You had me at cockles

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestmailby feather

BikeSnob, as he is prone to, nailed this one in a recent post. And, yes, I don’t even try to be current. I just talk about what everyone else is already talking about.

Since the invention of moving pictures, only pornographers and the Nazis have documented their endeavors on camera more assiduously than the “bike culture,” for whom no bike-related exploit is too mundane to commit to video.
See Warming the Cockles: Living, Breathing, Shopping.

That’s his set-up pitch. He’s just getting started. Go read his post. Or, cut to the chase, and watch the video he’s working up towards in that piece now. You are sure to weep tears of joy. I want to hug a cement truck after watching this. This could be the high water mark in fixed gear culture. Year from now we’ll look back at this and say, yep, that’s right about where it turned.

The video in question can also be viewed at specialized.com (they underwrite this drivel). As an added bonus, you can read the actual words someone actually wrote (on purpose) to describe the project:

PEDALING: NYC is a host-driven and character based webseries. Each episode ranges from 3-6 minutes in length highlighting the best and most eclectic riding in the area and culminating in an informative and engaging lifestyle activity.

Equipped with only two wheels and a love of communing, social-savvy hosts embark on culinary bike tours throughout the New York City metropolitan area – exploring each unique neighborhood’s vibrant characters, scenic destinations, and memorable rides.

They are totally serious about this. They’ve got five more episodes cued up for release over the next four weeks. You can see it here: pedaling.tv. Will this put more people on bikes? Will this increase bicycle awareness? Will this force people who currently ride bikes to saw them in half and buy Chevy pickup trucks?

I don’t really have much to add that hasn’t already been said better by BikeSnob (hey, the cat can write). But, I did notice the “cyclists” in the vid went for the $9.99 six pack to accompany their utterly ridiculous pizza project. I know cyclists. I know pros. Sure, I carried the raincoats, but I was there. Pros don’t go for the ten dollar sixpack, Pros go for the ten dollar 18 pack.

Look, it’s not about hanging out in the cheese room, or whatever these cats are into inhaling at twenty minutes after four on the regular. It’s about getting as many calories out of a dollar bill as possible. I’m talking about .99 cent grimy, glazed honey buns that sweat lardy goodness under cellophane wrappers. Big ass .79 cent cups of cola out of a fountain in a paper cup, balanced on the handlebar as you ride nine miles into a headwind trying to beat the rain. Cheap ass two dollar Mexican burritos from a drive through window. Domestic beer in the can. Sleeping on floors. Scrounging for gas money. Riding really shitty training wheels all winter long.

Whole Foods? Who the fuck can afford to shop at Whole Foods? Some assclown with a trust fund? I’m talking about Circle K, Flying J, Family Dollar Store, Albertson’s, Fry’s, Basha’s, Guerro Canelo, the Tap Room, Chez Lounge. You picking up what I’m putting down?

I have no idea who these people are in the film. I don’t know what they do. I don’t know where they live. But, if that’s keeping it real, I no longer know what fucking planet I’m on.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestmailby feather

About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

38 Replies to “You had me at cockles”

  1. I’ve never spent time in New York City, which I infer to be fatuous and self-absorbed, but those dorks are SERIOUSLY fatuous and self-absorbed.

  2. half, what a bunch of fucking scenesters. half, i’d love to cruse the City with these douche bags. but that’s what you’d expect from a douche bag,,,right?

  3. If you’ve never seen an empty gu packet on the side of the road and contemplated picking it up and trying to squeeze an extra drop out of it, you aren’t riding enough.

  4. I just got back from a road ride in the verde. 2.5 hours in the saddle down to page springs and back. it was the shit. Then I clicked on that feltcher pizza-pie bullshit. Hands down, that’s the gayest fucking thing I’ve ever seen and I fail to understand how that is less offensive than Team Double Cock Racing. This world is fuck up.

    And as a matter of fact, I was just at the whole foods in Sedona looking for post ride grub. A fucking ham sandwich there is 7 fucking dollars. I pretty much wanted to choke somebody out. Everyone in there had a fucking vortex up their ass. I’m just not down with that shit. Makes me want to set shit on FIRE.

  5. Our stop is the G-Mart in one of the African-American communities. Mr. Bates owns the joint and always takes care of riders. A can of coke, a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme pie and a water refill gets you home, not a bunch of stank cheese and high 4 beer!

  6. I clicked on the link expecting some extra douchey dribble but the very first words out of the guy’s mouth is “I’m a chef.” Well, what the fuck do you expect a chef on a bike to do?

    He’s a fucking chef, a NY chef, he cooks and lives for shit like that and he does it with a bike. He’s not a pro rider he’s someone who appears to love bikes and food.

    Now I stopped at the cheese shop so maybe it takes some turn after that but a video with about a guy who likes bikes and food combining the two doesn’t seem much to get worked about, hardly the Apocalypse.

  7. kg – my boyf’s a chef too but he doesn’t talk like that. he doesn’t call vegetables “beautiful”.

  8. And a pro chef shops at Whole Foods? In NYC? That was his best choice? Come to NYC, check out the awesomeness, shop at Whole Foods?

  9. Remember, for these guys bikes are a fashion accessory. And BTW, you can climb 2000+ feet powered by a Twinkie! Yum!

  10. Actually, those brussel sprouts WERE beautiful, but then again I’ve been a dishwasher and short order cook, never a ‘chef’.

    I honestly never new brussel sprouts grew on a stick, I thought someone had to crawl around and plant/harvest tiny heads of cabbage.

    Even douche bags can teach people a thing or two I guess.

    What amazes me most is we were edjucated on the sour dough, but never on the bikes. Why did they only have one brake lever? Is it cool to have a fixie with flats? Why aren’t all the bikes pink? Those are the questions I want answers to.

    But they probably don’t eat Twinkies because there are no 2k hills to climb.

  11. That’s so fu-huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-huuuuucking funny. So fucking funny because this rich fucking New Yorkers visit Minneapolis (or more trendily Portland) and their fucking minds are blown by the unbelievable hot moms with two kids on X-tra cycles riding to New Seasons, and the commuters riding across bridges in legions and passing them – some jaw dropping shit for a desert rat or a kid that can talk hi-dolla or BrookLYNNN slang. They might make New York live-able, right? After every abandoned warehouse is converted to roof gardened ‘flats’ ??????? Let me tell you what the fuck I’m talking about. I’m talking about a pile of tubes and a ratty office chair, and my pump. let one of those hipsters step to me in a tube patching contest. Bring it.

  12. I just don’t see it as anything more than a bad version of No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain can write…), or one of the shows on the Food Network, that I KNOW a bunch of us are addicted to… The reason we’re hyper-critical of it is the marketing of bike culture. Yeah, it’s silly and full of scenesters, but is it really worth of so much hate? Without that he’d just be another NY chef with a camera crew… Listen to your favorite musician talk about a chord progression, or an artist talk about the use of color, or a writer talk about character development. Yeah, chefs call food beautiful. Hell, I call food beautiful…

  13. I find Bourdain’s show very interesting, he talks with real people all over the world. This too me, seems very artificial, the camera is ‘hiding’ behind the cracker rack, the guys keep repeating the same crap, they are too aware of the camera. The filming, meh, I find videos of freeride hucksters to be boring, watching a couple guys cruise the streets on fixies, snooze.

    Not hatin’, just not lovin’.

  14. that avacado sauce at guerro canelo is so good i’d brush my teeth with it. just saying.

  15. What, you think Specialized is going to get the Black Label gang to sell their wares and promote bikes? Tall bike jousting with a sick of brussel sprouts, followed by vomiting on and sodomizing the loser with it?

    That does sound like something I’d rather watch…….Two sprouts one douche?

  16. The problem isn’t fixie hipsters, or chefs, or any other profession… it’s that every yahoo thinks their life is interesting enough to document on film (it’s not). Thus we get vacuous shows like “Real Housewives of Orange County” (or Atlanta or NY) and people pulling stunts like the baloon boy family or the presidential dinner gate crashers trying to prove that they are worth paying attention to (they’re not). The meta-story can be interesting, but day to day life is boring as hell… Especially in the form of Twitter updates.

  17. Alls I know is I just saw the episode where Bourdain hangs with Ted Nugent. Tony fired that M-60 like he’d been doing it all his life. Might be some hope for the boy, I’ll tell you what.

  18. These dudes have issues. This is still funny and I think they are trying to be serious since you cannot makeup this crap.

  19. Got about 2 minutes into that video and bailed.

    Anthony Bourdain/No Reservations seems to be popular in my house, especially today, think it was a marathon. Would have sat down and watched the Nugent one but had to get out before I lost any more daylight.

    dave (#21) – I couldn’t agree more, good call.

  20. Sell out is sell out. Everything jumps the shark sooner or later. Hopefully this douche nozzlery is the foamy aftermath of all that fashion fixie crap. But then again, I was a punk ass poser skater in that day. To each, their own Brussels Sprout.

    Whatev.

  21. Aaah jeez. SPecialized, they sure make nice seats, those guys oughta sit on there dumbazzfixxeez up over the GW and due north till they get to Canadia
    THat bowery whole foods contains some of the most profitable floor space in their empire. A friend from the risdID dept. designed that space he sayz, the growler beer boutique corner being the bright idea. He tried to join the bandwagon during college when singlespeedin lincoln woods was da shit and his big post football playin dumbass just snapped cranks in half and preferred driving his audi to the gym.. wholefoods canned him eventually
    If anyone ever wants a tour of NYC contact this STomparillaz on the off chance i’m there and we’ll ride xtra cycles through the night and pick all sorts of weird shit to string up on the bridge

  22. I don’t even know what to say. i just got back from 3 days of seclusion in the Mojave desert and this is the first thing i read. fuckin A..I moved from NYC to Arizona about 8 years ago and i hope i wasn’t that much of a flaming pussy when i got here..i hope this marks the jumping of the shark of the fixter cultre…i can only hope.

  23. not even gonna watch it.
    Miss my FLG days of try to feed myself enough calories on the cheap to survive Elden AFDs and Sedona “who knows where the fuck we’re gonna end up” adventures.
    Hammer Gel, Salted Nut Rollzzzzz & cold LFtT espresso shots…