Spotted this Spot yesterday. Took a photo because it was clearly the coolest bike in the rack. But upon further review it wasn’t as cool as I thought. I don’t read bike reviews or bike magazines very often and live in a thumbshifter retro world so I had no idea the acme has been around for a couple years. Spot has a special spot in my mind because they used to advertise in the outcast which made them cool by association and they were right here on the I-5 corridor. Their bikes were unobtainable so I bought one of their t-shirts. Now 20 years later they’re in Colorado and their bikes are made of unobtainium or actually dontreallywantium.
This bike is cool for sure. But I wouldn’t award it ultimate urban utility bike status because there are too many incompatible doo-dads. I like to visualize riding a bike across Iowa in July and I have a mechanical issue and roll into the one and only bike shop in the small town I happen to be drinking in at the time and the mechanic smiles, reaches up on the shelf and grabs the exact part I need and sells it to me for $5. In my standard visualization the part has never been anything hovering around an 11-speed internal hub or a gates carbon drive. In the visualization where I'm stuck with this bike the mechanic looks at the gates belt and says “shit, the vacuum repair guy went out of business right after WalMart came to town. But I bet he could have helped you with that thing”
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