Justify This – Bike Snob NYC

One of my guilty pleasures is reading tortured reader comments on other bike blogs, and from the site that brought you “white supremacy in the mountain bike space,” here’s someone who is too guilt-ridden to purchase a new bicycle frame:

It is sad to me that climate hysteria has broken the brains of an entire generation. There are all sorts of good reasons for purchasing an older used bicycle frame, from saving money to using perfectly good parts you already have that are no longer compatible with current frames, to simply undertaking a fun project But if your concern is primarily “environmental impact,” why is channeling the money you save to “classy parts or street tacos and beer” somehow better than buying a new frame? The frame is a one-time expense, and you will ideally use it for many years. Meanwhile, street tacos are a hastily-consumed items often consisting of the meat that is supposedly destroying the planet and that are prepared in a box that burns propane day and night, while beer is produced using shitloads of water and barley and then shipped in giant trucks that sit idling in bike lanes. Please note I am in no way denigrating tacos and beer, both of which I consume without a shred (mmm…shredded pork…) of guilt. However, a quality frame and fork is an investment in your cycling pleasure that can conceivably last you a lifetime, whereas you’ll shit and piss those tacos and beer away in a matter of hours.

As for the “classy parts,” these have less “environmental impact” than a new frame how exactly? (Especially when you factor in those wasteful tacos and beer.) The comment above was made in reference to a post about someone who took an old Rock Hopper frame or something, re-finished it, and fitted it with all new parts. Hey, like the beer and tacos, I fully support restoring old bike frames. What’s more satisfying than undertaking and completing a custom bike project? Nevertheless, buying a bunch of new bike parts and putting them on the old frame you refinished does not make you some sort of environmental hero; it just makes you exactly the same as everyone else who bought a brand new bicycle, except that you did it much more slowly. In fact, by the phony moral code you’ve created, it’s probably “worse” than buying a brand new bicycle, since no doubt every single painstakingly chosen part on the bike made its way to you separately on a different FedEx or UPS truck.

Now, once again, I am in no way denigrating any of the following:

• Tacos
• Beer
• New bicycles
• Vintage bicycles
• New components
• Vintage components

Moreover, I don’t mean any disrespect to the commenter. On the contrary, I mean only to lift the veil of senseless guilt that hangs over so many consumers of bicycles and bicycle-related products. Whether you’re putting new battery-powered dingles and dongles on your new carbon wonder frame, or becoming the ninety-billionth person to “resto-mod” (barf) and old mountain bike frame in the hopes that it’ll get featured on some bike blog, you should do without “struggling to justify” it. You should also probably take the additional step of considering that one of the main problems with “justifying” things we like is that vilifying the stuff we don’t like is often a natural consequence. Your hobbies and indulgences are good, while someone else’s hobbies and indulgences are bad and should be banned in the name of the climate. Eating and getting around and making money having fun requires extracting shit out of the ground and killing shit no matter how you do it, and the dead meat you’re eating is no less dead just because it came out of a groovy food truck that sits there idling all day in front of a weed dispensary.

I guess this is a roundabout way of saying we should live and let live…unless you’re a pig or a cow or a goat or a chicken, in which case you should die and get yourself inside a tortilla where you belong.

Speaking of refinished bikes…

(…and you’ve really got to see that finish in direct sunlight to fully appreciate it:)

…recently I praised the humble 28mm Pasela. So would it not then follow that a 32mm Pasela would be even better?

I dug these babies out of my Tire Pile over the weekend…

…and overall I much prefer them to the “gravel” tires I bought years ago and yet in that time have never fully embraced:

The 32mm Pasela feels much better on the road while giving up relatively little on the dirt in terms of traction–and, most importantly, it clears the brakes much more readily when removing or installing the wheels* thanks to the absence of knobs.

*[Insert your “That’s why rim brakes suck and disc brakes rule” commentary here: _____________.]

Of course the key to being able to fit plumpish tires to the Milwaukee is the medium-reach brake:

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly in the past, it makes me angry that the bicycle media waited until the eve of the death of the rim brake to champion the medium-reach brake:

I know I said bike people shouldn’t feel guilty, but that doesn’t apply to the media:

For as a wise man once put it:

Literature is replete with symbols of guilt. “Out, damn spot!,” utters Lady Macbeth. “I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is the beating of his hideous heart!,” cries, uh, the guy from “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The bike industry should be similarly tormented by the medium reach brake, which on road bikes solves all of the problems the disc brake purports to solve, but which they resolutely refused to stock on any their bicycles. Instead, all the road bikes had short reach brakes with no clearance, or else if it was a drop bar bike with clearance it had cantilevers.

The one problem they don’t solve is braking on carbon rims, though of course that means nothing to those of us who have no interest in using carbon rims.

When it comes to mixed-terrain road riding, we’re used to hearing that Jobst Brandt is the “Godfather of Gravel” (barf), and of course we all know people like Grant Petersen have long championed more voluminous rubber. But when it comes to using wider tires specifically on racing-oriented bikes, for some reason it seems like you rarely hear about Andy Hampsten, who was doing so long before it was fashionable:

See, way back in 2008 he was using “long reach Shimano brake calipers” to “clear the giant tires,” which of course is how people in those days described using medium-reach brakes to clear moderately-sized tires:

Hampsten Cycles also sold road bikes with ample clearance well before gravel became a marketing category, and it looks like you can still get a medium-reach rim brake frame from them today:

Obviously rim brake bikes of all kinds are vanishing, but if you like racy road bikes and medium-reach brakes your options for a new one are virtually nonexistent, especially if you’re looking for one that’s modestly priced. As of now you can still get a Milwaukee:

And besides custom stuff like the Hampsten I think maybe…that’s it? All-City used to sell one, but All-City is no more:

Of course you can still get a road bike with plenty of clearance thanks to the the Rivendell Roadini:

[Photo: Rivendell]

Though strictly speaking that takes long-reach brakes, and I’m talking specifically about racy road bikes here–not like you couldn’t put together a racy Roadini, but that’s defeats its own purpose:

And there’s the Crust Malocchio:

Though that’s kind of a strange bike in that it’s designed for a mix of medium- and long-reach brakes or something:

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it seems like a cool bike, but again, I’m talking about racy road bikes here, and if you want a traditional anal-retentive non-quirky road bike with sporty geometry then the Crust is probably not going to appeal to you.

No, the future of the medium-reach road bike, such as it is, lies in boutique builders and interests. For example, I see Ultraromance is planning to market a medium-reach road bike:

This is a good thing, because when people like me advocate for “old” technology we’re derided as bitter has-beens who don’t ride hard enough, but when Ultraromance does it he’s hailed as a genius. I realize this makes me sound like, well, a bitter has-been, which is fair enough, but I mention the bike only to give credit where credit is due, because he’s certainly got the right idea.

In any case, more than perhaps any other bike right now, the racy medium-reach road bike is very much in a buy-and-hold phase.