ok, this happened on saturday when i was concussed and less than all my sandwiches at the picnic.
working at the shop and a guy comes in and asks the other staff member about track frames.
eelco, in a fit of insanity that rivals my second marriage, suggests he head back to the workshop and talk to me about it.
i am confronted with tall, new dreads, new black clothes, shiney skateboard, coffee, and a definite lack of intelligence.
“do you guys sell track frames?” i’m asked.
“not in stock but i can order in whatever you want, and we can sort sizing and whatnot out for you as well. is it for track or street?” says i.
“oh, for street. i want to get a fixie!”
“ah, and you want to build it up from scratch, or buy a complete bike?”, me again.
“i’m not sure. i want to find out some stuff, so can you help?”
and i, in a moment of weakness, and knowing better but being concussed, say “sure, ask away!”
what followed was 30 minutes dredged from the deepest circles of dantes hell.
first question was what actually was a fixie, and it went down hill from there.
without going into the gruesome details the general gist of it all was that some friends of this muppet live in sydney where they are “well into the edge scene”.
they got fixies cause fixies are all about “rebellion and street culture and sticking it to the man”.
now remember that i’m not kidding with this.
one phrase, apart from the one i just used in the prior paragraph, sticks in my brain like a spike driven deep from the outside.
“i’m heading to crumpler next to look for a sick bag, they look well cool”.
further questioning revealed that this person hadn’t ridden a bike in several years “not since i was a kid” said the 21 year old, had no skill or experience, didn’t know what made a fixie a fixie, had heard from his friends that they were cool since they all got one in the last few weeks, and wanted to know if i could get get parts color matched so they would look good with the bag.
i am not kidding.
i asked how long he’d been skating.
“about 8 months” was the reply.
i’m trying to remember all the dumb ass things this knuckle dragging moron said, but it all boiled down to “people say fixies are cool, so i gotta get one!”
i almost got fired for the way i finished the conversation.
basic overview of the conclusion is
- you sir, are an ass-hat of the first water!
- you should never be allowed to procreate.
- you and your friends should all buy fixies so when you crush yourself trying to ride them, i can buy the parts cheap.
trying to explain to someone who doesn’t ride exactly why we ride fixies is almost impossible.
if they ride then you can talk about simplicity, connectivity, flow, feel, all the stuff we babble about when trying to convince people we have got it right and aren’t just to dumb to work out how to use shifters.
if they don’t ride at all, how do you explain it.
i tried suggesting that he buy a single speed instead, and go from there.
“will it look like a fixie tho?”
dude, what the fuck do you care, you didn’t even know what one was!
he left pretty soon and i think the only reason i’ve still got a job is because i work for parts, work weekends, and amuse the boss.
when this ass clown goes to another shop, and they sell him a chrome bianche pista cause thats what all the cool guys ride, and he mows down mother theresa trying to slow down brakeless cause thats how the cool guys roll, i’m the one who’s going to get hassled by the cops for it because we’re already being blamed for the chief inspector almost getting hit by a courier when it was actually just some kid on school holidays.
every time someone gets hit by some hipster numb nuts riding like a fucking 'tard, we take it in the ass for a month.
every time some muppet riding a 5K’s an hour trying to work out how to slow down his track bike clips a car, we get blamed.
2 hours later the exact same thing happened again except this time the dreads were a little older, the muppet friends were from melbourne, and i think i was a little less polite.
I AM NOT KIDDING!
and this was all going to go somewhere profound, but now i’m too mad to think where that was.
fuck it.
i’m going to go buy a drop frame womens touring bike with racks and panniers for work so no-one thinks i’m a messenger. it’ll be easier.
