by Jeff Dieffenbach |
email me at dieffenbach @ alum.mit.edu |
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SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2010 Pizza, Harpoon, and Clenbuterol Regular and even occasional readers of the self-admittedly critical Bike Snob NYC blog no doubt expected a talk by the Snob himself to be equally scathing. At Landry's Bicycles of Boston on a rainy Friday evening several days ago, I joined a capacity audience assembled to hear formerly anonymous but recently revealed Eben Weiss skewer all things dropped, curated, and of course fixed.  (Crack O' Dawn/545 Velo rider and MC Andrew Steinhouse, at left, dopes with Harpoon while Bike Snob NYC Eben Weiss pitches Starbucks.) Fueled by complimentary pizza and Harpoon, the attendees settled into one of many folded chairs in a section of the store no doubt recently cleared of high-end Trek, Specialized, Cervelo, and Seven machines. Master of Ceremonies and Larry King stand-in Andrew Steinhouse, who had lobbied both Weiss to come and Landry's to host, launched into an engaging and entertaining Q and A format backed by visuals. 
A closer look at the MC and his guest, who was coupling his talk with a weekend cyclocross race in Gloucester, reveals much that might have gone unnoticed by the assembled.  (Product placements galore.) As expected, the back and forth touched on roadies, fixies, and hipsters ... with the bonus local color of Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown's Pan Mass Challenge tri bike.  (Photo credit: Crack O' Dawn) That Senator Brown's ride might inspire a comment or two from Weiss shouldn't have been puzzling--the "About Me" statement on Weiss' blog accurately describes his style:
I was a bit surprised when in his remarks, Weiss included himself as a target of his blog's fun-poking--if he's done that in his otherwise excellent writing,
I've missed it.
(Perhaps he was thinking instead of fellow cycling blogger
Fat Cyclist, who frequently and effectively deploys self-depracation?)
More unexpected, however, and more important, was Weiss's tone hewing less to the snarky cynicism of his blog and more to the upbeat manner of his recently released
(and misleadingly sub-titled) book,
Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling.
Twice during the evening, and consistent with his tone throughout, Weiss emphatically made the point that his wish was to have cyclists and non-cyclists alike escape petty day-to-day beefs and "rise above." Amen to that. Bike Snob NYC? Not in our fair city. No, it was "Bike Friend BOS" who sheltered us from the rain, entertained us, and had us thinking a bit. |