Additional to yesterday’s submit in regards to the bewildering number of bicycles accessible to the fashionable shopper, this morning the next story caught my eye:
Now, I need to be completely clear right here: I’ve no drawback in any way with the author touring to Vermont on a press journey for a motorbike. If you happen to’re a author, and also you’re a bike owner, and somebody needs you to come back to Vermont and journey a motorbike, you must go to Vermont, and you must journey that bike.
Moreover, she is totally right that accessibly-priced bicycles are much more essential to most of us than five-figure superbikes with ugly-ass forks or no matter:
And she or he’s proper that every one these ultra-high-end bikes are principally all the identical anyway. (Not that I’ve actually ridden any of them, however all of them use the very same components and the very same geometry, so how might they not be?)
Most of all, I undoubtedly don’t have any drawback along with her recommending the bike. If she rode the bike, and she or he favored the bike, then she ought to give anyone fascinated by buying it the inexperienced mild to take action.
So be assured I’m not impugning the author in any approach–fairly the other, actually. If something, I’m un-pugning her.
Nevertheless, its essential to recollect this weblog continues to be known as “Bike Snob NYC,” not “Comfortable Inclusive Bicycle Lover NYC,” so after all there was one thing that irritated me, and it’s the bike itself:
Even accepting that accessible bikes are a very good factor, did the world actually need the nine-millionth fully indistinguishable gravel bike that makes you sleepy simply it? What number of of these items can the human race probably soak up? We’re already previous the purpose the place the biking media is pushing 28 (!)-bike sub-$2,000 gravel bike round-ups and “testing” them by the lots of. HUNDREDS! And but right here’s one other one, precisely like all of the others, solely this time from the world’s largest big-box sporting items retailer:
Once more, I’ll remind you I totally assist the author. Moreover, I’m additionally not morally troubled by commerce, capitalism, company development, personal wealth, burning fossil fuels to go locations in airplanes, or any of the opposite issues folks rail towards with their smartphones, utilizing the social networks run by the very folks they so despise. I went to Bentonville, I rode the Walmart trails, I visited the Walmart artwork museum, I loved myself very a lot, and I’ve no qualms about it.
Nevertheless, I do discover the ensuing bikes mind-numbingly boring, which is why I can’t actually relate to this:
However whereas the revenue margins could also be small, on the subject of the variety of bikes bought, that $1400 bike goes to outsell the $11,000 flagship three to at least one. It’s the sort of bike that offers somebody their first style of gravel driving or bikepacking. The one which helps an grownup fall again in love with driving for the primary time since childhood. The bike a mum or dad buys for a young person simply stepping into the game. And the bike you see each Saturday morning, leaning towards the wall of your favorite espresso store, well-loved and unfazed if it suggestions over.
I imply sure, it’s true, a brand new rider could very properly get one in every of these GRVL AF (I assume that’s gravel-ese for “Gravel As Fuck,” what an terrible title) and start a life-long love affair with biking. And I hope they do! (Start a life-long love affair with biking, that’s. I’m principally detached to which bike they select.) Nevertheless it’s not like Decathlon are performing some form of mitzvah or performing altruistically right here. Fairly, for some purpose they merely really feel the necessity to carry their boring-ass gravel bike over right here to The US of America (Canada and Greenland pending) to compete with all the opposite firms already promoting similar boring-ass gravel bikes.
Why? I dunno. Progress? So that you gained’t stroll into your native bikes store (in the event you nonetheless have one) and purchase a gravel bike from a smaller bike firm (if there nonetheless are any)?
I don’t imply to get all paranoid and dsytopian right here (that’s a lie, I completely do) but it surely appears like we’re possibly a yr and a half from the complete bicycle business, media included, turning into one nice massive drop-shipping operation run fully by AI.
Comfortable Friday!
