First we have a public apology. This will be more or less a rehash but it needs to be said.
Drivers,
It's our position that violence begets only violence. And before you roll your eyes and change the channel considering our mission statement last time, we're not talking about Big Deal stuff, war, crime, and all that.
However, as far as that's concerned, our belief is similar - as we will support no war between nations because nations are lives lived one at a time. Still, individuals can see both an individual and a nation at once in another, and we do not purport to make an appeal as an individual only to have it read as the statement of a nation.
That means for our purposes out on the road that when we meet, you every one of us a citizen of the nation of cyclists. There's absolutely no reason you would lash out at us in violence as individuals - we're nice folks with no known beefs against us, and we don't know you personally, though we are your neighbor.
Logically then, and this is the nicest we can put it and mean it will all due respect: you are prejudiced. We believe you are with your fullest faculties and able to control your vehicle and even that under most circumstances you are good at it even. Only the deranged would attack a harmless and defenseless individual without provocation, and so we will also posit that you are not.
Your violence, and make no mistake, every single time any motor vehicle driver deliberately puts a cyclist at even the slightest risk, that is an act of violence, is a decision.
We don't know and don't care to speculate on whether your decision is emotional, ideological or personal or simple fear. Whether it's "they just make me so mad" or "they have no right to the road" or "some person on a bike cut me off today" or "they just make me so nervous", it doesn't matter: it is logic of a sort because it was a decision-making process that caused you to speed toward our rear wheel then slam on the brakes, to honk at us while we're riding at the speed of traffic in a straight line and signaling our intent, to pass too close, to veer toward us, to cut us off.
Thus, the only conclusion then is that you have a prejudice against cyclists.
A problem here though is that your logic is not rational or logical. And one thing that you cannot do is make a logical appeal to an irrational claim. Your violence is not about us - it's about you. Us and themming it is not a great way to make friends, we know, but you force our hand, as we have done our best to think things over from all angles, lead by example and be on our best behavior, so we will repeat:
Every single time any motor vehicle driver deliberately puts a cyclist at even the slightest risk, that is an act of violence.
Now, what is there to be done about this? Why don't we talk it over? After all, we're rational adults, right?
Oops.
Sorry.
Now it's us who've made a grave mistake.
You are not making a rational statement. This means that we can't talk it over. This is where we got it wrong, and where our apology begins.
When you have irrationally committed an act of violence against a cyclist, you are committing it against all cyclists. What we forget sometimes is that if we attempt to speak with you about it, you are not speaking to the individual you attempted to harm or disturb; you are speaking to all of us.
Three times in the last two weeks you have threatened us such that we believed our lives were in danger. The first three of those, with adrenaline pulsing, we believed it was only right to let you know we would not stand for it. We spoke to you with respect and concerning only your act. We know we did raise our voice after your raised yours.
We attempted to stand up for our rights and make our voices heard as individuals at a particular time and place. We failed. In your fear and your cowardice and your disrespect we realize now you were not speaking to us as individuals, but as cyclists. All cyclists. Everywhere. At all times.
It's not our fault that you are prejudiced. We will not accept your ignorance of the laws of Pennsylvania and every other place that specifies that bicycles are vehicles. We will not accept your behavior or your threats or your deliberate endangering of us, we have nothing to apologize for to drivers when we stand up for our rights and we will not.
It is our problem, though.
Cyclists,
We unwittingly and very likely spoke for you. If that driver was angered, or scared, or made to feel righteous, we have set you back and multiplied the potential for violence against cyclists. Our words were for less than naught, because they have a negative balance.
For this reason, Fuck Your Jetta wishes to extend our gravest and sincerest apologies to all cyclists for attempting to engage individual drivers in a rational discussion following an attack.
We at Fuck Your Jetta hereby pledge to refrain from engaging in any way in an exchange, whether verbally, gesturally, and most certainly not physically. We will hone our ideological swords on the road by riding right, and pour sugar in metaphysical gas tanks here. We will lead, patriots to our nation, and drivers will have no choice but to cede their arms.
Hail, patriots.
Jul 14, 2009
Jul 10, 2009
Bikes Only
When we were kids, Detroit's WRIF and WLLZ were FM rock stations. If we remember correctly, WRIF was originally WABC, one of the first FM stations in the US, and one of the reasons Detroit was Rock City - in the early 80s and up into the early 90s they were still playing the same records that put dinosaur rock on the map. WLLZ was also of the old school but shot for the original age bracket of WABC did in 1971, so for the era you'd get your stadium fist-pounders mixed with hair metal and the odd jam from Metallica.
When we moved to Montreal, CHOM was a classic rock station and probably the main reason that folks whose parents didn't listen to Genesis still had prog phases.
Then overnight one night formats changed. When nobody was looking, WRIF and WLLZ became New Rock and Modern Rock stations, as did CHOM. It must have been in the numbers. In all cases it was a change for the worse, unless for some reason you're not averse to the New Radicals.
Well, the numbers have spoken. We've crunched them, sliced them and diced them and most of all, we know that a compromise means that nobody gets what they want. We know that fully 50% of faithful readers don't actually care about either bikes or records at all. The other one does both, but the editorship decided that since his needs are largely appeased by music sites whose titles contain references to food (that would be -fork and -vegan - sorry googlebot!). Unable to compete with either because we don't look good in skinny jeans and don't think it's homophobic or cultural suicide and in fact ideologically necessary to say that disco sucks, we choose to make ourselves relevant in a different way that hopefully is not disharmonious with the old Fuck Your Jetta you know and love or loathe.
So, dear reader prepare yourself: Fuck Your Jetta's format and content is changing to bikes only. If somehow you were attached to the original poorly written and edited-by-St-Ambroise content, you better start saving and learn how to convert html pages to portable documents, because sooner than later all previous posts will be removed.
What's the dilly-o you ask? Glad you did, because it's kind of important.
Here in these United States, there's much talk of freedom and all that jazz. As a Canadians by birth and residency for much of their lives, the entirety of your correspondents took for granted these things, and learned that when it comes to things like liberty and equality, where people are talking about them all the time is where they are lacking.
We don't mean to overreach and suggest that we understand what it's like to be an oppressed minority in huddled masses quivering with rage and stripped of our natural rights. Nevertheless, we will suggest that once we took a serious interest in road biking and were logging miles in the thousands as a quotidian thing, it quickly became clear that when it comes to road users, some are more equal than others to a large portion of both drivers and cyclists a large amount of the time.
We will not tolerate that. We will not tolerate intimidation, assault, violence or anything less than what we're due.
Fundamentally, we believe that cyclists have more right to the road than any driver does, and so will not accept anything that is not minimally compliant to the letter of the laws of the land and those unwritten. It is our position that bicycles are elegant in design, use and ideology such that simply by rolling on two wheels (and maybe more; though we ourselves are bi- and not 'bent, we believe broadly in pedalcycles) you are by default doing a right and good thing.
Our aim is to preserve and protect and advocate that right and good thing the best ways we know how, which is to lead by doing. Secondarily, and that's where you come in dear reader, we hope to discuss, impart and share knowledge via this forum on all matters vital and necessary to the two-wheeled and good.
Furthermore, we believe, even beyond bicycles, that patriotism means never accepting for a moment one's the suspension of one's natural rights. If the founding fathers of this nation were patriots, they were patriots to a cause that fought that which they found to be oppressive and in violation of their true rights. We believe that in this sense, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean in essence that everything is to be questioned, nothing to be accepted without consideration and that it is your duty as an American to fight any tyranny imposed by the government or of its citizens that is in violation either of the laws of State and Country or those implied by natural right. To ever accept anything else is unpatriotic and unamerican.
Haughty and lofty, yes. Like, bikes? Tyranny? We have had the bad luck to learn easy lessons the hard way and the grace and fortune to learn hard ones the easy way both, and while the glut of voices and blogs and what have you shout a chorus that turns dissonant in their multitude and multiplicity, we see a void to be filled. We don't know everything and we will frequently change our minds, be wrong, and argue against points we've raised ourselves, but like our old boy Whitman said, Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Simple vanity perhaps, and if so, do speak up dear reader, or feel free to change the channel. Better yet, go for a ride. We are well aware that many thousands of words have been spilled here that are the word that starts with m and rhymes with asturbatory. Also remembering quite clearly that a certain party suggested that one of our correspondents wrote in a style he described as officious, going so far to say that our esteemed editor sounded like an officious prick, we will admit with no little glee that we took that as a compliment and to mean we were doing something right under the circumstances.
And if you're rolling your eyes with the constant use of the first person plural, a last chance gas food lodging aside: At this point most of the people who read and have ever read this humble weblog do not know me personally, and it is henceforth a stated goal to make it irrelevant whether you do or not. We hope in the future that there actually will be a legitimate and literal we of the non-royal kind, but ideologically that the voice of these missive is that of more than me, and that at least some of the time and not a little bit we will speak for the reluctant and those who wouldn't or couldn't or cannot. Additionally, and I'm phrasing this very delicately, the power of a we that speaks from nowhere and everywhere of an unknown number has distinct psychological advantage both for those that join in the we and against the tyrants, and the greater our readership, the more powerful we will become. For better or for worse. We're banking on clear heads and full hearts can't lose.
You know, instead of being that guy.
And so we welcome you dear reader to our humble off-ramp from the information superhighway, Fuck Your Jetta.
No parking.
Bikes only.
When we moved to Montreal, CHOM was a classic rock station and probably the main reason that folks whose parents didn't listen to Genesis still had prog phases.
Then overnight one night formats changed. When nobody was looking, WRIF and WLLZ became New Rock and Modern Rock stations, as did CHOM. It must have been in the numbers. In all cases it was a change for the worse, unless for some reason you're not averse to the New Radicals.
Well, the numbers have spoken. We've crunched them, sliced them and diced them and most of all, we know that a compromise means that nobody gets what they want. We know that fully 50% of faithful readers don't actually care about either bikes or records at all. The other one does both, but the editorship decided that since his needs are largely appeased by music sites whose titles contain references to food (that would be -fork and -vegan - sorry googlebot!). Unable to compete with either because we don't look good in skinny jeans and don't think it's homophobic or cultural suicide and in fact ideologically necessary to say that disco sucks, we choose to make ourselves relevant in a different way that hopefully is not disharmonious with the old Fuck Your Jetta you know and love or loathe.
So, dear reader prepare yourself: Fuck Your Jetta's format and content is changing to bikes only. If somehow you were attached to the original poorly written and edited-by-St-Ambroise content, you better start saving and learn how to convert html pages to portable documents, because sooner than later all previous posts will be removed.
What's the dilly-o you ask? Glad you did, because it's kind of important.
Here in these United States, there's much talk of freedom and all that jazz. As a Canadians by birth and residency for much of their lives, the entirety of your correspondents took for granted these things, and learned that when it comes to things like liberty and equality, where people are talking about them all the time is where they are lacking.
We don't mean to overreach and suggest that we understand what it's like to be an oppressed minority in huddled masses quivering with rage and stripped of our natural rights. Nevertheless, we will suggest that once we took a serious interest in road biking and were logging miles in the thousands as a quotidian thing, it quickly became clear that when it comes to road users, some are more equal than others to a large portion of both drivers and cyclists a large amount of the time.
We will not tolerate that. We will not tolerate intimidation, assault, violence or anything less than what we're due.
Fundamentally, we believe that cyclists have more right to the road than any driver does, and so will not accept anything that is not minimally compliant to the letter of the laws of the land and those unwritten. It is our position that bicycles are elegant in design, use and ideology such that simply by rolling on two wheels (and maybe more; though we ourselves are bi- and not 'bent, we believe broadly in pedalcycles) you are by default doing a right and good thing.
Our aim is to preserve and protect and advocate that right and good thing the best ways we know how, which is to lead by doing. Secondarily, and that's where you come in dear reader, we hope to discuss, impart and share knowledge via this forum on all matters vital and necessary to the two-wheeled and good.
Furthermore, we believe, even beyond bicycles, that patriotism means never accepting for a moment one's the suspension of one's natural rights. If the founding fathers of this nation were patriots, they were patriots to a cause that fought that which they found to be oppressive and in violation of their true rights. We believe that in this sense, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean in essence that everything is to be questioned, nothing to be accepted without consideration and that it is your duty as an American to fight any tyranny imposed by the government or of its citizens that is in violation either of the laws of State and Country or those implied by natural right. To ever accept anything else is unpatriotic and unamerican.
Haughty and lofty, yes. Like, bikes? Tyranny? We have had the bad luck to learn easy lessons the hard way and the grace and fortune to learn hard ones the easy way both, and while the glut of voices and blogs and what have you shout a chorus that turns dissonant in their multitude and multiplicity, we see a void to be filled. We don't know everything and we will frequently change our minds, be wrong, and argue against points we've raised ourselves, but like our old boy Whitman said, Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."
Simple vanity perhaps, and if so, do speak up dear reader, or feel free to change the channel. Better yet, go for a ride. We are well aware that many thousands of words have been spilled here that are the word that starts with m and rhymes with asturbatory. Also remembering quite clearly that a certain party suggested that one of our correspondents wrote in a style he described as officious, going so far to say that our esteemed editor sounded like an officious prick, we will admit with no little glee that we took that as a compliment and to mean we were doing something right under the circumstances.
And if you're rolling your eyes with the constant use of the first person plural, a last chance gas food lodging aside: At this point most of the people who read and have ever read this humble weblog do not know me personally, and it is henceforth a stated goal to make it irrelevant whether you do or not. We hope in the future that there actually will be a legitimate and literal we of the non-royal kind, but ideologically that the voice of these missive is that of more than me, and that at least some of the time and not a little bit we will speak for the reluctant and those who wouldn't or couldn't or cannot. Additionally, and I'm phrasing this very delicately, the power of a we that speaks from nowhere and everywhere of an unknown number has distinct psychological advantage both for those that join in the we and against the tyrants, and the greater our readership, the more powerful we will become. For better or for worse. We're banking on clear heads and full hearts can't lose.
You know, instead of being that guy.
And so we welcome you dear reader to our humble off-ramp from the information superhighway, Fuck Your Jetta.
No parking.
Bikes only.
Mar 24, 2009
It's official
Somehow it's something, after two days off and smoking too much and a dentist appointment first thing in the morning (No Cavities Club Member, take note) and a regular stupid day at work, struggling a bit with a bit of wind and a bit of cold and a bit of tired to hear, upon coming up behind a bunch of dudes on mountain bikes who were clearly about to attack some trails, "Hey, I think this roadie wants to get by."
That's right, motherfuckers. I'm a roadie.
Just as he said it, I'd turned off my walkman and was about to say something to the effect of "damn, I wish I'd taken my mountain bike and had run into you fellows."
Instead, I awarded myself extra points as they were heading up a paved road and I was turning left onto a dirt road.
Roadie.
Hee hee.
The world demands it.
I will listen.
See you on the road, Fred.
That's right, motherfuckers. I'm a roadie.
Just as he said it, I'd turned off my walkman and was about to say something to the effect of "damn, I wish I'd taken my mountain bike and had run into you fellows."
Instead, I awarded myself extra points as they were heading up a paved road and I was turning left onto a dirt road.
Roadie.
Hee hee.
The world demands it.
I will listen.
See you on the road, Fred.
Sep 30, 2008
Yeah, You Turned The Other Cheek Alright
You know who you are. I'm sure you have very good reasons.
The short version is this: After enough close calls and being generally stressed out at high speeds on the roads outside of town recently, I decided that the way to get some plain old mileage today was to start work early, leave early, and do Valley Forge and back. Push it hard a bit, get home while it's still light, call myself a badass and imagine that including lights and city stops I can still average 22mph.
Just as some dudes in team jerseys I'd passed earlier pass me and kind of hang a bit, seeming like they're putting a toe in my water saying hey, you seem fit and strong, you want to ride with us, and deciding not to (since I don't know how to like ride in a paceline, say), then changing my mind (since I don't know how to like ride in a paceline, say, and what better place to learn than on an empty path with some fellows who are inviting you), I got to pull up to them, get out of the saddle just to stretch my legs and arms in case they're going to take off like a rocket, and my front end is wobbly.
Flat.
I should mention that I was pretty damn proud of myself for starting the day off with a flat and not having an aneurysm already, the kind where you go to take your bike out and find that you'd picked up a tiny sliver of glass on your way to the house and it deflated overnight - you know this story well if you like in South Philly or any other Philly for that matter, because we fucking love the sound of breaking glass.
Did I get pissed? No. Methodically: Remove wheel. Pre-inspect tire; first glance reveals tiny sliver of glass sticking out of the middle of the tread. Carefully remove, deposit in trash. Remove tube. Carefully inspect entire tire (do this with your eyes and your fingers; trust me, it's worth the tetanus you might get finding another sliver that pierced the carcass or was going to. Do both the outside and the inside, natch). Replace tube. Replace wheel. Fill tire (yo, my Mavic SSC stoppers are supposedly the most powerful dual pivot brake known to man, but goddam is it irritating that they have no quick-release, as they're French and intended for European i.e. Campy brifters, which have a QR for the brake on the lever itself, probably mainly to irritate people who mix group components; this will be a key point later). Go.
In beautiful downtown Conshohocken, I discover my combo pump/CO2 inflater which I'd just received replacement parts for in fact is still missing parts, and it is not possible to inflate any of the tubes I've got, nor use any of the 3 CO2 cartridges I've got, not to mention the patch kit sitting there senseless.
This is where you turned the other cheek: you my friend, with a bulge in the back of your jersey that looked like a pump, and a saddlebag full of goodies, you watched me waving you down, looked me in the face the entire time waving, first my eyes saying, "Yes, I need help", then my mouth saying it for you to see; then me continuing to wave as you rolled past, craning your neck to keep watching me from 50, then 100, then 150 feet before continuing on your merry way.
I mean, how do you do that? This is not an auto accident. There is nothing not to get involved in. I need help, and you can help me. I would do it for you, and I have, as recently as 2 months ago (Hi Melissa! Hope the sprint Tris and the ranger job in the 'Hickon are treating you well), and I ask every motherfucker who's stopped and not obviously drinking or relaxing, including a dude in a garish kit at the beginning of the path who was at first flabbergasted and then in total awe and full of thanks, even though he was making a phone call or something. Hell, I apologize to folks when I can't help them, like when I was on the 'Hickon trail, was meeting someone in 45 minutes, and only had road tubes - 29er dude was like oh that's cool, I could use a jog anyway and I live just at the top of the trail.
So I tried to flag down a couple of your buddies who passed, maybe ten in all, none of whom made eye contact at all as you did (which is kind of better actually, them doing that "I'mnotseeinganythingnotseeinganything" blank straight-ahead stare than looking me in the face and not stopping, replying but continuing to hold my gaze as if you have no idea double u tee eff). Then I gave up, thinking something mean like "fucking fake yuppies, you're not even real yuppies, you started your ride in Conshy!" Sitting there on a bench that would fall down if not chained to the fence, with a homeless dude who's asking me if I'm on a racing team because my jersey looks like the hood of a Nascar car. I take that as a deserved dis. Pretty sure that he in fact meant was I a member of a Nascar team though. I ask him if there's a bike shop in Conshy - he laughs and says he's never seen one. Homeless dudes eating black bananas and reading oily newspapers, both of which were freshly fished from the trash are surprisingly friendly and articularte. I consider asking him for a smoke, though his smoke smells like a refry. But I get directions to the nearest gas station and consider myself lucky that it's only about a mile away and that I carry with me a chuck that turns my presta valves into schraeder ones, car-style.
But is there not a cyclist pact? To help one in need? We know something that the world does not. But we also know that the world knows not of us, and the particular pain of having this beautiful and efficient machine silent and stationary from some trivial matter like the pneumatic tires not being able to hold a pneu. The smokers have a pact - if someone bums a smoke off you, you give it to them. That's it. It costs you nearly nothing, and you will, you will find yourself in need at one time or another when love or money cannot get you a smoke and a stranger is going by with a freshly lit Gauloises. I thought bikers were the same. Or one in ten. Or at least that one could get a shrug or a sorry.
This isn't the first time, and I have to say, the ones who will pass you by fully equipped to help you and knowing that it will take all of a couple of minutes are the roadies. They are those least likely to stop. Housewives on hybrids in designer sweats will stop. Gym rats on a jog who are impressed you've assumingly modified a spin so you ride it on sidewalks will stop. Crazy beard dudes with bar ends on their bar ends smiling on their bike that has a car radio and speakers hooked up to a 15 pound wet cell battery will stop, and they don't even know that there's air in tires. Maybe there is a fundamental solipsism to riding a road bike out to nowhere for no reason by yourself. There is in how I do it anyway, so perhaps it's not a surprise.
Turns out the going rate for 3 minutes of 90psi air in Conshohocken is 75 cents. Whatever. But because of the small volume of a road tube and the fast disbursement rate of an auto-type air compressor, I can't put a puff of air in my tube to give it shape - auto inflaters are all about volume, and I didn't want to blow up my tube trying to put like a half a psi in it, so I loaded the wheel and pump. Noticing only as I'm about to ride off that I've blown the tire off the rim because the tube was completely flat and it just fell off with the first hit of pressure.
Ok, repeat. And Mr. Lukoil cash guy, thank you for having pity on me and giving me change. I can see you wanted to say, sorry dude, I'm low on change and the fuckers here don't leave you so much of a roll of quarters because we get robbed 3 times a week. As he was about to say this however, he computed that I'm sweaty, have no see 'ums spatted on my face, and wearing a bike helmet as my shoes go click click crunch on his floor, and knows that this is not the time to get haughty about coins. The second time, he smiled sympathetically. You my friend perhaps kept me from purchasing an automatic rifle and taking out my frustrations in the traditional American way.
So finally back on the "road" as it were, dreaming of a beer and a medium rare hamburger with cheese and bacon that's a little burnt on the edges from hanging off and touching the grill. At then end of the trail, I get out of the saddle and push a little - I don't normally do this, but have started recently. My bike is too small for me, and with a long stem, long steer tube, and long body, I basically have to put myself far over the front wheel while crouching down too low, and it makes the whole front end creak. Still, I've learned that variation and short little high-effort sprints have to get worked into routines where possible, and until you get out in the counties, Philly ain't hilly, so I do it. Now something's wobbly.
Flat.
This time the rear, this time another tiny sliver of glass that wasn't there before. You motherfuckers who sit around on a bike path that leads from nowhere to nowhere breaking glass, what the fuck are you doing? Then again, if you're sitting around breaking glass on a MUP that leads from nowhere to nowhere, you probably know exactly what you're doing. Careful friends, inhalants lead to irreversible brain damage fast, as you're probably quite familiar.
Deciding to trash this tire even though it's till got miles left is done, but that isn't going to help me as I'm not on that weird little elbow on I think Minerva St. in the the 2nd best Yunk (the best would be Passyunk, needless to say), which puts me maybe a mile from Main Street and just far enough from Human Zoom that I'll miss them for 7pm closing to use a pump. Dammit!
So I'm shouldering my bike, not even trying to flag people down. A line of perhaps 15 riders pass, not one head turning my way, as I'm saying to myself, yes, and I hate you, and you, and you, and you and you and you and you and you and you, yeah, and you too.
In the least likely of places, the cheek turned again. In front of a hideous and expensive gated community with a big sign to say "oh hey check out our gated community, if you lived here you'd be home now instead of having to pass like 7 more of these on the way to your own gated community", after the Wed. night paceline dis and just when I'm feeling so sorry for myself that I'll get to HZ at like 7:03 that I can taste it, two sporty fellows, on a Fuji and one of those carbon Scott jobs (man, I have to say, they look pretty sleek for a carbon bike that's all black and yellow) (heh, says the rider of the Yellow and Black Attack) turn their heads, ask if I need help, and before I can answer, fully stop and are trying to assess the problem, shouting over traffic din.
The two fellows come over and offer aid to this wretch. In fact, I know I must have been speaking non-sense syllables, or otherwise was so consumed in rage and loathing and self-pity that I wasn't making any sense. But Scott had detached his pump before they could get something coherent out of me, and Fuji had assessed that I lived in South Philly and was trying to impress upon me that I could drop it off at 18th and Franklin and was making a joke about whether I'd heard of his law firm. Law firm! Fucking lawyers on sweet bikes are helping me! What did I say about Conshy eye-contact guy? I take it back.
Finally, to ice this here cake, Scott suggests that the law firm is too complicated and that I can just drop it off where he's "a bigshot" as Fuji says, the Franklin Institute. What? I'm finally registering. You're just going to leave me the pump? Hell, if I was them, I would too - once he handed it to me, I went in about a million directions, pulling out a tube, then unscrewing my valve stay and cap, then getting out levers, then taking the tube out of the box, then losing the levers, talking all the while, muttering things about Valley Forge and Human Zoom and broken pumps and gas stations. I'm sure the risk of me not returning the pump tomorrow was much greater than spending another moment there in the growing dark (the witching hour, as one of them suggested); my lycanthopic slip was surely showing.
Get the tube in, try to find glass in the dark, unsure whether I find it or not. Inflate tire. Oh, in my haste and rage did I pump up the tire and then find it can't get between the brake shoes? Yes I did. Yes I did. Deep breath now. All the way in. Fill the bottom of your lungs. Now the top. Now exhale as slowly as you can, through your nose. Empty the bottom of your lungs. Now the top. Man I want a cigarette.
Extra icing: remember how I was being a dick and cursing people who didn't stop? Once they'd stopped, helped me and gone on their way, every single person who subsequently passed asked if I was all right. No exaggeration, every one. A good half dozen in the 5 or so minutes it took to get my wheel together and gather my junk. A college kid on a mountain bike with his friend on a brand new cheap road bike. A Sturdy Girl (Luly, hope you're doing fine and have got in some 'cross races). Two dudes in full kit and bikes valued at the GNP of Ecuador. A lone dude on a red and chrome steel beast. G_d fucking bless you every one.
I'm lucky anyone stopped. Down Main Street it was obvious my brain wasn't working - I was stuck behind a guy in an Acura who was texting on a blackberry while driving - while fucking driving - for a whole mile, or thereabouts, from Green Lane to Walnut, and the entire time, as he was weaving all over the road, inches from parked cars and over the yellow line, speeding up and slowing down, I didn't pass him because it would have been much more dangerous as he was completely unpredictable. If you see a blue-green glow about three by three inches just next to where a driver's head would be and you're near a cliff, nudge the edge of their bumper that is opposite the cliff please.
But did I help matters any by screaming at him the entire time at the top of my lungs, "YOU'RE TEXTING WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING. YOU ARE DRIVING. ARE YOU DRIVING? WHY ARE YOU REPLYING TO AN EMAIL WHOSE ENTIRETY IS "lol" WHILE YOU ARE FUCKING DRIVING? ARE YOU RETARDED?" Maybe to flag to someone on the street that hey, look, isn't that Dave? Oh he's texting while driving? Oh, look, he says in his text he's in front of the bar and looking for parking ell oh ell.
But I just added more violence to the equation. I was chewing on sour grapes because of bad goddam luck with flats and my own stupidity of not testing my own equipment before going out on a ride, and not considering that it could have been way worse, as in the last 10 days I have been at all points in a crazy half moon arc from Blue Bell to the Southwest 'burbs to West Chester and I did not have a pump that worked, not to mention having no idea how to get to anywhere that could get me close to home.
No, I'm just going to give some mad thanks. To, like, the universe.
Thanks universe. You got me home on my own two wheels. And pretty easy. And unscathed, save for my own brain, boiling in its own juices.
Maybe my crazy ex-girlfriend had something there when she said I was the person she knew most likely to get born again or have some kind of cultish religious conversion - fucking Jesus lessons all over this one, right?
K you roadie scum, I'll fucking love you. I'll love all of you who are dicks all the harder. That'll learn you. So when I stop and help you next time, I won't even have to say, yes, friend, there's only one who ever truly loved you unconditionally. Take this bible tract? It's got pictures!
The short version is this: After enough close calls and being generally stressed out at high speeds on the roads outside of town recently, I decided that the way to get some plain old mileage today was to start work early, leave early, and do Valley Forge and back. Push it hard a bit, get home while it's still light, call myself a badass and imagine that including lights and city stops I can still average 22mph.
Just as some dudes in team jerseys I'd passed earlier pass me and kind of hang a bit, seeming like they're putting a toe in my water saying hey, you seem fit and strong, you want to ride with us, and deciding not to (since I don't know how to like ride in a paceline, say), then changing my mind (since I don't know how to like ride in a paceline, say, and what better place to learn than on an empty path with some fellows who are inviting you), I got to pull up to them, get out of the saddle just to stretch my legs and arms in case they're going to take off like a rocket, and my front end is wobbly.
Flat.
I should mention that I was pretty damn proud of myself for starting the day off with a flat and not having an aneurysm already, the kind where you go to take your bike out and find that you'd picked up a tiny sliver of glass on your way to the house and it deflated overnight - you know this story well if you like in South Philly or any other Philly for that matter, because we fucking love the sound of breaking glass.
Did I get pissed? No. Methodically: Remove wheel. Pre-inspect tire; first glance reveals tiny sliver of glass sticking out of the middle of the tread. Carefully remove, deposit in trash. Remove tube. Carefully inspect entire tire (do this with your eyes and your fingers; trust me, it's worth the tetanus you might get finding another sliver that pierced the carcass or was going to. Do both the outside and the inside, natch). Replace tube. Replace wheel. Fill tire (yo, my Mavic SSC stoppers are supposedly the most powerful dual pivot brake known to man, but goddam is it irritating that they have no quick-release, as they're French and intended for European i.e. Campy brifters, which have a QR for the brake on the lever itself, probably mainly to irritate people who mix group components; this will be a key point later). Go.
In beautiful downtown Conshohocken, I discover my combo pump/CO2 inflater which I'd just received replacement parts for in fact is still missing parts, and it is not possible to inflate any of the tubes I've got, nor use any of the 3 CO2 cartridges I've got, not to mention the patch kit sitting there senseless.
This is where you turned the other cheek: you my friend, with a bulge in the back of your jersey that looked like a pump, and a saddlebag full of goodies, you watched me waving you down, looked me in the face the entire time waving, first my eyes saying, "Yes, I need help", then my mouth saying it for you to see; then me continuing to wave as you rolled past, craning your neck to keep watching me from 50, then 100, then 150 feet before continuing on your merry way.
I mean, how do you do that? This is not an auto accident. There is nothing not to get involved in. I need help, and you can help me. I would do it for you, and I have, as recently as 2 months ago (Hi Melissa! Hope the sprint Tris and the ranger job in the 'Hickon are treating you well), and I ask every motherfucker who's stopped and not obviously drinking or relaxing, including a dude in a garish kit at the beginning of the path who was at first flabbergasted and then in total awe and full of thanks, even though he was making a phone call or something. Hell, I apologize to folks when I can't help them, like when I was on the 'Hickon trail, was meeting someone in 45 minutes, and only had road tubes - 29er dude was like oh that's cool, I could use a jog anyway and I live just at the top of the trail.
So I tried to flag down a couple of your buddies who passed, maybe ten in all, none of whom made eye contact at all as you did (which is kind of better actually, them doing that "I'mnotseeinganythingnotseeinganything" blank straight-ahead stare than looking me in the face and not stopping, replying but continuing to hold my gaze as if you have no idea double u tee eff). Then I gave up, thinking something mean like "fucking fake yuppies, you're not even real yuppies, you started your ride in Conshy!" Sitting there on a bench that would fall down if not chained to the fence, with a homeless dude who's asking me if I'm on a racing team because my jersey looks like the hood of a Nascar car. I take that as a deserved dis. Pretty sure that he in fact meant was I a member of a Nascar team though. I ask him if there's a bike shop in Conshy - he laughs and says he's never seen one. Homeless dudes eating black bananas and reading oily newspapers, both of which were freshly fished from the trash are surprisingly friendly and articularte. I consider asking him for a smoke, though his smoke smells like a refry. But I get directions to the nearest gas station and consider myself lucky that it's only about a mile away and that I carry with me a chuck that turns my presta valves into schraeder ones, car-style.
But is there not a cyclist pact? To help one in need? We know something that the world does not. But we also know that the world knows not of us, and the particular pain of having this beautiful and efficient machine silent and stationary from some trivial matter like the pneumatic tires not being able to hold a pneu. The smokers have a pact - if someone bums a smoke off you, you give it to them. That's it. It costs you nearly nothing, and you will, you will find yourself in need at one time or another when love or money cannot get you a smoke and a stranger is going by with a freshly lit Gauloises. I thought bikers were the same. Or one in ten. Or at least that one could get a shrug or a sorry.
This isn't the first time, and I have to say, the ones who will pass you by fully equipped to help you and knowing that it will take all of a couple of minutes are the roadies. They are those least likely to stop. Housewives on hybrids in designer sweats will stop. Gym rats on a jog who are impressed you've assumingly modified a spin so you ride it on sidewalks will stop. Crazy beard dudes with bar ends on their bar ends smiling on their bike that has a car radio and speakers hooked up to a 15 pound wet cell battery will stop, and they don't even know that there's air in tires. Maybe there is a fundamental solipsism to riding a road bike out to nowhere for no reason by yourself. There is in how I do it anyway, so perhaps it's not a surprise.
Turns out the going rate for 3 minutes of 90psi air in Conshohocken is 75 cents. Whatever. But because of the small volume of a road tube and the fast disbursement rate of an auto-type air compressor, I can't put a puff of air in my tube to give it shape - auto inflaters are all about volume, and I didn't want to blow up my tube trying to put like a half a psi in it, so I loaded the wheel and pump. Noticing only as I'm about to ride off that I've blown the tire off the rim because the tube was completely flat and it just fell off with the first hit of pressure.
Ok, repeat. And Mr. Lukoil cash guy, thank you for having pity on me and giving me change. I can see you wanted to say, sorry dude, I'm low on change and the fuckers here don't leave you so much of a roll of quarters because we get robbed 3 times a week. As he was about to say this however, he computed that I'm sweaty, have no see 'ums spatted on my face, and wearing a bike helmet as my shoes go click click crunch on his floor, and knows that this is not the time to get haughty about coins. The second time, he smiled sympathetically. You my friend perhaps kept me from purchasing an automatic rifle and taking out my frustrations in the traditional American way.
So finally back on the "road" as it were, dreaming of a beer and a medium rare hamburger with cheese and bacon that's a little burnt on the edges from hanging off and touching the grill. At then end of the trail, I get out of the saddle and push a little - I don't normally do this, but have started recently. My bike is too small for me, and with a long stem, long steer tube, and long body, I basically have to put myself far over the front wheel while crouching down too low, and it makes the whole front end creak. Still, I've learned that variation and short little high-effort sprints have to get worked into routines where possible, and until you get out in the counties, Philly ain't hilly, so I do it. Now something's wobbly.
Flat.
This time the rear, this time another tiny sliver of glass that wasn't there before. You motherfuckers who sit around on a bike path that leads from nowhere to nowhere breaking glass, what the fuck are you doing? Then again, if you're sitting around breaking glass on a MUP that leads from nowhere to nowhere, you probably know exactly what you're doing. Careful friends, inhalants lead to irreversible brain damage fast, as you're probably quite familiar.
Deciding to trash this tire even though it's till got miles left is done, but that isn't going to help me as I'm not on that weird little elbow on I think Minerva St. in the the 2nd best Yunk (the best would be Passyunk, needless to say), which puts me maybe a mile from Main Street and just far enough from Human Zoom that I'll miss them for 7pm closing to use a pump. Dammit!
So I'm shouldering my bike, not even trying to flag people down. A line of perhaps 15 riders pass, not one head turning my way, as I'm saying to myself, yes, and I hate you, and you, and you, and you and you and you and you and you and you, yeah, and you too.
In the least likely of places, the cheek turned again. In front of a hideous and expensive gated community with a big sign to say "oh hey check out our gated community, if you lived here you'd be home now instead of having to pass like 7 more of these on the way to your own gated community", after the Wed. night paceline dis and just when I'm feeling so sorry for myself that I'll get to HZ at like 7:03 that I can taste it, two sporty fellows, on a Fuji and one of those carbon Scott jobs (man, I have to say, they look pretty sleek for a carbon bike that's all black and yellow) (heh, says the rider of the Yellow and Black Attack) turn their heads, ask if I need help, and before I can answer, fully stop and are trying to assess the problem, shouting over traffic din.
The two fellows come over and offer aid to this wretch. In fact, I know I must have been speaking non-sense syllables, or otherwise was so consumed in rage and loathing and self-pity that I wasn't making any sense. But Scott had detached his pump before they could get something coherent out of me, and Fuji had assessed that I lived in South Philly and was trying to impress upon me that I could drop it off at 18th and Franklin and was making a joke about whether I'd heard of his law firm. Law firm! Fucking lawyers on sweet bikes are helping me! What did I say about Conshy eye-contact guy? I take it back.
Finally, to ice this here cake, Scott suggests that the law firm is too complicated and that I can just drop it off where he's "a bigshot" as Fuji says, the Franklin Institute. What? I'm finally registering. You're just going to leave me the pump? Hell, if I was them, I would too - once he handed it to me, I went in about a million directions, pulling out a tube, then unscrewing my valve stay and cap, then getting out levers, then taking the tube out of the box, then losing the levers, talking all the while, muttering things about Valley Forge and Human Zoom and broken pumps and gas stations. I'm sure the risk of me not returning the pump tomorrow was much greater than spending another moment there in the growing dark (the witching hour, as one of them suggested); my lycanthopic slip was surely showing.
Get the tube in, try to find glass in the dark, unsure whether I find it or not. Inflate tire. Oh, in my haste and rage did I pump up the tire and then find it can't get between the brake shoes? Yes I did. Yes I did. Deep breath now. All the way in. Fill the bottom of your lungs. Now the top. Now exhale as slowly as you can, through your nose. Empty the bottom of your lungs. Now the top. Man I want a cigarette.
Extra icing: remember how I was being a dick and cursing people who didn't stop? Once they'd stopped, helped me and gone on their way, every single person who subsequently passed asked if I was all right. No exaggeration, every one. A good half dozen in the 5 or so minutes it took to get my wheel together and gather my junk. A college kid on a mountain bike with his friend on a brand new cheap road bike. A Sturdy Girl (Luly, hope you're doing fine and have got in some 'cross races). Two dudes in full kit and bikes valued at the GNP of Ecuador. A lone dude on a red and chrome steel beast. G_d fucking bless you every one.
I'm lucky anyone stopped. Down Main Street it was obvious my brain wasn't working - I was stuck behind a guy in an Acura who was texting on a blackberry while driving - while fucking driving - for a whole mile, or thereabouts, from Green Lane to Walnut, and the entire time, as he was weaving all over the road, inches from parked cars and over the yellow line, speeding up and slowing down, I didn't pass him because it would have been much more dangerous as he was completely unpredictable. If you see a blue-green glow about three by three inches just next to where a driver's head would be and you're near a cliff, nudge the edge of their bumper that is opposite the cliff please.
But did I help matters any by screaming at him the entire time at the top of my lungs, "YOU'RE TEXTING WHILE YOU'RE DRIVING. YOU ARE DRIVING. ARE YOU DRIVING? WHY ARE YOU REPLYING TO AN EMAIL WHOSE ENTIRETY IS "lol" WHILE YOU ARE FUCKING DRIVING? ARE YOU RETARDED?" Maybe to flag to someone on the street that hey, look, isn't that Dave? Oh he's texting while driving? Oh, look, he says in his text he's in front of the bar and looking for parking ell oh ell.
But I just added more violence to the equation. I was chewing on sour grapes because of bad goddam luck with flats and my own stupidity of not testing my own equipment before going out on a ride, and not considering that it could have been way worse, as in the last 10 days I have been at all points in a crazy half moon arc from Blue Bell to the Southwest 'burbs to West Chester and I did not have a pump that worked, not to mention having no idea how to get to anywhere that could get me close to home.
No, I'm just going to give some mad thanks. To, like, the universe.
Thanks universe. You got me home on my own two wheels. And pretty easy. And unscathed, save for my own brain, boiling in its own juices.
Maybe my crazy ex-girlfriend had something there when she said I was the person she knew most likely to get born again or have some kind of cultish religious conversion - fucking Jesus lessons all over this one, right?
K you roadie scum, I'll fucking love you. I'll love all of you who are dicks all the harder. That'll learn you. So when I stop and help you next time, I won't even have to say, yes, friend, there's only one who ever truly loved you unconditionally. Take this bible tract? It's got pictures!
Sep 15, 2008
They Hate Our Freedom
Some days I'm pretty sure that I know exactly what Jesus would do.
He'd [seriously, there's no way I would consider actually posting the despicable descriptions of violence I came up with here; needless to say as our old buddy Trout Fishing in America, Shorty would say, "there is some that is crazier than winos," and there are some fates far worse than death] because he's fucking sick of people in death machines acting like fucking idiots.
And you know, I really want to turn the other cheek, because really, I feel sorry for you. It's a shame that you are ignorant and will stay as stupid as you are your whole life, because someone has to do the filthy jobs that nobody wants, have no rewards, and leave one only crippled, broken and poor.
The hard part is, you're not going to have that job, Bala Cynwood teenager driving a black Acura. You are perhaps 17 years old, and you are driving to school in a late model car that costs more than 25% of this country makes in 5 years. You're the generation between shirtsleeves, and you can coast on your parents' dough and businesses and investments your whole life while you're a fuck up, and your children are the ones who are going to have to get real jobs and real lives.
It's really hard to love you back, and the above is not the reason. The reason is that you have no idea what you've done, and you have no remorse; you think it's pretty funny even. When someone's coming down the road on a hill doing the speed limit and coming up on a curve and there is no other traffic, there is no goddam reason at all for you to start to pull out, stop, hesitate, make like you're going, stop again, and then when you're thirty feet ahead of me pull out right in front of me, leaving me no room on the right to pass you between your car and the curb, yet timing it perfectly such that there's now oncoming traffic and I can't pass you in the other lane either.
You wouldn't do that to a car, and you know why: because you would minimally be seriously injured and your (parents') car would be destroyed, you'd seriously injure the passengers of the other car, and very likely, you or the other driver or both would be dead as fuck there a block from your house. That would probably mean no x box for a week and certainly your credit card and cellular telephone taken away; they'd give away your pony, and that would make you cry a lot, because now to get laid you're going to have to meet a real live human.
But you'd get dead, fast. And you maybe haven't even considered that what you did was without question 2nd or 3rd degree vehicular assault. Because it was intentional. I don't have to crash for it to be that; I have to believe that you are either deliberately attempting to force me off the road or to lose control, or to strike me with your vehicle or cause me to strike you; simply conducting yourself consciously in a way that puts other road users in jeopardy is enough.
I have no doubt you were doing one of those - you saw me, and when I came up behind you at the light, you were doing the pretending not to be looking at anything vacant stare ahead along with your passenger, which looks very much like someone pretending to be asleep. If I weren't alert, able to react quickly and fairly good at handling a bicycle, I would have hit you. I would be minimally seriously injured, possibly dead.
I know I made one mistake; I can't remember the last time I attempted to say something to a driver that put me in grave danger. Calmly, rationally, and without a tone, I'm sure you would agree. But when you smiled and started gigling, and said, no, no, I didn't see you because you didn't have one of those thingies on your back or like, on your bike, that's when you had no idea how close you came to being a victim of extreme and deliberate violence yourself, along with your passenger, by someone with a maxed dose of adrenaline after narrowly escaping death and left over endorphins from riding and feeling good and really doesn't give a fuck.
When your friend started giggling, I had a clenched fist; I unclenched it when I realized the best way to keep you from driving away and get you out of the car was to grab him by the back of his head and smash his face into the half-opened passenger window hard enough to break it while traffic coming off of 76 was crossing in front of you.
That's a true story. I am not a violent person. I thought about it, made a plan, and readied myself to the degree of making my hands free. I was going to do it.
So I rode away. As traffic slowed to a trickle and the light was still red, I crossed the off ramp from the interstate, went through the advanced green and started going up Green Lane to get away from you before I did something irrevocable.
Not because Jesus would suggest that love is the only way.
Nuh-uh.
Revenge.
Here's my revenge:
I will join a club and a team. I will be one more person out on group rides on your highways, your thruways, your county roads, and your shortcuts. There will be more cyclists.
I will develop bike handling skills meant for racing to better react to your idiocy and to become even more confident at high speeds, while I take a lane and block you from passing me and us unless it is safe. There will be less accommodation of you, and more of me.
I will race, and I will be one more racer joining in your roads being closed for the morning, the afternoon, the day. There will be more races.
I will take down your license plate every single time and call in a vehicular assault attempt. I will request charges be pressed. Your name will go down in the books, and it will cost you time, money and reputation.
I will support local clubs and teams and advocacy groups. There will be support from the community, from the city, from your friends and neighbors.
I will encourage friends and neighbors to ride a bike; those who ride bikes to ride them recreationally; those who ride them recreationally to use them as transportation; those who use them as transportation to train. There will be more cyclists.
I will continue to ride in the road, and I will give better than I get, and much better than you deserve.
This will be no burden, because I will be doing something I love, and I will, we will, be right.
You can continue to do what you love, which is to be stupid and ignorant as much as you like, feeling protected, invincible like a wealthy teenager likely does, but remember, you don't know who is a cop, who is a sadist, who is a lawyer, who is a killer, who works in city hall, who is armed, who got your license number and whose best friend works for the DMV and knows where you live. I am none of those. You will live to regret it, eventually, one way or another, so I don't have to do anything but turn my cheek, hope for the best, and take the righteous path.
Which tomorrow morning happens to be right through your tacky suburb, you pimply little pony rapist.
He'd [seriously, there's no way I would consider actually posting the despicable descriptions of violence I came up with here; needless to say as our old buddy Trout Fishing in America, Shorty would say, "there is some that is crazier than winos," and there are some fates far worse than death] because he's fucking sick of people in death machines acting like fucking idiots.
And you know, I really want to turn the other cheek, because really, I feel sorry for you. It's a shame that you are ignorant and will stay as stupid as you are your whole life, because someone has to do the filthy jobs that nobody wants, have no rewards, and leave one only crippled, broken and poor.
The hard part is, you're not going to have that job, Bala Cynwood teenager driving a black Acura. You are perhaps 17 years old, and you are driving to school in a late model car that costs more than 25% of this country makes in 5 years. You're the generation between shirtsleeves, and you can coast on your parents' dough and businesses and investments your whole life while you're a fuck up, and your children are the ones who are going to have to get real jobs and real lives.
It's really hard to love you back, and the above is not the reason. The reason is that you have no idea what you've done, and you have no remorse; you think it's pretty funny even. When someone's coming down the road on a hill doing the speed limit and coming up on a curve and there is no other traffic, there is no goddam reason at all for you to start to pull out, stop, hesitate, make like you're going, stop again, and then when you're thirty feet ahead of me pull out right in front of me, leaving me no room on the right to pass you between your car and the curb, yet timing it perfectly such that there's now oncoming traffic and I can't pass you in the other lane either.
You wouldn't do that to a car, and you know why: because you would minimally be seriously injured and your (parents') car would be destroyed, you'd seriously injure the passengers of the other car, and very likely, you or the other driver or both would be dead as fuck there a block from your house. That would probably mean no x box for a week and certainly your credit card and cellular telephone taken away; they'd give away your pony, and that would make you cry a lot, because now to get laid you're going to have to meet a real live human.
But you'd get dead, fast. And you maybe haven't even considered that what you did was without question 2nd or 3rd degree vehicular assault. Because it was intentional. I don't have to crash for it to be that; I have to believe that you are either deliberately attempting to force me off the road or to lose control, or to strike me with your vehicle or cause me to strike you; simply conducting yourself consciously in a way that puts other road users in jeopardy is enough.
I have no doubt you were doing one of those - you saw me, and when I came up behind you at the light, you were doing the pretending not to be looking at anything vacant stare ahead along with your passenger, which looks very much like someone pretending to be asleep. If I weren't alert, able to react quickly and fairly good at handling a bicycle, I would have hit you. I would be minimally seriously injured, possibly dead.
I know I made one mistake; I can't remember the last time I attempted to say something to a driver that put me in grave danger. Calmly, rationally, and without a tone, I'm sure you would agree. But when you smiled and started gigling, and said, no, no, I didn't see you because you didn't have one of those thingies on your back or like, on your bike, that's when you had no idea how close you came to being a victim of extreme and deliberate violence yourself, along with your passenger, by someone with a maxed dose of adrenaline after narrowly escaping death and left over endorphins from riding and feeling good and really doesn't give a fuck.
When your friend started giggling, I had a clenched fist; I unclenched it when I realized the best way to keep you from driving away and get you out of the car was to grab him by the back of his head and smash his face into the half-opened passenger window hard enough to break it while traffic coming off of 76 was crossing in front of you.
That's a true story. I am not a violent person. I thought about it, made a plan, and readied myself to the degree of making my hands free. I was going to do it.
So I rode away. As traffic slowed to a trickle and the light was still red, I crossed the off ramp from the interstate, went through the advanced green and started going up Green Lane to get away from you before I did something irrevocable.
Not because Jesus would suggest that love is the only way.
Nuh-uh.
Revenge.
Here's my revenge:
I will join a club and a team. I will be one more person out on group rides on your highways, your thruways, your county roads, and your shortcuts. There will be more cyclists.
I will develop bike handling skills meant for racing to better react to your idiocy and to become even more confident at high speeds, while I take a lane and block you from passing me and us unless it is safe. There will be less accommodation of you, and more of me.
I will race, and I will be one more racer joining in your roads being closed for the morning, the afternoon, the day. There will be more races.
I will take down your license plate every single time and call in a vehicular assault attempt. I will request charges be pressed. Your name will go down in the books, and it will cost you time, money and reputation.
I will support local clubs and teams and advocacy groups. There will be support from the community, from the city, from your friends and neighbors.
I will encourage friends and neighbors to ride a bike; those who ride bikes to ride them recreationally; those who ride them recreationally to use them as transportation; those who use them as transportation to train. There will be more cyclists.
I will continue to ride in the road, and I will give better than I get, and much better than you deserve.
This will be no burden, because I will be doing something I love, and I will, we will, be right.
You can continue to do what you love, which is to be stupid and ignorant as much as you like, feeling protected, invincible like a wealthy teenager likely does, but remember, you don't know who is a cop, who is a sadist, who is a lawyer, who is a killer, who works in city hall, who is armed, who got your license number and whose best friend works for the DMV and knows where you live. I am none of those. You will live to regret it, eventually, one way or another, so I don't have to do anything but turn my cheek, hope for the best, and take the righteous path.
Which tomorrow morning happens to be right through your tacky suburb, you pimply little pony rapist.
Sep 11, 2008
g_d help thems that help hisself
Ok, ok, based on the voluminous hate mail we've received for essentially insulting Tommy Keene, saying absolutely nothing coherent about power pop, and basically using violence in the form of nasty exhortations in the hopes of trying to make people stop committing acts of violence (contrary to your second favorite vice-president nominee, making a concerted effort to add violence to violence is not g_d's will, we know, and we apologize, at least for the lousy writing), it has become clear to the brain trust here at Fuck Your Jetta that we have to say something smart about something to make up for recent posts.
We sort of started getting to today's topic a while ago, in a much more circuitous manner, but that was also more about riding in snow, which of course Philadelphia need not concern itself with, though they are calling for a snowier winter than last year's sunshine beach party. Nevertheless, there are some basic concepts that need to get kicked around that are pretty important in that they are daily concerns if you pilot a bicycle anywhere but mountain trails and velodromes.
The Slide
We are not referring to a dance move, but what at least my brother refers to the South Philly Slide.
South Philadelphia is pretty much a big grid where every 500 feet there is a stop sign. If you live in the middle of this grid (or likewise in similar grids in any corner of Philly that has rowhouses except around University City, where they put up lots of traffic lights because they remind college students of their favorite tee shirts with frogs in sombreros suggesting binge drinking and date rape in Cancun and Daytona Beach), you probably know the lay of the land fairly well, and coming to a full stop would delay you gunning your gigantic double-wheeled extended cab truck to the next stop another two to three seconds. You slow down, optionally you sort of look up from your pocket computer phone mp3 video game console, and then you keep going.
I'm not going to make the argument that drivers should or should not come to a complete stop at every stop sign. Like everything else, even completely unambiguous signifiers like stop signs are relative and contextual. Should you halt every time and put on your parking brake for a second? Probably not. The basic idea at a 2 or 4 way stop is to make sure the intersection is clear, there are nolemmings pedestrians, to allow any other road users who have arrived at the intersection to go before you, and finally, cross it. I am familiar with only one mode of vehicle travel as a pilot, so I can't speak from experience, but I'm going to say that the above is what the red octagon means.
Furthermore, I'm going to admit fully that I frequently do not come to a complete stop myself. I might even go so far as to suggest that I rarely do, though it seems that I actually stop on my bike more than your average cyclist. If you're in Philly, you are likely very familiar with the g'head wave, employed sometimes as a courtesy (a true courtesy, not the bizarro world one), sometimes because to some drivers cyclists are a great cause of annoyance or anxiety or both (and I suppose that annoyance is a form of anxiety, but the latter doesn't not always comport the former), and would prefer simply to have the biker out of the way before doing anything. Either way, at least some of the time is it clearly to the confusion of some motorists who have arrived at the intersection before me that I am intent on stopping to let them pass.
But back to stopping, or not stopping rather. It's with great frequency that drivers in Philly (and everywhere I suppose, but much more so than in Montreal anyway) do not stop at all, and sometimes barely slow down and make it clear that they have no intention of stopping. More often though, they slide.
Now, I've heard any number of times drivers complaining that cyclists do not respect drivers or follow traffic laws, and the most frequent beef is the stop sign or the red light. Let me propose a theory here: more often than not, they are not actually blowing stops and lights, but in fact sliding.
Consider your own driving - at a clear intersection, or one where approaching traffic will arrive after you've already successfully crossed, how often do you stop? I mean really stop. Five will get you ten that you almost never do.
This is not meant as a criticism; I do not mean to say that I do either. But quantitatively, think about it: for the most part, you don't actually stop. You slow down, and for all intensive purposes you may be stopped, but technically, you're moving, and if you go through the red, in some sense (and probably according to the traffic rule books if on quota day you are at the wrong intersection at the wrong time), you blew it.
Now consider this: the mass of your vehicle and typical 6th Street velocity will determine your momentum, and that momentum is inversely proportional to the degree of control you have on your vehicle and your stopping distance. (Let's ignore for a moment other mechanical factors like your turning radius, whether you have 22" spinny rims, if the dice hanging on your rearview are pink or black) You drive a Jetta that runs on vegetable oil, you've got a little greater precision because you top out at 40km/h highway and your car's a ton and a half without the dice; you drive a Navigator with a V8, and you are driving a 7,000 pound behemoth when a tank of gas and you are in it.
The mass of my Surly is maybe 22 lbs; the mass of my Jamis Eclipse with a bottle of water is probably under 20. I'm somewhere in the ballpark of 215 pounds these days. That means if I'm carrying a roast pork with spinach and sharp from John's I'm increasing my effective mass by a full percent, whereas if you do the same in your Suburban Ussalt Vehicle, in terms of relative weight with respect to control, it would be as if someone sneezed on you.
That is to say, the total vehicle weight I'm dealing with is in the ballpark of a 250 pounds. Assuming my brakes, arms and legs are in working order, and that my actual speed is less than you, my stopping distance is a fraction of yours. I don't care if you're only going 10 miles an hour (and you most certainly are not, because anytime someone does at my corner, there is plenty of honking to suggest that this is not an appropriate speed for Wharton Street), you can't stop in 5 feet, let alone safely.
You might say that this is starting to look like a pretty good argument that bicyclist should in fact always stop. I mean, what's it to yiz?
Well, no. If you're not going to, I'm not going to. But with respect to signage and speed limits on the roads, this is an apples to oranges comparison. Still arguing to the death that bikes damn well are vehicles, and deserve to be treated so on the roads and in the laws of the land, roads as we know them in North America weren't made for anything but cars, and as such, applying all the standard rules and signs equally to cars and bikes in fact is not equal at all, because if anything, it favours cars and puts bikes at the disadvantage every time.
If you would demand that cyclists stop at every stop sign and stop light, then by extension, it stands to reason that on a one lane street, you can't ever pass me. As a stop sign, you may not pass me, ever. At a light at a large intersection, you're going to stay behind me as it takes me three times as long to get through it - imagine crossing the West Chester Pike like that. It just doesn't make any sense, and doesn't do anyone any favors. All it does is increase congestion, and considering that basically all roads everywhere in these United States are designed to make cars king and all other users secondary (versus everywhere else in the world, except on main roads, pretty much), it's not going to work. It's not viable for traffic flow, and probably more importantly, it's not viable culturally.
I'm not going to get all "oh in Europe they..." because it's a completely different sociocultural context, and those stupid fuckers also have everything else backwards, preferring education, high standards of living, months of vacation time and free universal health care, to owning automatic weapons, low, low prices omg smiley face lol and oppressive poverty in the wealthiest country in the world. Nevertheless, I have seen cars, bikes and pedestrians living in total harmony in places where there was no signage and no division between vehicle and pedestrian space.
You don't want that, and even if you did, we can't have it. So let's get something straight: I'm not blowing stops and reds, I'm sliding. It would be really cool to have bar graphs to represent this, some shallow curve for bikes vs great sharp peaks and valleys for cars. It's all relative.
Keep in mind here that I'm not pretending that some people on bikes aren't dicks or idiots; I might consider agreeing that proportionally, idiocy is much more likely on a bike, but I'll take that back for all of you people who drive on sidewalks - if you see someone ride the length of a block on a sidewalk, they are ignorant or plain stupid, and you have our permission to love them even more compassionately than you already do, just like Jebus would. I have recently had occasion to see a full grown adult in his mid 30s who has never owned a car and ridden bicycles as transportation since a teenager approach an intersection where a driver who was there first, was signaling, attempted to make eye contact and began entering the intersection before he was even there go out of his way to cut her off, forcing her to slam on the brakes, as well as the car behind her. Just stupid and indefensible, and I wish him painful and perpetually weeping herpes anywhere you can get them. But I've also watched people texting while driving, so let's call it even.
There are less cyclists on the road than there are drivers, so you see more people doing much worse with a wildly disproportionate capacity for harm in cars every day - you hate it because we're more visible (in terms of the road landscape, where cars are so common you no longer really see them) and obviously different, so we stick out, and that's why we stick in your craw.
But the roads are a trust game - you have no choice but to assume that anyone else on the road has both your and their best interests in mind. Anyone could suddenly pull the wheel 90 degrees at 50 mph. They don't. They hope you're not going to. So when it comes to bicyclists who are otherwise ruly and predictable, you have to assume we know what we're doing unless we do something to suggest that we do not. Once that trust is violated, shit hits the proverbial fan, so I will ask that you raise your bottom and accept a threshold of a greater benefit of a doubt. It's in our best interests.
For one: If I am approaching an intersection and you are too, but within my range of safety I can obviously clear it without speeding up and be through it before you have reduced your speed to verify your safe passage, I will make eye contact with you, nod to tell you that I am going, and then give you the wave that is the common response to the g'head wave, the semi-universal open palm to signal an understanding of peace.
I will slow down as I approach and do this, preparing for the possibility that you do not see me or that you will not slow down or stop. If it appears that you are not going to stop, I will not race you to the intersection, nor will I deliberately block your passage. If it appears that you not only aren't going to stop but you make eye contact as if to say, look, I'm in a car, I go first, even if you got here first, I still won't, but I can't promise I don't hope your next administration of Novocaine misses the nerve and has to be reinjected another 4 times until your face is so numb you can no longer reply coherently and the procedure is performed while the area is only numbed to 25% of standard practice and you feel little bits of your own teeth collecting around the base of your throat perpetually almost but not quite triggering your gag reflex.
I'm facing the facts: you don't want me around. That's ok, I don't want you around, either, and I won't mention the fact that I pay the same taxes that you do for the upkeep of infrastructure while I cause zero degradation of them and that no matter who's president next, everyone's promising to make it cheaper for you to continue to be the kind of idiot that drives an SUV when the greatest load you haul is cases of soda from the Acme. Which does nothing for me, since I buy approximately zero millilitres of gasoline a year. Even Steven, let's call it.
What I am proposing is that when I'm apparently flaunting traffic laws, I'm actually following them, relative to my vehicle.
When I go through a stop sign, I am not only preventing you from stopping when you technically weren't going to (assuming that if you couldn't read my cues, or were jumpy or cynical about bicyclists, you would do as most do, default to the safest option by stopping completely and waiting until the obstacle is out of the way), but I'm getting the hell out of your way, just like you wanted.
When just before a light changes, I double check that the way is clear and jump the light during the 2 second delay (note to Quebec readers who aren't from Quebec: don't do this, Quebec is the only place in minimally North America, Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong that has no delay between one direction's red and another's green, as cultural matter in a société distincte), I am not thumbing my nose at you. Do you want me 5 feet from the parked cars across the intersection just as you are so I can safely pass an opening door, just as you do, but from a dead stop, in front of you, accelerating much more slowly than you? Or squeezing in between you and parked cars as you approach at 3 times my speed? I doubt it.
When there is an advanced green for left turns, especially at very large intersections with heavy traffic, am I laughing at you when I bust through the intersection before the two second delay, and across before turners-left have started moving? No, my friend, no; especially on these roads, there's probably not going to be a stop for a half a mile, a mile or more, and you're going to accelerate quickly and drive at or above the speed limit, because everyone knows that no cop will pull you over for doing ten miles or less over the limit. Knowing you're on the road too, and wanting to stay the fuck out of your way, I'm doing just that - making sure I'm long gone and out of the path of the first out of the gate, last minute right turners, and that asshole compensating for a tiny penis pulling around you on your left to pass you on the shoulder (ladies, praise be that there is no equivalent, gender bias be damned). I know you don't like me and want me out of the way; voila!
I don't hate drivers. I suspect that nearly no drivers actually hate cyclists. But we have to have an understanding. The deck is already stacked in your favor, and we are trying to play in your house. Some of the rules that are meant for you don't apply to us in the same way because we are fundamentally different. We can get along nicely. Understanding our differences and that we're working for the same goal are key to this. Most drivers apparently understand this, as in all of my travels around Southeastern Penna, I have to say that 99% of the time we reach this understanding. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so here's your grease.
And if that doesn't float your boat, I'm just a Canadian living by your rules, buddy, and g_d helps thems that helps hisself, my American friend.
We sort of started getting to today's topic a while ago, in a much more circuitous manner, but that was also more about riding in snow, which of course Philadelphia need not concern itself with, though they are calling for a snowier winter than last year's sunshine beach party. Nevertheless, there are some basic concepts that need to get kicked around that are pretty important in that they are daily concerns if you pilot a bicycle anywhere but mountain trails and velodromes.
The Slide
We are not referring to a dance move, but what at least my brother refers to the South Philly Slide.
South Philadelphia is pretty much a big grid where every 500 feet there is a stop sign. If you live in the middle of this grid (or likewise in similar grids in any corner of Philly that has rowhouses except around University City, where they put up lots of traffic lights because they remind college students of their favorite tee shirts with frogs in sombreros suggesting binge drinking and date rape in Cancun and Daytona Beach), you probably know the lay of the land fairly well, and coming to a full stop would delay you gunning your gigantic double-wheeled extended cab truck to the next stop another two to three seconds. You slow down, optionally you sort of look up from your pocket computer phone mp3 video game console, and then you keep going.
I'm not going to make the argument that drivers should or should not come to a complete stop at every stop sign. Like everything else, even completely unambiguous signifiers like stop signs are relative and contextual. Should you halt every time and put on your parking brake for a second? Probably not. The basic idea at a 2 or 4 way stop is to make sure the intersection is clear, there are no
Furthermore, I'm going to admit fully that I frequently do not come to a complete stop myself. I might even go so far as to suggest that I rarely do, though it seems that I actually stop on my bike more than your average cyclist. If you're in Philly, you are likely very familiar with the g'head wave, employed sometimes as a courtesy (a true courtesy, not the bizarro world one), sometimes because to some drivers cyclists are a great cause of annoyance or anxiety or both (and I suppose that annoyance is a form of anxiety, but the latter doesn't not always comport the former), and would prefer simply to have the biker out of the way before doing anything. Either way, at least some of the time is it clearly to the confusion of some motorists who have arrived at the intersection before me that I am intent on stopping to let them pass.
But back to stopping, or not stopping rather. It's with great frequency that drivers in Philly (and everywhere I suppose, but much more so than in Montreal anyway) do not stop at all, and sometimes barely slow down and make it clear that they have no intention of stopping. More often though, they slide.
Now, I've heard any number of times drivers complaining that cyclists do not respect drivers or follow traffic laws, and the most frequent beef is the stop sign or the red light. Let me propose a theory here: more often than not, they are not actually blowing stops and lights, but in fact sliding.
Consider your own driving - at a clear intersection, or one where approaching traffic will arrive after you've already successfully crossed, how often do you stop? I mean really stop. Five will get you ten that you almost never do.
This is not meant as a criticism; I do not mean to say that I do either. But quantitatively, think about it: for the most part, you don't actually stop. You slow down, and for all intensive purposes you may be stopped, but technically, you're moving, and if you go through the red, in some sense (and probably according to the traffic rule books if on quota day you are at the wrong intersection at the wrong time), you blew it.
Now consider this: the mass of your vehicle and typical 6th Street velocity will determine your momentum, and that momentum is inversely proportional to the degree of control you have on your vehicle and your stopping distance. (Let's ignore for a moment other mechanical factors like your turning radius, whether you have 22" spinny rims, if the dice hanging on your rearview are pink or black) You drive a Jetta that runs on vegetable oil, you've got a little greater precision because you top out at 40km/h highway and your car's a ton and a half without the dice; you drive a Navigator with a V8, and you are driving a 7,000 pound behemoth when a tank of gas and you are in it.
The mass of my Surly is maybe 22 lbs; the mass of my Jamis Eclipse with a bottle of water is probably under 20. I'm somewhere in the ballpark of 215 pounds these days. That means if I'm carrying a roast pork with spinach and sharp from John's I'm increasing my effective mass by a full percent, whereas if you do the same in your Suburban Ussalt Vehicle, in terms of relative weight with respect to control, it would be as if someone sneezed on you.
That is to say, the total vehicle weight I'm dealing with is in the ballpark of a 250 pounds. Assuming my brakes, arms and legs are in working order, and that my actual speed is less than you, my stopping distance is a fraction of yours. I don't care if you're only going 10 miles an hour (and you most certainly are not, because anytime someone does at my corner, there is plenty of honking to suggest that this is not an appropriate speed for Wharton Street), you can't stop in 5 feet, let alone safely.
You might say that this is starting to look like a pretty good argument that bicyclist should in fact always stop. I mean, what's it to yiz?
Well, no. If you're not going to, I'm not going to. But with respect to signage and speed limits on the roads, this is an apples to oranges comparison. Still arguing to the death that bikes damn well are vehicles, and deserve to be treated so on the roads and in the laws of the land, roads as we know them in North America weren't made for anything but cars, and as such, applying all the standard rules and signs equally to cars and bikes in fact is not equal at all, because if anything, it favours cars and puts bikes at the disadvantage every time.
If you would demand that cyclists stop at every stop sign and stop light, then by extension, it stands to reason that on a one lane street, you can't ever pass me. As a stop sign, you may not pass me, ever. At a light at a large intersection, you're going to stay behind me as it takes me three times as long to get through it - imagine crossing the West Chester Pike like that. It just doesn't make any sense, and doesn't do anyone any favors. All it does is increase congestion, and considering that basically all roads everywhere in these United States are designed to make cars king and all other users secondary (versus everywhere else in the world, except on main roads, pretty much), it's not going to work. It's not viable for traffic flow, and probably more importantly, it's not viable culturally.
I'm not going to get all "oh in Europe they..." because it's a completely different sociocultural context, and those stupid fuckers also have everything else backwards, preferring education, high standards of living, months of vacation time and free universal health care, to owning automatic weapons, low, low prices omg smiley face lol and oppressive poverty in the wealthiest country in the world. Nevertheless, I have seen cars, bikes and pedestrians living in total harmony in places where there was no signage and no division between vehicle and pedestrian space.
You don't want that, and even if you did, we can't have it. So let's get something straight: I'm not blowing stops and reds, I'm sliding. It would be really cool to have bar graphs to represent this, some shallow curve for bikes vs great sharp peaks and valleys for cars. It's all relative.
Keep in mind here that I'm not pretending that some people on bikes aren't dicks or idiots; I might consider agreeing that proportionally, idiocy is much more likely on a bike, but I'll take that back for all of you people who drive on sidewalks - if you see someone ride the length of a block on a sidewalk, they are ignorant or plain stupid, and you have our permission to love them even more compassionately than you already do, just like Jebus would. I have recently had occasion to see a full grown adult in his mid 30s who has never owned a car and ridden bicycles as transportation since a teenager approach an intersection where a driver who was there first, was signaling, attempted to make eye contact and began entering the intersection before he was even there go out of his way to cut her off, forcing her to slam on the brakes, as well as the car behind her. Just stupid and indefensible, and I wish him painful and perpetually weeping herpes anywhere you can get them. But I've also watched people texting while driving, so let's call it even.
There are less cyclists on the road than there are drivers, so you see more people doing much worse with a wildly disproportionate capacity for harm in cars every day - you hate it because we're more visible (in terms of the road landscape, where cars are so common you no longer really see them) and obviously different, so we stick out, and that's why we stick in your craw.
But the roads are a trust game - you have no choice but to assume that anyone else on the road has both your and their best interests in mind. Anyone could suddenly pull the wheel 90 degrees at 50 mph. They don't. They hope you're not going to. So when it comes to bicyclists who are otherwise ruly and predictable, you have to assume we know what we're doing unless we do something to suggest that we do not. Once that trust is violated, shit hits the proverbial fan, so I will ask that you raise your bottom and accept a threshold of a greater benefit of a doubt. It's in our best interests.
For one: If I am approaching an intersection and you are too, but within my range of safety I can obviously clear it without speeding up and be through it before you have reduced your speed to verify your safe passage, I will make eye contact with you, nod to tell you that I am going, and then give you the wave that is the common response to the g'head wave, the semi-universal open palm to signal an understanding of peace.
I will slow down as I approach and do this, preparing for the possibility that you do not see me or that you will not slow down or stop. If it appears that you are not going to stop, I will not race you to the intersection, nor will I deliberately block your passage. If it appears that you not only aren't going to stop but you make eye contact as if to say, look, I'm in a car, I go first, even if you got here first, I still won't, but I can't promise I don't hope your next administration of Novocaine misses the nerve and has to be reinjected another 4 times until your face is so numb you can no longer reply coherently and the procedure is performed while the area is only numbed to 25% of standard practice and you feel little bits of your own teeth collecting around the base of your throat perpetually almost but not quite triggering your gag reflex.
I'm facing the facts: you don't want me around. That's ok, I don't want you around, either, and I won't mention the fact that I pay the same taxes that you do for the upkeep of infrastructure while I cause zero degradation of them and that no matter who's president next, everyone's promising to make it cheaper for you to continue to be the kind of idiot that drives an SUV when the greatest load you haul is cases of soda from the Acme. Which does nothing for me, since I buy approximately zero millilitres of gasoline a year. Even Steven, let's call it.
What I am proposing is that when I'm apparently flaunting traffic laws, I'm actually following them, relative to my vehicle.
When I go through a stop sign, I am not only preventing you from stopping when you technically weren't going to (assuming that if you couldn't read my cues, or were jumpy or cynical about bicyclists, you would do as most do, default to the safest option by stopping completely and waiting until the obstacle is out of the way), but I'm getting the hell out of your way, just like you wanted.
When just before a light changes, I double check that the way is clear and jump the light during the 2 second delay (note to Quebec readers who aren't from Quebec: don't do this, Quebec is the only place in minimally North America, Europe, Japan, and Hong Kong that has no delay between one direction's red and another's green, as cultural matter in a société distincte), I am not thumbing my nose at you. Do you want me 5 feet from the parked cars across the intersection just as you are so I can safely pass an opening door, just as you do, but from a dead stop, in front of you, accelerating much more slowly than you? Or squeezing in between you and parked cars as you approach at 3 times my speed? I doubt it.
When there is an advanced green for left turns, especially at very large intersections with heavy traffic, am I laughing at you when I bust through the intersection before the two second delay, and across before turners-left have started moving? No, my friend, no; especially on these roads, there's probably not going to be a stop for a half a mile, a mile or more, and you're going to accelerate quickly and drive at or above the speed limit, because everyone knows that no cop will pull you over for doing ten miles or less over the limit. Knowing you're on the road too, and wanting to stay the fuck out of your way, I'm doing just that - making sure I'm long gone and out of the path of the first out of the gate, last minute right turners, and that asshole compensating for a tiny penis pulling around you on your left to pass you on the shoulder (ladies, praise be that there is no equivalent, gender bias be damned). I know you don't like me and want me out of the way; voila!
I don't hate drivers. I suspect that nearly no drivers actually hate cyclists. But we have to have an understanding. The deck is already stacked in your favor, and we are trying to play in your house. Some of the rules that are meant for you don't apply to us in the same way because we are fundamentally different. We can get along nicely. Understanding our differences and that we're working for the same goal are key to this. Most drivers apparently understand this, as in all of my travels around Southeastern Penna, I have to say that 99% of the time we reach this understanding. But the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so here's your grease.
And if that doesn't float your boat, I'm just a Canadian living by your rules, buddy, and g_d helps thems that helps hisself, my American friend.
Sep 10, 2008
The Real Underground: Tommy Keene
Tommy Keene sounds like the soundtrack to a good 80s movie, or at least 80s in a way that's hard to put your finger on.
Maybe more like a tune on the soundtrack, but not your Don't You Forget About Me. More like one of those songs that comes on the radio, and subconsciously, you turn up the car stereo a bit, drum your fingers on the steering wheel for a verse without even noticing; without noticing the song in particular in fact, which if you did, you have a hard time naming where you heard it, just percolating into a part of your brain that feeds tiny but perceptible doses of happiness chemicals to another part that's right beside your memory centers.
I hardly ever go, damn, I want to hear that Tommy Keene song; I don't hardly know the name of any of his songs. But once I put on one of his albums (which has been more than a few times in the last couple months, where a couple of cds haven't been able to get away from rotation), I have yet to go, hmm, nah, and put on something else instead.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Tommy Keene was by trade an building engineer or a commercial architect, some trade where the goal was not to make obvious what you're doing, but to make it as subtle and functional as possible, shopping centres, stairs, bridges, a turn around a bed of hard rock that couldn't be blasted away. Unobtrusive, and indelible in success if you didn't notice anything.
Contrast this with Brian Eno's ambient stuff, with all that hyper-intellectualized bullshit and lauds that go with it, that music that was supposed to be less noticeable than wallpaper in a place you only every walk through or perhaps read a magazine or sleep sitting up in. You don't have to check and see if you're paying attention to Tommy Keene songs - you are, in yr id, and that is his success. Eno, you're constantly checking and seeing if you're still listening, getting something that everyone or no one else got or lied about getting - you're not, and that is Eno's success, all the talking about records that no one actually listens to, and people pretending to listen to music that you're not supposed to listen to so they can join the club of people that got it
Or this one, those that apparently like to say they got it and bee tee dubbs, fuck you, regardless of whether it's an interesting concept or if you're for the creation of or listening to music that's not supposed to be listened to as an intellectual exercise; I'm not.
No, Tommy Keene's oeuvre is successful not in that you don't notice them at all, but in that you can't quite figure out why it is you keep coming back to his songs and his records. It's not so much that you remember any one of them in particular, it's that you can't seem to forget them as a whole.
What if you're an craftsman, and not an artist? Is that damning? Build a bicycle not meant to be ridden, and you're an artist; make one too pretty to be ridden, and you're an artisan craftsman; successfully build the same thing over and over again, relentlessly, and we'll call you a manufacturer.
And if you craft something that has no apparent place or use or correlate in the world? This is maybe what we usually call art of any stripe - but what, if anything is the Heidelburg project but craft? The stuffs that ought be viewed as art because such as it is crafted, there is no corresponding category in everyday reality for their greatness except to say they were really good, like a really comfortable chair, or a particularly tasty roast chicken?
We have a hard time calling something that serves an obvious purpose besides mere entertainment art; nor do we want want to relegate one who makes something intangible but permanent such as a song to the status of builder. But what if you make something fastidiously and conscientiously that nobody actually wants?
Well, not nobody. Tommy Keene doesn't make buggy whips in a world that no longer uses buggies - it might look like that because on the surface his 80s output didn't look that different in a lot of ways from a lot of slick pop rock of the era, yet he continues to crank it out. But his consistency, of which I will assume as a master craftsman who knows all aspects of his materials, designs, and functional properties of his work, is remarkable. His newest album is not in the least out of step with his earliest; it is timeless, not in the sense of Ella Fitzgerald, of a now canonical form that continues to interest and engage listeners despite the style being locked in amber. It is timeless in that with respect to the continuity of music, it doesn't fit in any time.
Surely I am doing a wild disservice to Tommy Keene in such terms. His records sound produced and careful, like little has been left to chance. Usually we'd say this means they sound commercial, but if it was commerce he was after, he obviously would have changed something in his craft to shift with the times, to flow at least a little bit, or maybe get caught up with the current of what's now and hot and everyone's listening to. Yet he does not. And on the other side of the coin, there are many who would gravitate to the unique and skewed visionary who flips out, bugs out, makes something that few would get and attracts a couple of hangers on who appreciate or live vicariously through the odd man out, and will roll with the punches and missteps of one true to her vision - Bob Pollard, we're looking at you again.
The middle ground here is a razor's edge - there might be many who are merely adequate, neither totally commercial nor off-kilter, but we hear them every day in The Gap off the OC soundtrack, or at open mic night. Tommy Keene is a master professional musician and songwriter, and damn near every one of whose songs is a complete story, neither totally straightforward nor leaving so much to the imagination that you'd call him out there.
And this is his downfall, if you could call it that; insofar as gaining a large and loyal listener base, or even a cult fandom, he neither engages those who'd champion a renegade nor those that would glom onto anything that sounds pretty safe. Tommy Keene is the archetypal power pop artist, so much so such that as the archetype, he ends up being nearly invisible. He hits every mark; muscular and melodic power chords; classic guitar sounds (Rickenbackers, Telecasters, Gretsches), mixing electrics and acoustics; smart songs about relationships, mostly lost or failed ones, or pining for those that will be lost or failed; smatterings of keyboards or guitars that sound like keyboards; classic rock- and pop- influenced songwriting and style; driving verses building to perfectly timed release in the chorus.
Everyone else however has a schtick, even among power pop artists; Tommy Keene has no schtick. He's not funny or ironic, he doesn't get drunk and sloppy, he doesn't fuck around, not arty, or indulgent. In his entire career, he has not made a record that's bad, and his only experimental moment, if you could call it that, is having a single song that broke his own mold by being really long; it's lyrical content is basically the creation of a relationship, a breakup after infidelity, and then the unfaithful one dying in a plane crash and the other contemplating suicide, in a build of urgent pop that moves from thoughtful to driving. It's pretty much Power Pop: The Movie, if such a thing were possible.
Can having no schtick be a schtick? Usually not. Tommy Keene is the Jesus of power pop - take anything he actually said or did, and you can't any fault with it, but probably nobody's going to really get it either. I mean really get it.
And there's the rub. You knew we wouldn't stoop to a simple Eno dis for no reason, right? We have to admit that even while we listen to his records in particular, we can't name a favorite song. We can't sing along, because we don't know the words. We feel we can feel what he's getting at, and perhaps therefore what he's about, but your humble author was sort of making it up when he said that all of his songs were stories: we feel they are, and compelling ones at that, but even as we have championed him, have we really heard him? Have we got him at all?
We Eno'd him. Or anti-Eno'd him, perhaps; Fuck Your Jetta has to admit that for all our bluster and interest here we haven't listened that closely to his songs that are obviously meant to be listened to and for attention to be paid them, and we like to put them on and be enveloped in them for a time and then go about our way in the world. Shuddering to think what the man himself might say, this here humble servant reminds you that he subscribes to the theory that such as you'd characterize the world with not understanding, you'd characterize your own understanding.
Is that a crime?
Eager to make a hasty escape from being painted into a corner, we urge y'all to check out Tommy Keene's tunes; we like Isolation Drills, Ten Years After, The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, and (speak of the devil), his collaboration with Robert Pollard as the Keene Brothers.
Maybe more like a tune on the soundtrack, but not your Don't You Forget About Me. More like one of those songs that comes on the radio, and subconsciously, you turn up the car stereo a bit, drum your fingers on the steering wheel for a verse without even noticing; without noticing the song in particular in fact, which if you did, you have a hard time naming where you heard it, just percolating into a part of your brain that feeds tiny but perceptible doses of happiness chemicals to another part that's right beside your memory centers.
I hardly ever go, damn, I want to hear that Tommy Keene song; I don't hardly know the name of any of his songs. But once I put on one of his albums (which has been more than a few times in the last couple months, where a couple of cds haven't been able to get away from rotation), I have yet to go, hmm, nah, and put on something else instead.
It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Tommy Keene was by trade an building engineer or a commercial architect, some trade where the goal was not to make obvious what you're doing, but to make it as subtle and functional as possible, shopping centres, stairs, bridges, a turn around a bed of hard rock that couldn't be blasted away. Unobtrusive, and indelible in success if you didn't notice anything.
Contrast this with Brian Eno's ambient stuff, with all that hyper-intellectualized bullshit and lauds that go with it, that music that was supposed to be less noticeable than wallpaper in a place you only every walk through or perhaps read a magazine or sleep sitting up in. You don't have to check and see if you're paying attention to Tommy Keene songs - you are, in yr id, and that is his success. Eno, you're constantly checking and seeing if you're still listening, getting something that everyone or no one else got or lied about getting - you're not, and that is Eno's success, all the talking about records that no one actually listens to, and people pretending to listen to music that you're not supposed to listen to so they can join the club of people that got it
Or this one, those that apparently like to say they got it and bee tee dubbs, fuck you, regardless of whether it's an interesting concept or if you're for the creation of or listening to music that's not supposed to be listened to as an intellectual exercise; I'm not.
No, Tommy Keene's oeuvre is successful not in that you don't notice them at all, but in that you can't quite figure out why it is you keep coming back to his songs and his records. It's not so much that you remember any one of them in particular, it's that you can't seem to forget them as a whole.
What if you're an craftsman, and not an artist? Is that damning? Build a bicycle not meant to be ridden, and you're an artist; make one too pretty to be ridden, and you're an artisan craftsman; successfully build the same thing over and over again, relentlessly, and we'll call you a manufacturer.
And if you craft something that has no apparent place or use or correlate in the world? This is maybe what we usually call art of any stripe - but what, if anything is the Heidelburg project but craft? The stuffs that ought be viewed as art because such as it is crafted, there is no corresponding category in everyday reality for their greatness except to say they were really good, like a really comfortable chair, or a particularly tasty roast chicken?
We have a hard time calling something that serves an obvious purpose besides mere entertainment art; nor do we want want to relegate one who makes something intangible but permanent such as a song to the status of builder. But what if you make something fastidiously and conscientiously that nobody actually wants?
Well, not nobody. Tommy Keene doesn't make buggy whips in a world that no longer uses buggies - it might look like that because on the surface his 80s output didn't look that different in a lot of ways from a lot of slick pop rock of the era, yet he continues to crank it out. But his consistency, of which I will assume as a master craftsman who knows all aspects of his materials, designs, and functional properties of his work, is remarkable. His newest album is not in the least out of step with his earliest; it is timeless, not in the sense of Ella Fitzgerald, of a now canonical form that continues to interest and engage listeners despite the style being locked in amber. It is timeless in that with respect to the continuity of music, it doesn't fit in any time.
Surely I am doing a wild disservice to Tommy Keene in such terms. His records sound produced and careful, like little has been left to chance. Usually we'd say this means they sound commercial, but if it was commerce he was after, he obviously would have changed something in his craft to shift with the times, to flow at least a little bit, or maybe get caught up with the current of what's now and hot and everyone's listening to. Yet he does not. And on the other side of the coin, there are many who would gravitate to the unique and skewed visionary who flips out, bugs out, makes something that few would get and attracts a couple of hangers on who appreciate or live vicariously through the odd man out, and will roll with the punches and missteps of one true to her vision - Bob Pollard, we're looking at you again.
The middle ground here is a razor's edge - there might be many who are merely adequate, neither totally commercial nor off-kilter, but we hear them every day in The Gap off the OC soundtrack, or at open mic night. Tommy Keene is a master professional musician and songwriter, and damn near every one of whose songs is a complete story, neither totally straightforward nor leaving so much to the imagination that you'd call him out there.
And this is his downfall, if you could call it that; insofar as gaining a large and loyal listener base, or even a cult fandom, he neither engages those who'd champion a renegade nor those that would glom onto anything that sounds pretty safe. Tommy Keene is the archetypal power pop artist, so much so such that as the archetype, he ends up being nearly invisible. He hits every mark; muscular and melodic power chords; classic guitar sounds (Rickenbackers, Telecasters, Gretsches), mixing electrics and acoustics; smart songs about relationships, mostly lost or failed ones, or pining for those that will be lost or failed; smatterings of keyboards or guitars that sound like keyboards; classic rock- and pop- influenced songwriting and style; driving verses building to perfectly timed release in the chorus.
Everyone else however has a schtick, even among power pop artists; Tommy Keene has no schtick. He's not funny or ironic, he doesn't get drunk and sloppy, he doesn't fuck around, not arty, or indulgent. In his entire career, he has not made a record that's bad, and his only experimental moment, if you could call it that, is having a single song that broke his own mold by being really long; it's lyrical content is basically the creation of a relationship, a breakup after infidelity, and then the unfaithful one dying in a plane crash and the other contemplating suicide, in a build of urgent pop that moves from thoughtful to driving. It's pretty much Power Pop: The Movie, if such a thing were possible.
Can having no schtick be a schtick? Usually not. Tommy Keene is the Jesus of power pop - take anything he actually said or did, and you can't any fault with it, but probably nobody's going to really get it either. I mean really get it.
And there's the rub. You knew we wouldn't stoop to a simple Eno dis for no reason, right? We have to admit that even while we listen to his records in particular, we can't name a favorite song. We can't sing along, because we don't know the words. We feel we can feel what he's getting at, and perhaps therefore what he's about, but your humble author was sort of making it up when he said that all of his songs were stories: we feel they are, and compelling ones at that, but even as we have championed him, have we really heard him? Have we got him at all?
We Eno'd him. Or anti-Eno'd him, perhaps; Fuck Your Jetta has to admit that for all our bluster and interest here we haven't listened that closely to his songs that are obviously meant to be listened to and for attention to be paid them, and we like to put them on and be enveloped in them for a time and then go about our way in the world. Shuddering to think what the man himself might say, this here humble servant reminds you that he subscribes to the theory that such as you'd characterize the world with not understanding, you'd characterize your own understanding.
Is that a crime?
Eager to make a hasty escape from being painted into a corner, we urge y'all to check out Tommy Keene's tunes; we like Isolation Drills, Ten Years After, The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, and (speak of the devil), his collaboration with Robert Pollard as the Keene Brothers.
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