played itself out exactly as it was intended to and our world is no better or no worse off for it – it’s exactly as it was and exactly as it always will be.

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Oh hell, rather than make you click the link I’ll just repost…

Cop Car Burned! All Criticisms of Global Capitalism Rendered Moot!

i don’t endorse violence. i don’t think it’s the ideal way forward to a better society. i think all sane people would agree. heck, i don’t even endorse vandalism in the “service” of social change. i’m conservative that way. but the disproportionate reaction (to the disproportionate mainstream media coverage) to the image of a burning car and some broken windows at the G20 summit in toronto needs to be put into perspective.

i won’t bother with the obvious comparative study of the isolated “violence” of a handful of protestors versus the overwhelming violence practiced day in and day out at the expense of millions upon millions of human lives by national states the world over in order to secure their geopolitical interests. too easy. too obvious. too fundamental.

i will however, point out that unless you’ve been in the situation of being a direct, physical and psychological target of overwhelming and belligerent street-level force FUNDED BY YOUR OWN TAX DOLLARS, it can be hard to understand the frustration and rage that can build over the course of an afternoon let alone over the course of a lifetime.

hell, you don’t even have to have experienced it directly. just sitting on our couches in our homes, cursing the stinking system, we all know that the state has a monopoly on ultimate violence and total control. otherwise it wouldn’t exist as it does, right? things would be different, cause we would have gotten up off our couches and changed it if we were operating on a level playing field. but their is no level playing field between the state and its subjects. citizens plainly have insufficient institutional power to derail the sociopathic behaviour of the prevailing order. frustration and rage is the predictable result.

that frustration and rage is exacerbated when you’re pitted face to face against a wall of riot cops who are alternately corralling and intentionally provoking your otherwise peaceful demonstration into a corner, firing rubber bullets at you, detaining and searching you with no cause, hitting you with batons, singling out and abducting organizers, impersonating protesters, firing gas canisters intentionally at head level, exploding sound grenades by your ears, permanently damaging your body with exposure to chemical bombs (all based on personal experience by the way) and then having it all portrayed in the media as if it were YOU that needs to be restrained and punished rather than the megalomaniacs on the other side of the fence that continue to plunder and pillage the planet at these obnoxious publicly-funded private-parties of the global elite.

in these situations, there is only so much futility a person can take before their rage can get the best of them and a burning cop car or a smashed bank window starts to look pretty appealing. yes, these are futile acts, but what do we expect people to do when they are treated like shit and the justice system does nothing to intervene on their behalf?

sure, ideally we could all rise above it and aim for a perfect, superhuman state of restraint. sure. and yes, ideally i too would prefer the demonstrations were strictly peaceful (for strategic reasons mainly) and that other, more polarizing means of demonstration and protest and disruption occurred outside of these public gatherings (where they would be more effective).

but the people who manage the security state won’t let that happen anyways. they WANT violence. they provoke it. why? it justifies their absurd budgets. it lets them test and refine (and demonstrate to the rest of the population) their methods of population control in a managed setting, preparing for the day that the shit really hits the fan and the police state finally gets to give up any pretense of democracy. why else would they have the summit in fucking downtown toronto, where spirited protest was absolutely certain to occur, rather than on some cruise-ship in the atlantic where it could all be completely avoided? these are essentially war-games being staged on our nickel. and we, the people, are the enemy.

so let’s just try to keep things in perspective when corporate media habitually fails to hold concentrations of global power to any sliver of account and instead chooses to replay footage of a stupid burning cop car on a loop for hours on end as their marquee story.

there are plenty of examples of independent video footage of cops provoking and mistreating people at the G20 summit surfacing on the net. do yourself a favour and check them out and ask yourself how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of it. or if it were a member of your family.

that’s all i got to say.

Posted by Jesus H. Chris

Killer and I thought it would be fun to go for a bike ride in the G20 security zone and see what kind of trouble we could get into… Nothing!

Even two guys dressed in black with lots of tattoos riding down closed roads couldn’t get more than a quick glance from any of the billion police officers currently in the zone. What’s a guy gotta do to get arrested / assaulted around here? Jaaaaaysus!

On the real, though, it’s pretty gnarly down there – a total police state / militarized zone – our tax dollars well at work!

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In other news; after nearly a decade of riding a bike in this city having never been brought down by the streetcar tracks, despite a few close calls, they finally got me!

Note to self; when you starting from a stopped position, even if your rear wheel is crossing perpendicular to the track, if it’s wet your wheel will slide out from under you causing you pain and embarassment. Furthermore, no one who sees you go down will care… If only Tom Cruise was there, he’d have known what to do.

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When I’m done learning how to ride my motorcycle really well I’m going to learn to surf and then this is going to be my life. I know that this is old and hasn’t been updated in forever but I find myself constantly returning to it when I feel the need to get away. Oh yeah, I’m feelin’ the need to get away… feelin’ it bad.

Can’t wait!

Not unlike this fender fail from the days of yore; last night on my way home while stopping to say hi to some buds in front of a crowded patio I had another epic fender fail… Not embarrassing at all! It might be time to throw some metal jammers on this guy…

Fortunately, I’m a hoarder so a replacement was not hard to come by… So many styles and sizes to choose from, oh my!

It’s been a while since I’ve had the need or desire to do some tinkering so it felt good to break out the stand and have at it. It was surprisingly relaxing and brought me back to the days where tinkering on bikes was basically all I did in my free time. That got to be a bit much, but I could use a little more tinkering in my life… I suspect the new Motorbike is going to give me tinkering opportunities a plenty. Hows about I say tinkering one more time? Tinkering.

The mm clearances on this beast are a royal pain, it also might be time to order myself a pair of 25c Marathons instead…

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Shout out to Leslie who was found unconscious in the street on Sunday night and is still recovering in Hospital. Details are sketchy at best but Leslie may well have been the victim of a hit and run… Will keep y’all posted. Now, I may be very guilty of owning a few very nice helmets and yet wearing them very little but I don’t think that there is any question here that Leslie’s very likely saved her life the other night and we’re all thankful for it.

Of course, now the helmet is demolished but don’t worry, little buddy, the gang is chipping in and getting you a new one so you just go up to Bikes and pick out whatever your little heart desires.

I spent the day yesterday, until well after the sun went down, with the folks’ working on the outside of the house and I think the end may finally be in sight and I’ll be able to spend my weekends doing the following; waking up without an alarm, going for coffee, going for breakfast, bbqing, riding my road bike, riding my motorbike and lounging in the park drinking cold ones… That’s about all I want for when the sun is a shinin’!

I don’t have fantastic before pictures but anyone who’s been to my place for the first time knows that it’s a house with a huge expanse of red interlocking pavers on a street full of lush, green gardens and (dare I say at risk of my masculinity, which is abundant, right?) pretty little front yards… The worst house on the best street, as they say.

Before, sorta.

After, almost.

Once the plants start to fill out and I get a little bit more ground cover I think it’s going to look awesome… I still hate the brick but I don’t think I’m going to touch it. The next projects for the front will be new door paint, maybe new lighting and definitely a new front porch. The only thing worse than those red pavers is the plastic boards (made to look like wood, sorta) that these lazy pricks used to build the porch… Worstever.

I still have a decent amount of work to do in the back yard but nothing as dramatic or time consuming as what went on out front… Not this year, anyway. Next year I’ll try to do a more extreme makeover (home edition, turn on the waterworks, right?) back there but I don’t think I have the energy right now.

I don’t have an amazing before pic, I suppose this is as close as it comes…

…but this is a little more accurate.

Garbage, construction debris, small families living in there somewhere, piles of dirt, you know… Basically it sucked the big one back there. It’s at least a little bit less sucky back there now. Ok, a lot less sucky!

All in all, for a weekend that was supposed to piss rain from start to finish, it was a pretty frickin’ productive weekend!

Ok, let’s try this again! So I fouled out the spark-plugs on the bike soon after getting it and I don’t know enough yet to be able to isolate specific problems so I had to have ‘er trailered back to the shop for repair. Paul at Ontario Cycle Salvage was good about cutting me a huge deal on towing which I certainly appreciate. She left me on Thursday morning and came back to me Friday night in nice running condition so I could spend a couple of hours riding on Saturday.

I thought it was the rusty tank causing problems so I was getting ready to put a new tank on there until while I restore the original one, but the old rust bucket is still on there so I’ll need to pick a 3 or 4 day stretch when I don’t want to ride to take care of that. I ordered some POR-15 direct from the Canadian distributor in Montreal on Thursday afternoon and it was at my doorstep by the time I got home from work on Friday. Awesome!

I thought I’d be really clever and try to come up with some sort of little compartment to mount under the seat to store my insurance and whatnot when I popped it open to discover that Honda already thought of that and built one in!

Once I popped it open I was delighted to find the original Owner’s Manual in great shape… So sweet!

I’m still getting the hang of it but I’m going to spend as much time on the bike as I can to get some good practice in and thus far it’s super, super fun. I can’t wait to get to a point when I can really start to enjoy this thing! Oh, the adventures I’ll have…

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Figuring that if I fall off this thing I better get something new to protect myself so a new leather jacket was in order. Hey, I’ve invested a good amount of money in nice tattoos and I fully intend to keep them!

I stopped by The Crows Nest and Jon was just finishing up a cut before taking a break so he graciously took me over to see Roger who owns King of Kensington and Flashback to see if he could help me out, knowing that finding something to fit a guy of my size and shape is never easy. See, I’m a little over 6’4″ and weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 215 pounds (last I checked) so I’m tall, I’ve got long arms, I’m not rail thin but not a huuuuge fatty so often when I find things that are long enough they are also tent-like in overall appearance..

Roger went into the back and game out with a fine selection of vintage leathers and helped me find one that fit well, gave me an unexpected but very much appreciated break on the price, and sent me on my way. She’s a beaut!

Vintage leathers are ideal for me for a few reasons; 1) I don’t feel like I’ve become a horrible vegan, buying a piece of leather as old as I am 2) Leather motorcycle jackets cost a fortune, I don’t have a fortune 3) I like old stuff so if I were to buy new I’d likely buy something that is modeled after an old jacket anyway 3) Already broken in – instant character. Boom.

Last week I picked up my first motorized vehicle in… well… ever. When I lived at home I’d drive one of my folks’ cars but I’ve never owned one and since moving to the city almost a decade ago (woah, has it been that long?) I just haven’t needed one… I can rent, borrow, or use Zipcar for when I really need one and the rest of the time? That’s what bikes are for…

I’ve always liked motorbikes but given that I go everywhere I need to go via bicycle year-round and you can’t ride a motorbike in the winter; practicality has kept the urges at bay. Buuuuut, with a few good buds getting into them and with me coming into a little bit of money last month I decided to treat myself. This didn’t hurt, either.

I’d looked at a few bikes but between pieces of shit, of which I’m sure there are plenty, and bikes that are too small for me (frame size) or too big for me (engine displacement) I set my sights squarely on mid-70′s Honda CB750s…

I found this one, a ’74 CB750 Four, at Ontario Cycle Salvage in Scarborough on consignment; beautiful vintage condition (original pipes & all!), already running but in need of just a couple of things for certification so I rolled that into the price and they took care of it. In the week I waited I bought my helmet, got my M1, got insured, signed up for my training course / M2 test, badda boom / badda bing! I’m a motorcyclist now…

I’ve got new emblems for the tank & side covers but I have a little bit of restoration work to do on both so I’m going to hold off on the installation until then… Beyond that, there is very little I want to do with the bike… New bars, new mirrors, maybe new signals, basic stuff but I think Honda did a great job when they designed it so there isn’t much I need to do!

Because I’m still figuring out how it all works Andrew rode it home for me. It gave him a little bit of trouble on the way home (likely due to a little rust in the tank) but once he opened ‘er up on the highway it ran beautifully for the rest of the day. I practiced in the alley way, stalled it every ten seconds, parked it and headed up to Crows Nest.

I went to get on it yesterday and I just couldn’t get ‘er going again. I’d definitely run down the battery and by the time I was done trying it’d totally killed it. Fortunately Colohan came over with a trickle-charger so we’ll see if that does the trick! I really hope so because when she’s a runnin’, she’s a runnin’ meeeeeean! So jazzed!

Here’s to new adventures; can’t wait to get comfortable enough to take ‘er out on the open road where she belongs.

Across from The Pearl, below the King of Kensington (awesome vintage shop) now lives the new home of Jon Roth, barber extraordinaire and all around good fella, the Crows Nest Barber Shop. I know that Jon & a huge cast of characters have been busting their asses to get the place ready over last month and it shows – it looks fantastic and it’s filled with great vintage treasures, most notably an antique cash register that has been in Jon’s family for a very long time… You can’t pay for that kind of character.

Congrats, Jon, if you were looking to create a super comfortable environment in which gentlemen can get together, shoot the shit, drink a billion PBRs and come out looking so fresh and so clean… well, you’ve done it.

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While you’re in the market be sure to go see Killer & the boys (& Red, of course) and pick yourself up some new Dblnt designed Bikes On Wheels shirts…

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While you’re getting new shirts for summer – get ready for this little gem out of Ottawa based design shop, Supply.

They’ll be available for pre-order soon and a portion of what they make on the shirts will be donated to a (yet to be decided) bike charity or advocacy group. Nice work, Steve!

There are relatively few photographs of yours truly on this blog and this is true for two reasons; a) it’s my blog and I don’t really make a habit of photographing myself, I’m self-absorbed enough as it is and b) I don’t photograph well… I just don’t! For every good picture of me there are nine super embarrassing / unflattering ones, fact. This is what makes being a part of Kelsey’s “Bagheads” series, that I mentioned last week, appealing for me… I get to be in cool photos but they don’t get all grossed up by my face!

Some un-chosen alternates…

Old & dirty, just like El Papi Churro himself.