Urban Tools: Curatorial Commitment

In last yesterday's post of Tuesday, August 24th, 2010, which I posted yesterday, and which should not be confused with today's post, today's bonus post, or any other post, I included the following piece of "fixie"-themed artwork:
While originally taken aback by its resemblance to the propaganda materials of a certain political regime so evil that it caused the interruption of all three Grand Tours in the 1940s, I have since learned that it's actually (as its creator informs me) intended to parody fixed-gear elitism. Indeed, so well-executed was this parody that I was thoroughly taken in--as was this unwitting "hipster," who also seems to have missed the point:

Prince Harry, incidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance in the above photo to Tom Boonen, who also shocked the world recently with this instance of anti-Semitic and/or anti-Amish mockery:

(It's impossible to know for sure whom Boonen is mocking without additional props such as horses or minivans.)

The UCI really needs to stage an intervention for this guy, and the admonishing visage of his mentor Johan Museeuw glowering at him from beneath his flaxen hairpiece could prove to be just what he needs to "scare him straight."

Furthermore, in addition to misinterpreting that image, a number of airplane nerds have informed me that the following statement I made in the day after Monday's post is also in containment of a factually inaccurate incorrectitude:

Just wait until I "drop" my own "fixie" video, in which I ride up and down the tarmac at JFK while doing elephant trunk skids and almost get hit by a Scandinavian Airlines 747.

As it turns out, Scandinavian Airlines doesn't use 747s at all, a fact of which I was unaware despite a childhood spent more or less directly in the JFK flightpath. By the way, in case you're wondering what Scandinavian Airlines does use, it turns out their fleet consists mostly of longships:

Though they have been upgrading it in a piecemeal fashion:

Anyway, having duly acknowledged my mistakes, I'd like to return to a time before I made them. It was a much simpler time--you might remember it as this past Monday--and it also happens to be the day I received the following press release from minimalist bike designers Biomega:
Apparently, the marketing department at Biomega wants the world of cycledom to know that as of Monday it "renews its curatorial commitment to cherry picking the world’s top designers to design its bicycles," since their previous "curatorial commitment" has expired. This, of course, is nü-pretentious maximum-verbiage minimalist-speak for "we're selling some new crap now." So what stylishly useless and overpriced fruit hath this cherry tree of pretention curated? Well, there's this "true urban tool" for true urban tools:
This is a great choice for the urban tool who wants a neutered mountain bike-like machine that is useless offroad yet also has no fenders or really anything that would make it useful for everyday city riding. (Though it does have that brilliantly conceived hole in the frame so that you have one tiny place to lock it.) Or, if you prefer something that's not "classic" but does have the "potential of a classic," you can opt for this model:
I was amused to note that this potentially "classic bicycle" is called the "NYC," and it even has a mostly-useless integrated downtube "filth prophylactic" which I assume is a stylistic nod to the pieces of cardboard food delivery people zip-tie to their frames. Clearly, brilliance like this cannot spring from a single mind, so it should come as no surprise that this bike the brainchild of "the three creative forces of Danish design group, KiBiSi"--which consists of Brüno, Dieter from "Sprockets," and a monkey with a protractor:

Together they may not be able to design their way out of a paper bag, but they can at least decorate the bag's interior in fashionably spartan style while they're trapped in there.

Speaking of minimalists, since last week I've mostly gotten off them (getting off minimalists should not be confused with "minimalist getting off," which refers to looking at porn on your iPad). However, it is worth noting that the blogger who wrote that "I only have 57 things" post
has not only removed all the comments to that post (a number of which were critical), but has indeed, in the name of minimalism and helping people, also eliminated comments and commenting from his entire blog:

(Killing comments in order to save you.)

He then goes on to list (again with the lists!) a number of reasons why comments are an anti-minimalist waste of time, though a more cynical person might suspect that the recent influx of skeptical visitors was really the deciding factor and that he prefers not to grapple with truth:

My blog traffic has exploded to 64,000 readers per month while I was not even here to oversee the operation. Obviously being away from my blog encourages growth more than sitting around all day reading comments does.

Also, he's going "vagabonding," which I guess is a form of minimalist walkabout.

In any case, the truth of the matter is that eliminating comments from a blog is like filling a guitar with cement--you can still play it, but it will lose all its resonance. Even if some of those comments are negative, interesting music is both mellifluous and dissonant, and I suppose what really lies at the heart of minimalism is carefully "curating" your own insular and self-serving "reality"--which is perfectly fine, but also seems antithetical to blogging. Amish people also "curate" an insular self-serving reality, but they're not out there blogging and selling books about it. If you're going to proselytize people into your lifestyle, at least be ready to do some convincing.

Speaking of convincing, a reader informs me that an insurance company failed to convince anybody to buy bicycle insurance, when they left a bunch of bikes around London that didn't get stolen:

Ultimately, I infer two things from this. Firstly, British thieves are apparently hale chaps who prefer a good challenge and find the plucking of low-hanging fruit distatefully unsportsmanlike. (They probably even have their own club and wear a distinctive hat and tie combination so they can recognize each other.) Secondly, if you're regularly locking up a bicycle that's so expensive it warrants its own insurance policy, then you're probably a fool, or a Biomega owner, or possibly both.

However, we may all need insurance if we're invaded by a "hipster robot bike army:"

Actually, judging by most of these fixed-gear videos, we already have.

Posted in: bicycle marketing