it wasn’t the riser bar I really wanted. It was the riser bar I happened to have on hand. A handlebar swap setting off a sequence of events including cables and housing. The riser bar I might really want is sitting in a bucket in the back of the BikeWorks Warehouse. It could be at Recycled Cycles. It could be on Ebay. It could be in your garage. I don’t really know what it is. The rise. The sweep. It’s hard to define, but I’ll know it when I see it and ride it and feel it. The bar I had on there was great for all intents and purposes in appearance. It was cool but I was reaching out a country mile. This bike was weighed in the balance and found wanting, wanting you to slow down and enjoy the ride. This bike weighs a metric shit ton. This bike weighs as much as two of your bikes. This bike does well on flats and downhill. Don’t ask about the uphill ride back home. This bike makes you appreciate your other bike. This bike is a sunny afternoon stroll to the corner store for a six pack. This bike is a snowy morning roll around leaving goofy tracks aimlessly arcing in the snow with no place to go.
They were all sitting around getting loaded without a care in the world when a hand appeared out of nowhere and wrote a message on the wall. No one really knew what the message said so they summoned a panel of experts. After much deliberation, debate and drivel the experts got nowhere, they were all stumped. Then someone suggested they call Daniel. Daniel was an old timer, a regular, a ringer who knew what was what. So they lured him in with free beer.
Daniel took one look at the writing on the wall and said, “you’re fucked, that’s the gist of it” Then he drank a beer.
I know someone who knows someone that recently turned 50 and she celebrated the occasion at a McMenamins establishment in Portland. During those festivities, someone purchased something 3-D from the gift shop to gift to someone who got that McMenamins icon tattooed on his arm a while back. That gift merged seamlessly into his evolving mashup memento mori display spitting distance from the sink where he brushes his teeth with that tattooed arm.
got into a little back & forth with a friend the other day when she asked if I had any #8 back issues. No. no I do not. Fast forwarding to what if there was another issue of kickstand, a #23 and it came out in 2024. As if. What if. Neoretro bro. If I starting working on it today, this would be the working cover, invoking evoking revoking replaying rewinding regurgitating the theme on issue #8’s cover. Throwback Thursday, on Friday. Like riding a bike. Like learning to ride a bike with a couple friends to hold you up. Like getting by with a little help from Joe Cocker
we now join our regular routine, already in progress
December 20, 2023
Portrait of the Artist as a Commuter [bike]
Wednesday 12-20-23 6:39am
U-District Station
Narcissistically taking another selfie off-the-glass when the train pulled into the station. Staring at a device, just like every other mindless attention-span-diminished commuter. When I finally looked up, I realized I missed my stop.
Pulled this old poster from the archives the other day in a discussion about the revamped Bike Works logo design with another former Bike Works employee. But that’s another ball of wax worthy of discussion involving bike parts, physics and so-called graphic designers.
Yesterday I actually popped into the Bike Works warehouse at the tail end of a sale in search of Profile Design bottle cages. I didn’t find any of those but I pawed through a couple hundred other choices and bought 3 Bontrager RL cages for $9. They're similar to my beloved Profile Design in that they’ll secure your coffee, your beer and even your water bottle in a tasteful understated black composite cage.
Just a brief jaunt into the warehouse is enough to remind me of Seattle’s position atop an underground aquifer of seemingly endless bike donations. An embarrassment of riches. A bike town. A cycling culture that is constantly shedding its skin in search of the next next next new bicycle and all the accessories that’ll go with it. So they donate kickass bike stuff because it's “old”.
The Bike Works Warehouse is incredible. If you’re looking for something, they have it. They probably have 10 of them and they’re practically giving them away. I was eyeing a CoMotion tandem priced at $40. Visualizing shipping it to Iowa, riding RAGBRAI on it, then selling it for $300 in the end town.
Yesterday they did in fact give away 128 kids bikes in less than two hours on Beacon Hill. 128 kids in Seattle are now rolling around on bikes they didn’t used to have.
We still like beer, especially around the holidays. It’s been exactly two years since these little smokies pulled the tap handle and drained the entire keg onto the floor. Now there’s a spring-loaded-cat-resistant tap handle that makes it really difficult to drain the keg by accident. But never say never.
it’s all fun & games, until someone puts a price tag on it. Molly Foster sent me this t-shirt. Not the actual shirt. But the link
I’m dumbfounded
$177
One hundred and seventy seven dollars
I wonder how much this shirt sold for 40 years ago. But I'm the crusty old man whining about the price of coffee when I was your age.
I never worked at ABC but I was a legal messenger for 10 years and that's why I like how she spells messanger.
As I paw through everything I own, I do not believe there is any one clothing item in my closet that cost as much as $177. Much of it is thriftstore scores. But even at MSRP… …Outdoor Research hoodie? nope. Showers Pass rain jacket? Not quite. Rab puffer jacket? Maybe. But everything else. Dirt cheap. Nada. Nunca. Nicht. Nothing.
To judge a beer by its label is like judging a book by its cover, before you get a chance to crack it open and smell it, feel it, read it, taste it and take it all in. When it’s behind the glass and you can’t get your hands on it until you pay up, what else can you judge it by? The New York Times beer review? A recommendation from a friend? Past experience? A good old gut feeling?
Flying Lion makes great labels for their cans --designed by this guy --which make great peel & stick postcards when you’re done with the beer. And their beer is pretty good too.
I’d like to think of this woman bracing herself against a wall on the backside of Benaroya Hall being blasted by wind and rain and cursing her existence while pondering a move to Austin or Boise or Iowa City. FUCK FUCK FUCK THIS FUCKING FUCK… …FUCK SEATTLE. But she’s not just holding onto any old wall, she’s posted up on the wonderful wonderful wonderful wall. But of course, that’s all in my mind. As this is a stock photo from an old psychology textbook that I’ve probably already shared with you, more than once.
Today this photo jumped out at me, again, for some reason. Maybe because my socks are still soaked from Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday too.
Sunrise: 7:45
Sunset: 4:15
Bathed in an atmospheric river of rain it doesn’t really matter. Ask me about my conspicuity. Don’t ask me if it’s raining.
Alistair sent me this yesterday and it brought on some flashback whiffs of acetone and phantom carbon fiber slivers in all five fingers of my non-dremel tool hand.
If you make it through the talking talkity talk you just might see some still shots of your friends in the end. The shot I took of Peter’s bike 12 years ago is right behind Benjamin Hall at UW, spitting distance from the Mailing Services Mothership. Who knew?
got the triptych. Pausing briefly just to see a man about a horse. You know, on the Ave, that man about that elephant. Sincerely for real, really. I saw an elephant painting at ye olde surplus store yesterday for $3 and nothing says Big Time like an elephant says Big Time. So I bought it and hand delivered it to the proprietor in a large plastic bag to fend off the rain, leaving the price tag in place to add authenticity. An early Christmas present delivered via bicycle.
This threepeat compilation took longer than expected because I got a flat tire on the Specialized. A slow leak on a Friday's commute home. Perfect timing. If there is such a thing as a perfectly timed flat tire. It took me 17 days to get around to fixing it. That’s laziness and the luxury of having 5 commuter bikes to choose from. Four with full fenders.
When I hit for the cycle, you’ll see these shots again.
Operating under the assumption that I’m the only person you know with a Don Cockroft card, or two, stapled to the wall of their garage. Cockroft was a kicker for 13 seasons with the Cleveland Browns. The first 9 of those seasons he was both the punter and the kicker.
His last game in the NFL was the infamous Red Right 88. January 4th, 1981. A playoff game between the Browns and the Raiders. The game lives on as a bad memory in the string of bad sports memories for Cleveland fans. In that game, Cockroft missed two field goals, had an extra point blocked and the snap was muffed on another extrapoint. The coaches were not feeling too confident going for a field goal to win the game. Years later Cockroft revealed how bad of shape he was in that day, with two herniated discs and the fact that he needed four epidurals to make it through the season.
I started collecting football cards in 4th and 5th grade. I have vague memories of Jim Plunkett, Lester Hayes, Brian Sipe and Ozzie Newsome. But I have no recollection of Don Cockroft. These football cards inspired me to learn a little history.
Big Time time. Big Time. Celebrating 35 years in business. With a slight Purple & Gold variation on the classic logo theme. Nothing says happy anniversary like a black hoodie.
got this professionally framed photo (24” x 30”) yesterday for only $7.49 at Ye Olde Surplus Shoppe. Now I just need to get a coworker to drive it to Skyway someday after work.
One of you cycling fans out there can probably tell me what year this shot was taken. I'm guessing 1997, plus or minus three years.
Using a reusable cup not for the 7 cent your-own-cup discount but because I’m single-handedly saving the planet one throw away cup at a time. Somewhere between here and there last week, I lost the lid to my favorite coffee cup. Which isn’t really a big deal except when I want to ride away before I finish my coffee and it splashes all over my ankles until it all splashes out and then I have no more coffee and my socks are wet.
Visiting my favorite thrift store recently seeking another other coffee cup I came upon a polished steel nearly newly new 12 ounce Grey Goose vacuum sealed tumbler for $1.74. It hits the spot. With the look and feel of a tall can it holds 12 ounces and it fits right in on my continuum. Full on phantom nostalgia syndrome. Full of hot coffee feeling like a cold beer. Holding on and standing by in the rain wondering why. It fits right in on my Profile Design cup holder too with the assistance of a child-size pilderwasser bracelet to snug it up. My last coffee cup was rather short & stout so it blew the bottle cage out. extended exstruded extrapolated. The cute little pw bracelet is reigning it back in. If you zoom in you’ll see the unmistakable letters of the live-wrong bracelets Bill Brady brought to RAGBRAI more than once. I'm wearing one as we speak (as seen in the postcard photos below) I just happen to have a ziplock bag full of those things sitting around waiting for a job to do. A job like this. Another example of in situ resource utilization…
Strategically stuck all across Iowa in late July. Thank you Chris Murray. Sporadically stuck in other cities and towns all over the country throughout the year. Thanks again Chris Murray.
Q: is this heaven?
A: no. it’s Iowa
Like it’s 1989. Nothing says baseball like a Kevin Costner movie says baseball.
Q: is this real life?
A: yes. it’s Applied Physics bro
You know, Henderson Hall at 1013 NE 40th Street. You’ve been by it a million times even if you never paid attention to the name. Tucked in the northeast armpit of the University Bridge, a stone's throw from the Wall of Death, on your way to Fremont or Recycled Cycles. I strategically stuck this sticker many moons ago and it keeps on keeping on keeping right pointing the way.
“How’d you like to make $14 the hard way?” –Caddyshack
The cost of living is riding on a vector that’s out of control in both magnitude and direction. So I’m not sure what the going rate is these days in the 98105 on Boat Street or even the 98118 on Ferdinand Street, but I got these for $5. Perhaps only because Andy Voight rang me up.
To the untrained eye these look like a pair of beat down brake levers. But those in-the-know know these levers will last another 20 years. These levers kick ass.
110 years ago Duchamp stuck a fork in a stool, mounted a wheel and called it art
25 years ago I was bombing down Denny on the way to work. A guy in a Cadillac was messing with me. Perhaps he was angry that he had to pass a cyclist at 8 in the morning. I believe he got in front of me and intentionally slammed on his brakes in the middle of the Denny descent over I-5.
I stacked it up onto the back of his car. The guy got out looking a bit surprised. I didn’t say anything except “my bike scratched the shit out of your car” When I climbed off the trunk and picked up my bike, I spun the front wheel and it was fine so I thought my bike was fine too. I rode away. But it only took a moment on the bike to realize the fork was fucked.
That’s the fork with the unique rake that wound up in my version of Bicycle Wheel.
Counterbalance Bikes is closing in a week or so. I plan to make one final visit to say hello - goodbye to Peter as I roll along the U-Village Silvercloud Burke Gilman route on an electric assist bathtub.
there goes the neighborhood
there goes the local bike shop
Adam, Jake & Peter opened Counterbalance at 2 West Roy Street in 2000. Peter took over and it moved to the Blakeley Burke Gilman spot formerly known as Ti Cycles II.
You can read more herewhere the comments are often more entertaining than the content
Digging through the photographic memory I found these shots of Sam and Todd during a Boat Street Crit with C. Forest Hoag lurking in the background. 17 years later I often find myself loitering on Boat Street and that building in the back is UW Box #355100 but you can address it to #355020.
Jake racing CMWC Seattle 2003
this may or may not be a Tyler Goldsmith photo but that is Adam at the Store Room in the late 90s
So the boss says to me three weeks ago you delivered this box to this mailroom do you remember it? glazed over I stare not really at him but at the empty space off in the distance over his left shoulder pausing and waiting for a beat or two expecting a punch line like are you fucking kidding me? I delivered a shit ton of boxes in the past three weeks why would I remember any of them… …if the barcode scan says I delivered it then I guess I delivered it but that does not mean I remember it what day is it?
The term for fear of clowns—coulrophobia—is of fairly recent invention, coined, perhaps, as enough grownups found they were not alone in lingering childhood queasiness over exposure to big people dressed like Bozo –Richard Dodds
The more I know about electric assist cargo bikes the more I realize how much I don’t know and the more it all sounds like this
Took the past couple weeks off of work and during one of those weeks Alistair rebuilt my work bike from the frame on up. All new wheels, gold rims, rear hub motor, new battery, new charger, new brakes, new really bad ass kick ass brakes, look at those rotors, new electrical doo-dads, controller, throttle, tweaks, adjustments, fixes and whatchamacallits as well as all the every-little-things that I don’t even know about, neatly secured with zipties.
I’m living in a lugged steel downtube friction shifter world circa 1989 but riding around on a $12000 electric assist bathtub Monday through Friday.
For 5.5 years I rode a Merce Cunningham* and it did the job. But now Alistair has built up the ultimate Patsy Swayze**
after only one day, it’s clearly a whole new ballgame.
those in-the-know
know G&O lingo:
*Merce Cunningham = eZee front hub motor
**Patsy Swayze = GMAC rear hub motor
If you’re building up an electric assist bike of your own. Get the GMAC.
I’ve been to the library more in the past week than I have in the past 3 years. I’ve also silkscreened more chainrings onto postcards in the past week than I ever have before. Most of my cranks are 130 bcd but these old LX cranks are 110. Chainring bolts and their bolt circle diameters have crawled into my subconscious mind and Flann O’Brien is getting in there too
Had a dream that I was at the library, checking out a few more books. I started to unlock my bike and noticed the chainring dangling from the crank and the chain slack on the ground. Everything else seemed to be there as I wondered why someone would take the time to steal 5 short-stack chainring bolts off a bike but leave everything else. Rolling into some dystopian state where chainring bolts became the catalytic converter of bike theft.
Toggling in and out of dreamland I scrolled through ways to slow a chainring bolt thief. Variations on the theme of tamper proof security fasteners. There’s a tool for that. Numerous choices exist in the industrial fastener world. Several choices exist in the bike bolt world to protect your wheels, pedals, saddle and seatpost. But none of them are chainring bolts.
What if thieves were not after your saddle or wheels or pedals? What if thieves just wanted the bolts that hold it all together? Especially the chainring bolts.
Just went to the store for some cat food and butter. No joke. Really. For real. It’s good to have goals. In the butter aisle what did I see but a line of tall cans calling out to me. Cannot say I’ve ever had my hands on a 19.2 ounce can. Until today, where we join your daily routine already in progress.
My first thought was 19.2? What the fuck? Who came up with that shit? Then I stuck the can into my tallcan coozie and as I drank it I gave it some thought. It’s the same footprint as the tallcan and the 12 oz can too. That's a huge cost savings right there. The rest is marketing mumbo-jumbo. Not ready to commit to a 24 oz roadmaster? Grab a stovepipe! It’s only 19.2 oz. And so on… add descriptive words to taste.
My minimal online research confirmed this. Beer companies use this “stovepipe” size primarily for high ABV beers. Targeting the convenience store shopper with the one-beer-to-have-if-you’re-having-only-one. Pound it in the parking lot, at the bus stop or walking to the company picnic. Yes. When one’s not enough and six is too heavy… …the stovepipe comes in handy.
The good news is those guys down at DANK bags don’t need to format a stovepipe coozie. The tall can size does the trick. Close enough. Hiding in plain sight and—or not hiding anything. It’s a beer. I’m drinking it. Don’t we all have bigger fish to fry?
as you can see the tallcan coozie leaves little to the imagination. The roadmaster coozie offers complete coverage but it's a little slippery. Six of one. Half dozen the other. Don't overthink it. Drink it.
Over the past 25 years there have been a few brief shining moments when I saw myself as a participant observer in some small corner of the bike world. Delusional. This weekend with more free time than usual on my hands I’ve been looking at some bike stuff I normally wouldn’t look at. Wheel Fanatyk Ric was at the MADE show in PDX in August. He compiled a few links to other people’s coverage of the show. On a fast-forward scroll through it I saw some amazing bikes, beautiful integrated stem & bar, 3-D printed this & that and some good looking stuff.
But I don’t really care about most of it. Almost all of it. Scrolling through this stuff makes me realize I’m an outsider, a crusty commuter riding used bikes that don’t register on any consumer metrics. I’m not even an observer of all that stuff but I am aware of futile attempts to build a better mousetrap and the constant reinventing of the wheel. I smiled when the bike shop dude spoke of hybrid bikes when all his customers asked for gravel bikes. And the square taper bottom bracket continues to hang on.
When I got to the Radavist coverage of this bike, not a show bike, a PAUL employee’s bike. I smiled and took another look. A closer look. This bike is where it’s at for me. Not made of shiny new unobtainium. Whatever works, works. Especially when your scrappy cobbled-together components are PAUL.
I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve used a bottle opener in the past year. But yesterday I opened a beer with a PAUL bottle opener. Then I gathered up most of the bike bottle openers in my garage. I’d need two hands to count them all.
Those guys down at DANK bags sent me that PAUL opener from the Made show in PDX. It’s a fine piece of metal. The kind of component that just feels good in your hand. Well made.
Ten years earlier, the directors at Bike Works gifted all the employees engraved Park Tool bottle openers that include a pedal wrench, a 15mm socket and a “tire lever” that I wouldn’t put on any wheel unless it was an emergency. It’s clunky and heavy but it’s part of my tool kit for sentimental reasons.
My one and only time in Vegas and Interbike I came home with a lot of bottle openers. If one ABUS key is good, then three must be better. Hunting and gathering. More like hoarding.
At the POSEIDON table was a spread of little bikes in various colors. Cute but functional. Looks like a bike but opens beers. Several of them ended up in my pocket and I gave away a few when I got home. I still have that blue one hanging on the zipper of my weekend backpack.
The GIANT cog shaped opener is from a RAGBRAI many years ago.
The RHINO opener is kinda cool but I can't say I've ever used it and for some reason I took two. Hoarding. The UNIOR opener looks like a tool that hangs from a mechanic’s belt loop keychain. The official Park Tool BO-2 fits right in among all the Park Tools on the pegboard but it doesn’t bring me much joy. Blah blah blah.
I feel like bottle openers are good marketing but they’re never around when you need one or there are two too many to choose from.
reading Bret's comment about Surly discontinuing the CrossCheck led me to the Surly site which of course led me to the Jethro Tule: a bottle opener that every single speeder needs. CrossCheck fades out, Preamble and Straggler fade in.
got this book in my hands, just two days after it was unleashed on the world because Fantagraphics is only a few zip codes away. I’m not saying you should buy it. I’m just saying, you should buy it. Read through it. Then read it again ten more times slowly. Or skip around. Pick a page. Flip and stop. Learning something new each and every time.
The New York Times review was pretty piss poor. Basically describing the entire plot and spoiling it for everyone while saying nothing at all about the artwork. Horseshit. Like hiring a retired basketball player to call football games. What are you talking about?
The NewYorker review was great, in depth, lots of discussion of the artwork with all the historical references. All the while saving the plot and story for you, the reader. Read it.
Can't say I knew much of anything about the artist Pippa Garner, until today when I delivered this catalog from UCLA to the Henry Art Gallery. I texted this photo to family and friends but I didn't use my tongue.
I am learning more about Pippa Garner as we speak...
I like bikes. But it takes a bit, a little something, to get my attention. Working at a nonprofit bike shop and sorting endless piles of donated bikes built up my immune system to disregard most bike stuff. This cute little red stem got my attention. As short as a stem can be and still be a stem. Then the ad hoc slap dash Sun Bum mud guard made me smile. Wedged parsimoniously between the seat stays, its effectiveness largely psychosomatic. If perception is reality, it’s the thought that counts.
Shit like that gets my attention. Like the experimental nuclear physicist that rides a hoopty bike to the lab with gerry-rigged homemade mudguards fashioned from a FedEx box. Or the oceanography undergraduate with the expensive shiny new gravel bike “secured” outside with a beefy Abus lock looped only through the quick-release front wheel. Or the famous atmospheric science professor weather blogger that rides in to work with his hose-clamped milk crate.
With a pristine patch of concrete and a brand new paint pen go ahead and express yourself. But is that the best you can do? I’m not angry, I just feel like you could do better. In any case, you did make me chuckle and take a photo too.
Operating under the assumption that the graffiti on a college campus is usually done by college students and college students often tell dick jokes.
I’d stick with the tongue-twister tradition if it had to be a dick joke:
Mr-Medicinal-Herb-Garden Keith Possee told me of this book recently and I finally got my hands on it. I’m only 33% through it but it’s not too early to tell you two to read it too.
Published first in 1965. It comes directly from Dervla’s journals and notebooks she schlepped along her journey in 1963, riding a 37 pound single speed with 40 more pounds of shit strapped to it. She was a real badass.
If you think you’ve done something special on your gravel bike, please read this book and gain some appreciation for Dervla’s Armstrong Cadet bicycle named "Roz" and the ground she covered on it.
Dervla Murphy just passed away last year and she published many more books after this one. Thank you Keith for pointing this out to me.
Dervla Murphy later in life, relaxing at home with a beer & a smoke
Yesterday a handmade oneofakind Pierced Hearts Tattoo coozie from those guys down at DANK bags arrived among some other treasures in a very well packed package all the way from Rip City. The tall can coozie contained a tall can in tact in fact full of Rainier and I drank it.
I’m confident this is the only Pierced Hearts Tattoo tall can coozie on planet earth. Seen here next to some Pierced Hearts Tattoos by Joe Who.
Too little mechanical advantage leads to low braking force. The feel on the lever will be firm, but this feeling is misleading. When trying to brake hard with such brakes, the force applied to the brakes will be relatively small, inadequate for effective stopping.
Too much mechanical advantage leads to a mushy, spongy feeling at the lever, since great force squishes both pads and cable housing. Braking force would have been great if the pads would touch and rub the rim/brake disc rotor all the time. Since pads are always at least 1 mm away from the braking surface, too much mechanical advantage results in lever being pulled all the way to the bars and brake pads just reaching the rim, not applying any force, or not even reaching the rim.
This is why mechanical advantage needs to be balanced. The amount of cable pulled by the lever needs to match the movement of brake pads. If the brake lever pulls 10 mm of cable, the brake pads should move about 5 mm, which makes for about 2:1 mechanical advantage.
# # #
I just cut & pasted all that jibber jabber because yesterday I swapped out the handlebar, brake levers, cables and housing on a rain bike and took it for a ride. Testing the brakes and in the back of my mind I could hear Steve Maluk scolding me for halfassing a bike build by using V-brake levers on canti brakes because they were there, because I was lazy, because I didn't want to dig deeper in the parts bins for the proper levers.
But here & now all I have to do is switch the cute little doohickey in the levers from V to canti, for the proper feel and function. Cheers to you Steve. Cheers to good old rim brakes and XT levers that go both ways.
It was a dark and stormy night morphing into a dark and rainy morning rolling down the hill to the train when I hit something, knowing right away it wasn’t good. But the first stage is denial: fine, it’s fine, everything is fine, no big deal, it’s cool as I kept rolling to the click-click-click-click-click of that something lodged in my rear tire hitting the ground with each revolution of the wheel. A block or two later the air pressure was completely gone and I walked the rest of the way to the train platform where from my tire I pulled a self tapping sheet metal screw.
Talking to myself on my morning commutes I often ask unanswerable questions, like how many variables need to fall into place for events to occur 5 days per week at almost exactly the same time. Same hose clamped milk crate douche bag, same sidewalk, same street, same time every fucking day. How many variables had to line up for my rear tire to hit that sheet metal screw just right.
Several hours later at the mothership I said nothing aloud about my various variable theories while I replaced my inner tube. Alistair watching me fix-a-flat, expressed his belief that every 25-30 times you ride over a screw, nail, tack your front wheel will flip it just right, setting it up for your back tire to suck it up. It’s an interesting theory but I believe the numbers are actually a little higher or lower or it's a push. Toss in some front flats too. This is a theory I’m not really interested in proving or disproving with more research on Renton Avenue South.
Operating under the assumption that the editors at the Seattle Times have a choice, and that they choose to gravitate toward the dogshit whiners whining about dogshit. They do not publish every single rant or rave submitted. They carefully curate the collection and it always seems to remind me that Seattle is still a podunk western town with a podunk newspaper founded in 1891.
But that poor old codger is still flustered by the crazy bicyclist bicycling in the bike lane, waking up at night reliving the whole scene again and again. For a split second I wondered was that me? Not the codger, the cyclist. But I went down the list: I don’t raise a fist and I don’t yell. I do often offer up unintelligible hand signs and mumble things like “seek and you will find” I don’t ride fast. However when traffic is stacked-up backed-up bumper-to-bumper, the bike lane looks to be hauling ass. I’m not out on my bike to teach anyone a lesson but sometimes I like to remind drivers that the bike lane exists for bikes. It’s not just painted on to collect broken glass and act as an ad hoc right turn lane when traffic backs up. Maybe it was me.
If I was editing a bike messenger zine this shit would be cut and pasted in there somewhere in the next issue. Not the dog shit, the bike shit, literally cut out with scissors and pasted with glue.
Working at the mothership I’ve seen a few retirement parties. Some of them were pretty cool. Some were piss-poor pandemic “parties”. One was a lukewarm Domino's pizza, paper plates and a 2-liter bottle of generic orange soda on a folding table affair. Are you fucking kidding me? 30+ years gets you that? The guest of honor intentionally left before the pizza showed up.
That little government worker ditty above is circa 2007, when my perspective on government workers was based on interactions with court clerks: municipal, county and federal. When I showed it to a UW employee I knew back then, he got a bit peeved, taking pride in his state employee status.
10 years later I became a government worker. The ditty is holding up well, I wouldn’t change a thing. But now that I’m talking shit from the inside out, toggling between essential and nonessential status, depending on the weather or the passing pandemic, I might add a few lines, and then add a few more.
Have you ever seen an Eggleston photo displayed above a Rock Racing bro? How about an autographed Steven Hauschka near an autographed Seth Holton above a Nana Thebus next to a James Burns photo? Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things. But I’m rather proud of the thrift-store-score frame housing Shaggy’s skid shot.
The photographer seemingly said “everyone cover your junk with both hands, except you Mr. AVA, you’re the man”
Seek and you will find framed photos of your friends from yesteryear at the surplus store
Sent a photo of this photo to everyone I know who is in the photo, at least the ones I have old phone numbers for, and Craig confirmed that that’s Seth’s autograph. Fuckin A+++
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
–Mathew 07:07
I’m no bible thumper, but some people call me Matt and I do have a predilection for 07. A 07:07 is a double bonus.
You’ll often find me rolling slowly around town, talking to myself, saying things like “seek and you will find” then responding in another voice with something like “no shit sherlock”
Just yesterday morning, the google let me know that the phrase I’ve been mumbling for years is from Mathew 07:07. I had no idea, thinking it was just a worn out koan or a James Thurber-ish “one is alright, two are too many and three are not enough” kind of thing.
So anyway, it was a dark and stormy night... ...or it was dark, and it was morning
Friday morning’s commute started off with a flat on the way to the train when I hit a tomato-size rock just right, or wrong and blew out my rear tire. Halfway to the train or halfway back home. I decided to walk home and switch bikes. Rolling into work a bit late on a bike I haven’t ridden for many many moons, made me realize how much the tires sucked. Way too big & dumb & heavy & slow leaving no room for full fenders. It sent a Robin Hood ripple through my bike collection, looking for parts to poach and switch and swap. I smell rain in the next few hours, days, weeks and months so I wanted to put some fenders back on one more bike for the dark rainy season.
Saturday I went into my local non-profit community bike shop warehouse seeking some 700 x 35ish tires. I found a pair of oh-so-gently used Clement tires for a small fraction of the MSRP of a single tire. Bike Works continues to kick ass in the seeking & finding department.
Sunday I put the tires on the bike and some full fenders too and took it for a test ride. Which means I rode out of the garage and called it good. But before I even made it 50 feet up the street, I stopped for a discarded dental pick pic to share with Dr 37 Mike. I’m not really seeking dental picks but I find them anyway, everywhere.
The true test rides come Monday morning with a groggy roll into work in the dark, when things matter and they’re really real and all the clicks and creaks and torques and tweaks take place.
Monday I rode it to work and heard a few things like fender struts wagging and friction shifting lagging. But the tires are everything I hoped for and more. Thanks Bike Works. Is it raining?
one hundredandsixtythree people all talking and waving and laughing and eating and drinking and smiling and frowning and shaking heads and opening mouths and putting forks and spoons in them and chewing and swallowing all kinds of produce and sitting back and relaxing maybe and drinking coffee and lighting cigarettes and getting up and so on
and so off
into the night
without ever noticing
the man with the mirrorhead
below the forgotten
plasterhead of DANTE
looking down
at everyone
with the same eyes
as if he were still searching
everywhere
for his lost Beatrice
but with just a touch
of devilish lipstick
on the very tip
of his nose
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. "Not too long" from PICTURES of the gone world. City Lights Books 1955
If you have the first edition from 1955 it's worth about $3000. I have the 1971, sixteenth printing with a cover price of $1, purchased at a used bookstore 50 years later for $3.50. word
My new cycling computer, this is not. It’s a 15 pound thermometer (electric assist bathtub added to show scale) I like free piles, thrift stores, old junk and random shit found in the middle of the road. I like this thing because it’s analog as all get out. If it wasn’t as big as a toaster oven and heavier than a bowling ball, I might try to take it out of context and put it back in somehow somewhere else. But all I could do was take a picture and make it last longer.
Rolled up on a playing card face down on Okanogan Lane. When I bent down to pick it up I found the 07 of clubs.
It’s now bookmark du jour.
Later I googled the 07 of clubs and found pages and pages of hidden meaning, from tarot to financial forecasts. Supporting my theory that the internet will provide plenty of backing for any hypothesis you feel like kicking around, positive or negative, pros or cons, supporting or disputing, whatever you’re looking for.
A perfectly timely book of not-so-light light reading as August winds down and Labor Day approaches and your flip-flop tan line is well established. This is the type of book that makes my epic commute fly by. One moment I’m in Columbia City and the next time I look up I’m in the U district. From a commuter train in Seattle to an exclusive beach club on Long Island and back. Transporting the reader to another place and time or another place in real time. The author says a lot with very few words. Her compact, efficient sentences speak volumes. Two thumbs up twice.
A triptych of old dudes cast off in the home decor section next to last year's break room decorations, you know, like those ones Betty always brings in: Valentine's-St.Patricks-Easter-Christmas.
Is there a doctor in the house? Yes, but he’s no Hans Christian Andersen. I took a pass on these three but I took a picture so it’ll last longer.
Can’t you smell that smell. It’s hard to define but I know it when I smell it ::: quality of life’s quirks & quiddities.
Yesterday I got this photo from Shaggy. It’s him winning the skid at the MMI 20+ years ago. It’s possible I saw this shot in COG magazine but much more likely I saw it in the shop where those guys down at DANK bags had it. Now I’m with my very own to have and to hold and to hang on the wall.
Last night, over two hours into our nostalgic text exchanges after speaking of rolling messenger events on borrowed bikes and sending the 2009 photo below, I finally realized that it was eight-one-five day and Shaggy is 815.
This postcard recently came about on a scrap of cardboard when I was screening random things in various combinations. You got your derailleur on my cow. You got your cow on my derailleur. Two great tastes that taste great together. A happy accident with a few leftover smudges and smoodges and chainring teeth from a previous session.
Yesterday I dropped it in the mail with a cute little kitten stamp and no return address, sending it off toward a new home.
With only a vague recollection of the events in question I can neither confirm nor deny any allegations. To this day I cannot see a Green Machine without seeing Steve Maluk. Yesterday I had to pause and snap a photo when this Green Machine jumped out at me on Boat Street. It’s as if Steve is right there printed in the same font on that cheesy plastic front wheel. Retrospect hindsight second guessing mission statements customer service choices shoulda coulda you name it. He can tell you the whole story someday. But those in the know know. WWSMD (what would steve maluk do?)
As you might recall, the other-other day I came upon a fork in the road. Then I passed it once, twice, three times a-daily for a week or so until finally I bent down and picked it up and put it in my pocket and that has made all the difference.
A place for everything and everything in its place until it isn’t because it got shoved aside or buried beneath some old shoelaces and a postcard collection. Give me an allen wrench long enough and a cold beer and I can move the world. Or something like that. Hidden pictures hiding in plain sight. It’s always the last place you look.
When you say “vanishing point” sometimes I think of the 1971 existential muscle car movie, sometimes my mind goes to “parallel lines on a slow decline…” in a Guided by Voices way and sometimes it goes to my junior high art teacher teaching perspective drawing...
A vanishing point is a point on the image plane of a perspective rendering where the two-dimensional perspective projections of mutually parallel lines in three-dimensional space appear to converge. When the set of parallel lines is perpendicular to a picture plane, the construction is known as one-point perspective, and their vanishing point corresponds to the oculus, or "eye point", from which the image should be viewed for correct perspective geometry.Traditional linear drawings use objects with one to three sets of parallels, defining one to three vanishing points.
The vanishing point of a discarded dental pick is the moment it leaves the person’s hand. Like 37 Mike says, outta sight, outta mind. In truth a discarded dental pick will not vanish from my field of vision – standing by – hiding in plain sight – for 10,000 years or until some poor sucker sweeps it up, whichever comes first.
That’s a 1978 Garo Yepremian card on the wall at HQ.
Where were you in 1972? I was 3 years old somewhere in the Inland Empire and I was not watching Super Bowl VII, which capped off Miami’s perfect season of 72. But six years later when I was paying attention to the NFL and collecting football cards I knew of Garo Yepremian because he kicked around the NFL until 1981. That play was played ad nauseum. NFL Films will not let me embed the video here but they will let you watch it on youtube. Notice how he kicks lefty but tries to pass with his right.
Garo goes for glory. Every place kicker dreams of rolling out and throwing a touchdown pass.
Steve G sent me this from BikeWorks and I wrote ‘steve g photo’ in comic sans because he’s all about the font.
Every sticker tells a story. Montlake Cycles, CAOS, an alleycat in Madison. But a dickstank sticker in situ 24 years later brings a smile to my face. I’m guessing one of you has a good guess who this Bianchi belonged to.
joined the Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom party 63 years later. Never paid much attention to Updike until I stumbled upon some short stories he wrote late in life. Now I have some reading to do. It’s just a phase I’m going through.
got an S-works Prevail Vent blah blah helmet a couple years ago but I couldn’t bring myself to wear it out of the house until this week. High priced not for the material but for the lack of material, the negative space, the vents, the air, the nothingness. It’s vented like all get out. In order to achieve the ANSI-MIPS-SHIT-SHOW certification with less material, the material that is there has to be a country mile high. Stacked. Stupid Stacked Stupid. That’s why this helmet is like a big bulbous mushroom perched on top of my head like a sumo suit you can rent at the Puyallup Fair.
For years and years I’ve worn the same Lazer helmet I got at BikeWorks when Steve Maluk was the shop director. Whatever fucking year that was. Obama was in the White House. That helmet reached its expiration date long ago but I kept wearing it as a gesture, a nod, an intention, an example, a habit, a comfort zone. One significant impact my ass. One day a roadie couple passed me and said, “your chin strap is undone” and I laughed thinking if you only knew.
In the rain-rain-winter months I wear a Bern helmet with all the vents taped shut. That helmet is also older than dirt and I’m currently researching my next winter helmet which will have no vents so I won’t have to tape them shut. A snowboarding helmet perhaps or a construction-rock climbing-arborist helmet taken out of context and put back in on an electric assist bathtub.
Had my hands on this thing in a thrift store the other day just long enough to send a picture to Steve Young, the king of shower beers. But at 67% off the MSRP it didn’t sell me and he doesn’t need any assistance on his shower beer set up.
I like beer. I like showers. But I don’t need some doohickey to hold my beer in the shower because I’ll be drinking it and then I’ll be showering and there are no shiny surfaces in my shower. This thing reminds me of some poor sucker that drained their life savings to get their thing produced in a factory in Taiwan but then they go on Shark Tank to try to get some marketing because it’s just the same sliced bread with different marketing. Revolutionary space age patented technology blah blah blah.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
paraphrasing Alistair here when the other day he summed it up succinctly:
“On a scale of one to ten, one being a wheelbarrow and ten being a road bike, this bike is a 1.5”
Buy a wheelbarrow Cat, if you need one. Then buy a cargo bike that rides like a bike, takes corners and rolls further than the garden shed faster than 3mph.
Cloudburst knows beer. Making small batches. One-offs. Non repeatables. Never repeating. Take some time to scroll through their beer archive. It’s epic. It’s poetic. It’s like a liberal arts education, a strong foundation. Full of obscure references, educated guesses, inside jokes, beer industry criticism, puns and play on words. Their beers are really good and sometimes the names they name them, are even better and the descriptions of the beers are comical and worthy of printing onto a page-a-day tear-away calendar. Drink the beer. Peel the label. Mail the postcard. Run the gamut.
Today I wore my pw jersey to work, to show my solidarity with the pilderwasser collective that’s rolling across Iowa as we speak. Perhaps Chris Murray felt the psychic connection across two time zones when he sent me these photos this morning.
That’s Matt on the RB-1 that I rode across Iowa in 2007, 08, 09 & 11. I sold it to him ten years ago and he’s still rolling with what looks to be the same parts.
Dan & Chris. 67% of the OG team pilderwasser 18 years later.
today I worked a little RAGBRAI into the Burke-Gilman trail one way or another sincerely for real really
That’s East Angela Drive where it meets North 56th Way. Not in Seattle. Not Orcas Island. Not Friday Harbor. It's Scottsdale, Arizona.
That’s Angela as in Angel. Angie may be playing in the background but we are gathered here today to talk about this thing called: angel number 56.
When the universe is trying to tell you something, there's no need to do the math or run the numbers. The numbers will make themselves visible. For me, the number 56 starts popping up in street signs, digital clocks, odometers, thermostats, pressure gauges, periodic tables, chocolate-vanilla soft serve swirl cones, license plates and dream states…
…I was serving process on the San Juan County Auditor and the client paid big bucks to fly me up to Friday Harbor in a float plane. After a brief walk to the courthouse from the dock I served the documents lickety-split. Then I had 5 hours to kill before I could fly back to Seattle. My first thought was breakfast burrito and red beer, with not just tomato juice but a spicy bloody mary mix.
From the open door of the first place I passed, I heard the unmistakable notes of Angie just as I was humming and mumbling those exact lyrics to myself. Synchronistically synchronous synchronicity. The piano playing was proficient but the vocals were Angelic and Amazing. When I stepped inside, it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Angie
A n g i e
When will those clouds all disappear?
On the far wall I saw the piano and instantly recognized the woman playing it::: Koshalla--- wearing a Lawrence Taylor jersey with the sleeves cut off.
Just after 6am on Tuesday morning I spotted two tall cans of Busch Light standing still unopened holding their places in a six pack ring near a bench on the train platform. I took a long look at them and smiled as I visualized cracking one open and downing it working a little RAGBRAI into my morning commute, transitioning seamlessly. If not for the three security guards milling around just over yonder, I might have continued on that continuum a little early for a Tuesday, unless you’re in Iowa in late July.
At 7:33am I sit on a stool outside Bulldog News and sip my coffee staring off into space in a Southerly direction where a few doors down on the other side of the street I spy with my little eye: Big Time Brewery where at 3:33pm I sit on a stool outside and sip my beer staring off into space in a Northerly direction where a couple doors up on the other side of the street I spy with my little eye: Bulldog News. Lather rinse repeat. Here we go round again. Full circle. One way or another.
Both Big Time & Bulldog use the same brand of bombproof metal stools outside. These two establishments on The Ave either side of NE 42nd Street exemplify the two ends of my coffee-beer continuum personified in real time and space especially on Wednesdays. What day is it?
if it gets my attention for more than 3 milliseconds (0.003 seconds) then it’s effective marketing. if I pull it out of the recycling bin to take a closer look and then staple it on the wall, it’s amazing marketing.
When I was a kid I often rode my bike to 7-11 for penny candy, slurpees and a pack of football cards. I’d also play some galaga or phoenix before I rode back home to check out my new cards. This was 1978, 1979, 1980. I still have some of those football cards. But yesterday I took a binder full of my “best” cards to a card shop to trade them in.
The proprietor gave me a super lowball offer and I said “OK”. I looked around the store and ended up trading straight across for this signed framed certified Hauschka photo. Not something I was searching for but now it’s hanging on the wall and I learned that Hauschka is from Needham, MA and he turned down dental school to use up his one more year of eligibility at NC State after graduating with honors from Middlebury College.
I had a James Lofton rookie card, Earl Campbell - Walter Payton team leader card, OJ Simpson 49ers card. Nothing outrageous. None of the cards were in pristine condition because I was shoving them in my back pocket and riding my bike home.
One card in my binder that stood out to the card guy was this 1978 Steelers team leader card featuring Tony Dungy. A card that I never paid any attention to.
The world of selling trading cards is not for me. I was fine taking that low ball offer because the cards have been collecting dust in my basement since I was a kid. I’ve cherry picked all the placekickers and stapled them on the wall. And now I’d like to get rid of all the other stuff because there’s somebody out there that might actually be looking for it. Sentimental value adds up to jack shit when you try to cash it in. I appreciate things for what they are and now I’m getting rid of them. Or maybe I’m just trading them in for other shit. Junior Junior is bringing in more cards faster than I can get rid of the old ones.
you can call me anything you like but my name is Veronica
July 13, 2023
if the average woman says 16,215 words per day and the average man says 15,669... ...then I’m clocking in around 120 spoken words - on a normal day.
my count goes up a little if you add up the words I say on postcards, or mumbling the same old former bike messenger walks into a bar jokes, or humming song lyrics to myself and making lists like this:
One letter writer to The Seattle Times summed it succinctly: "Most of us agree that Rainier is a good, though thoroughly unexceptional beer. We bought it because their crazy and often clever commercials earned our attention and loyalty" --historylink
Aside from the scene in the parking lot, this entire story takes place in the windowless breakroom of a Hobby Lobby store in Boise, Idaho.
Just the setting got my attention enough to want to read more. I’ve never been to a Hobby Lobby but I’ve been to Boise once or twice. I’ve been to Rathdrum many many times and it gets some lines in there too. I won’t ruin it for you.
Haven’t read The Whale yet, but I might some day soon.
gerberding hall, formerly known as The Administration Building built in 1949 then named for William P. Gerberding in 1995. Inside, outside, come around. Outside looking in. Inside looking out. A framed photo of the exterior hanging on the interior. You get the picture.
Next cherry blossom season I’ll ask the official photographer if I can continue standing by on the bench. Blending in. Fading out. Posting up. Sitting down. Somewhere along the coffee-beer continuum. Hiding in plain sight.
cheers to Daniel E. Murray and Chris Murray -- the original members of team pilderwasser RAGBRAI 2005.
cheers to Chris Murray and Jimbo for growing that thing into a full-on RAGBRAI thing with busses and trucks and vans and jersies and caps and stickers and signs and coolers full of ice cold beer
Henri Matisse and Hans Christian Andersen walk into a bar…
…the bartender fakes a smile thinking she’s talking to herself: what’s with this place and all the worn out dead white guys, is this some kind of Fauvist Little Mermaid joke?
As she places two coasters on the bar, Matisse says, “I’m a frayed knot”
A Venn diagram t-shirt I made yesterday for an economics professor in Appleton, Wisconsin. No joke. 130 bcd big rings overlapping symbolizing sets with something in common.
The byproducts of that shirt include these postcards. Upcycled scraps of cardboard screened three times, switching colors before the previous color dries. Mashing the big ring. Then dropped in the mail with a Lichtenstein stamp. Roy that is. Illustrating the logical relationship between two or more sets of items.
It’s like preaching to the choir when we’re all well within one standard deviation. If you’re reading this sentence you probably like Mudhoney.
Steve Turner, the guitarist from Mudhoney wrote a book called Mud Ride that came out on June 13. I bought it that day and plowed through it in a couple days. But before I finished it, I bought a copy of the super deluxe 2 disc 30th anniversary edition of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. I also dug through my pile of t-shirts hoping to find my Superfuzz Bigmuff shirt. Unfortunately I gave that shirt away long ago, faded and falling apart.
At SeaTac the other day I stuck my head into the SubPop gift shop for about 15 seconds. I will not be buying my next Mudhoney t-shirt at the airport.
Mud Ride appeals to me on several levels. It’s a well written narrative on the evolution of a pretty important chunk of Seattle music and Seattle history in general. And for that, it is interesting. But for me it was a checklist to look back on what I was doing at various times Turner brings up and that time and that other time too. It’s not a book I would recommend to my parents, because I know they don’t give a shit about Mudhoney. But I’ve been talking with my boss about it because he knows those guys and he’s a musician. And I’ll recommend it to you because you’re reading this sentence.
I like to picture Turner cruising around town on any old bike, going to shows at the StoreRoom, or lurking around in the U district with Dan Peters or Mark Arm. I like to imagine Mark Arm when he was a student at UW and I imagine he had a late night show on KCMU.
Turner didn’t get accepted to UW because he fucked around in high school a lot. He got into Seattle U but didn’t last long. Then he did some time at Seattle Central, because he promised his parents he’d get a college degree someday. I like to visualize passing him on the streets of Capitol Hill in 91 or 92, not knowing who he was. Or seeing him at a party in the U district in 1993 completely oblivious. I did see Kim Thayil once at Targy’s Tavern but I knew exactly who he was.
Turner is a few years older than me. He was a clean cut kid from Mercer Island. Oh so close to calling him a clean cut catholic kid from Mercer Island, but he pissed off his catechism teachers so much he never got confirmed.
I got confirmed but not long after that I complained about church so much that my mom let me start staying home on Sundays.
Turner was into bikes, all kinds of bikes and he raced BMX. He was also into skateboards from the moment his dad brought one home and into the present day, just at slower speeds.
I was into bikes as a kid too and I still am. But I wasn’t really into skateboards much past 3rd grade.
I only heard of Mudhoney in 89 or 90 from a college friend who had much deeper musical tastes than me. But I didn’t listen to them until my brother in law gave me the Superfuzz Bigmuff & early singles CD in 1991. I liked it. I really liked it. And I still really like it.
Now I’d like to draw your attention to the Showbox ticket stub from 5/16/97. That was the Friday after my very first day at Elliott Bay Messenger Company. I have absolutely no recollection of my 5th day as a bike messenger or the show after it. But I can safely say bikes were ridden, beer was consumed and that 09 Dave was at that show with me.
On my first tour at WA Legal (a small legal messenger company) in 1998, Dan Peters (the Mudhoney drummer) would pop in and work here and there delivering legal documents and serving process whenever Mudhoney was not on a world tour. He was just another chill guy, friendly and not rockstar-like at all.
This brings to mind Turner mentioning in his book that he could always go out to the store or go to shows and blend right in. Something that Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain and Chris Cornell could never do when the Seattle music scene blew up. Turner also compares and contrasts how Nirvana handled mega-rockstar status Vs. the way Pearl Jam did. Note how I used Vs.
When Matt Lukin, Mudhoney’s bass player, was ready to move on. The band was in search of a replacement. One of the people they wanted was Steve Dukich from the band Steel Wool. I went to high school with Dukich and I was very happy to see he got a couple paragraphs in Turner’s book. Dukich was not interested in joining the band full time but he played several shows with them and did a little tour.
Steel Wool had a couple albums out on Empty Records and I was a big fan not only because I went to school with 50% of the band. I saw them live whenever I could in Seattle and Bellingham too. When I was putting out a little bike messenger zine, Empty Records would buy ad space in it. They never paid me cash, they paid for their ads by mailing me CDs of bands I’d never heard of, bands that got my attention like Sicko and Dead Moon.
I noticed in his book, Turner only mentioned the Screaming Trees once: “a band from Ellensburg” Turner’s book is quite a bit different from Mark Lanegan’s, the lead singer from Screaming Trees. Turner also says zero words about Layne Stayley. He talks of Andrew Wood from Mother Love Bone, but mostly because of all the overlap of various band members coming and going and new bands forming. He talks a little bit about heroin but only because Mark Arm was fucking around with it and it jacked up their tours sometimes. If you want to read more about heroin and Seattle music, read Lanegan’s book: Sing Backwards and Weep.
Mud Ride was enjoyable for the history but more so for me because I identify with Turner’s experience being in Seattle and being sort of aimless. But all the while he stayed authentic, never pretending to be something he’s not. This is who we are and if you don’t like it, go fuck yourself. We’re not in it for the money. We’re in it because we want to be in it. Mudhoney is the real deal and Turner is a big part of why that’s true.
PS: one more Mudhoney moment came back to me today on a slow uphill grind as I was chanting “we wanna be free to do what we wanna do…”
At the beginning of In ‘n’ Out of Grace there’s a sample of Peter Fonda’s speech from Wild Angels. You can watch it below and or listen to it on your Mudhoney album.
In the early 90s I was living in a giant dirt cheap studio apartment with a landline and an answering machine that had those cute little cassette tapes.
I wrote a letter to an Anthropology professor at WSU asking for any possible internships or research positions focusing on Archaeology with a recommendation from one of my college professors.
The WSU guy got my letter and actually called me. But he got my answering machine message which was that sample directly from In ‘n’ Out of Grace. The gist of his message was, I needed to change my answering machine right away. I didn't change my machine and I didn't call him back.
Thank you Mudhoney for changing the trajectory of my career, or lack thereof.
A couple weeks ago I was rolling along Okanogan Lane at 7:47am when a cyclist rolling towards me said “Wrong Way Buster!” She was the only other human in sight on the entire sprawling-scenic 700 acre campus. All I could do was chuckle.
I’ve noticed her one other time in the same situation and she mumbled something inaudibly, perhaps the same thing. When I recall it all I like to reimagine it with her screaming “WRONG WAY FUCKER!!!” and it makes me chuckle even more.
Okanogan Lane is a short little road on campus. Basically a glorified sidewalk to several stops on my route. It cuts between Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, from the Molecular Engineering loading dock and Atmospheric Sciences slowly rolling past the medicinal herb garden and onto Life Sciences. It's a vector slicing an arc from the circle of Stevens Way. It’s used by Uber/Lyft drivers, UPS, FedEx, delivery vehicles and packs of students wandering around cluelessly absorbed in their devices and earbuds.
I ride down it the wrong way every day multiple times a day at very slow speeds. This lady who obviously works somewhere at this large state university is the only person who has verbalized their displeasure directly to me, Mr McfuckingFeeley electric-assisting a bathtub around campus at 3 miles per hour. For all I know, I might be delivering this lady’s mail everyday.
In my June 9th list of three word phrases “okanogan lane loser” got Wamsley’s attention and he discovered this google maps image of me from 2019, unloading yet another oversized amazon box on Okanogan Lane, keeping that frown upside down. Please note: my bike was pointing the wrong way buster.
It brings to mind one time or another a jaywalker downtown was in the middle of a one way street and suddenly startled by 39 rolling up the wrong way. 39 smiled and said “didn’t your mom teach you to look both ways?”
got this guy at the UW surplus store on Tuesday for 50 cents. It’s not a photograph but a pretty nice print. The google told me it's Hans Christian Andersen. But at the time I thought it was just another dead white guy.
Today I found a Renior “Madame Georges Charpentier and Her Children” for $6.99 at a thrift store because the frame and mat looked to be about the right size. A few hours after that I silkscreened a few words on HCA and as the paint dried I took the frame apart and flipped the Renior to put the famous Danish author in there. He fits fine, as if I had him framed.
for another 50 cents I got this historic DANK bags sweatshop photo to add to the series. It may or may not be a work in progress because the paint is still wet and you may or may not remember the first one, the last one, the other one
I appreciate the details. I am laser focused on little things that many people don’t give a shit about. Conversely many people seem to be honed in on things that I’m oblivious to, and things I could not care any less about. I don’t care how your weekend was. But if I did, I’d ask you about it. Mostly I don’t care for idle chit chat. In the workplace, this can be comical, unbelievable and occasionally very frustrating.
Is that the best you can do?
Are you fucking kidding me? Really?
We’ve been over this a thousand times?
You don’t remember?
Wait. What?
You’ve always done it that way, so you think that’s the way it should be done. Or perhaps you were trained by a sack-of-shit to do things that way and you don’t know any better so you keep plugging away, day after day.
Depending on the context, attention-to-detail can be an admirable attribute. Unless it’s taken too far. It was cool. Until it wasn’t. Then it wasn’t cool.
Can’t see the forest for the trees, says the old saying. Wasting a lot of time on minor details, never getting to the big-picture problem. If you could actually see the big picture, you’d realize there are no problems. It’s just a bunch of bullshit. Building mountains out of molehills like Russhell says. Sometimes this is a strategic time wasting strategy deployed by sack-of-shit goldbricking cherry-picking workers in the workforce. Sometimes it’s legitimate cluelessness and stupidity. Blissful ignorance. Mud fence dumb.
Choose your battles, they say. What to nitpick. What to let slide. Worry about the things you can control, they say.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, they go on to say. Worrying about little shit is a waste of energy. But when people have nothing to worry about they’ll invent new things, or the stupid little things sitting around get promoted to bigger big things. Monumental petty bullshit.
Transcend the bullshit. A classic slogan. But it’s easier said than done when 90% of everything is bullshit.
Having a bad day you say. Traffic was heavy. Someone parked too close to your parking space. The elevator is out of service. Your mascara is lumpy. Your coffee shop stopped serving cherry blossom lattes. Another epic ascent of a molehill that to you sincerely feels like a mountain.
it was a baby boy, so we bought him a toy, it was a ray gun, and it was 1981
June 14, 2023
Fort George makes a fine beer. “just say know” I drank a couple down but I won’t be upcycling — postcarding those Fancy Rayguns until I get some Nancy Reagans to pay the postage. Hand in hand. Hand delivered first class USPS-like.
On the other hand there’s a lowercase g filled with Burberry mirror-image so it reads correctly in the bathroom mirror while brushing teeth or raising a hand in some horseshit zoom meeting. AS IF we could work remotely. Making an ass outta you and me.
Nobody has one of those. Or these. Except me. “Trust but verify”
the hardest button to button
It’s a long story that brings to mind another story which reminds me of this one time and this other thing but I’ll leave it at - that was then and this is now or vice versa.
while you're waiting for Turner's book to come out on Tuesday, read Bewilderment, it's incredible. I'm 63% through it and I can say: you should read it. I'd be done with it by now but the afternoon trains have been so crowded I can't even read a book. I have to stand up next to my bike and take pictures of my brake levers.
Bomb proof. Built to last. Big beefy barrel adjusters. Comfortable. Functional. Work well with dual pivot brakes and kick ass with cantilevers. Best brake levers evers bro.
Sitting around the conference room table at Shimano 30 years ago the designers decided that maybe they shouldn’t design things that last forever.
NOS pairs are selling for $245 on eBay. Scuffed up old pairs are $50. I have the full on Kevin's Mom M733s on the SOMA and a silver step child variation on this Specialized. Gigo likes these levers so much he said he almost bought a single lever the other day. Then two weeks later I almost bought this single lever for him at Recycled Cycles. Best brake lever ever.
A classic Bice catch-all used in a variety of contexts. Often directed at messengers rolling through base when he was dispatching. This only made it onto a select few t-shirts over the years. Another favorite Biceism that never got onto a silkscreen: “you’re the one telling them how it is” I would wear that on the back of a t-shirt.
“The smell of freedom”
–Robert Arzoo early 90’s
The smell of freedom is hard to define but I know it when I see it. It’s neither here nor there, it’s everywhere. It can be subtle as well as overpowering. It’s a quality of life issue. I most often associate it with smoke and fumes billowing from a two-stroke engine on an otherwise pristine walk through the woods in Whatcom County or a stay in an otherwise quiet campground when a chainsaw fires up, or an ultra mega weed whacker then the big bad backpack leaf blower. Robert would chuckle and remind you that that’s the smell of freedom while at the same time calculate the oil-to-gas ratio roiling the air. Mr Robert Arzoo also coined the coffee-beer continuum, and just like that I adopted it, co-opted it, usurped it, stole it like an artist and ran with it, applying it in other contexts like the smell of a messenger on an elevator. This made it onto very few t-shirts.
Can’t you smell that smell?
Screened a batch of postcards recently. They don’t fit the parameters of “postcard” as defined by the USPS and I’m not sure I put enough postage on most of these upcycled scraps of cardboard. One cranky postal worker could have directed them to the dead letter office as we speak. On the other hand, one friendly postal worker could have directed them to your local carrier who will schlepp them those final 50 feet to your door.
In 1999 Bill Clinton was in the White House, Jeff Bezos was TIME’s man of the year, American Beauty won best picture, Ask Jeeves was your search engine, you were listening to music on CDs, but you still had a bunch of cassettes around, the #1 song on Saturday June 5 was “livin la vida loca” by Ricky Martin, the Nokia 3210 was a very popular phone as text messaging was taking over and pagers were faing out, messengers still carried pagers and brick-sized radios and called into base on landlines when they could and they could smoke in bars and restaurants and talk about the Y2K bug.
In 1999 Devlin and I put on a little alley cat. It was $5 to race and everyone got a prize of some sort and all the beer they could drink. It was a simple 8 or 10 stops around town. Mike Dodge got first place and $150 in cash and a modified thriftstore trophy. Brad Lewis in second got $50 cash. Both Dodge and Brad were cat 1-2 racers and they said they’d never won prizes that big in any of their races. The remaining prizes were things like soccer balls, bike parts, t-shirts, retro bike jersies and gift certificates to Sammy Sue’s.
We put up a few flyers around town and a Red Bull rep tracked me down by asking around. I wasn’t looking for him. He found me and gave me $200 in cash and a case of Red Bull. The Elysian gave us two kegs if we promised to consume the beer far away from their place of business. The start and finish festivities took place at the 19th Ave E party house 24 years ago today.
It seemed to take forever to drill through the steel with a carbide tip bit and an old screw gun, but it worked. Then I rattle canned both sides and hung it on the pole outside. The negative space turned positive, in more ways than one.
inside outside come around
who's that? brown
Thank you Bret for the crow cutouts positive & negative.
this one goes to eleven but this does not bring me joy.
one size does not fit all.
i want to hack that steer tube down a country mile, chuck all those fsa spacers in the tip jar and flip the bars dwi-like, that, that would bring me joy.
A few months ago (February 15) this poster came down the line at the mothership and jumped out at me and I did the same thing then that I did yesterday when a second version came down, texting and emailing a shot of it to a select few. You know, those in-the-know. Not that Dean, that Dean.
To most people this poster doesn’t mean shit, or at the very least, it’s kinda boring. If you’re in law school at UW, perhaps it means something to you.
However, to a group of former Zen Couriers and other Seattle messengers, this poster brings up some bad feelings, some fuck-yous, a few fuck-that-guys, as well as a host of other PTSD symptoms.
In an alternate reality I would find a church basement we could use every other Tuesday night and all yall could straggle in and sit down in a circle of folding chairs and share your stories. An ad hoc former Zen Courier support group in an effort to let go of the loads and loads of shit you’ve been carrying around. Anyone else with Zen stories to tell could come by and join in. 39 would visit often.
Elliot would start the more recent story telling and 87 would have plenty to add from yesteryear. These two reacted right away to this photo, with visceral no-joke-fuck-offs. I know these two have a lot of stories to tell and a lot of hard feelings lingering from their time with Zen.
Just off the top of my head I know a few others who would join in. 33 John could talk for hours about Zen, including his road rage incident at the construction site for Benaroya Hall, his arrest, court case and judgment paying for the damage to the hood of the guy’s car he inflicted with his fists. I have no doubt he was already pissed off in a heightened Zen state before the guy in the Honda fucked with him. Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, like 33 repeated repeatedly into the mic dispatching at Elliott Bay one day back before his Zen days.
Brian Harris could add some stories too even though he only did a brief stint at Zen – Dean told him he needed to dress more like a “messenger” – more spandex and less button down shirts & khaki pants. Brian quit Zen after a few days and went on to become Seattle’s highest paid messenger dealing strictly in title insurance and real estate documents at Champion for a few years.
Before I was a messenger I wanted to be a messenger and I read about them and their zines in Bicycling Magazine where I learned more about Iron Lung from Seattle. I sent Iron Lung a letter and they published it and I got a couple issues in the mail and at Wright Bros and in one of those issues I read about Mr Zen courier and his bike touring travels with his wife. no joke. for real really.
Dean was always cool to me, but I never worked for him. I did however get a lot of second hand smoke over the years and that law school poster jumped out and struck a chord. A creepy off key minor chord.
More than two hours before game time this family looked cooked. As my epic commute overlapped some of their epic journey to the ballpark to watch the M’s lose 11-6 to the Pirates. Please take a moment to appreciate the dad’s glove.
I’d say I’m a fair weather baseball fan. Most of the time I don’t pay much attention to it. But I enjoy sipping $17 tall cans in the outfield occasionally.
Just a few days ago I finished this book. It’s a great one. I passed it on to a friend and I’m passing it on to you too. The author is no jughead jock strap, she’s the editor of the Paris Review and she knows baseball as well as she knows writing. It’s very well written and it’ll make your train ride go by in a flash.
Dropping the kids off at the pool the other day. Literally for real really. Not taking a shit, but taking my kids swimming. Another dad a few chairs over says, what’s kickstand? pointing at my shirt. It was a zine, I say, leaving it at that.
A bit later the other dad asks, did it have anything to do with bikes? Yeah, I say, I was a bike messenger for a while, a while back, leaving it at that. The stilted conversation, or lack thereof. The long silent pauses, the empty space that drives my old lady crazy was the start of our conversing.
Late 90’s you say, says the other dad. Did you know Todd Gallaher? Yes, I say. And then he talks a bit about bike handling, riding in crits and strong riders pulling off crazy shit that only strong riders can pull off, riders like Todd that he raced with back in the day. Conversation moved on to other messengers that raced bikes too… …inevitably turning to Dave Richter and Jonny Sundt.
I’m into arrows. All kinds of arrows. But there’s one arrow that does not bring me any joy, the amazon logo. This sticker sums things up pretty well.
99% of the time I make sure the frowns are down. But these boxes of fertilizer were completely blownout before I even touched them so I gave up on the orientation as I barely made it to Life Sciences with that pile of shit.
That scrubby scrappy pine tree and others like it always remind me of the Evergreen State College logo. Not the stale clean cut newer version, but the OG crusty hippie 1967 logo:
Evergreen is an unusual place. In the 80s I had a chance to spend a few days on campus when my mom was attending a conference there. Then I almost transferred there as a homesick aimless clueless college freshman. I stuck it out in Iowa, but I know a few people that graduated from Evergreen as well as Carrie Brownstein, Lynda Barry and Matt Groening.
The school motto is Omnia Extares
Which translates to “let it all hang out” perfect for a school whose mascot is the geoduck. For some reason that logo stuck with me like an old favorite coffee cup.
Trees like this are often seen in harsh windblown ocean side environments. But this tree lives a cush life on Wilson Ave South where I stopped at Chuck's to work a little RAGBRAI into my Tuesday.
The numbers are there. They’ve been there all along. In your clocks, your calendars, your Steve Miller lyrics. They’ll be there tomorrow and the next day too. Maybe you haven’t noticed because they haven’t jumped out into your face.
07 Mark my words, when the numbers reach out, you might want to pay attention.
Last week I had a dream that I was riding an old mountain bike built up with period correct parts, to the Othello station to catch a train early one morning, so early it was still dark outside. It may or may not have been my bike but it was black and it was steel and it was old and it was a real smooth ride until I got a flat and just when I realized that, the other tire was going flat too. When I got to the station I leaned the bike against a stainless steel railing with safety glass below it and then I went inside somewhere. Somewhere that may or may not exist in reality because it was all a dream and hard to describe. I spent some unspecified amount of time in that somewhere place doing some unspecified things and when I came back outside, the bike was gone. I had a huge sinking feeling and said, this is what it feels like to get your bike stolen. Then I heard a few voices yelling my name and I turned around. They said, hey, we got your bike over here. But I couldn’t see the bike because it was beneath a pile of baked goods, pastries, cakes and desserts. Piles and piles of them, stacked, all individually wrapped, presented in clean white boxes and clear plastic cases. I thought to myself, what the fuck is this? What are you doing with all this shit and why would you pile it all up to obscure a bike? The bike that may or may not have been mine. Help me move all this. I’m going to miss the train, I thought out loud. As we unloaded all the cakes and pies. The train pulled up and I missed it because the bike was still mostly covered in baked goods. Then I woke up. I think. What day is it?
About 6 or 8 hours before that, in what some people call reality, so called real life, daylight hours or actual events. I got on a southbound train in the U district, and there was Gigo, who I’ve only seen two or three times in the past 12 years. I said shit, do you always take this train? He said, yes but usually later. And I said, me too but usually earlier. We sat staring at our bikes hanging on the bike hooks and talked about Seattle history, Seattle messenger history, legal messenger work then and now, bikes, bike collections and bike parts and the accumulation of “stuff” all the shit that piles up when you live somewhere for a long while. We talked all the way to the Othello station where he got off.
There is no doubt my conversation with Gigo was the root of the dream I had. The photo above is one of his bikes around 2006ish. He told me he’s built it up now with much better parts and it’s just one in his collection of many. But I’m not really sure about all those cakes and pastries.
A sense of accomplishment. As if I’ve earned it. Collecting cute little stamps or satisfying punches punched in my punch cards nesting next to each other in my back pocket as I creep along the continuum in the 98105.
“Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.”
It’s all fun & games until you run the numbers. So don’t run the numbers. Don’t do the math. Don’t look at your bank statement. Don’t sweat it. Don’t read the fine print, it’s all in your mind. Spend $66 on our beer and we’ll give you one free pint. Big Time time, big time. Spend $36 on our coffee and we’ll give you a free Americano bro. SEA FAB coffee.
I think they should change this price to $222. Still way over priced but appropriate for an old ti flat bar. Working within the constraints of the material at the time, there will be no bulge up to a 25.4 or 26.0 and don’t even ask about 31.8 bro. Shim that shit and you’ll need more than a beer can for that.
Alistair could give you a longer, detailed, more accurate and historical explanation for why old ti bars were all 22.2.
And that brings to mind my new $542 Reynolds 3D printed titanium bottle openers. If I had one, I’d keep it on my keychain. If I had two I’d lend you the non driveside one.
In the Seattle spring into summer more and more tourists take the train to and from Sea-Tac and more and more chuffers take bikes on the train. The after-thought bike storage design on Sound Transit train cars sets cyclists up for run-ins with tourists with giant rolling suitcases. With only two bike hooks on older train cars and four on the newer cars, they say it’s first-come first-served.
Northbound at 6am in Rainier Beach, it’s no big deal. But at 4pm heading toward Sea-Tac it can be comical as well as frustrating. For many of these people it’s their one and only time riding a train to the airport and I’m viewing it all through the agitated eyes of a crustier than thou crusty commuter. I’m no Pete Rose, I’m more like the Lou Gehrig of crusty commuters with 2,721 train rides and counting… …10 or more rides per week, 500+ rides per year.
For a moment I imagine how I look through their entitled eyes… …just some asshole with a bike that steps on and slaps it up there on the hook only to sit right down and read a book. The worn out water bottle burping up backwash dripping dribbling dinkling hanging at an awkward unnatural negative 12 degree angle the bike swinging swaying swooping with the drive side pedal slamming the wall at each stop & start and the non drive side chainstay rubbing road grime on their Samsonite.
My grimy bike swinging on the bike hook says with a smile: Welcome to Seattle. Enjoy your stay. Your hotel & restaurant taxes are paying for our stadiums. Your rental car taxes too. Have you been to the Market? The Space Needle? The Ballard Locks?
Last week, a family of four boarded a very crowded southbound train at Beacon Hill. Each member of the family was wearing a carry-on bag and rolling a large suitcase. They all congregated around my bike which was hanging next to another bike. The mom stuffed her rolling suitcase in, next to the two bikes and never took her hand off it. (this is a common behavior displayed by airport travelers: at least one hand on their suitcase at all times, white-knuckling the shit out of it, as if it could be snatched away at any moment) The dad and the kids stood awkwardly in the accordion center section of the car with all their luggage. I was less than 3 feet away on my way home at the end of the day.
The dad was literally touching my bike. Stroking the top tube logo, grabbing the stem, the bars and trying the brake levers, saying “Hey Honey what do you think of this setup? Look at these bars, a more upright position… …could be for you… …but the stem’s too long, too low” she says, “yeah maybe but it’s kinda funny, cruiser bars, weird, that’s not a cruiser frame but those are cruiser bars. So weird. Funny. Weird. Weird.”
Their bike conversation focusing on the setup of my bike, didn’t bother me, bikes are cool. I like bikes. The dad stroking my bike didn’t really bother me too much because, after all, it’s a $40 used bike from Bike Works.
What did bother me was when I needed to extract my bike and get off the train —2 stops later -–the family didn’t budge an inch. They stayed glued to their fucking rolling suitcases in their exact position and I had to make a real effort to get my bike off the hook and get the fuck out of there with out road-grime-fender-strut-chain-lubing their khaki pants.
The mom blushed as I passed within a foot of her, saying “oh we were just talking about your bike.” I said nothing, thinking: no shit, I was 3 feet away from you the entire time, watching your husband stroke my bike, and that’s all good but now I’m trying to get the fuck off this train in Columbia City and it would be cool if all yall step away from your luggage for one second.
A couple days ago a guy boarded with a rolling bike travel bag the size of Texas. (You know the bags that hold your road bike and your wheels with no need to pull your seat post. It’s that big. Fucking HUGE. Deep and wide) I’m sure the bag alone cost more than all of my bikes and the bike inside cost way way way more than all of my family’s bikes combined. I didn’t see any team logos or sponsors or product placement on the bike bag or the guy’s getup, so I guessed he was just an enthusiastic cycle tourist.
He attempted to cram his big bad bike case into the cubby next to my bike on the hook. About 23% of it fit in there and the rest blocked the aisle while he kept it in place with his foot.
When the train got into the 98118 I hoisted my bike off the hook and over the guy’s legs and bike case and said “is this the beginning, or the end of your epic journey?” the beginning, he said. “word” I said telepathically.
At the end of that same train car another south bound traveler had a luggage cart overflowing with bags and bags and bags and random shit including a skateboard and shredded 12-pack of Rainier. Over the 6 seats he was occupying with his yard sale sprawl, there were a few full beer cans that he continued to offer other travelers while he never stopped his double-fisted ramble-on about how his time in prison interrupted the time he was a sponsored skateboarder. The best part of it all was the looks on the nearby traveler’s faces as they couldn’t get to Sea-Tac fast enough.
I’ll have what he’s having, I said to myself, first-come first-served my ass.
This bike lasted more than 24 hours in the 98195 with the lock in place just so. I’d like to imagine the absent minded owner returning to their bike and chuckling, happy to have a ride home. But it was probably just the thief staging the bike until they could return for it later because they had too many other bikes to haul back to their ad hoc chop shop.
That McMenamen’s coaster has been on the wall at HQ for 20 years. (HQs: 1, 1.5, 2 & 3 too) and it’s tattooed on my wrist if I ever lose the original.
That older lions ditty has been on the wall at HQ for 20+ years too, since I found it and poached it from a chapbook or a street score and completely absorbed it into my reality… …literally cutting and pasting it into an issue or two of kickstand and 20 years later still giving it a nod here and there, paying my respects. The author is unknown, at least to me.
That ditty bubbles back up into my brain sometimes as I roll around on the street, and it has inspired a few new little ditties and dredged up some old song lyrics, in the same vein:
Over the past 13 years I’ve devolved into a crustier than thou crusty commuter. A lazy public transit rider with a bike ride on both ends. Everything has devolved along with that, form following function. My bikes are single speeds or 1 x 7. My backpack is gigantic, containing books, magazines and journals to read and write and lunches & snacks to eat and random shit I found on the ground. My wardrobe decisions are not made for long days in the saddle, they’re a compromise of comfort and function that does not scream Rapha or Castelli. Layered up like a midwest winter. My Sambas are blown out from many miles walking and many more rolling platform pedals.
My 30 mile round trip commute, if I actually rode it, would be twice my typical electric-assisted daily mileage at work.
I’ve grown to depend on the train. Like clockwork. Eyes closed muscle memory. Rote route rut routine. Heat map habitrails. Well worn neural pathways. Biorhythm - SSDD. The next train is arriving in 2 minutes. All those train rides are time for me to zone out and stare at the wall. Or read every word in the new New Yorker. Or finish off another book and then another.
It’s cool. Until it isn’t. Then it’s not cool.
“your commute just got fucked bro”
–Steve Young text 4/28/23
Due to construction, accidents, various mish mashed mishaps the trains don’t always run on time. Friday they went from every 8 minutes to every 35 minutes with two transfers required. I left home early to check it out, being day one of a potential two-week shit show and I wanted to gauge the morning commute time. I learned that it takes forever on over crowded trains with two transfers required and I will not do that again. (within 12 hours Sound Transit had improved run time and required only one transfer)
For the next couple weeks I plan to sprinkle in some more bike atop less train. All the while hoping that the tunnel repairs take less time than what they’re saying.
In the AM I can get off at Mt Baker roll MLK blah blah blah – Montlake Bridge and Fanny’s your aunt. But I think getting off at Beacon Hill rolling 12th Ave S into Capitol Hill blah blah blah – U Bridge and Bob’s your uncle, will bring me more joy punctuated by flashes of phantom nostalgia right around 12th & Howell, just 4 miles from UW.
In the PM it will depend on how soon I need to get home to Junior and Junior Junior. Train a little and bike more or no train at all and bike all the way.
Those in the know know that a 15 mile bike ride can take 4 or more hours when you work a little RAGBRAI into it.
“You’re the one telling them how it is”
– Tom Bice (with an eye roll & smirk)
Some days I don’t mind riding my bike home, when I have a choice, when it’s my decision, when I’m the one telling them how it is, when it’s sunny and 72, when I have lots of time to stop and smell the roses: Big Time, Cool Guy, Six Arms, a nod to the spirit of Bensons, Elysian, Peloton, Chucks, Ale House, Slow Boat, Jude’s and so on. This little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none and this little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home with a couple tall cans hiding in plain sight.
Slowly, very slowly.
At the end of some heavy manual labor work days the last thing I want to do is go for a 15 mile bike ride. Six months out of the year here it’s dark and raining and traffic’s a real bear. In addition, I’ve noticed all the calm, courteous, respectful and polite Seattle drivers seemed to have moved away. Now they’re all assholes.
I tried to upload this Craig Etheridge photo onto that cars-in-bike-lanes site. But it wouldn't take it because there's no location tag. And it's not my photo it's Craig's and it's 12 or 13 years old.
If you stop to take pictures of every car in every bike lane on your commute, you'll be late to work.
Craig took that Fremont bike lane shot, one of the classics in the photographic memory, that's his story...
...but it brings to mind this shot I got on 3rd Avenue one day years and years ago with a thing called "digital camera"
After the wedding Sam and I went on holiday to Whitstable in Kent. We were so happy. The sun shone every day. We ate the most incredible seafood.
We moved to London. We got jobs. A car. A joint bank account. A cat who peed on everything then ran away. We called her Margaret Scratcher. We settled into a routine. We saw less and less of each other. We were tired. We argued. We argued about money. We argued about whether we wanted to live in the city or the countryside. We argued about whether or not we should start a family.
We had one argument in particular.
Sam suggested that I talk to someone. Professionally.
That made me so angry. I knew what depression was and I knew I was fine.
I had a study at home and I’d sit in there, listening to records and reading the sleeve notes.
The lives of other people have always fascinated me. I always read the liner notes in record sleeves. The trials and traumas behind the music. Tortured geniuses.
Weldon Irvine. Albert Ayler. Ronnie Singer. Donny Hathaway. Amazing musicians. All took their own lives.
I’m so grateful to be ordinary.
Sam told me I was becoming morose. That I was isolating myself. Wallowing.
She encouraged me to carry on with the list, but I found it hard to notice new things.
826978
826978
826978
The list ended, just one hundred and seventy three thousand and twenty two short of a million. It was finished. So I boxed it up and threw it all away.
I sat in my study. Sam packed her things. I helped her carry boxes to her car. I stood in our doorway and she looked at me from the car.
That horrible feeling when something is broken and can’t ever be fixed. The trapdoor swinging open. Fight or flight or stay as still as you can.
I’d been feeling like that for a long time.
I watched her drive away.
She left me a note, written in an album sleeve. She knew that when I wanted to think of her I’d look for the Daniel Johnston song she sang at my parent’s house and, as always I’d sit and read through the record sleeve.
Sam’s note said that she loved me and that when I was ready we should try again. But I didn’t find the note for seven years.
###
unknown author
author unknown
published here without permission.
I don’t know who the author is but I know it's greater than the sum of its parts.
I found this on a discarded folded piece of paper in the Chemistry department the other-other day. It reached out and got my attention somehow, got me to read these words. Now I’m sharing them with you. word.
If you know who wrote this let me know.
###
ps:
thank you Alistair for pointing out that the folded discarded page I picked up was a just a slice of the story "Every Brilliant Thing" the book, the play, the movie of the play, the adaptation of the facebook group into the play into the movie
Roundabout 2006 the guys down at DANK bags put out a batch of toptube pads featuring an exclusive one-of-a-kind pilderwasser design.
Bret in ABQ still has one, in pristine condition, rolling in that high desert air. After he sent me some photos I forwarded them to those guys at DANK to check out. Then a few days later, Steve was in town and sent me a photo of another TT pad from that batch that’s still rolling on Face’s bike, not as pristine as Bret’s but still rolling.
Yesterday I saw a bike messenger on campus. When I said it’s nice to see an actual bike messenger, she chuckled and said I guess you’re kind of a bike messenger. Then I smiled and said I used to be kind of a messenger at WA Legal and Seattle Legal. Then she asked, do you know Face? I said yeah, he filled my position at WA Legal in 2007 and he’s still there, still rolling.
Cliff Mass will do whatever the fuck he wants to do. Then he might tell you about it, whether it’s the weather, or not. That’s why some people really like him. That’s also why some people really don’t like him.
should we talk about the weather? I'm wearing two winter coats and it's April 13th
Just another shopping cart full of stolen bike parts kicking around the U-district normally wouldn’t get my attention. But the other day I saw Professor Cliff Mass dismount his trusty steed (hose-clamped milk crate and all) to take a photo of this shopping cart. I wish I was in the right place to get a photo of him taking a photo, but I was not. However, later in the day, around the third or fourth time I passed this pile of shit, I stopped to take a photo, because that’s what Cliff Mass would do (WCMWD)
Found this historic photo at the surplus store the other-other day (see price tag) The official title on the tag on the back is “small labor history photo mounted on foam board” and you can scan the QR code
Schlepped it home in my giant backpack. Then after a few beers added a little something to it, taking a swipe at the DANK BAGS in black paint. It came out really half ass in a disappointing glass half empty way. Screening onto a slippery slick unforgiving undular concave foam core surface kinda sucks. It’s a little iffy, but the cost-benefit analysis worked out. 24 hours later I took another swing at it with some white paint and it panned out in a drop shadow way, like a sequence of fortunate events, as if I planned it all along. Sorta like that Seurat painting. Are you my Bucky?
I like to think of this shot as the DANK bags sweatshop figuratively tucked away at various discrete locations here in Seattle years before they moved their operation down to Rip City. 97% of the laborers pausing momentarily to look up at the photographer thinking “there goes Nikki, fucking shit up, again”
A work in progress or maybe it’s all done. Could be an early birthday gift for one of those guys down at DANK bags or just another whack artifact on the wall here at HQ.
about 27 seconds after I took this photo the building manager came out and said what’s up? and I said living the dream, never had a bad day then he said what? are you trying to get in there? no I said I just wanted a photo and he said why because it strikes your fancy? yes, yes it does and I proceeded to ask him about Bret Farve playing for the Jets and Vikings and painkillers and karma and rotator cuffs and Aaron Rodgers’ tattoo being the highlight of last season and dark room meditation and the Jets parallel and assorted other NFL horseshit dollar signs because he’s a Packers fan and he asked me if it’s raining and so on and so forth.
the Fruit Bats have been live on KEXP about 67 times but I don’t see any Lazy Eyes in their there there. It’d be nice to bookend them back to back live with Cheryl Waters but here and now this will have to do.
I like the Silversun Pickups song, got a little kick to it. But the Fruit Bats Lazy Eye will always, in the end, for the long haul, get my vote.
in 500 words or less, compare and contrast these two Lazy Eyes and talk amongst yourselves
PS: this lazy eye discussion started in my mind a couple years ago, inspired by a person that works along my daily route rote routine somewhere between 9:03am and 10:17am with sporadic afternoon visits sprinkled in. Just a small part of the soliloquized bike ride through the city.
get a whiff of Fremont’s Kush chronic IPA. When you try to google it, to learn a little more, google will suggest you and your sausage fingers probably meant to look for Lush IPA. But you don’t need to google it, you need to drink it.
Fremont’s Lush is one of the top three IPAs in Seattle. So why mess with a good thing? Because they can, they could, they will and they would.
The subtle belches and burps that follow the consumption of a tall can do not go unnoticed when the can is Kush. It’s like a hop vine growing in your throat or maybe it’s like coughing up bong water.
It’s hella dank bro.
The wine, spirits and beer critic for the New York Times couldn’t sum it up any better than that.
a seemingly endless string of cliches strung together like the cheap plastic beads on a Las Vegas Airport vending machine necklace, toss in a heaping helping of 80’s keyboard, sprinkle with Hagar, top with a dollop of Eddie Van Halen, let stand 3 to 5 minutes at room temperature and call it a hit song
Cutoff golf pants are the new black and nothing holds them up like a Soulrun belt. I like the belt so much that I bought another one. So when I Mr. Rodgers out of my black work cutoff Izods into my blue home cutoff Izods, I’ll have an incredible belt to hold them up and I don’t have to mess around at the switch out.
Almost all of my belts have been ratchet straps or tie downs. Ground scores and hardware stores. I still wear a belt that those guys down at DANK bags made for me from a USPS strap & buckle I found on 4th Avenue years and years ago. When I was a legal messenger frequenting all the courthouses in Seattle I wore a plastic buckled strap so I would not activate the metal detectors I passed through multiple times a day.
Stevil’s AHTBM endorsements of Soulrun got my attention a while back, but the belt didn’t grow on me until it became my everyday work belt. Now it’s my everyday home belt too.
The metal loop on my work belt is for a carabiner full of keys, my backstage pass to the gritty underbelly of a very large public university aka Mr. McFeely on an electric assist bathtub. The pockets on my golf pants must be set-in drop-in style. No slash pockets, no slant pockets, no seam pockets, no pleats, no bullshit. Good old deep drops to keep that mess of keys from flying around.
All Soulrun belts are shipped at 45” so you can cut them to the length you want. But I don’t cut mine. Which brings me to my recent belt loop invention, a cross section of a 26 x 1.5 tube. It fits perfectly, costs zero dollars and keeps the end of the belt where I want it. For other width belts you can use other width tubes from that pile of blown out tubes sitting in a milkcrate in your garage.
capacitance electronic disc aka “video disc” technology was conceived in 1964 but it wasn’t brought to market until 1981, and by then it was already obsolete and inferior technology to the Laser Disc (1978) and the VHS tape (1977)
It seemed like a good idea at the time, the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but 17 years of R&D didn’t help the video disc catch on. It was an analog stylus-read giant disc, like a juiced up LP record in a hard plastic case. Big and dumb. Really big and really dumb. If there were five different ways to fuck it up, they covered four of them.
"The 12-inch discs were crafted using PVC blended with carbon to allow the disc to be conductive, and a thin layer of silicone was applied to the disc as a lubricant. Discs were stored in a caddy from which the disc was extracted by the player. CEDs could store 60 minutes of video per side, so almost all films needed to be flipped over at some point."
Video Discs were produced for about 3 years before everyone gave up. I didn’t know all this disc shit and history of competing formats until recently when I carried a couple around in my backpack for 12 hours. At one of my favorite bars I showed them to the relatively young bartender and he had no idea what he was looking at.
I have vague memories of seeing a behemoth disc player hooked up to a TV in a department store in the early 80s. But at my house we had a VCR slightly smaller than our microwave oven.
A couple years ago at a thrift store, I found two Burt Reynolds movies on video disc – Gator (1976) and Stroker Ace (1983) – and bought them for Stevil, a Burt Reynolds fan. Useless, obsolete artifacts. Dumb as a mud fence. They’ve been sitting in my garage collecting dust until last Friday when Stevil was in town and I schlepped them all the way to Peloton to hand them over, where he may or may not have forgotten them. You can see them on the bench in the background in Bret's photo above taken at Peloton that night.
If you have a video disc collection you’ll need a double-triple reinforced shelving system to store them, screwed into the studs with giant lag bolts because all that PVC, carbon, plastic and silicone is really heavy.
the best part of this thrift store shot of the Stroker Ace disc is the peek a boo view of the Linda Ronstadt album and as you know no one knows Linda Ronstadt like this guy
Finished The Laughter a few days ago and it kicked my ass. Kicked it in the right direction. As a white guy floating around on an entitled hovercraft of assumptions, the despicable narrator brings attention to things that a lot of white guys accept and expect.
If this book is shelved next to Stoner in the academic novel category, it’s got 100 more years of perspective on stodgy English professors.
Sonora Jha, a professor at Seattle U, sticks to her claim that The Laughter is completely fictional. But her book is fueled by reality.
About 20 years ago I was working for a contractor who was working on a Madison Park home owned by an English professor from Seattle U --I’ll call him Dr Ivy League-- he was in the room for less than 10 minutes, but that was more than enough time to see, hear and feel how entitled he was, even his son was walking the walk, talking the talk, like his dad. Dr IL is still a crusty white tenured professor at SU teaching a syllabus overflowing with crusty white dead guys. I cannot help but see that guy as the narrator in Jha’s novel.
bartender said, why the long face, is it nothing new under the sun, hipsters claiming they’re onto something, but it’s all been done before? oh and we don’t serve hydraulic brake fluid
Pilder took place at a large University in Indiana instead of Missouri, and was set about 50 years later than Stoner, and was based on a true story? More Vietnam, more long hair, more LSD. But still plenty of romance, dean’s office politics and academic hi-jinx.
as if
the story actually happened, because it did, it just hasn’t been framed in the form of a book. I play a bit part in Bloomington right around 1969.
if and only if
this could be a work of non-non fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents all products of the author’s memory of what he perceived to be actual events described from his point of view. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is not coincidental. that's what he said - she said
Today I got my hands on The Laughter. I had it on hold at the Seattle Public Library before they had their hands on it. But now, being #133 in line on 25 copies, with each patron potentially sitting on their share for 3 weeks… …the best case scenario made me break down and cough up the money at a local independent bookstore where I got to pull it off the shelf and buy it like your parents and grandparents used to do. Now I can read it and then lend it to two friends who tell two friends who tell two friends, before I’d ever get my hands on a library copy.
There are 4 or 5 pairs of Sambas in varying states of distress kicking around between work and home. I’ve blown through a gazillion pairs of Sambas, Samba Classics, Samba OGs and now I’m onto Busenitz pros. The sole is beefier and more durable and there’s a bunch of padding as if I’d need it skateboarding. But it works out electric-assist bathtubbing.
I will not be needing any Samba Velo shoes, no thank you. The lame compromise of a weak SPD shoe and an uncomfortable walking shoe.
multitasking = halfassing
bro
Bro
Hey Bro!
The third bro gets me to snap out of my morning-commute stupor enough to look over wondering if dude is talking to me. Thinking: don’t bro me bro. Then he points. So I turn a bit to look behind me. And he says your bag, your bag is open. Thanks I say, thinking: do me a favor, don’t do me any favors. It’s a giant Ortlieb and it’s always “open” unless it’s really dumping rain.
More like an elk’s head, less like a bull’s head. Recently moving this elk head to a new location beneath a basement window at HQ got me thinking. Thinking that Brooks saddles are good for something and also realizing that each time I reached up to open the curtains above the elk head I was bonking the horns because they protrude from the wall a bit. Envisioning some sort of end caps, I started to tinker. It didn’t take long before I came upon my ALL WORK AND NO PLAY IS NO GOOD AT (AWANPINGA) top cap collection and I knew I wanted to use a couple of them somehow.
Then I started looking for star nuts so I could screw down the top caps legit-torque-spec-like, full on threadless headsets. But I didn’t have any star nuts sitting around and if I did, I’d have to completely mash the shit out of them to get them stuffed into that old steel handlebar’s inside diameter. Labor intensive overkill futility.
The next day at work, I was thinking about bar plugs. Ye Olde School threaded bar plugs would work just fine. I stuck my head in the electric cargo bike cage and asked Alistair if he had any bar plugs, like the ones on an old Free Spirit. He said “what?” and then politely changed the subject.
Recycled Cycles is spitting distance from the mothership, and if they were open on Mondays I might have spent a couple bucks on old bar plugs. But they were closed, so I didn’t.
Later, back at HQ I decided to make my own plugs and started tinkering again. In less than 10 minutes I fabricated a suitable solution with some old shit that was sitting around. In situ resource utilization brings me joy, an amount of joy that’s inversely proportional to sitting in a hotel room in Bozeman waiting for OE parts to arrive from Germany so a local shop can fix my BMW.
I hacksawed a synthetic wine cork in half then shaved the pieces down a smidge with a utility knife so they were a bit proud of the old steel handlebar’s id. Then I screwed the AWANPINGA caps into the plastic plugs with short-stack sheetrock screws. Finally, in conclusion, I plugged the plugs snuggly into the elk horns and stood back to admire my work. No OE, no torque specs, no carbon fiber, no out-of-pocket expense, no sales tax, no shipping costs, no hose clamps, no zip ties, no duct tape, no bullshit.
If you work in a small nonprofit community bike shop and refurbish a few thousand used bikes, there’s a good chance some of those bikes will be Gary Fishers. And there’s a good chance some of those Gary Fishers will have AWANPINGA headset top caps. And there’s a very good chance some of those top caps will end up in your pocket only to reappear on one of your own bikes or JB Welded to a spoke magnet and displayed on your fridge or screwed onto the pegboard in your shop or years & years later used as bar plugs in your Elk horns.
Deep under Brooklyn Avenue each weekday morning at 6:52am I get off the train. Instead of cramming a crowded elevator, I take escalators to the surface. Standing to the right, holding my bike and contemplating my existence.
same shit different day.
what day is it?
this New Yorker cartoon by Corey Pandolph & Craig Baldo is spot-on and that’s why I cut it out digitally and stuck it on the pw fridge with a metaphoric magnet.
In 1942 Picasso created “Bull’s Head” from a seat and handlebars he saw sitting around. I like to think that some poor bike mechanic did the same thing once or twice years earlier than that but Picasso got credit for it because he was Picasso andPablo Picasso was never called an asshole.
When I was surrounded by epic piles of used bike parts I made several iterations of bull’s heads around the warehouse. This one made its way home with me where it has moved around the house a few times.
Ten years ago I wrote this little ditty on a shot of Picasso’s sculpture and it illustrates clearly that I’m still mumbling to myself, repeatedly repeating the same old shit.
For the past several years it’s been collecting dust in the garage at the top of a hill. The few times I’ve ridden it recently I found myself reaching for a throttle that wasn’t there, expecting an electric assist to get me up the hill like that big purple bathtub. But all I had were 8 gears triggered by 37’s gifted shifter. Which worked great living in the CD with very small kids and groceries, even pony kegs from the Elysian were slowly doable.
But that shit is so 12 years ago bro.
you may ask yourself
how did I get here?
When you get to be my age, living on the edge of Skyway, as lazy as electric assist cargo bikes let me be at work all day, the last thing I want to do – at the end of the day or the end of the week -- is go for a bike ride, a cargo bike ride. Even if this CETMA was juiced up, where would I take it? Why would I take it there?
This bike has moved on to another family with a tiny kid.
PS: Last week I rode home on a bike. No train ride, just a slow bike ride all the way to Rainier Beach, juiced up, but only on beer. I was waiting at the light at Jackson & MLK when a dude on an electric Bullitt flew by going 25 uphill. He looked at me for a second and sized me up on my sad little analog bike.
I know a guy that rides a Bullitt all around town with no assistance as in electric. He does gardening and landscaping and urban horticulture. And I have more respect for that than ever, now that I ride a motorized Bullitt all day.
I’m not just shit talking. I’m talking to myself and trying to feel better about saying goodbye to the CETMA.
“the epiphany of knowing something through words that could not be put in words”
February 28, 2023
Read this book several years ago and I thought it was pretty good. Read it again this week and now I think it’s amazing. I believe the difference between the two readings has been the passage of time and watching my kids grow up. As well as me getting older and older and older and actually feeling it, feeling old and two or three other factors that I don't want to discuss. It also helps to be rolling around a college campus while reading the greatest campus life book ever written. In no way am I saying that I have any academic connection. I’m just a casual observer in cutoff golf pants rolling around on an electric assist bathtub. But I like to visualize an old crusty professor like Stoner skuffing around Denny Hall or Gerberding, not shy about sharing his opinions and scowling at the undergrads. UW’s English department is in Padelford, but that building is too new and cheesy to fit into a Stoner-like story in my mind.
The reason I picked it up in the first place was probably this piece in the New Yorker. The book came out in 1965, sold 2000 copies and went out of print. But it’s had several revivals, reprintings and rejuvenations. The reason I picked it up again this week was a review of a new academic/college/campus novel written by a Seattle U professor called The Laughter. Haven't read it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. When the author mentioned Stoner in an interview I thought perhaps I should give Stoner another go.
Here's to books that deserve second looks. Tell Me Everything is also set on a college campus, but it’s not fictional, it’s actual events in and around Boulder as well as other stuff & things. Here we are with coach Prime taking over at CU Boulder and all the NIL cash floating around and E$PN’s millions tainting college sports, and this book is more relevant than ever. And the author went to the finest liberal arts school in the country and graduated in the same year that I did. All roads lead to Grinnell.
I’ve mentioned both of these books once or twice in the past 10 years. Here we go round again.
I got my hands on some new fabric screen printing ink. It’s purple and sparkly and it’s called “amethyst” All that is lost in the dingy filter on this photo. But it’s there in real life, for real, really on this postcard I mailed to a friend and fellow GbV fan. It should arrive a few zip codes away within 7 days with a little help from the USPS.
Junior-Junior just received a postcard from grandma that she mailed 7 months ago from Canada. One digit off in the zip code caused the delay. However one of the guys down at DANK bags sent a postcard last week with one digit off in the zip code and it showed up here just fine.
or a worthy goal that springs us out of bed each morning
each time I deliver to KUOW (94.9 FM) I repeat the perfect parking mantra a few times loud enough for anyone to hear echoing off the overbuilt cement in various authoritative-intercom-ways or fake-as-fuck-advertising-voice-over-ways or crazy-guy-at-the-bus-stop-ways
nouna mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing
1997 “chocolate milk”
Working at a large commercial messenger company when one day a dispatcher told a pack of riders a story about a certain messenger back in the day that was toting around a carton of “chocolate milk” when it busted open and soaked everything in his bag. The moral of the story was -rookies do stupid shit-
2007 “gasoline”
Working at a small legal messenger company when one day the owner/dispatcher asked all the riders if they were aware of any recent mishaps where they might have spilled “gasoline” on legal documents that were delivered/filed/returned to a very very large law firm in town where a legal secretary called to complain about the smell of her documents. This subtle euphemism in the name of plausible deniability, let us all know that he knew what was going on out there on the street and that we should be a little more cautious with “gasoline” around the legal documents.
2023 chocolate milk
Working at a large university, rolling around on an electric assist bathtub filled with mail as well as packages, posters, maps and business cards. I’ve recently been in a chocolate milk phase coinciding perfectly with Junior-Junior's move away from it. It makes a good snack. Last week I had a carton bouncing around in the cargo box for a day or two, which was a pretty stupid rookie move. Digging it out from under the mail I noticed the carton was rather deformed and dented but still intact. As I drank it down I chuckled to myself, visualizing the stacks of mail soaked in chocolate milk that I would have to explain to my coworkers and supervisors. But chuckling even more because it’s actually chocolate milk and not a euphemism for some other thing that would be harder to explain.
"The Tender 2500 is the solution for carrying all you can think of and more, while still being able to access the capillaries of the city. Who still needs a van?"
this poster was staring at me all day so I took a picture to make it last longer so I could ask someone that knows one like 87 or 39 or you two too as if you knew Dean. Not that Dean. That Dean.
A few weeks ago I took Junior and Junior Junior to a reading by Katie Yamasaki for her new bookShapes, Lines and Light. Junior Junior was pretty squirrelly sitting still for an hour in there, but Junior got a copy of the book autographed after patiently waiting in line. The whole experience was worthwhile and afterwords we walked back to the train and took a look at two Yamasaki buildings. The book is about Katie’s grandfather Minoru Yamasaki, the badass world famous architect from Seattle who went to Garfield High School and then on to UW, graduating at the top of his class in 1934. He then moved around the country working as an architect, designing many monumental buildings and projects including the Pacific Science Center here in Seattle and the Twin Towers in New York.
I’m no architect, but I’ve watched a lot of Brady Bunch episodes and I appreciate meaningful architecture and design. Like Potter Stewart said, “I know it when I see it”. As a legal messenger, I spent countless hours standing-by in and around the varied architecture of downtown Seattle. We could pick and choose where we wanted to hang out. I found myself drawn to the plaza of the IBM building and the lobby and surrounding plaza of the Rainier Tower. You might know them as 1200 5th and 1301 5th. Both buildings were designed by Yamasaki and both share elements found in many of his buildings, including an exoskeleton and bomb proof structural engineering built to withstand earthquakes and plane crashes. Ask me about controlled demolition. The shapes and lines and light and hard-to-describe feelings that Katie mentions in her book, are there in both buildings. I spent a lot of time pondering, thinking, loitering and drinking beer and-or coffee in the shadows of those two buildings downtown. Just a few photos from yesteryear don’t really convey it all. You had to be there. And you can still “be there” if you ever find a reason to go downtown these days, walk around 5th & University. Have a seat. Have a beer hiding in plain sight. Look up. Look around. Look at the shapes and lines and light.
a picture of a picture. a photo of a Tyler Goldsmith photo of Ethan & Andy standing outside 2101 like it's 1999. Because it was. I think.
cleaning out that file cabinet, I stuffed this in my pocket and then handed it to Andy at Recycled Cycles yesterday. Andy was a Bucky for a long time, but he's been at Recycled for a really, really long time.
among the news, interviews, faculty, advanced degrees, presentations, lectures and publications, down at the bottom of page 12 in the Fall 2022 Grinnell Anthropology newsletter:
Mark Pilder ’91 reports that he’s “rolling around the 700 acre campus of U Wisconsin delivering mail on a giant cargo bike. Holding an all-access pass to the gritty underbelly of a large state university... [and doing] urban archaeology focusing on discarded dental picks and KN95 masks.”
Udub this or UW that, you know, Seattle, Madison, Washington, Wisconsin, whatever it takes, plus or minus 2000 miles. Not bad for information gleaned from a recycled cardboard postcard scrawled in sharpie.
strategic withdrawal: any attempt to step from a why, however worthy, into whylessness
— as in going fishing without desire for fish, so that
desirelessness becomes the prey you’re catching
David James Duncan
“Strategic Withdrawal”
My Story As Told By Water 2001
I took this bike out for a stroll the other day after many moons collecting dust in the garage. It was a 30 pound single speed roll along Seward Park Ave, plodding along at 7 mph on 40 psi or less (slow leak up front) No backpack, no pump, no tools, no raincoat, no fenders, no lycra spandex. Getting some looks from the Rapha-Castelli bros mashing around the lake. I had both bike racks to myself at Chuck’s Hop Shop, before a gravel bike posse rolled up straight outta Swift’s instagram, literally, looking askance at my ‘91 RockHopper, or maybe it was my outfit ??? all wrong
Slow heavy bikes are great when you don’t have to ride uphill. The slow roll is not so much a change of scenery, just a different perspective on the same old shit, getting away from the rat race to the next train northbound-southbound-northbound repeating repeatedly. Away from the Mr McFeeley route rote rut. Away from the whys and closer to the whylessnesses.
The day after that slow roll, I was cleaning out a metric shit ton of recycling from my monumental file cabinet, when I came upon the David James Duncan essay “strategic withdrawal” from a 2001 book. It was nestled among old-older-oldest tax returns, keg receipts, Seattle Legal pay stubs and other shit I used to think was important. Someone special pointed this essay out to me in 2007 and I haven’t given it much thought since, but it jumped out at me and said “read me again, please” and as I did, it summed up my change of perspective on that slow bike ride. The this & that fit together like hand in glove or both hands in a pair of sweet gloves I found on the train one day.
In case you didn’t know, DJD is the author of The River Why as well as several other books. So it only makes sense that why, whylessness, fish, fishing, water and rivers pop up more than once here and there in his writing. Mark your calendar 8/8/23, DJD has a new book coming out. It’s called Sun House
this photo flew in from the 98225 last night. 37 sent it to me. A commentary on decision making, forks in the road less traveled, choices, priorities, favorites, this way, that way, either way, Nana’s Pudding not so much. A black & white filter would sort of weed out the kid in the red hoodie and leave us with a grayscale composition to ponder. butterfinger
I can’t ride by without slowing down to pay tribute somehow
sometimes I do
ask Sri Chinmoy a question
pinch his cheek
dig deep into his ear with a Q-tip
as you can see my Double Darn cap fits him really well
those ladies on the trail, out for a walk, rounded the bend and then, they got a look at me taking pictures of Sri wearing my cap. that’s when I put it back on my head and rode away on an electric assist bathtub
yesterday around 3:33 this photo flew in from Rip City. One of the guys from DANK bags sent it to me. As you can see it’s a commentary on composition, reality vs illusion, introspection, points of view, Las Meninas mirrors, consumption, product placement, brand recognition and consumer loyalty …sometimes you wanna go, where everybody knows your name…. and or …I’ll fake it through the day with some help from johnny walker red… Like 93 always said, just a bunch of pictures of 39.
If Shaggy and Dr 37 Mike toss in a photo, I’ll have a 2023 hoodie triptych, but this shot is a tough act to follow.
The Locksmith by Grey Wolfe LaJoie, is a short story that was published in The Threepenny Review #170. If I could hyperlink-hand-it to you I would, but you’ll need a digital subscription. This story is a gift that keeps on giving and if you can find it, read it. It appeals to me on several levels. The self-absorbed soliloquistic bike rides around town, punctuated by the petty details of horseshit customer service interactions, ring true.
loud and clear
right up my alley
day in day out
here are a few snippets:::
The locksmith is not allowed a driver’s license. He rides a bicycle from customer to customer, granting them entry. He likes to think about the number zero. He likes to think about time travel. He likes to think about shadows. He has watched many videos on each of these subjects.
The symbol for zero is meant to encircle an absence, a nothingness. But the unbroken circle comes also to connote, paradoxically, everything. This excites the locksmith greatly. He has learned much about zero. He has learned that mathematicians and physicists are unsure whether zero is real, whether it should be treated as a presence or an absence. It is an interpretive problem.
Since he was a very small child the locksmith has thought of time travel. There is one theory which accepts the flow of time as a cognitive construct. This is the locksmith’s favorite.
In particular, what the locksmith likes about shadows is that, although they occupy a three-dimensional area, we can see only a cross-section of them. The cross-section is a silhouette, a reverse projection of the object which blocks the light. But the shadow itself has volume, dark and imperceptible.
same sidewalk, different year. Across from 1001, some might say 1000 4th Avenue. Some say Koolhaus, or postmodern or dysfunctional central library. When I ask Junior and Junior Junior to pause for a photo they usually say “why dad? you’re so weird”. Five years later they were saying it again with no analog bikes in sight, just a few electric scooters up the block.
…streets were never dark, and they were flooded with an inflationary quantity of lettering, emblems, pictograms and other symbols; it was impossible to extract and retain any reference points, and accordingly every reference was simultaneously correct and incorrect; the writing system had regressed to a medium of illiteracy.
A few days ago my attorney informed me that Specialized canceled my Global Brand Ambassador status. Fortunately, my Miller Lite contract is still paying the bills.
Lucky I'm sane after all I've been through
I can't complain but sometimes I still do
Life's been good to me so far
$$$
Along my predawn commute to the mothership I spotted a dead roadmaster can of Michelob Ultra wedged just outside the escalator handrail in the U-District station. My brain began running the analytics, unable to compute, attempting to retrace the decision making process that went into the consumer’s choice at the corner store that led up to them pounding a 25 ounce can of that shit on their train ride. Were they worried about carbs and calories? Why does anyone drink that shit?
why ask why? try Bud Dry
why would I ever drink Michelob Ultra?
The only scenario that comes to mind: I’m in a small town in Iowa in late July and somebody hands me an ice cold can and I drink it because it’s free and it's cold and it’s in my hand.
I’m not out there rolling around looking for a new pair of gloves, they just seem to find me. Yesterday I ground-scored my newest new-to-me pair of Showers Pass gloves A while back I found a pair of Showers Pass pilgrim buckle gloves that were a bit small for me and I passed them on to my old lady. But they inspired me to buy my own pair in a larger size. Those are the gloves I wear at work on coldish days. For commuting these past couple winters I’ve been wearing a pair of off-brand gloves I found on the train one day. On really cold days I wear some real tree camo Cabela’s gloves I found on Walla Walla Road behind the IMA. Back back way back in the day, I found a pair of Isotoner gloves at One Union Square and wore them through several bike messenger winters.
Some of you may be thinking how gross it is to pick up a pair of gloves and start wearing them as your very own. But I’m a smart shopper and gloves are washable. Let me remind you that I rode public transportation every single day of a global pandemic. As a mail carrier I touch every door knob, handle, lock, mail cabinet and elevator button there is to touch in the 98195. I did the same as a bike messenger all over the core. It cracks me up to see germaphobes try to open doors with their backpack straps or push elevator buttons with a folded napkin. Sometimes I see them just wait helplessly until someone comes along and exits the door they want to enter, so they don’t have to touch it.
I draw the line on some groundscore items. I won’t touch hats or clothing item unless it’s a Grinnell Griffins Rugby t-shirt. Single gloves are sad in a lost puppy way like a twin separated at birth, and I don’t pick them up unless it’s to create a shrine and place them conspicuously on a stuck stick for their people to see them the next time around.
Gloves are overrated. Why should I put on gloves, only to take them off again? I’ll get a little chilly to avoid a hassle. Why should I climb that hill, only to roll back down it? I can’t scan barcodes on packages and type in POD destination codes on a janky iphone with a big fat pair of gloves on, so I’d rather leave them off. If I have to ride all the way to Warren G Magnuson Park in the winter, I’ll put on some gloves. But riding an electric-assist bathtub from Schmitz Hall to the mothership – 0.6 miles – when it’s 53 degrees and raining? no gloves needed.
Once upon a time I worked in a carbon fiber wheel bakery near Fremont and I had to wear at least one pair of gloves at all times, sometimes nitrile beneath another pair or two of protective gloves with a Dremel tool in hand. When that gig ended I had more than a strong aversion to disposable gloves, as well as respirators and safety goggles. I went on to wrench on bikes and I was happy to get my hands dirty, as I still am. Fuck rubber gloves. Seeing coworkers place their skanky used gloves on the table, as if they’re going to use them again makes me cringe more than a used condom on the train platform or a KN95 used as an asswipe on the elevator ala David Sedaris. Throw that shit away please.
I am grossed out by used disposable gloves sitting around. But I won’t hesitate to adopt a gently used pair of winter cycling gloves.Here and now 67% of my winter gloves are ground scores and I’ve got enough to get through a few more winters.
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