Additional to yesterday’s put up concerning the bewildering number of bicycles obtainable to the fashionable client, this morning the next story caught my eye:
Now, I wish 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 motorcycle. In case you’re a author, and also you’re a bike owner, and somebody needs you to come back to Vermont and trip a motorcycle, you must go to Vermont, and you must trip 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 elements and the very same geometry, so how may they not be?)
Most of all, I undoubtedly haven’t any drawback together with her recommending the bike. If she rode the bike, and she or he appreciated the bike, then she ought to give anyone keen on buying it the inexperienced gentle to take action.
So be assured I’m not impugning the author in any approach–fairly the alternative, in actual fact. If something, I’m un-pugning her.
Nonetheless, its essential to recollect this weblog remains to be known as “Bike Snob NYC,” not “Glad 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 really want the nine-millionth fully indistinguishable gravel bike that makes you sleepy simply taking a look at it? What number of of this stuff can the human race presumably take in? 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 tons 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 absolutely 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 in opposition to 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.
Nonetheless, 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, relating to the variety of bikes bought, that $1400 bike goes to outsell the $11,000 flagship three to 1. It’s the type of bike that offers somebody their first style of gravel using or bikepacking. The one which helps an grownup fall again in love with using for the primary time since childhood. The bike a mum or dad buys for a youngster simply entering into the game. And the bike you see each Saturday morning, leaning in opposition to the wall of your favorite espresso store, well-loved and unfazed if it ideas over.
I imply sure, it’s true, a brand new rider could very nicely get one in every of these GRVL AF (I assume that’s gravel-ese for “Gravel As Fuck,” what an terrible identify) 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 type of mitzvah or performing altruistically right here. Quite, for some motive they merely really feel the necessity to convey their boring-ass gravel bike over right here to The US of America (Canada and Greenland pending) to compete with all the opposite corporations already promoting equivalent boring-ass gravel bikes.
Why? I dunno. Progress? So that you gained’t stroll into your native bikes store (for those who 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) however it looks like we’re perhaps a yr and a half from all the bicycle business, media included, turning into one nice huge drop-shipping operation run fully by AI.
Glad Friday!
