— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Ape Hangers? Tricycle? Pink frame? Dreads? Wraparound glasses? Black vest? Those shoes?
I'm pretty sure there are no official Sunday Streets distinctions, but if there are, this badass is clealy deserving of them all.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Outrage! Mission Local reports that come the first of 2012, Rainbow is getting rid of the 10% discount afforded to SFBC members. Which, you know, is probably going to cost SFBC a third of their members and a few thousand people a couple hundred extra bucks on produce, vitamins, and adorable ferret calendars.
Why ditch the discount?:
“Our goal with the discount was to help broaden the membership of the SFBC,” says Mason, who handles public relations for the cooperative. The thing that ultimately drove the decision to eliminate the discount, he says, was when the SFBC realized how much money Rainbow was giving away through the discount in relation to how much the SFBC was getting through signing up new members. “They said, ‘Wow. If you just gave that to us, just think of how much more we could do for cycling in the city,’” recalls Mason. [..]
Another rationale behind the discount, Mason says, was to alleviate Rainbow’s parking crunch. The store did wind up having to double the number of bike racks in its space, but it’s still a struggle to find a spot. And while the SFBC and occasional Rainbow cashiers did maintain that people needed to ride their bikes to the store to use the discount, Mason says that biking to the store — or even biking, period — was never a requirement. “It was never about having to show your U-lock or your helmet or whatever. It was really just about broadening their membership.”
I understand their reason (“we can better finacially support SFBC by donating a percent of sales directly”), but I struggle to see how ending this discount will do the Bike Coalition any good. Most of my friends who were on the fence about joining the org inevitably joined because of the discount. But hey, between this and ending coupon day, I'm sure this was less about SFBC and more about earning more off your everyday bulk flax purchases.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motorist on the road, accept no substitutes.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Gotta give it to bike thieves. They're so dedicated to stealing some parts that they'll just up and ruin the bike itself so they can flip the remaining functional parts for spare change. And as Ice Tubes noted, this bike prompted exploded after the hacksaw cleared the top tube.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Woah, this was published in the Chronicle back in 1999? That messenger has to be, like, 50-something now and taking heart medication. How did the Chron possibly come to that conclusion way back then?:
Rebecca Tiller, bicycle messenger hot dog extraordinaire, has a new motto as she goes tearing around the alleys, parked cars and roadways of downtown San Francisco delivering packages. […]
She is riding the hot new thing in the world of bike messaging: a track bike, otherwise known as a crazybike, groovybike, or as some put it with grudging admiration, “that dumb bike only an idiot would ride.”
Of course, to Tiller and about 30 fellow messengers who ride these ultra-light, extra-fast — and, by the way, probably illegal — things, there is only one word to describe them.
“Awesome.”
Awesome! Almost as rad as the editoral published a few days later:
TRACK BIKES, what a great concept!
San Francisco's bike messengers are zipping about town on a new breed of bicycle that goes faster than regular bikes and has no brakes.
And I think we all agree that the problem with bike messengers has been that they rode too slow and braked too often.
Actually, the track bikes do have brakes, but the brakes have a complicated, technical name — pedestrians.
All this sounds very familiar. Also, if “that dumb bike only an idiot would ride” was cool way back in 1999 and already the scorn of haters, what does it make it today?
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
I don't have a lot of love for Marin County. For one, it's the place that mountain biking was invented, yet all the seminal trails are now illegal to ride on. Second, everyone there drives BMWs and nothing irks me more than other people's success. Plus, it's San Francisco's Canada. But when it comes to bike lanes, they seem to have the right idea. Drivers always seem to park their cars in SF's bike lanes (I blame tourists, cuz they're dumb). It took SF years to do a damn thing about Fell. And it's Monday morning and I need something to bitch about.
Would a simple “no parking” stencil along all the bike lanes help? I certainly don't know for sure, but I've only had to bike around a car while shaking my fist once up there.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
Earlier this week, there was some concern that the “mob of folks” that smashed up a red truck during a York St. raid to retrieve stolen bike parts got the wrong truck. Luckily an anonymous neighbor has some snaps to help clear up any future confusion:
here's some pics of his bobby, his truck with black cap, his license plate and some shithead who probably helps him steal this shit.
one of his neighbors does have the exact same truck but no cap on it. He's a nice guy and does not steal bikes or sell stolen property.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
As we've talked about in the past, Pop's Bar is straight-up the worst place to leave your bike due to their neighboring bike thief. Well, GoatLeg over at SF Fixed “riled up a fucking mob” and got his stolen parts back:
Hello, all. Tonight me front wheel was stolen while locked up outside of the Dovre club at 26th/Valencia. I was inside while some friends were outside smoking while some random local asked whose bike it was this guy stole the front wheel from. They knew it was my bike, and the local told them it was a latino guy in a red pickup truck with a black topper over the bed. Immediately we knew it was this guy Bobby who lives around the corner from Pop's. All my friends came in and told me what happened, I ran out with all my shit expecting to see him outside. Of course he wasn't there, so I ran back in, got all my homies together and riled up a fucking mob of folks 100% poised to get my wheel back. So, we all ran down to the corner of 24th/York, a few of them went in to Pop's to get some beer and not be directly involved in what was about to go down.
So from there, four or five of my friends surrounded Bobby's truck (the same red pickup with the black topper) while I ran up to the house we knew he lived at. I wasn't 100% sure which of the two doors was his, so I rang each bell. His neighbor opened here door almost immediately. I asked, “Does Bobby live here?” and she said “No” and poinetd to the other door on the left, at which point I looked back at my friends who were opening up the tailgate to Bobby's truck and grabbed my wheel out. I turned to his neighbor and said, “Cool, well your neighbor is a bike thief and we're just taking my wheel back”. As soon as I turned away I started off down the stairs and one of the neighbors yelled, “What the fuck are you doing to that truck??!” I took off running as fast as I possibly could, while my friend had my wheel in his had and everyone scattered.
Of course, stealing the wheel back isn't enough. GoatLeg is taken his photo (above) and is “going to make it known that this guy is a known bike thief, and that I know where he lives and that he needs to stop doing this shit, or he will pay. I fullheartedly think this a step in the right direction to get this shit stopped.” Going to poster the neighborhood? He'll pay? It looks like Bobby is at the end of his rope and people are done waiting to SFPD to do something.
I can't imagine this will end well.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
The second SF BIke Party made its way to the Mission last Friday and ran into a little problem at Garfield Park:
Several riders got their bicycles stolen at Garfield Park. If you walk away from your bike, be sure to lock it up! We don’t want anyone else to lose a bicycle.
This is like the time that your brother didn't think he needed to put a lock on his high school gym locker and had is innocence shattered as he discovered he didn't have any pants to wear to his last three periods. I'm not saying it was deserved, but you shouldn't expect your unattended date to not get up and spilt while you dance with another girl.
— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
In case you didn't already have enough ways to acquire a track bike, Low Bicycles has come onto the scene with their rad, handmade track bikes. At $945 for a frame and fork, the setup is no doubt pricy, but Low builds these frames right here on Florida Street, unlike Mission neighbors Public Bikes and Mission Bicycle Company who mass-produce their frames in Asia. Low's website explains:
Having had it with the endless search for a no-nonsense aluminum track frame, Andrew Low took it upon himself to build his own. Like many of us, he was frustrated to find that most options out there were either discontinued, too hard to find, in poor condition, or just plain ugly. Harnessing his background in metal design and fabrication, Andrew started Low Bicycles.
Low Bicycles takes pride in producing high quality bike frames right here in San Francisco because we love this city. We are passionate about this bike culture and intend to grow an intimate connection to it. While we realize that our stiff and aggressive design philosophy is not for everybody, we hope to satisfy and evolve with the needs of the most hardcore riders out there— those of whom are influenced and inspired by the same spirit which gave birth to this company.
And if you need more convincing that their frames are the jam, their Tumblr is packed full of shots both of the manufacturing process and the finished product. Unfortunately there's already a 3 month waitlist to get a frame, so if you want yourself a fresh bout of credit card debt by Spring, you better get moving.