Fixpert

OMGosh! First thing I read this morning was about this evil fuck in LA that deliberately hit cyclists with his car (not that uncommon, especially in LA unfortunately). So I got all angry and was gonna post a bunch of stuff about it.

But THEN! I came across this sweet sweet video of homies riding fixed gear through the streets of New York City. Yay for these dudes and dudettes and yay for positivity!! It flushed away all the bad feelings in a jiff. You can watch this smaller version here on Fixpert, or you can watch a larger, nicer version of Empire on Vimeo.

Empire from Empire on Vimeo.

I got choked up with a wee bit o’ nostalgia watching this video, thinking back to 2001-2002…my blissful-though-painful days riding through the streets of New York as a bike messenger. This video does a great job of capturing the challenge of density that is special to New York. There’s just so much stuff going on all around you at any given moment, and it’s not just cars. TONS of foot traffic, jaywalkers, food carts, pizza delivery bikes, rogue pigeons, elephants, parades, taxis, space aliens. It’s all there.

I should also say, I was never nearly as bad-ass as these guys. My specialty as a messenger was the suffering part — riding in all kinds of bad weather with 40 lbs on my back with a satisfied smile on my face, “now THIS is livin’!” I’m good at the suffering.

via Absentmindfully

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 11:07 am and is filed under Bike Lane. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.