Playboy Fixies

As I sit and write this tonight, I have the Vuelta playing on Universal Sports, and am listening to the commentator criticizing Alexander Vinokourov for a new blog he’s just started because according to him "The blog is so yesterday.  TWEETING is where it's at now."  Let's hope for my sake he's wrong.  But the discussion of Vino is an interesting one.  This is the same Vino that was once called the “bulldog” for his tenacity in relentlessly attacking Lance Armstrong and his Discovery team in trying to get on the podium in France in 2005, was later busted for doping, retired saying he would never race again only to pop up this year, days after his suspension was lifted, demanding to be let back on “his” team while wearing this kit: A jersey with his own picture on the front in his former Astana uniform with the words "Vino-4-ever".

By the very nature of a professional cyclist’s kit, he or she is a walking billboard, an advertisement for the sponsors. So what does it say to wear an image of yourself on your jersey?  Vino was criticized heavily for this kind of seemingly shameless self-promotion.  But doesn’t Superman wear a giant “S” on his chest?  Granted, a large “S” is a little more subtle than a silkscreened massive visage of his own dippity-dooed hair and cleft chin, but still, would the good people of Metropolis have preferred if Clark had logos for the Daily Planet all over his uniform?

This is not to say that Vino is like Superman.  Far from it.  If I had to pair him up with a superhero - I think it would be more like Aquaman with the blonde hair and the constant slimyness.

Vino's jersey reminded me of when I was about 12 years old and for my birthday, my grandparents got me a sweatshirt with a reproduction of a photograph of myself on it.  As if it weren’t bad enough, the picture they used to have printed on this cotton monstrosity had been taken about 2 years previously (again on my birthday) when I was eating a big piece of cake.  This was the same summer when I spent many of my days on my bike on some trails in the woods by my house.  It was in these very woods that I stumbled upon a hidden stash of Playboy magazines owned and secretly stowed away by my neighbor, an asshole high school kid who once had shot in me in the ass with a BB gun, and was thus due for some well-deserved retribution.  Therefore, I moved the stack of skin-mags to my own secret location, and proceeded to spend the rest of the summer learning what naked women looked like.  I came to appreciate the early 80’s naked female form  in all of its natural, un-enhanced, tan-lined, occasionally imperfect splendor.

Earlier this year, a friend of mine bought a current edition of Playboy (yeah - that's right - a friend) and being curious, I took a peek through it.  I’m not sure what I was really expecting, but what I saw was strangely foreign to me.  Nothing but flawless oceans of evenly-amber tanned skin stretched over silicon and collagen implants and injections (respectively).  Where were the real women?  I felt like a COG (see Question #3).  Looking at photographs of some industry fixies on display at the Eurobike 2009 this week was oddly reminiscent of looking at that recent Playboy - with all of it's amber-toned shiny fakeness.

This one looks like some little kid just puked up a bunch of cotton candy after being on the tilt-a-whirl all afternoon at the local fair.

And an obnoxiously brightly colored Cinelli....available in all the colors of the rainbow!

The irradescent metallic paintjobs on these Tange's make them look like a piggy pile of Japanese beetles in a love fest.

I'm left wondering where are the real bikes?  Is it just all this fake fluff? 

And it seems like everybody is trying to jump on the fixed gear craze these days.  Check out the bicycle line from Urban Outfitters: a clothing retailer for the individual who wants to be a hipster RIGHT EFFING NOW!

Not only can you design and order your brand new fixed gear and have it shipped to your door in 7 days in any array of flourescent putresence,

Exhibit A

But you can also order a range of clothes to make you look like a complete hipsteresque tool.

Exhibit B

And just in case your new slime-green fixie and rakish chapeau don't clue in all the kids that you are, in fact, too hip to be square, you can also get this:

Exhibit C

But I beg to differ, Mr. Hip.....some bikes do pollute.

Pedal on....