Freak Magnet

Multitasking

2012-01-28T02:55:00.000-08:00

Lotta people might think it's weird that my dog drives a car...
What's even weirder is that he wears a hat.

No Exceptions

2012-01-16T18:55:00.000-08:00

So I'd just worked a 60+ hour week. It was my first day off and in a damn while. I headed to SF General to see my buddy Toph One on my new SE PK Ripper single speed (freewheel, thank you very much). Toph was wrecked by a hit and run driver last Saturday night on the way to his house.

Still, it was cold but sunny, and there are taco trucks everywhere, like lost apostles of Jesus:
Love was in the air.And so was death, and general broken-ness. There were a few stuffies zip-tied to this fence--and a bunch of empty zip ties that once held flowers, I'm guessing. Drive by "oopsie" carnage? Shit's pretty real around 22 and Harrison.
Toph was in great spirits, though his pelvis was as broken up as a melting ice floe. You'll never have a baby again, Toph! Your childbearing years are behind you, sir.

Hardy har. He's got a couple benefits coming up--the one in the link above is the first. The second benefit is at Som bar on 16th Street this coming Sunday, January 22. I'll be there, so, clearly that's where you hot bitches wanna be seen.

Even if you don't know Toph--and everybody knows Toph--you should come through. Biker or not, show your love for a solid guy with solidly bad luck. Toph has an car magnet in his ass--he's already broken a collar bone and a hip on cars.

On the way back from General, I saw a 6'4" gay dude on rollerskates with furry legwarmers, a top hat, and two foot tall bunny ears.

Squint, and you can see him:
Donnie Darko got nothing on everyday SF.I got stuck between a gaggle of hippies on squeaky shit bikes on my way through the wiggle. Every time I passed them, I'd get caught at an intersection, stop, and they'd pass me back. Finally I just sat at a park bench and smoked a bowl. The smell of hippies and the sound of squeaky, neglected bikes is basically my description of the lowest circle of hell.

Newly lifted, I made my way into the park. As I approached the stop sign at the Conservatory of Flowers, a rabid pack of street shit rat kids coalesced out of the trees like spectres of extreme bunkness. They had a couple of unleashed brindle pit mutt hippie dogs (sorry you drew the short straw, buddies--at least you're not in China), and the scrawnier of the two decided two blaze across the street into my path at Mach 3. I didn't know if it wanted to play with me or eat me.

Immediate application of massive braking. I run the original Dia Compe MTB levers...they basically came off a 1973 Hodoka. Huge. OTB status, forthwith.
Right away, I wondered if this dog was going to start grubbing on my tender bits before I could get up. Fortunately, it was more about playing than anything else. A girl ran up to me, saying "Oh my God, are you okay?" while 6 or 7 other hippie shits fucked off into the treeline like spoiled American Yetis.

I stood up and stared at her for a few heavy seconds before I enquired:

"Have you heard of a fucking leash?"

"I have a leash!" she said, indignantly.

"Well why don't you put it on your fucking dog?" I retorted, before adding a none-too-poetic but all-too-true, "Fucking hippie shitbags!"

This is why my front door has this on it:
What Would Lemmy Do? I know he was in Hawkwind and all, but seriously: hippies ruin everything. If there's oatmeal, a hippie's going to shit in it. It's like they think their crap is brown sugar.

Handclaps?

2011-10-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

Let's see...Gibson SG? Check. Disco ball? Check. Multi-kulti psychedelic bootie bitches? Check. Laugh-In style trip out graphics? Check. Magic carpet ride with druid wizards and guy in chef's hat? Check. Completely bad ass metal riffage? Check and double check. Skull mask dude? Check. Porcelain mask dude? Check. Bare-chested leisure suit Travolta-esque disco hip bumpin' with bikini babes? Check. Subliminal tigers? Check. Chef's hat guy solo? Check. Porcelain mask guy solo? Check. Gargoyle gremlin dude? Check.

"Dy-no-mite"?

Check.

I just blasted uphill on the trails through the Presidio jamming out to these guys. They should've been huge. Well, at least a little huger than Monster Magnet or QOTSA.

I want to eat a half sheet of acid and listen to this on repeat for the next week.

Handclaps? With all this rad shit, how could there not be fucking handclaps, bitch?

My Ridiculously Picturesque City

2011-09-26T10:01:00.000-07:00

Lately, while on various two-wheeled missions, I've been impressed with my ridiculously picturesque city. It's not anywhere you can walk down a (semi) major urban thoroughfare and see a hot girl shitting on a street corner toilet. Check dude's suspenders. And a belt? No slip grip for Uncle Charley.
Dolores Park beer and a bowl session:What you can't hear is the sound of dirty arrhythmic hippies trying to export the "drum circle" concept to every spare square inch of urban open space.

Ever wonder how hippies always manage to fuck up everything? Literally everything hippies touch turns to shit.

I spotted this while peeing in a strange new alley in the Mission. "Enjoy," indeed.
Reading "Happy Hour" by Denis Johnson at Thee Parkside whilst getting happy. Bonus points for inadvertent Olympic ring beer stains.
Found this ominously named corporation in China Basin, down by the stadium.
Check the Chihuly glass chandelier:
That wacky one-eyed glass-blowing pirate! Not pictured: perplexed corporate guard types, wondering why some biker scumbag was taking photos through their looking glass.

Rustbuckets by the Ramp:
I used to fish here sometimes. You can catch stripers, perch, and probably hepatitis if you step on the right syringe.A Minor Forest:
McCovey Cove:
The Bay Bridge is my favorite:
Giant bow and arrow:So this is weird. I just randomly rode out this pier and stopped in front of this light--one of probably around 50 or 100 lights. And my friend Tork had a tag on it, from before he lived here, he tells me. Shitty picture, but you know, small world (of vandals).
So there's a big, sheet metal '50s rocket on the Embarcadero now. If you look closely, you can see the random huswifes doing pilates on the railing.
(Some of the) sea lions have returned to Pier 39. Who's watching whom? And who's the herd animal?Maritime Museum is a great art deco building:
This guy's camera confused him:
Aquatic Park pier:
Not sure what this park is called. It's up on the hill above Fort Mason. Never really noticed this statue before:
WAY OUT!This quaint family flying a kite restored my faith in humanity after I was unfortunate enough to see an old man with his foot in an old woman's lap. She was cutting his toenails with a giant clipper that looked more like a fucking tin snips. People do this stuff. In public.
SF turns basically any asshole with an iPhone into some kind of goddamned Ansel Adams. It really is the great visual equalizer:
This is a photo of Chris Schramm working on a folding bike. What an unlucky bastard! Realize, if you ride this type of freakish circus contraption, bike mechanics think you're an asshole. Really.
I found this awesome sticker on a fork protector on a boxed Specialized. It says "DO NOT remove before installation of wheel." Which, unless you're MC Escher, is impossible.My post work smoke spot:
This is in the Presidio by the golf course. Usually foggy. It's part of my ride home trail:
This is the secret place in the Presidio where the Army plants cadavers for use in wars:
Truffula trees by Mountain Lake Park:
The old Carousel building out by the zoo. Used to be a Doggie Diner:
Typical San Francisco paranoid schizophrenic street genius shopping (c)art sign. When is someone going to curate a show of these:
They rebuilt the busted windmill in the park. Now the creeper midnight blow job spot is way more picturesque:
Hey Mickey, come on over, we're having a party:
I think this pleasant little stretch of middle-of-the-street trees is on 32nd and Fulton:
I took this shot while walking home with a flat. Had a tube, tire levers, and no pump. That's using the old bean:
Because you never know when you'll need to wash your mitts:Man down!
Early is missing. Check the Mission near the newly reopened Palace Family Steak House, I guess:
The view from Bernal Hill. Or, as my old roommate's dad used to call it, "Dogshit Hill":
Bo dog investigates the dog grave on the backside of Bernal:
SF is always going to be my favorite. If I don't have time to put a bike on the car and go to some "destination" riding spot, I can always ride a few blocks into the park and find some fun singletrack cuts:
And double wide dirt, next to the madness of heavy machinery:
Solo. One guy, one bike, no cups--moving through the trees:

Danny "Magoo" Chandler

2011-09-19T20:38:00.001-07:00

Always at least one step over the edge.

Sorry Fellas

2011-09-18T13:16:00.000-07:00

Sorry Jeff Carroll and Ron Wilkerson. Anthony Sewell was the first guy to do no handers.
May he rest in peace. Super radical peace.

Stu Who?

2011-09-16T18:14:00.001-07:00

Stompin' Stu Thomsen, bitch!

Too Bad Life Just Ain't Fair

2011-09-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

I'll tell you who Chris Collins is, bitches! It's this guy right here, with the thumbs. Or, rather, that guy, yonder, shirtless, with the thumbs, and the lacy ladypanties. Really, there's a little Chris Collins in all of us. Imagine of Jesus was a baldheaded lunatic from bumfuck Ohio who liked smokin' weed and eatin' pussy. You know, a salt of the earth bastard who might turn water into wine for the sake of a really bitchin' party; or knock a motherfucker out with one punch for being a classless, glass-throwing asshole. He'll smoke his last bowl of weed with you, and would give you the shirt off his back if he could remember where he put it.

And, not to put him on blast on these here interwebs, but this motherfucker has had even shittier luck than me this year. First, he got hit by a car, over the top, Starsky and Hutch style. Ripped all the tender bits up inside his knee: ACL, MCL, all that shit. Most of that shit. More than that shit--maybe some extra shit too. Meniscus? I don't know man, I'm not a fuckin' doctor. Things were rotten in Denmark.

Then, right before he was supposed to get surgery, he gets pneumonia.

Then, somewhere in the midst of all this nonsense, scabies. Yeah, scabies. I said it. No idea how or from who--just sat on the wrong chair or fucked the wrong crackhead on the wrong abandoned mattress--who knows where these things come from?--and itchy and scratchy are off to the races.

Things were not looking good for our hero.

Then this fella steps up out of the shadows:

[These last two images are by Miller Thomas]

His name is Colton and he won't pay for drugs, sex, office supplies, or hot dogs, so give it up smooth. He goes ahead and organizes some kinda punk rock shindig for the benefit of his cousin, to wit, Christopher Collins. (They're all cousins in Ohio, right?) The Buckshot--the bar where I work--hosts it, hot dogs are grilled, DJs Vinyl Hayride and Jonny Landmine show up, as do the bands Street Justice and the White Barons, and, well, shit gets a little loose. For once, the Buckshot looks like an actual punk rock bar inside, not a theme night at a USF dance.

I went bike riding that day and got stuck in traffic on the way home, so I missed Street Justice, but I did get to see the rock and roll juggernaut known as the White Barons, which is always a shot glass full of awesome sauce:
Which, in laymen's terms, means whiskey.
The rock? Consider it broughten:
Lately, Kenny G's hair has found an entirely cooler place to hang out:
Find a girl with faraway eyes:
Raw power I can feeeeeeel it:
Q: How far we goin' back?
A: Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back.

Colton had no fun. Too stressed out playing Johnny Organizer-of-charitable-events-guy. Here he is, grinding his teeth from stress:
This might be my favorite shot of the night. Enter the maelstrom:
The Devil's blood came seepin' through the walls:
And Miss Eva was not scared:
Some sort of man-ilingus went down:
Electric freakout ghosts started flying around the room:
Then Colton went into a trance:
In layman's terms, whiskey:
Singalongs were of the epic, NYHC variety:
Which, as we all know, invariably end in dudefests:
Somebody let in the riff raff. On the right is Sean Ramirez, of the eponymous principle:
The other guy is the Herculean Chilean, Rocky Lobos.

Joel, a.k.a. Jonny Landmine, lookin' like the ghost of Bobby Peru:
Josh, manned the door for a hot second:
And, lest we forget, the celebrity cripple, which is to say, the man of the hour, and his barbed wire birdcage full of loot:
Seriously, people, ones? He's moving back to Ohio, not Fresno. Give the motherfucker some gas money. Ones should go directly to the G string you know he's wearing.

Talk about beauty and the beast. I'm thinking we should use the donations to buy this pretty lady some contact lenses:
Gus from Fist Fam wildin' out:
Yeah, there were fuckin' hot dogs. You thought there weren't? Didn't see Colton paying for any, that's for goddamned sure:
Chris, you're a great guy with shit luck, and we're going to miss you in Fogtown.

When you're broken down and beat up...

When you're coughing up blood and your balls itch...

When you're stuck between a flatulent homeless dude and an old Chinese woman with a pillowcase full of live chickens on the Stockton bus...

Just thank God you're not French:

Which is to say, I could see you building a crazy contraption like that, but you'd ride it a lot faster.

I Shall Return

2011-08-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

"Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul."

--General Douglass MacArthur

Ride It Like You Stole It

2011-08-21T20:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I fancy myself a bike mechanic. Of sorts. After a fashion.

But I'm not a bike mechanic. This guy's a bike mechanic:
That, in the words of a certain Chris "Mad Dog" Moeller, is what you call "bicycle soul riding." Which, in addition to Sammy Sandals above, also looks looks like this:
Which brings me to what I call the Sean Ramirez Principle, after my McMexican coworker at the bike shop. One day I was putting a new 11 speed Campagnolo Super Record groupset on some rich guy's custom titanium Seven. His "old" parts that were currently on that bike were going on his custom carbon Calfee.

"If I had a bike that cost this much, I sure as shit would work on it myself," I said.

"That's the thing though," Sean replied. "Guys that can afford bikes like this spent their time learning how to make money and guys like us spent our time learning how to work on bikes."

Ouch, that is some true ass shit. The mechanics I work with ride everything from high end Intense downhill bikes--expensive, but hooked up on the cheap because he knows the guys--to lovingly restored old Raleighs, to impeccably-tuned second tier brands like Fuji and Jamis. They know how to work on their own machines, which we all have between 5 and 15 of. There are precious few custom frames between us because we know precious little about the stock market. Or dentistry. And, since we are immersed in the ass-end of industry hype--fancy new titanium derailleurs that don't shift, drivetrain designs that are intentionally obsolete two years after they come out, custom Ti frames that flex like wet noodles--we don't waste our paltry paychecks on the emperor's new clothes. We're smart. We have skills.

Yet we've made horrible life choices.

Quite clearly.

This isn't Sean Ramirez. Matter of fact, this wasted youth somehow owns his own business.
Yeah: it's a bar. But Sean Ramirez was in the room when this photo was taken.

I put together shit like this all day:

Specialized S-Works Venge. $8300 out of the fuckin' box.
Hint: someone here didn't major in Creative Writing, and it wasn't me.

Where have I been? That's always the question. I either haven't felt like checking or haven't had the time since I was about 7 years old. This post was going to be my "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" post, a Freak Magnet summertime classic, but it's getting late, I've got to go to work, and I've made a vow to make these shorter and more frequent.

I've been broke, I've been broken, and I've been broken up with. I've been camping, hiking, riding, and sleeping in the literal and metaphorical dirt. I've been working.

Here's the bottom of my foot, fresh out of the cast:
And here's an 8 1/2 x 11" sheet of paper covered in dead skin:
I'm still here, motherfuckers. Others have fallen harder, and with greater frequency:

"A man can fall many times in life, but he's never a failure until he refuses to get back up." --E.K.

Hoffman at Woodward West, killing his ankle on a lazy Saturday.

Until next time, I love you, I hate you, fuck you, fuck me. Hugs? And, if you see Kaye, can you tell her...

[Whatever it is you need to tell her.]

Sometimes I think all the magic is gone from the world. Then I look at my rainbow unicorn toenail clipper, undoubtedly made by the delicate fingers of a not-long-for-this-world Malaysian angel child, and I think the magic can never end.
Keep on riding it like you stole it from some motherfucker who had more money than balls.

Thanks

2011-08-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

You left me your Newport butts.
Out on the patio, covered in dog piss.
That's the last I've got left of you.
So, you know...thanks for that.

Greg Ginn You Tired Old Cunt

2011-08-20T03:11:00.000-07:00

You tried so hard to destroy the man you became him.
82,200 results in less than half a second. Negativeland, Dave Markey...you fucked everybody. YOU KICKED CHUCK DUKOWSKI OUT OF BLACK FLAG! Everyone wants Henry to be the dick, but you've played this tortured genius shit to the hilt. You and Lars Ulrich should make a Black Keys-like blues duo called Take the Money and Run.

Sonic Reducer

2011-08-19T18:40:00.000-07:00

I don't need anyone
Don't need no mom and dad
Don't need no pretty face
Don't need no human race
I got some news for you
Don't even need you too

I got my devil machine
Got my electronic dream
Sonic reducer
Ain't no loser
I'm a sonic reducer
Ain't no loser

People out on the streets
They don't know who I am
I watch them from my room
They all just pass me by
But I'm not just anyone
Said I'm not just anyone

I got my devil machine
Got my electronic dream
Sonic reducer
Ain't no loser
I'm a sonic reducer
Ain't no loser

I'll be a pharaoh soon
Rule from some golden tomb
Things will be different then
The sun will rise from here
Then I'll be ten feet tall
And you'll be nothing at all

--Dead Boys

Fuckin' Nazis

2011-08-14T15:29:00.000-07:00

And their goddamned UFOs.

R.I.P. Eagle Tavern

2011-06-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

Punker supergroup OFF! features Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks), Dimitri Coates (Burning Brides) on guitar, Steven McDonald (Redd Kross) on bass, and Mario Rubalcaba (Earthless, Hot Snakes, Rocket from the Crypt) on drums. They played the second to last live show at the (unfortunately) historic Eagle Tavern. The Eagle--featured in the very first post of this blog--has been ousted from their spot by a greedy landlord who wants to get rid of a landmark in favor of condos or some silly straight club that will probably tank in three months.

Anyhow, went to the show with my lady, got in a weird argument on the patio with her during the opening band, who's name I can't remember (they didn't sound too compelling from the patio), made up, went in, punked out, took some photos.

Culture Kids came on before OFF! and fucking killed it. They've got a raw-boned early Bad Brains DGF type attitude. It was refreshing to see a new punk band that wasn't formulaic or cutesy pop.OFF! hit the stage with a vengeance. Keith immediately started his celebrated "I'm in a Box" Marcel Marceau mime act. Great fuckin' shirt:
This was followed hard upon by his "Surfin' Tsunami Claw." Anyone who knows Josh from the Buckshot think there's a similarity here?All up in yo grill:
Dimitri:
Steven McDonald, lookin' hella sexy. I think dude behind him might be rubbing one out:
Good times were had by all. The Eagle was no stranger to hot man on man action:
OFF! proved themselves to be greater than than the sum of their celebrated pedigrees and brought the noise with fury. Thank you, gentlemen.

In other news, I've zip-tied a piece of tire to the bottom of my cast and am hobbling around crutch free against my better judgment:
The idea was to be able to ride around the neighborhood, but if my girlfriend were to find out I was doing this, she'd go ahead and chop my foot off, so I probably won't. I want to get on this bad boy a.s.a.p:
Traitor Ruben with Hayes Stroker Ryde hydraulic discs, DMR chromo wing bars, Wellgo MG-1 magnesium pedals, 9 speed cassette with single front ring, Ultegra derailleur, and XT shifter. This tits. Got eight days left before I'm in a walking cast and I can't wait.

Deliciously Soft or Rock Hard?

2011-06-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

It's a long and winding road. Or, perhaps, a long and winding drainage culvert where they'll find your mangled body. Luck plays a big part.
Just being morose. Been off my feet--at least one of them--for over a month now, and the more I get used to it, the more I realize it sucks. Oh well, things can always be worse:
My friend Gabe watches Big Trouble in Little China every night before bed. Every fucking night. And why not? We all need something to believe in, some soul food for our spiritual gas tank, if you will. Even Jesus needs a burrito now and again.
It was this type of next level nourishment I had in mind when I saddled up with my friends Josh and Sam and headed to the 3rd Annual Old School BMX Reunion (and tractor pull?) at Woodward West. That whole "saddled up with my friends thing" sounds more gay rodeo than I'd intended. What I mean is we drove Josh's car down. Which is a subcompact, with three dudes, so I guess gay is as gay does.

Would you share an inflatable mattress with these guys?
Lucky I didn't have to.

We headed to Fresno first to ride Mosqueda Bike Park. Of course, had to stop at my spot El Cutija in Los Banos on the way down. We had some tacos y burritos and made sure they came with a Dan Quayle style tomatoe or two.
I didn't get any photos, but Sam and Josh interviewed/video'd some cats for the BMX Riders Organization site, one of them was Kink-sponsored local Chad Osburn, who works at the park. In reality, he fucking owns the place:

I said goddamn!

Turns out the Super 8 (or was it a Motel 6?) that Josh booked right next to the freeway was a hotspot for whoo-urrs. Who knew? Found this empty case of over the counter rock hard boner enhancers in the parking lot:
We had to stop by Target. This dude was out front, so we knew that everything was safe. Captain Fuckin' America is gonna break necks and bust balls on all terrorist motherfuckers:
Check this Mongoose shit bike with a thousand spokes:
My first real BMX was built around a Mongoose Motomag frame. How the mighty have fallen. The thing is, they've always made bike shop quality, workingman's priced bikes. Pacific (since bought by Dorel) pissed in the brand's gene pool when they put the name on tin foil bikes in Wal Mart. (Whereas companies like Murray, Huffy, Next, and Hyper have attempted--with varying degrees of success--to take the opposite route from mass marketed shit to fair to middling.)

The good news is, homeboy Martin Wendt, formerly the guy responsible for keeping Solano Cyclery deep in good BMX stuff, is now the BMX brand manager for Mongoose. He's hooked a few Bay guys up with awesome prototype Goose 24 street bikes. Here's some pics of Trent's:
And now, I come to find out that he's largely responsible for the design/spec/inspiration on the limited edition 2011 Kos Kruiser reproduction.
One of the first legit BMX race cruisers, Jeff Kosmala's Kos Kruiser ruled (and so did Jeff) in the years between souped-up Schwinn beach cruisers and the 24 inch wheel. (Not sure if that was a Mongoose innovation...seems like the TwoFour came awfully early in the process.)

The above kit is the limited Oakley trim. It comes with brand new Oakley B1-B grips (Oakley have been doing limited runs), and these sweet Son Lite Turbo inspired hubs in red anno:
There are only a dozen of this bike in the red/gold trim, and they're all going to be either given away at various vintage events or donated to charity raffles. Which is awesome. The production run will be 20 bikes in chrome/silver/black and another 20 in raw/black. Worldwide.

They've got modern features like integrated head tubes, V-brakes, etc. No, I don't work for Mongoose. Yes, I want one. Hella.

Anyway, I'll let that boner subside and get back to the glories of Fresno. They had this giant warehouse supermarket that reminded me of Wal-E or Idiocracy:
Seriously, look at that fucking place. Doesn't it just scream "Welcome to Costco, I love you"?

We were, of course, there at midnight. Miles of freshly waxed floors with sterile, almost holy fluorescent light shining down on them. The horizon line disappearing with the curvature of the earth, inspiring thoughts of pure, MSG-sodden, nitrate-infused defeat: "I'll never make it that far." And everywhere, pasty white fat people pushing carts into the mist rising off their inevitable, ultimate doom at the hands of too many of these:
They don't even look like food. Thank God they're "Deliciously Soft," though: my teeth are starting to fall out from all this fine livin'.
I don't even remember the name of the store, Crazybrains McClusterfuck's or something like that, but it was definitely a circus. They even had an old fashioned claw game in the front:
Wonder how many babies get stuck in that fucker a month? Probably not too many with those deliciously soft sugar cookies on sale. I long for the days of the honestly dishonest snake oil salesman.

Also not to be missed at CBMcC's was the vending machine with SKULLebrities dead famous people stickers. If you have a low attention span and smoke a fair amount of weed, like me, this type of shit is high-larious:
Who's in the line up, eh?

Let's see, we've got John Lennon:
Jimi Hendrix:
Tupac "Thug Life" Shakur:
Well, the guy on the right is The King, but who's that on the left? A premonition of Johnny Depp (seen here as Captain Jack Sparrow) buying the farm?
Heath Ledger:
At first I thought this was Michael Jackson, but since he's the next one down, I'm going to have to say this is the lost member of Josie and the Pussycats. You know, the original drummer that OD'd and they buried in a shallow grave in the Mojave Desert?
MJ was one fucked up individual. The people named Elvis "the King." MJ dubbed himself "The King of Pop," then fucked the real King's daughter. This shit is Shakespearean, y'all. It's like Hamlet with transsexuals:
He shall rise again:
Woodward felt a little different this year. I hadn't been riding BMX much before I went, working 50+ hours a week, and I felt sketchy as hell. Seeing the OG guys ride was definitely still cool, but it wasn't as nifty as it had been. Once I accepted the fact that my riding had, rather predictably, regressed and not, rather magically, progressed, with my time off the bike, I relaxed and had more fun.

Of course, you know how we do at Woodward:
First day vert ramp action. Think this might be Dominguez:
Coco Zurita:
Simon Tabron:
Jay Eggleston:
The next day they opened the fuckin' Megaramp to anyone foolhardy enough to try it. You needed to have a full face helmet and sign a waiver. The roll in on this is equivalent to a nine story drop. It's followed by a 50 foot gap jump and a 27 foot tall quarter pipe.

The view of the roll in from the quarter deck:
Look at the little tiny people for perspective.

As you might guess, I didn't sign the waiver. However, a few of my friends did and were okay. Lots of guys started on the middle, on the plywood covering the gap. Apparently carving the quarter wasn't that hard, in that the transition is huuuuuuge, so it was somewhat forgiving (though knee-breaking in sheer G force). Next year I will definitely get on it.

Hoffman will be breaking himself off on Megaramps until he's 90, if he lives that long:
Check the fucking mogambo jumps they're building next to it. Look how small the pick up truck is next them--that was a jacked up 4x4"!
This kid is like 11. No shit:
So's his little hesher buddy:Trent plays Jesus on the deck:
Ben Snowden:
Stylee. Think this could be Blyther:
Meaty:
Nyquist:
Let's just say, you hit the gap at speed:
The legendary king of all things gnarly, Hugo Gonzalez, did an ass-plant on the deck and some guy tried to help him up:
Who should be chilling beside the flatbottom but the first guy to successfully land a backflip on a bike, the real Cru Jones, Jose Yanez:
Who immediately took off his shirt to prove that, even in his 50s, he still fuckin' had it. You can't see too well unless you click on the photo to enlarge it, but his tattooed forearm reads "my RAD self":
I happened to be wearing the Vans RAD shirt that day:Blown off the pedals at 35 mph can't be a very "clean underwear" type feeling:
Nyquist topedoes himself down some slick Skatelite:
Only to be redeemed by a huge 360. Yeah, that's the launch you're looking at:
I was a split second too early on this. Fucking Cam Birdwell is a savage. (Soon to be) fully extended Superman seat grab. He also flipped the gap.
Wilkerson was on a custom aluminum Pork with the latest version of his GrooveTech system:
He also had these prototype Lifesaver Lollipop style pedals:
The last day's party is always a fun throwdown. It's a bit of a drag that there are so many kids, because this sausage fest could definitely use a few dozen stripper poles and the talent to use them. More sword fighting here than at a Renaissance Faire. I feel bad for the two girls that work for Woodward--they get hit on non-stop.

Joe with one of his vintage scoots, a candy red Hutch Trick Star:
More of Joe's rides:
Just in case his stunt double weren't real enough for you, Cru Jones alter ego Bill Allen was in effect:
Didn't really talk to him. Seems like a cool enough guy, though. Must be a bit weird to make your living off a cult B-movie that sunk off the radar without a blip and has never been officially released on DVD but is adored by a subculture you aren't a part of. I guess it was either old school BMX reunions or ass sliding conventions.

Large Ray in effect, heckling of course. Not sure who...maybe a photo of Drob's mustache.
Sam, Josh, and Iain in the back of Trent's minivan. Ragin' with Satan:
Hugo on the big screen. Drob wasn't the only one with a mustache:
Shad from Goods, Aaron, and a few other luminaries.
Flatland sesh got underway on the dance floor as usual. Bicycle boogie, bitches!
Nourie turned everything into melted glass:If I invented this move, I'd have called it the "Ice Cream Machine":Jose Yanez with a drunken, grandfatherly--yet eternally rad--megaspin:
Later, he got to breakin':This guy rides the same bike, brakeless, on everything from a 14 foot vert ramp to flatland. And, as you can plainly see, he shreds:
Here's Dennis, taking better pictures than me:
To be honest, flatland progressed way beyond me, well, sometime after the rock walk ceased being cool. That's why I like to make up names for the tricks. I'd call this the Electric Glide or the Slutty Suzie:
This little dude got a bit out of hand:
So someone threw him on the floor and made sweet, orangutan-like gay sex with him. I told you it was a sausage fest. Dan Hubbard has been holding it down for the bicycle source and earning a living doing shows since the day after cherrypickers were invented. (And yeah...that's really the name of this trick.)
Way back:
If this can be a Miami Hopper:Then I think I might call this a fluffernutter:
Matt Hoffman's cane was made out of Skyway T/A ("totally aerodynamic") tubing with an Oakley B1-B as a handle. So rad.
I honestly thought Iain and Dave Nourie were going to make out:
Sam and a fairly lit Ron Wilkerson:
We hit the hangar to say our goodbyes and take a few pics on the last day. Josh Kumli on the vert ramp:
Think this is DMC:

Ron Wilkerson:
Ben Snowden gapping the deck from mini to bowl:
Brian Blyther:
Dennis with a bowl to bowl carve:Trent ragin':
I promise never to ignore you again:
Long live the new blood:
Sam and a mustache-less Drob give a salty salute before the drive home. Until next year, fuckos:
And now for the randumbs. Check this vintage Mountain Goat in front of the Buck, locked up with what appears to be a plastic chain. The ever popular reverse bar end set up. I wish I would've beaten this dude to the garage sale:
47. I don't care you fatuous cunt:This is without a doubt the worst fucking tag I've ever seen. Seriously. And I've lived in a major metropolitan city for the last 20 some odd years. Please, give up and go die:
Gonna have a soul shakedown party, tonight:
Made it to the casting ponds a day too late:
Well, it's late and I've gotta work in the morning. Into the void.

I Have Transcended Both Pain and Fashion

2011-05-11T18:28:00.000-07:00

I haven't been much of a Freak Magnet lately--more like a worker ant. Two jobs, ten to twelve shifts a week, 50-60 hours, plus trying to sell/fix bikes out of the house. Trying to put on my big boy pants and be a grown-up, I guess.

This is basically where I work for one of the jobs, so it can't be all bad:

And the delicate strains of the world's tiniest violin waft gently through the firmament.

The key is, to not let it get to you. I've never been in Guantanamo Bay, but I imagine if I were stuck there like those other hapless assholes, I'd ultimately have to come to an understanding: "How can I not make this suck so much? How can I be happy in this moment, as fucked as it is?"

In addition to hanging themselves, the luckless few wasting away at Guantanamo because they once lit OBL's cigarette (he's dead, BTW) or threw a rock at an Lynndie England or something, well...in addition to hanging themselves these nowhere men, humble creatures of Limbo such as they are, like to pray. Five times a day, ass to the west and head to Mecca. This is meant to show fanaticism to Americans. Who actually fucking prays? On their knees, even? On their very faces? Good lord, how gauche. Jesus, that shit went out with macrame tube tops and brown nail polish.

Well, what the fuck would you do? In the words of Black Flag in "No More": "No, I won't believe that this is all/ I'm not happy, I'm not free." If you're sitting in a tropical chicken coop, marinating in your own juices, you'd better get your mind on that next level, if you can't step up with the corporeal self. Even if you're convinced it's a delusion. Especially if you're convinced it's a delusion.

Fox News loves to show Muslims praying: it highlights their unimaginable piety next to our weekend football game Bud Light Catholic guilt Sunday rituals. It makes them other, it stamps them FANATIC.

"What kind of a lunatic would pray five times a fuckin' day?"

We ask, indignant, an army of armchair quarterbacks, a battalion in La-Z-Boys, where we sit and feast, wearing the colors of our Sunday blood tribes, screaming at grown men in tights as they play war games in some faraway land.

I'm no apologist. I'd have killed the motherfucker myself--with my thumbs--if I could have. But really, what an afterthought. A let down. Parade him through New York in stocks or let me yawn already. It's the same game we've played since the fucking Crusades. Do you know what those bastards are doing? They're desecrating everything we hold dear: They're shitting on the Chevrolet, the apple pie, and your mom. We gonna let 'em get away with that, boys? Put on your jocks, team, it's time to saddle up and sodomize.

Help me: I'm fuckin' bored.

So yeah. Don't get wound up, man. Hate to sound like a flaccid old hippie, but sometimes it helps to sit on a bench, look at the waves, and smoke a bowl or two. Meditate. Take a step laterally instead of marching down the grid iron. Put your mind in a different jar, if only for a second. I'm not against traveling the world, seeing what version of meat and bread is popular in the Outermost Cusp of Eternal Bumfuck Nowhere, but it really is true: wherever you go, there you are. Stuck, motherfucker. So you can be a bitch and suffer, or you can smile and say, "well, at least I got the other leg." In the words of Ram Dass: "Be here now."

This is known. This is science: a motherfucker can take shit too seriously.

It might be time to laaaaaay back. Have a couple beers with the guys before you go home. Smoke a bowl sittin' on the dock of the Bay, ride up that monster hill without stopping while listening to Closing Time. With your mind off your money and your money off your mind.

Don't have a meltdown here, Mr. Man. Stand tall as the world turns to a lump of mushy shit with Glenn Beck planting a flag atop it. Just know when to blow off a little steam:

Or maybe blow a little smoke, if that's your get down:

Do what you've gotta do to get loose, just be loose:

Real loose. Walk to the edge and let the wind blow through you. But know when to step back:

Rise above. Hit it on that next level. Transcend, if you will:

Take yourself from a 10 to a 25 within seconds.

Ask yourself: What Would Lemmy Do?
Props to Michael Madfes for the above image, which is available for a nominal fee by clicking on the last link, along with some other randomly awesome and awesomely random goodies.

As for me, I've had so time to stop and smell the flowers, provided they smell like bad breath and reruns of the Streets of San Francisco. You can't deny Maulden any more than you can deny the steamroller of wah-wah driven funk of a good Quinn Martin intro:

8 screws, 1 plate, and 22 staples later:
So I broke my ankle working at the bar. Tried to take a guy down, and ended up taking myself out. Ten minutes before last call. The night before I was supposed to head off to Boggs Mountain to go camping and mountain biking with my lady, followed by a couple days fishing in Clearlake. To celebrate my birthday. My 40th birthday.

I think I'm hearing that violin again.

This is right after I broke it, in the ambulance:
And here's my friend Brett, who just happened to be at work that night, just in time to hook me up with a swell dose of morphine.
He seems to be saying, "Just slide on off to La La land...gonna be a smooth landing."

Here's what my ankle looked like 10 days later, when the splint came off:
These are called "fracture blisters." They appear opposite the break, which is the side of the most soft tissue damage. In the words of Dr. Deng: "Imagine a knife sitting on piece of meat." It's the same thing with a broken bone on soft tissue, and if you don't get something stabilized soon enough, a non-compound break can become an open wound. The blisters are caused by swelling: the fluid has to find somewhere to go, so ultimately it seeps through the skin. The top blister was popped before my new cast went on.

That'll put you right off your fuckin' lunch, looking at that thing.

I've done some other things besides break myself off, but I think I'm going to try to filter that through a few posts. No use trying to slam it all in one mega-post. Who's got the time?

Here are a few random pics, starting with the view from the Saratoga Gap trail:
We took Shanti riding. He was a fuckin' trooper, though he did eat shit in the first 75 feet of the trail. Here he is looking like he's going faster than he really is:
Ocean Beach graffiti. My friend Tomek shot this:
Last weekend there was an old school show at Lake Cunningham skate park. There were some beautiful bikes--I'll post pictures within the next 6 months. Maybe.

Remember though, the '80s weren't entirely a golden age for BMX:
Fuck, who am I kidding? BMX robots were raping bitches all over the wasteland.

New blogs forthwith at a more reasonable pace.

Stay gold, Pony Girls and Pony Boys.

Jumping Off the Mood Swings and Breaking My Leg

2011-03-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

Before we get started, a simple question:
It's really hard to find that special someone for, you know, the little things.

Lately, it seems like everything's been difficult...broken cameras, boots on my truck, extreme broke-assedness. Then, about a half week ago on Saturday night, around 2:15 in the AM, when any self-respecting Dudley Do-right would be getting his salad tossed--with or without jelly--I had a jumbo fucking freakout at my job. I'd worked 60 hours that week between both of my gigs and I wasn't in the mood for taking shit just for the sake of taking shit. So instead of calmly saying, "Let's leave this for another time, shall we?" and walking out, I proceeded to throw my bike into no less than three doors on the way out.

I don't like throwing bikes. You know how some people miss a trick or wreck and throw their bike? Never done it. Never did that with a skateboard, either. But, for whatever reason, I snapped. Threw my bike into things, punched a wall or two:
Stupid. I don't know what it was. Usually, I can swallow anything. Just sort of shrug it off, "Yes, I see your point, thank you sir can I have another?" and I'm cool. The person who set me off I actually consider my friend, and I won't go too deeply into the situation except to say it struck me as a classic case of transference. You know, kicking the dog. He'd had a shitty night, and shit rolls downhill, and at the bottom of said hill is a turd-covered pooch to kick. Rather than lose my mind on an individual, I choked it back until, right as I laid a hand on my bicycle, throughout my life the very tool of my emancipation from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I had a psychotic episode. Lost my shit.

On a Freudian level, it was pretty goddamned expulsive. I mean, it would've been less embarrassing had I went ahead crapped my pants, instead of whirling around like the Tasmanian Devil on angel dust. I could've claimed the flu and trundled home in my dirty pantalones to smoke a bowl in the bathtub with the remnants of my dignity.

Anyhow, yeah. Whoot--there it is. Ugly admission time.

The Buckshot is so fucking lenient, man. I like working there. I like my co-workers/bosses. I take full responsibility for my outburst, and I'm both stoked and amazed I have a job. Still wondering what exactly brought it on. Perfect storm of stress, depression, and, I don' t know...maybe the new meds. They' might not be working so hot. Who knows? It was a profound moment of dukkha, of off-centeredness, of dissatisfaction with the world and my place in it.

Speaking of perfect shitstorms...the Tsunami was some truly wild, Noah's Ark style shit:

And,no, I'm not Glenn Becking it and saying it was some kind of divine retribution for X, Y, or Z. But the it was definitely a deluge of biblical proportions. Looked like a Michael Bay CGI fuckfest, except it was real. My heart goes to all the folks in Japan who are suffering.

Some people have real problems, I guess.

In terms of the added nuclear threat, let's not get hasty on the tripping out thing. According to noted expert, Nuclear Boy, the reactor has to take a shit, which reactors can never do, but it might only have to cut a fart instead:

So, yeah, I've turned a corner. I've had my emo public pantshitting, and I'm moving the fuck on. As part of the Brand New Dunc, I picked up a new job wrenching at Roaring Mouse. This is the view about a quarter mile from my work:
During the day the folks at Shimano send me cryptic dirty messages via the codes, acronyms, and marketing hoo-ha they print on their parts. Have you ever had a "2-WAY RELEASE"? It's twice as good as a happy ending:
Saw Devo for the fourth time in my blessed, blessed, life:
De-evolution. It's a fact, monkey man!

The night ended at Taqueria Cancun, as many of the best do. This is what it looks like after last call while you're waiting for tacos:As if you didn't know that already, huh? It's always that blurry, but it's only in black and white if you're really faded.

In other good news, the casting ponds in Golden Gate Park have been drained for cleaning:
The bad news is, it's been pissing rain. And there have apparently been people in the lodge until around 4pm. But it's daylight savings time, and it can't rain forever, so hopefully some sessions will go down before they get refilled. I'm wondering if the space between them can be gapped... Looks like it.

Here's some pictures of Drob gettin' down. Photos poached from Dennis Dowling, as usual, since, well, you know what happened to my camera... Den takes better photos anyway:
Classic style right here, yo:
Young kids can't handle fastplants like this. It melts their fuckin' brains:
Curb Dogs Forever, Forever Curb Dogs.

Before I head off to the Mouse to build some bikes, I'd like to show you what I currently have for sale. Let's start off with this beaut of a beach cruiser, branded for the Italian digestif, Fernet Branca:
San Francisco sells the most Fernet outside of Italy. Bartenders love it. I think this stems from "what should I drink?" type people. Your surly bartender will pour out this magically black Italian concoction of fermented herbs and mushrooms, and your half-ass bar orderer will cease to have "one of what you're having." Personally, I only drink Fernet for what it's intended: to help me digest. After a big steak, you really can't beat it.

In any case, their branding is pretty fuckin' cool: very old school, art nouveau kind of vibe. Purty:
Don't want to get your pantleg dirty when you're riding your babe on the bars to the beach (or to the bar):
Ass magic:
Three speed Sturmey Archer internal hub:
Actually, you might want to ride two babes on these wide boys:
It's like you rode out of a poster, circa 1895:
Get your hands on this bike and you're guaranteed to have a heavenly time with your friends and lovers, even if they're not of your species:Going with that old school, white tire vibe, we've got a city-cruiser Specialized Rockhopper single speed conversion. I call this type of set-up a "party bike."
You've got a Wald rack to haul your beer, and a big fat horn to make sure you get to the throwdown in on piece (worry about getting back later):Stylish and reasonably cushy saddle:
New Origin 8 cranks and sealed Hoffman Sole Mate pedals:
Only one speed, as drunk people find shifting confusing:
Brand new 40 hole Alex TA19 wheel in the rear will take any number of accidental curb drop offs:
Fat Duro brick tires to help you with your balance. Tektro Oryx brakes with Cane Creek flat top levers front and rear:
Lightning bolts and shit:
This silver graphic outlined in yellow on the blue purple frame makes me want to grab my balls and yell "Hooo-hooooo!" in falsetto, a la Michael Jackson:
12 pack, comin' through! Yeah, you best get out of the way, sucka!
As an added bonus, she'll still get you to work the next day--and fairly quickly too:
Moving right along to a 57cm Pake Single speed with another Wald rack (what can I say? I love 'em):
Velo Orange levers, woodgrain (!) lock on grips, Nitto bars, and tweed brake housings (!!):
The grips aren't actually wood, so they feel good:
The vintage Middlemore saddle is made in Coventry, England, so it'll look great with your 14 hole oxblood Docs, Sta-Prest, and braces:
Loud, proud, and punk! Hell, one of the guys from the Business probably made this fuckin' seat:
He didn't make the sealed cartridge hubs, though, that's for sure:
Campagnolo cranks and ring, and a reasonable gearing (39-17) means you can get around expediently without busting your ass up hills:
Brown anodized bear traps look tough and keep grippin':
Maxxis Xephyr meats--long lasting and quick:
Tange Prestige tubing, yo:
Redline tensioners keep it tight, while White Industries freewheel just flat out rules. These freewheels retail for $80--this one is only lightly used:
Beauty, eh? You know you want her. (And yes, the rear wheel is a flip flop, so the bike can be turned into a fixie in about 5 minutes. You'll have to do that on your own, though...)
Here's a Dawes single speed I built my friend Patrick. He kept complaining about how heavy his old bike was and how much it made his pussy hurt when he rode it...
Okay, maybe not the pussy part. Har har. The thing was, his bike had drops and a 52-16 or some ungodly gear. This sucker has DH riser bars and a zippy 44-17 gearing. It's also aluminum with carbon forks, as opposed to steel on steel like his last ride.

The brake cables do a yin/yang kind of thing. I dig that:
Cannondale brakes, Bontrager carbon fork:
Turvativ Holzfeller cranks--pretty much the only used part--Wellgo pedals, Chopsaw sprocket, some kind of Taiwanese painted chain where the company painted the rollers as well, causing a minor red flake snowstorm:
Frame is ball burnished with a clear coat. Super sweet welds: Kinesis, bitches! Made in Taiwan, of course, but what isn't these days? Your fuckin' mama was made in Taiwan, I heard...by robots.
Diggin' these seats, except for the "end zone" graphic, but that should wear off quick enough:
The best chain tensioners ev-ah!
Vuelta Zerolite wheelset, CST meats:
That's one happy black man with a super non-hurting pussy:
Well, that's enough of my builds for this installment. Buy something from me, you fuckin' bastards. I love you! But I mostly want your money.

P.S. I love you!

Lotta people have sent me this graphic:
Pretty spot on, I'd say. I think Mike Giant did it...pretty sure I saw it in the Portland Upper Playground show he was in.

Speaking of SF bikes, look at this wild ass frame I spotted at the Devo show:
It's hard to see, but there are twin top tubes. It's like an upside down Quadangle crossbred with a mixte.

Let me throw down some graf and street art pics, then some randoms, then I've got to go to work again.

This was carved into the dirt in the concourse between the de Young and the Academy of Sciences. Fuckin' sooooo tough. Tuff, even. I think I might have to get a tattoo of this with the word "TUFF" below it:
Neckface?

Clearlake, man. Place is the fuckin' 420 zone. Excuse me, the "420" zone. Though a dime bag of speed will get you a tattoo from a guy named Rusty and a blow job from your future (toothless) wife. Hell, a dime bag of speed will get you a tattoo from your future toothless wife...she might be toothless already.Little notes, left on the street. Keep up your self esteem, okay?
I love random wheat paste shit like this. At the same time, I guarantee you it was pasted up by a 23-year-old art school student who recently broke up with her boyfriend, is thinking about dabbling in lesbianism, and whose favorite band is The Faint. And you just know that bitch is wearing a headband right now:Ocean Beach seawall mural is the tits. CHING CHONG CHONG motherfuckers!
Not sure if this actually says anything, but the style is awesomely retarded--reminds me of the old "Dave" pieces. It's literally got everything. Gene Simmons, martini glasses, fuckin' ice cream cones:
Peter Criss smokin' a doobie:
Okay, if definitely says something--is the "M" throwing gang signs? Is that an "R" with the horns up?
DBL O P RYE UMR? Something like that. Who gives a fuck?
Geary. Cool sticker, even though it's obviously done by a 20-year-old girl who still shops at Hot Topic. Is that a Pac Man ghost?
Sidewalk. This is the name of a guy's goth band, no doubt. [Never call them "goth," though--he'll get pissed. Say "darkwave."]:Hanging on a door in the Mission:
Loving yourself is important, especially if you're a Siamese space skullstronaut:
Fuckin' death machine!
One of these butterflies is doin' his own thing; one of these butterflies does not belong:
To the randoms! Or the Batphone--whichever is more handy.

They don't call them blue bellies for nothing:
Male blue bellies, by the way, have two dicks. Who knew?

Presidio:
Been hanging onto this for awhile. It's an Abu Ghraib Christmas tree:
Homeboy had a knitted Grateful Dead sweater. Yeah, seriously. When he caught me snapping a photo, he told me about all the time his mom spent on it:
Street justice:
Stay tuned for the crying of lot 49:
House doily:
Now, for the fam.

Bo pretending he can drive:
Dolly and the pink Bug:
Lucas turned one a couple weeks ago. Already pimpin' the stunna shades:
Well, that's about it for this installment. Hopefully I'll get something up before I go to the Old School BMX Reunion at Woodward, April 1-3. If not, I'll talk to you then.

Is It Me You're Looking For? Or Charlie Sheen?

2011-03-10T11:19:00.000-08:00

Ah, Facebook.

It's a lonely person's smoke signal. It sends your gray depression up into the blue sky, "It's 2pm, I just woke up. I don't feel good. I'm not sick, really, but I do not feel good. This song by [whoever] makes me feel [better, or self-satisfyingly worse], please check it out."

Then a voice from out of the ether says, "Wow, I like that song too."

And you've had some kind of interaction with what you have to assume is a discerning intelligence, maybe human, hopefully not an algorithm--at least not an inorganic algorithm--and you feel a little better. It's almost as though you had a human interaction, but, mercifully, you were spared the sturm und drang, the tension in your heart muscle that signifies the possibility of failure.

There's no failure in Social Networking, silly! You throw out whatever desperate, aching, misanthropic solipsism you want, and someone will validate you: "Hey, all right. I like this. I like you. We are lonely and aching in much the same way. What medication are you on?" Facebook makes it okay for a grown ass man or woman to say, "I need attention." All, miraculously, Jesus Hall-eh-fuckin-lujah!, without the contaminants--both emotional and microbial--of mouth to mouth, eyeball to eyeball communication. All smoke signals, thick black tendrils of ash, the particulate of a slow burn, twisting 'round one another before blowing away.

Well, after the avalanche of FAIL that has swallowed me up of late, it's no wonder I slipped in oil from my upstairs neighbor's car and blew my fucking ankle up:
Looks like there's a fuckin' baseball under there.

Then shit got colorful:
Until, finally, my toes turned black, which is hot, in a quasi-gangrenous kind of way:
All this right before the Swans show. I've been waiting to see Swans for, I don't know...forever? I made it, of course, with some help from Miss Laura. Here's an artist's rendering, via iPhone:
That is kind of what that song felt like, so it's not too bad a rendering.

The idea, I suppose, is to fake it until you make it. And, "make it," I mean bangin' seven gram rocks and finishing them because that's how you roll: WINNING! You have one speed, you have one gear: GO!

Yes, folks, in the words of my friend Cheryl Eddy, illustrious film writer for SFBG, Charlie Sheen "transcended celebrity status and is now a folk hero." So a guy likes to carry a briefcase full of cocaine and party with porn stars until he has to be hospitalized--and, really, then only occasionally--ain't no reason to fire the man. And can you honestly find me one human being who gave a fuck about Two and a Half Men? That show was a cocktail of pure failure--the only reason it stayed around so long is that, to quote Thoreau, "most men lead lives of quite desperation."

Charlie Sheen's post-shitcanning interviews, on the other hand, have been a smoothie of unadulterated WINNING (with a free seven gram boost of pure Columbian flake). I call upon TBS, or MTV, or VH1, or FX (that'd be an easy fit) to give Mr. Sheen a half hour a week to get coked to the gills and rant. The ratings would make those mild-mannered panty-sniffers at CBS weep into their Metamucil. Quiet desperation is a bore: give me the Sheenie One and his loud, self-obsessed desperation.

Sheen vaulted over folk hero status to the immortality of a god, from whence he will no doubt slide into the pit of unmemorability. He became an internet meme. Now, don't tase me for saying this, bro, but while he's clearly the meme of the moment, if not of 2011, two months from now all of us--those who didn't buy the T-shirt, at least--will be asking "Charlie who?"

But for now? Send in the clowns! We need a good, honest hedonist now and then to remind us of life's folly. Did you see that bitch squirm when he mentions doing coke? It's like he was saying "moist panties" over and over. And you know he did a bump off her nipple as soon as the interview was over. Hollywood is full of faceless hypocrites. Sheen is H.L. Mencken meets Rodney Dangerfield via a clapped out actor who reached his zenith in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (all right, Platoon, if you must). He tells it like it is while at the same time being perfectly willing to insult your wife.

He's been turned into a parody of Bil Keane's Family Circus, which, as everyone knows, only approaches the Galaxy of Funny when bastardized:
And his quotes have been substituted for the text in New Yorker cartoons, which, as everyone knows, only approach the Galaxy of Funny when read from an appropriately high tax bracket, and/or when they have Charlie Sheen quotes substituted for the text:
Finally, he's been turned into a disembodied, gacked-out talking head random quote generator:
Wait, I guess he did that last bit to himself, with the help of a briefcase or two of Peruvian Marching Powder. There it is, Charles: you haven't lived until you've been auto-tuned to the delight of thousands.

Speaking of delight, am I the last guy in SF to notice the awesome Jeremy Fish Silly Pink Bunnies sculpture on Laguna and Haight?
Radical.

Moving right along, I've turned my house into a secret workshop for diabolical two-wheeled wonders. Well, it's been like that for a bit, but I'm making a big thrust to build up some cool rides for sale.
Man cannot live by bread alone--especially when he can't afford bread.

The first of these (hopefully) salable rides I like to call the Purple People Eater:
It's an Raleigh Technium frame and fork with some bitchin' '80s graphics:
It's like Don Johnson got so mad at Charlie Sheen for taking his throne of Has Been Celebrity Cokehead that he threw up the Miami Vice logo all over a bike frame:I don't know if you can get your head around this, but the name of this model is "The Chill." I made it with my girl Monique in mind, but she felt it was a little too Punky Brewster for her tastes.
Everybody grows up, I guess. Even Punky B. I like to think of it as the technicolor embodiment of an Epoxies song--check the Hoffman grips and purple annodized Tektro levers:
But I suppose that's pushing it. Especially when it's got this vintage Persons Yellow Submarine seat:
Teapot bell, Wald basket:
Purple brick pattern Duro tires, dice caps:
Purple bear trap pedals, Chopsaw sprocket, and KMC chain:
One speed is all you need:
Frame is actually American made. "Technium" was Raleigh's process of fitting aluminum tubes into steel lugs. I believe it's pronouncerd "really strong glue":
Sweet SR drop stem:
Wishbone ass end:
The best part: you can fit a quality sixer or a shitty 12'er ("half rack," in hillbilly talk) in the basket:
This peach is still for sale, so get at me, and I'll hook you the fuck up.

This next build is another American made hardtail that got some customizing along the way. It's a Trek 8000 made with Easton tubing, and my homeboy Brad already bought it. Nevertheless, I'll post some pictures anyhow.

The idea behind this bike was to make a jumbo BMXer--Brad is 6'4"--with some gears for the city or the trail:
Hoffman bars, Supercross forks:New versions of the classic Dia Compe MX 1000 brake. Had to have the forks drilled for these:
Tangent X-Loc stem:9 speeds are all you need! (Unless you want more. Or less. I can do that.)
Spot cranks, Azonic ring, and my new favorite part, a Paul Chain Keeper:
Swobo seat:
Plenty of room up front:
Tektro Oryx cantilevers, Kenda Short Tracker dual purpose meats:
New set of super tough Vuelta wheels with bladed spokes:
Ready for curb-cut commuting or Golden Gate Park roosting:
My first real BMX frame was a Mongoose Motomag, after I broke my department store AMF in half. Nowadays, kids think Mongoose is a Walmart only brand. Sadly, like famous American BMX brands GT, Schwinn, and SE Racing, they're now owned by an overseas companies. However, Goose has always made non-toy bikes, including some awesome full suss mountain bikes. Plus, they've got the raddest mascot ever, Maurice the Mongoose, and the most bitchin' slogan:As a great philosopher once said, "Hello? WINNING!"

The last legit steel race frame the built was for this cat, however: The Craig Reynolds Express, made for Dr. Smooth himself. Built this up for my homey Ethan:Always thought black and blue was a tough color combo. Custom 8"x28" Slam bend Solid bars, with the extra cross bar, a la Boss. (When I first moved to Nor Cal, I almost got my ass beat for not riding a Boss. I was riding down the street and this crew of guys in a car yelled, "What kind of bike is that?" When I answered "Robinson," they yelled back "FUCK ROBINSON! BOSS!")
Tektro magnesium Talon lever, Mongoose lock-ons:
Bars are clearcoat over raw tubing. Snafu Morgan Wade stem affords a nice view of the front tire:
TNT Retro Blade sprocket, FSA cranks, Vuelta 32 hole deep V rims, Maxxis tires, Avid brakes:
Snafu UL fork, old school GT sealed hubs:
My favorite build of late is this Univega Alipina hardtail monster. I call it the "Flyin' Eyeball." I built it with my friend Chris in mind, though I've got to build something like this for Hammerin' Hanke. The grips and seat are actually just about the same color as the tires, they just photographed weird with the iPhone:
UGP seat is a tribute to legendary Santa Cruz Skateboards artist Jim Phillips. Frame is OVERSIZE, bitches! (Back when "regular size" was pretty tiny.) It's also black chrome, which is rare and fully certified bitchin':
O.G. Araya rims. XT derailleur--6 speeds is all you need:
Loving the Chain Keepers:
Chopsaw American made sprocket, FMF ISIS spline cranks, Primo Josh Stricker plastic platforms:
Noticed this decal after I built it: designed by Mert Lawwill, the only motherfucker badass enough to be voted into the Motorcycle AND Mountain Bike Hall of Fames:
Don't fuck with Mert unless you can hang a Harley sideways like this at speed:
More eyeballs:
Dice too. Why not? V-brakes are Avid:
Shafted GT Piston stem, back when they were US made:
Okay, the A'me Cam grips are rad, as are the Tioga lever covers, but check the eyeball bell with the dinosaurs inexplicably wrapped around the outside:
Hunt Wilde number plate with Von Dutch's original Flyin' Eyeball graphic. Did you know that, much like Ed Hardy was a legit tattoo artist prior to being a universal sign of Guido-dom, Von Dutch was actually the godfather of hot rod pinstriping before his shitty progeny sold his name down the river to appear on Justin Timberlake's lame head? Well, you should have known. Chicks are by Vince Ray:The eyeball hot-rodder Big Daddy Roth send-up on the back of the plate is by Von Franco. Bars are anno green numbers with a bolt-on crossbar designed for XR50 type minibikes:
Catchin' a theme here? This one's by the Atavistic Avatar himself, The Pizz. Subtlety was never my strong point:Friction shifter, of course (though an 8 ball suicide shift would've been dope):
Steel is real:
Ready to kill:I didn't build the bike below, just saw it locked up in front of the Buck. It's made in America by a company called Bowery Lane Bicycles. The model is called the Broncks, and it comes with the rack and wood box. They list for $595:
Raw finish is awesome, as the brass brazing shows through nicely, though the lugs are from The Land Beyond Basic:Design-wise, I'm a little skeeved out on the 9 foot tall stem shaft, especially on a bike with what looks to be a 4 inch head tube. If you want your bars up that high, why not spec the bike with taller bars? You can't even lower them with that monster stem:Here's one I should've sent to the Bike Snob. Dude has no less than THREE chains securing his Brooks saddle. I know people steal them, man, but what are they going to do--steal the front half and leave the back two-thirds? Glad you've got that covered. May as well just carry a wrench and bring the seat in with you everywhere:
The same night someone parked their sweet Broncks in front of the bar, someone left this sweet ID. Same guy? The triple-locked hipster status symbol seat makes me think, "Hmmm...maybe." Not that I don't love Brooks or anything, though it's always funny seeing a seat that costs 1/6 of the total bike price. Your ass is sensitive, I know. Hell, Eric rocks a Brooks that costs MORE than the rest of his hoopty--he's just too cheap to let me build him a decent ride (ooh...ouch! Called the fuck out on the internets).
Anyhow, I had to take a photo of dude's license. The "Look Dad--I'm a Man Now!" 'stache and the wifebeater are too fuckin' good to pass up. Seriously, who gets their license photo taken wearing a wifebeater? How many cops have looked at that and said, "Oh, tough guy, eh?" Too bad you can't see the tattoo of an anchor on his bicep. Or the pot leaf on his ass cheek. Maybe it's a good thing he left this ID.

I guess it's better than wearing a fez in your DMV pic. Or not. Here's the kid and I at the SF Bike Expo:
See no evil, hear no evil, moustache no evil.

Maybe I'll pull my head out and post some pics of that event...think it happened four or five months ago. Some cool chops, Stingrays and rat rods, though.

Freak Magnet: Yesterday's News Today.

Really, though--"Pedal Panties"? Seriously? I hate to harsh on someone running their own thing, but are these really necessary?
"Pedal Panties are a sexy, highly engineered, quality piece of athletic clothing with a thin breathable cushion that provides a more comfortable ride for women."

I've run into the woman who makes these, Ms. Panties, I guess, and she's super nice. And I do see the value in saddles and even frames designed specifically for women. But biking lingerie? That's what they're billed as. How is this better than the basic lycra maxi-pad short that keeps dudes from rubbing their asscrack raw?
I guess the secret is in the "sexy." Because when you feel sexy, you ride sexy, and when you ride sexy, I want to ride with you and eat your swampy twat at every available water break. Pedal Panties, ladies?
If you bedazzle 'em, I guarantee I'll tap that ass... [Please pronounce "guarantee" with a cajun accent.]

Well folks, thanks for bearing with me on this one. Been busy, I don't know--limping, trying to turn my luck around, so you're left with another ultra marathon of a blog. At the very least I hope it's diminished your productivity at work.

Until next time, stay strong:
And by all means, stay rad:
Oh, and buy a bike from me, huh?

Low Hanging Fruit for Hunchback Chimpanzees

2011-02-19T19:49:00.000-08:00

The cherry blossoms are blooming, and I find myself making bad decisions.

The song for this post is MC5's "Miss X," but, for my purposes, it's "Miss Ex." Why break up with someone you know you're in love with? So in love, in fact, we made heart-shaped wet spots:
Who wouldn't want to sleep in that?

The thrice weekly blow-outs made it clear that we were making each other crazy. Correction: we were already crazy but we were trying to make each other our own brand of crazy. We were square pegging a round hole. It was going to take some serious work, and, while Hermann Goering reaches for his revolver when he hears the word "culture," I reach for my pillow when I hear the word "work." I've been sleeping my dreams away for nearly four decades now. Winner winner chicken dinner! Why not throw it all away and "re-evaluate"?

Yes, the cherry blossoms are blooming, and I find myself making some very bad decisions:

In terms of good decisions, the decision to see my ol' homey Danny Buzzard, of former All You Can Eat and current Fast Asleep punk rock fame, is a wise one.

Danny Boy works at Santa Cruz bikes and hooked my pal Josh up with a new Nomad.
That's not it, and neither is this:
But they are the new carbon Nomads, which are indeed the shizz-de-la-nit, if you're into the crabon. Anyway, we headed to the old cannery in SC where the magic happens, and Mr. DB gave us the grand tour.

Here's an aisle full of brand new fancy goodness for completes:
Frames everywhere, resplendent in candy colored powder like something out of Willy Wonka:
Josh's bike is revealed hiding in the pisser. Look at that motherfucker. He's going to smile his face right off his skull:
Nothing like seeing a few cases of $100 seatposts and stems sitting around like they were potato chips. Each one of these boxes represents a month at work for me:
People get bored in Candyland like anywhere else, I suppose:
If you were to jump into these boxes you'd come up bleeding. It'd be the most expensive ass kicking you'd ever get:
Titties:
Junk in the trunk:
Just in case you forgot:
The new raw Nomad--clearcoat over aluminum:
Waiting on powder:
Oven to cure the powder:
People exposed to toxic fumes often have a predilection for the metal:
This is the decal dude. He puts on the water decals before clear coat. And, apparently, he eats a lot of acid:
So David Lee Roth and Dee Dee Ramone walk into a bar...
Who wouldn't want a beer when powdering frames all day?
SC fell for the rasta bike craze as well:
Syndicate bikes sitting around the paint shop:
More candy:
The NHS (Santa Cruz Skateboards) have a bunch of ramps for lunchtime sessions:
This was seriously a Wonkavator: a wheel-building machine. A goddamned robot! (Remember, that's pronounced "ro-butt.")
Wheel dude (clearly, I was not taking notes) had a Red Wine hat on. Take that, Toph!
The nipple-putter-onner machine:
That's the wheel in the middle with the ro-butt nipple tweakers busily tweaking 1/6 of a rotation at a time:
Danny even gained us access, via the super friendly ace mechanic Doug Hatfield, into the Syndicate Attic to check out the factory riders' bikes:
Greg Minaar's V-10:
They all had these fancy carbon rims:
And, when you're Greg Minaar, you get custom decals on your fancy rims:
Peaty's old ride:
Minaar again:
While Danny was giving us a tour one of his coworkers in another part of the factory yelled: "Get back in your hole!" In truth, though, it was a pretty nice hole, complete with King Diamond woodwork and silicon sealant sculpture:
Right before we got back to Danny's hole, we passed a shaven-headed guy talking on his cell phone near the trunk of a BMW. "Dude," Danny whispered. "That's Roskopp." It was kind of like walking by George Lucas while on a tour of Lucasfilm, or, perhaps, like walking by the real Elvis (the one that's still alive, not the one who faked a drug overdose while taking a shit) while buying bacon and barbiturates in Memphis.

Apparently the guy's on the skate side of things vibe on the bike guys because "Roskopp doesn't skate anymore."

Are you kidding me? Ha! Skaters, for such a "do your own thing" crew, can sometimes be more pinched and insular than surfers, who are mostly just dicks. We did run into one of the skate guys while we were looking for the bike part of the complex , and he was crazy nice while giving us directions, so the reports of the skate/bike feud may be somewhat exaggerated.

Once again, Danny, thank you. Josh and I (mostly Josh) owe you dinner and a case of beer, if not a handjob. Like I said--mostly Josh. You made a retarded boy's dream come true:
After Josh bought himself a combo Christmas/Birthday present, we met up with Stevil Bieber at Little Tampico for some Mexican fandango fabuloso. Steve tried to MacGyver the pen into a blowdart gun but failed miserably:
Steve also revealed the sacred hit count, which, without actually revealing it (this would be the equivalent of a junior sorcerer posting a master wizards favorite spell on the internet), is multiples of what this blog gets in a year. But in a month. But hey, I'm movin' on up.

Speaking which, let me apprise you as to how last post's keyword spamming mania fared:
Not very well. Maybe a few more hits, but not a ton of wacky search phrases. I do take comfort in the fact that as many people found my blog by looking for it by name as those who found it looking for "diaper masturbation," which was a kink I didn't even think to include:
Hoo-fuckin'-ray! Yippie! [Sorry, I just nutted in my Huggies.]
I've been stressed as a motherfucker lately. I've been trying to get a job wrenching in a bike shop. Seems easy enough, but it's yet to pan out. The recession is squeezing most shops, in addition to it being the off season. I had an interview a couple weeks ago at a place that ended up hiring a part time sales guy instead. Why take a chance on a mechanic when you can train a high school kid to wrench in your own image for much less? It always makes me cringe when I'm asked, "What's your shop experience?" Motherfucker, please! I wrench on bikes more than all of your employees combined do in a week, and I do that shit for love. I taught my fucking self, with advice from mechanic friends, of course, all of who should be running their own shops, or have. When I was 12 I'd disassemble and rebuild my GT Pro once a week. Yeah, I haven't worked in a shop since I was 18, but I know how to swing a wrench. Quite clearly:
I'm still on the hunt, but I'm also on the hustle, trying to build some bikes and sell them out of my house, like hip-hop tapes out of the trunk. I need to get my taxes straight so I can get a resale license and up the profit margin before getting an actual storefront. Eyes on the prize.

Yesterday, I had a Jules-like revelation. A moment of clarity, if you will:

I was sitting at my desk, writing, and had to take a break to pick up my daughter and our friends' daughter at school and take them to dance class. Had to dig through a fucking jar of Classico Roasted Garlic pasta sauce, carefully picking out the quarters, to have enough scratch to get the kids Clif Bars and water for a snack before dance.

In addition to my relationship derailing, this month my roommate moved out, which is fine, as I need the space--but now I've got to pay for all of it. My camera broke. I had to borrow over a thousand bucks from my boss to get the boot off of my truck. Anywhere else in the country except New York I'd live in a four bedroom house for the price I pay on my hovel--an it'd be a fucking mortgage, not rent. Portland has been looking good for awhile. My Portlandian friend Luke claims that it's "where people move when they can't hang in SF, LA, or New York." Maybe, and maybe that's why it's looking awfully good. Every time I get a clear enough head to see I'm a rat on a Habitrail wheel, it depresses the fuck out of me. Hand to fucking mouth, and even I don't know where these hands have been. It's the stress factor, got me down.

Like Andre Nickatina says in "Situation Critical": "No matter how you makin' paper/ Nigga that's a grind."

I'm grindin', but I'm not making the paper. That means I need to grind more, until I disappear into a bloody pulp, or run some Tony Montana type shit. An empire woven together with chain links and brake cables.

Hickey reminded us that "Everyone's a Whore," and this is true--but whores get paid and all I've got is rugburn on my knees.

SF, as much as I love her, is getting me down. People are so rude. They're concerned about shit like merging. While on my way to pick up the kids, Clif Bars in my pocket, this woman in a brand new BMW with a Stanford license plate frame sped up so I wouldn't merge in front of her. Pinched like a premature turd. It was my turn, but she wasn't having it, because she was doing some important shit.

Worse is realizing I drive like that all the time--10 minutes late out of the gate and tripping, needing to be there then instead of be here now.

I don't need junkies in wheelchairs telling me my dog is too close to them. I don't need crotchety bastards swearing at me when I ride my bike. I don't need cops sweating me for drinking a beer in the park. I don't need someone to always be behind me or in front of me on the sidewalk, and I'm getting sick of standing in line and waiting in traffic. I don't need someone living all over me.

A big part of my job is telling people not to take their beers out of the bar. Invariably, a large percentage of these people are Euros. On the one hand, it's annoying as fuck--you're not in Rome anymore, Caligula, so don't do as the Romans. On the other hand, when I take a step back, what kind of a fucking country is the Land of the Free and you can't even walk down the street drinking a beer for fear that you'll pervert the kiddies, whose parents are most likely raging closed door alcoholics who don't love each other anyhow. It's a goddamned Babyfood Nation.

Then again, maybe people do too much shit in public:

I hope this doesn't make me sound like a fucking kook, some kind of Ron Paul groupie or militia member. I'm not looking to get away so I can build a gun-infested fortress that'll protect me from Mexican immigrants until Jesus comes. I don't need a gun and I'm not worried about zombies or criminals. I just need some fucking space. I need some space to think. Some space to breathe.

Take three steps back and get off my dick.

It's like Keith Morris said: "I've got the world up my ass." And I'd like an extraction, please.

World Up My Ass

I've got the world up my ass
And I'm gonna move fast
Be the first
Won't be the last
I've got the world up my ass

Society is burning me up
Take a bite, spit it out
Take their rules
Rip 'em up, tear them down

Twisted mind, withered brain
You know I'm going insane
I just tell them to get back
When they tell me how to act
I've got the world up my ass

You know I've got the world up my ass

I need a space that's fucking mine. I know it's all pissing on fire hydrants, but I don't want to have to break my balls grinding every month to pay for someone else's livelihood. Fuck that.

Yeah, I know. I had every fucking opportunity. I know how I got here. I've got it upstairs, in the brain, but somehow I've always lacked the motivation. All head and no heart, too much of a full belly and not enough Knut Hamsun style starvation. Society isn't burning me up, so much as I am. In the words of the Fugazi song, "I burn myself I am the fuel." I've been writing about alternative social structures--the Mesa, Christiania, Kowloon Walled City, Carville by the Sea--because I need a change, because I'm not excelling and I need to. It's really on me, isn't it? It's never too late to Rise Above.

When the world conspires to shit down your throat, close your mouth.

Suck Fuck Pussy Sex Schoolgirl Pigtails Lesbian Lesbo Girl on Girl Gay Interracial Group Gangbang Golden Shower Bi Horny Asian Japanese Black

2011-02-02T08:25:00.000-08:00

Balls Huge Tits Dick Cock Boobs Milf Granny Leather Latex Fetish Midget Taboo Fist Anal Pierced Cum Facial Orgasm Porn Porno Gangbang Slut Stud...

I could go on...but I won't.

As those of you who follow this blog may know, I've recently had a laugh about the stats page, wherein I can see how many folks stumble--drunkenly, I hope--into my little corner of the internets while searching for things like "pictures of men with jumbo or super-sized testicles" and "bart simpson is ficking." Not fucking, mind you, but ficking.

So I figured I'd play a little trick on the internet and just spam the fuck out of this post with a list of titillating (tits! titties!) smut keywords and see how dramatically my hits went up. While originally invented by Al Gore...oh wait, this just in: Al Gore did not invent the Internet. (Nor did he really even claim to.) Anyway, while the tangled e-web we weave was the brainchild of a bunch of eggheads at MIT and UCLA in the late '50s and early '60s--guys who had nothing better to do (i.e. they couldn't get laid) than to dream up with a world wide web, how could they have known that other guys decades in the future who also couldn't get laid would use it almost exclusively to fap to midget bestiality porn.

Yeah, they probably knew, huh?

I shall observe and report, dear reader, the veritable hit explosion, the orgasmic release of millions upon millions of big dick anal fuckdream accidental re-routings to a blog that, sadly, is only incidentally pornographic. And, if you've found the Magnet in a search to rub one out, why don't you just relax and sit for a spell before moving your well-lotioned fingers on to the next Sasha Grey video? Really, though, with all the free porn clearinghouses out there, you're a pretty inept jerk off if you stumbled here during a search for spankable visuals, so I don't feel too sorry for you. Leave an angry comment below.

Speaking of comments, how does one ask for them without seeming to be an insecure high school girl begging for approbation on her Tumblr or Mindspring page? I get more comments on the "hey, I have a new blog entry" status updates on Facebook than I do on the actual blog. And really, I care: I want to know what you're thinking out there. Who's that I see in my magic mirror? The quiet, delusional type reading this on her iPhone on a Minneapolis public bus, sitting across to the angry guy rubbing one out to Sasha Grey in the Land of the Ultramidgets?

Have I sent you closer to the edge or farther from it?

And while we're speaking of the edge, check out this upstanding young man, perhaps dubiously labeled a crackhead, from what can clearly be seen in background as the sparkling jewel of American metroplexes, Trenton, New Joisey:

I love it how the guy videotaping does nothing but question his own sanity for capturing the trainwreck on tape while he halfheartedly prays for a safe-landing. But the best part is, after the jump, when Flipdude is decompressing from his own insanity and marveling at his mostly functional extremities inside the fine establishment purveying ghetto goods (otherwise known as the "Shop 4 Ballers")--big shiny wheels, brightly colored Champion jackets that look like they're made for an overgrown five-year-old T-ball kid:

"That was super fun."

Fucking amazing. My hero. It's really too bad I don't live in the neighborhood (hell--looks like somewhere I can actually afford), because I would start a dead pool as to this dude's impending death date. He can't be long for this world, and why not make some scrilla on his clear lack of self-preservation instinct?

Only other person I've seen even remotely like this guy was an Indian named Sonny from the outer reaches of Northern Canadian Nowhere. By "Indian" I mean the feather kind, not the dot kind. I'd say "Native American," but that seems kind of weird in that he was from Canada.

I was 20 and working in the Nautilus salmon-processing plant in Valdez, Alaska. Sonny showed up in camp one evening around sunset, playing into the stereotype by carrying a mostly empty fifth of whiskey and screaming a bunch. Somehow he ended up with Roland's stun gun. Really, who knows how these things happen? It's like the Chekov saying:"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Sonny existed, deux ex machina, to fire that pistol. Or, in this case, that stun gun.

A bunch of half-sick college kids looking for adventure and "easy money" (don't believe the hype) in Alaska, sprinkled with rail-riding hobos of the old school variety and lam-of-the-law misfits and n'er-do-wells, we gave Sonny a wide berth around the campfire that night. He started off by shocking himself in the neck with the device. His head bobbed back and forth like an electrocuted rag doll, but he kept talking. The words bubbled up from the back of his throat in a gargle: "These things," [gurgle gurgle], "aren't shit!"

That was the moment when I realized I, the aforementioned half-sick college kid, a product of waterslide suburban summers and cherry Kool-Aid, was witnessing someone who truly did not give a fuck. Not one. Not one half of a fuck. Not one iota of a fuck. If we hadn't been living in tents and cars, I'm sure he would've gladly flipped off a house.

As it is, he went down to the glacial run-off river the next day and decided to "surf" on top of a four door sedan as it off-roaded by the side of the gray water. Off falls Sonny and breaks his spine, only to die in the hospital around 3am.

Every so often you have these moments of awareness. This guy is what? 22? 23? How did he make it so long? How is he not dead yet? Then, another drunken day in the Great White North, and Death comes ripping. Guess it's better to go find it then let it find you, right?

Nonetheless, dumb luck counts for a lot in this life.

So does having PMA, which I've got to dial in myself lately, after a couple aggravating street hassles in my 'hood of late.

[For anyone keeping track of my incessant linkings, I've probably linked to that Bad Brains video twenty times...and I'll damn well keep doing it, too.] While on the subject of PMA and the 'Brains, I came across an awesomely yellow 1985 Kuwahara Puma mountain bike frame and fork. Immediately, I thought of building a rasta-colored Bad Brains tribute bike. Well, not really--my lady Laura suggested the colors, and after that Bad Brains motif came to mind rather readily.
Kuwahara branded bear trap style headset, Puma logo:
Now it's a Bad Brains model:
Red brick pattern cruiser tires by Duro:
I dig these Mesinger/Troxel style waffle seats:
The bar tape is Cinelli in the world champion stripes. I over-wrapped the blue so it wouldn't show. Tektro levers and a cool Schylling revolving bell:
The Kuwahara graphics are the tits:
KMC chain, single speed adapter, Chopsaw gear and bolts, Wellgo plastics. Chopsaws are awesome American made CNC machined chainrings--super straight, available in a ton of different sizes and colors, in five bolt 110 BCD or 4 bolt 104 BCD. If you don't know what that means, then clearly I should be building your bike for you:
Frame is made from Tange chromo tubing, as you can see by the sticker on the seat tube. Cranks are Sugino A/T:
Dice valve caps are a must:
Rear wheel is a Sun Rhyno Lite with an XT hub:
Odyssey Slic Cables and sweet anno green Dia Compe cable hanger. If you look closely, you can see the cable end has a little green die on it:
Basket is a Wald 137. Wald is one of the oldest bike accessory companies in existence, and I've been diggin' the 137. Not too huge, perfect for one or two bags of groceries. Not too heavy. Cheap but sturdy:
Style for miles, G:
Can't you just see HR cruising around on this? High out of his mind and talking to aliens:
Colton bought it before HR had a chance to call me up:I took the above pics on my iPhone because my beloved Nikon shit the bed. It's currently at the Nikon repair facility in El Segundo, looking for Q-Tip's wallet, I guess. ("Ali got the fruit punch.") When I get $260 to get it out of camera jail, I'll be able to take quasi-legit photos again. If you have a spare Franklin burning a hole in your pocket, I'll gladly take it off your hands.

On the serious tip, though, Tip--I got fronted some cash and I'm building about ten bikes right now--a few old rigid frame mountain bike conversions like the one above, an old Raleigh 3-speed ladies bike in root beer brown with fenders, a single speed city bike with fuckin' tweed brake cables (?!), a clean, workmanlike Lemond road bike, a Columbus-tubing chromoly Univega single speed (cooler than it sounds), at least one BMX...so get at me. I'll have a shit ton of rad stuff built up in the next few weeks, and if you're walkin', you're hurtin'. (Actually, if you're walkin', I'm hurtin'--I need to sell this shit.) Also available to do repairs, tune-ups, bachelorette parties, kids' birthdays, light housework, and drug deliveries. No windows.

Then again, I suppose you could always hire a child clown to build you a bike for less, or perhaps, to entertain you at a discreet adult party:

Okay, I'll do windows.

I've been posting about alternative, off the grid communities lately--Kowloon Walled City, Christiania, the Mesa, and a bit of Slab City--hopefully the desert road trip will go down in March, as I'm too busted ass to do it this month. The next installment of Experiments in Alternative Living is San Francisco's own, mostly long gone, Carville by the Sea.
The subject of a beautiful book by local historian Woody LaBounty, Carville was a community made of formerly horse-drawn streetcars located around what is now 47th Ave and Lawton, but was then sand dunes and dirt roads. When electric streetcars became prevalent in the 1850s and '60s, the old horse cars were sold for $20 a pop. A whole community sprang up of people living in the cars. Not only were houses made out of the cars, sometimes stacked into multiple story dwellings, but there were shops, a "coffee saloon," and a church.

There are a couple Carville houses known to exist today, one of which used to look like this inside:
But has since been unfortunately remodeled to remove all traces of the streetcar it once was. The other is made of three cars, and still shows it's origins:
The above is the only picture I can seem to find, and I can't find any exterior shots of this house, so if you happen to know who lives in this Carville gem, or it's exact location, let me know. I'd love to bug the current residents to let me take a few shots inside.

Finally, I'm reluctant to include in this post any mention of my daughter, seeing as how it started, but I came up with my porn keyword spamming scam a week ago, and today's my kiddo's birthday. (Happy birthday, D!) I normally wouldn't feel compelled to share that, necessarily, but yesterday I visited her classroom to see her act in a play about Cesar Chavez.
She did a great job, of course, though I didn't bring it up to puff her up with fatherly pride. The charts on the wall behind her are about how to read and respond to literature. Now, in my motley "career" as a drifter and layabout, I've made a dollar or two as a writer and editor, a TA in a college lit class, and a substitute teacher. Which is only to say, I am keenly aware of spelling. You can't see in this photo, but in these charts, D's teacher misspelled "judgment" seven times, and also fucked up on "preposterous" and "assassination."

For "judgment" she wrote "judgement" and for "preposterous" she wrote "prepostrous." The first is a commonly misspelled word, which makes it especially grievous to my busybody, spelling Nazi way of thinking in that, hey, if it's fucked up on often, you should know that as a teacher. And fucking the same word up seven times on one wall means it's not a mere typo. The problem I have with the extra "e" in judgment and the missing "e" in preposterous is that, in both cases, they lead to a change in the syllable count. The two syllable judj-ment becomes jud-jeh-ment. The four syllable pre-pos-ter-ous becomes three syllables when you drop the "e": pre-pos-truss.

My babymama Kristina was sitting in front of me for the play, and I know she noticed "judgment" since she's a lawyer and probably sees that word fairly frequently. She did notice it, along with a botched "assassination" attempt, and it also drove her batshit. Without trying to bust her out in front of her class, I quietly mentioned something to the teacher before I left.

"Um, it's not a big deal or anything, but I noticed you spelled 'judgment' wrong."

"I did? Where?" she replied, scrutinizing all the instances where she'd spelled it incorrectly and seeing nothing.

"It's J-U-D-G-M-E-N-T. There's no 'e' after the 'g.'"

I don't think she believed me on this count, and she definitely seemed annoyed. I can't blame her on one level, in that she'd had to wrangle fourth graders all day. (Though the major wrangling during the presentation was done by the beleaguered outside drama teacher, who had to feed some kids all of their lines.) I know I must seem like a horribly pinched busybody to some of y'all reading this, and I probably seemed that way to her.

On the other hand, was I really so out of line? I mean, what the fuck? This is the fourth grade, not grad school. She wasn't spelling prestidigitation or antidisestablishmentarianism. Plus, there's the matter of it being her job to teach my daughter how to spell (as well as mine, and her mother's, granted). Beyond this, she's also at least partly responsible for instilling good writing habits in her pupils, one of which is looking up words you're not sure of. In Ye Olden Tymes when I went to school (which was probably around when she went to school, as we're about the same age), we had to check our spelling on these old fashioned things called dictionaries that were made out of trees and had little black splotches called "ink" on them. Nowadays, with the new-fangled compuboxes everybody seems to have, you can check it by simply sending an electro-mail to God or whatever you do.

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. And yes, folks--spelling counts. It may not be the most important thing a teacher does during the day, but it counts. And to D's teacher: I ain't mad at ya. Pedagogy is a hard row to hoe: I discovered this while teaching summer school math to inner city kids going into the 7th grade. Their hormones were going batshit, it was a nice summer day outside, and they spent most of their time drawing spurting dicks in their math workbooks and eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos. One girl raised her hand and quietly told me, "Deanna is lighting a fire in her desk." So, you, know, I feel your pain to some small extent. But it shouldn't be beyond the pale to expect a teacher to spell words correctly.

And, while I'm being totally righteous, what about bicycle rights?

Portlandia is the raddest show going right now, hands down. Makes me want to visit again soon.

The raddest poster going right now is this pie chart punk rock comparison by Dan Gneiding:
Actually, it's the raddest poster gone, as the pre-orders sold out, though he's thinking about doing a reprinting. I hope so, because I shit the bed on pre-ordering one. Curiously, Mr. Gneiding is a senior graphic designer at Urban Outfitters. This isn't curious in and of itself, but only curious because a certain Stevil Kinevil hipped me to this poster and to Dan's work, and he fuckin' HATES Urban Outfitters for doing reproductions of his favorite Budweiser sweater, and, basically, for co-opting anything remotely cool and mass-producing it for style-challenged assholes.

I had my own experience with this when I was getting a tattoo done about five years ago at Black Heart Tattoo. Jeff Rassier was wearing a ring-necked T-shirt with none other than RL Osborn doing a table top or something on it.

"Yeah, nice BMX Action Trick Team shirt," I told him.

"Huh?," he replied and stared at me blankly.

"Your shirt. It's RL Osborn."

"Oh, yeah. I guess. I got it at Urban Outfitters. I just thought it looked cool."

Which is not to say that it didn't, or that Mr. Rassier is one of the aforementioned style-less assholes. But, c'mon--know what you're reppin'. My friend Tony met a guy at a party once with a tattoo of the Einstürzende Neubauten logo. When Tony commented on the tattoo, the guy replied, "Huh? Oh--you mean the Henry Rollins guy?"If Hank had a tattoo of a target-headed, squiggly-armed stick figure on him, then heck, this guy was going to get one too. I just hope he likes taut, German industrial weirdness. Or not.

The funny thing is, Bob Osborn, RL's dad, already sued Huggies (or was it Pampers?) for using one of his photos on some pull-ups (Extreeeeeme pull ups! no doubt) and came away with a shit grip of money. Wonder if he knew about the UO swipe? Assuming he took the photo, that is. Who knows, he might have just sold them the image. Then again, maybe he sued Urban and Mr. Gneiding, assuming he worked there five years ago.

What I'm saying is, it's a small world, and nothing is new. As a blogger who routinely jacks images from the matrix, I can say that intellectual property ain't what it used to be. It reminds me of the Associated Press vs. Shepard Fairey throwdown.
Was the photo the iconic image, or was the artistic reworking that made it iconic? I'd argue for the latter, though as a photographer with no drawing/painting/printmaking skills whatsoever, I'd better watch what I say before my work ends up on a Urban Outfitters shirt. (Who am I kidding--Hey, UO, wanna buy a photo?) And isn't the job of a street artist/graffiti writer to re-purpose what's already there? Marcel Duchamp did not invent bicycle wheels or stools, but he re-purposed, or, more accurately, de-purposed them into art:Does Campbell's have a case against the estate of Andy Warhol?
If you put a bird on it, is it art? Maybe, but is it yours?

While on the subject of bikes, Portland, art, and intellectual property, Stumptown's mighty Shad Johnson recently had his shred boner decidedly deflated when GT, or whatever mega-conglomerate owns Gary Turner's name nowadays, issued him a cease and desist order over the appropriation/homage winged Goods logo.
This stirred up some shit on the innerwebs, mostly to the effect that you can't make a dead brand relevant by suing the balls off of a local BMX shop. I'll remind Shad that parody counts as fair use, so he might consider reworking the GT wings into something like Mark Gonz's elbowing of the first skate conglomerate, Powell Peralta.

Before:

After:I feel a T-shirt coming on: picture a giant spurting cock with little arms and legs tabletopping on a BMX bike with GT-style wings around the outside of the whole thing. The Shred Boner, anthropomorphized.

I'd buy one.

One intrepid reader of The Come Up--it's not hard being "intrepid" when 90% of the comments are 13-year-olds calling each other "fag"--suggested that the GT wings might not be as original as they claim:

Somewhere, at this very moment, a lawyer has a record-setting, pants-splitting, sue-happy shred boner.

Well, we started with dicks, and we finished with them. Funny how that works. Now for the randoms:

Nope!
Bo dog, beach time:
Tits! Don't forget the tits!
Stand proud:

Blood, Semen, and 35% Meat

2011-01-29T20:45:00.000-08:00

Well, it looks like the weather's turned to shit again. It was tits for while here in the city, which was surprising, being only the end of January. Even went on a mini picnic with the better half a couple days ago.

Picnic time with the Minutemen is a happy time.

But as rad as the Minutemen were, they were nothing compared to the feline hardcore powerhouse of Cat Flag:
Haven't been riding a whole lot lately--just to work and back, all of 7 blocks each way. My back is roached lately. It's been crapper ass ever since I drove a cab, and I've officially blown it out twice--once pulling up for a wallride, and once practicing gates at the track. This time, though, it just dipped into the ouch bag all of it's own accord--from the steady lower back ache to, "Oh shit, if I move barely the wrong way...Shit! There it goes again."

Sucks, because I missed V-dogg's birthday celebration at Lake Cunningham. Even if I wasn't riding, it would've been a good time to snap some photos, as can be seen by this picture I poached from Josh Klavir of a certain Ryan Nyquist, x-ed up about 8 or 10 feet out.
I suppose it's a good thing I didn't show--I hate making the youngsters feel inadequate--I usually get 12 feet out of that bowl.

Speaking of showing up the youngsters, Vince Dogg is fuckin' 46 and is still tearing it up. Here's a shot of a newly learned barspin flyout:

Here's a shot of Vince gettin' all Hoffman-ed out in 1985:
Happy Birthday, V-dogg. Many happy returns.

Speaking of back in the day, here's a shot of my old pal Joel throwin' down a Bert in a Fremont ditch when we were in high school. Joel still kills it as well. Despite the fact that he used to ride Tracker Ultralights, he's always been radder than me.

Photo by Adam Mackintosh

After years of extensive study, doctors at Johns Hopkins have discovered that radness may indeed begin in the womb:
And what better way to nurture that radness than a set of knitted Star Wars characters:Lucy Ravenscar not only has an awesome name, but she's hell on knittin' one and pearlin' two. Chewie has to be my favorite:
Though Sammi Resendes has done some amazing work herself, including this super hot--in a crochet kind of way--slave girl Leia. Jabba the hut really knows his dirty outfits, huh?In terms of cool shit on the interwebs, however, you'll have to check out my friend Hyper D's blog, Datajunkie. Lately he's been into saucy sado-machismo-chistic Mexican fotonovellas like Namur:
If you want to see the whole sensacional aventura completa, plus all kinds of digitized pulp from risque alternate yesteryears, you can spend days wigging out on Datajunkie.

Speaking of the internets, Ron Wilkerson, freestyle innovator and all around good guy, has shaken things up at the dusty 2-Hip site, treating it to a redesign plus a new blog, The Hit. In addition to having a penchant for Crocodile Dundee style hats, Ron has come up with a whole line of 2-Hip parts: pedals, sprockets, and a new version of the much-slagged Groovetech system
which looks pretty good.

Best news from 2-Hip by far, at least from my angle, is hooking Tim Knoll up on the flow team. Tim released two of the most mind-melting BMX videos ev-ah last year, including this one with an 8-bit version of War Pigs:

Tim is from Wisconsin and it's a complete understatement to say he has a style all his own. On the one hand, his upside down stuff reminds me of old school CW style cats Ceppie Mays and Dizz Hicks. (You'll recall that Dizz is "the master of upside down insanity. Tricks like the heavy metal maniac's Dizz Flip redefine the term 'radness.'")

On the other hand, his riding is so out there--a combination of flat, street, and gymnastics--that he makes you think he taught himself how to ride on a mountaintop in Tibet. Truly freestyle. I can appreciate your average over-talented kid who rides all day and dropped a web edit on thecomeup, but there's only so many nose manuals and rail variations to 180 I can watch on any given day. I can watch the two above clips every day and still get stoked to ride. Radness, once again redefined, without the added benefit of a BMX Plus! narrator.

Subrosa's Kyle Hart does some redefinin' his own damn self: rum-chugging, bum-jumpin', Misfits pumpin', rear peg grabbin', vert footplantin' stylee:

Finally, everyone over the age of, say, 30, should check out Plus Size BMX/Old Guys Who Ride. Hot action from the geriatric set, including a lot of 24 and 26" wheeled nasty business. It'll either pump you up to ride, or make you feel even more feeble: "Wait, that guy's got 5 years on me and he's doing that?" (See the above pic of Vince).

Or, just take a look at this nice flattie photo of Coloradan Mark Brown I poached from OGWR:
Shralp hard, fellow members of the Geritol generation, shralp hard.

And speaking of shredding and hardness, not to mention Viagra milkshakes and Speedo tumescence, this guy right here is all about "the rippin' and the tearin'," even at his advanced age:

Rick is probably making a lot of fat old rich ladies (i.e. "wild women") very happy.

Remember donuts? The little neoprene grip jobbers that supposedly protected your hands from getting all worn out on the thumb and forefinger from the abrasive action of your rubber grip flange? They were about a sixteenth of an inch thick, and people would stack them up one at a time until they had the optimum amount of silly to go with their Dyno brake guard, checkered padset, and "knee bumper" handlebar pads.

Then Flite one-upped everyone and dropped Jumbo Donuts. I was thinking about the ad for them the other night--they basically took a well-known witticism about fucking fat chicks: "More cushion for heavy pushin!"--and used it to sell needless bike accessories to the parents of 12-year-olds nationwide.
Kudos to you, Flite, for making a generation of chubby chasers while simultaneously protecting them from the "rippin' and the tearin'" of thumb blisters. Their next ad featured the copy: "What do fat chicks, mopeds, and Flite Jumbo Donuts have in common?"

Not that rippin' and tearin' is always a bad thing, of course. You've seen the video, you've seen the dance--clearly it works for the Rickmeister. Rumored hermaphrodite Lady Gaga, of the Ace Frehley exploding nipple bra, has requested her new fragrance smell of blood and semen.
We can only hope she goes with Eau de Rippin' and Tearin' for the name. Once again, not a fan of her music, but a big fan of her weirdness.

Further news from the "stranger than fiction front" will be of special interest for those among us against the corporate harvesting of cows. This doesn't include me, of course--I can't really get to know my meat on a first name, micro-farmed basis, not being as rich as Alice Water s, you know. I'm from the Anthony Bourdain, "tastes like it died screaming" school of cheap hamburgers. The rest of y'all can breathe a little easier knowing that Pepsico is only using 35% beef in their "seasoned beef." The secret seasoning? Soybeans, wheat and oats, and things Alabama lawyer Dee Miles can't pronounce. If God didn't want us to eat animals, he wouldn't have made them so tasty. The good news is, they only have to be 35% tasty for Taco Bell to serve 'em up. Maybe they can keep them alive and just cut off the unimportant bits for gorditas. "Try our seasoned beef--now made exclusively with tails and balls." And maybe stomachs, too--who really needs four fuckin' stomachs?

My fellow traveller through the unsavory side of the blogosphere, Stevil Kinevil, posted this photo of a B-47 using RATO, or Rocket Assisted Take-Off, in an entry about a week ago:
Being a bit of a plane geek, I dug around for videos of RATO take-offs, I found this expose on Operation Credible Sport:

Sometimes, things do not go as planned. Especially with rockets, it turns out. But don't worry, kids. As Andre Dubus said, "The times are never so bad." So why the long face?

43 Resolutions

2011-01-15T18:55:00.001-08:00

We can go ahead and admit it:

Something is terribly wrong here.
But it's no reason to get hasty about ending it all, kids.

When the culture devolves to the point of needing to be italicized or put in scare quotes--the culture, the "culture"...

When you can't hear the words through the shouting...

When the reportage of the moment becomes the moment...when we live to text about it, blog about it, IM about it, Facebook about it, Twitter about it...to the point where we've forgotten what it was to begin with...

When I use more ellispses than Céline...

When the media eats its tail--it's tale--swallowing itself in a gastro-sexual mouthfuck ad infinitum...

Well, shit's just gotten a bit weird, that's all. Our obsessions are moving faster than we can keep up. Cultural relativism is passé, Chuck. It's been relative for awhile. Now it's all equally irrelevant.

[drawing by Adam Zyglis, from Politically Illustrated]

Seems our friend Jared Lee Loughner--symptom or disease?--had an eventful night before his murder spree, which included taking sexy photos of himself with his piece. Yep--picture tomorrow's rock star, Jared Lee instead of Jerry Lee, insecure gear tucked into a Republican red banana hammock, Glock 19 rubbing himself full of confidence to do the deed. Is that a high cap magazine in your pocket or are you just happy to see me? We really are a nation gun-fuckers, aren't we? As Frightwig so poignantly queried: "How come a missile looks like a cock?"

It's no wonder I've been looking into alternative realities in which to live. (Well--it's been existential malaise coupled with the fact that Laura and I are planning to get a place together and I realize my credit is absolute dumperschitz.)

Lately I've been fascinated by Kowloon Walled City. Originally set-up as a military outpost during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), the Walled City became, by the late 1800s, a squat of 700 people. From there it turned into the most densely populated place on earth, an urban "megablock" with 30-50,000 people living in a 6.5 acre area--smaller than your average city block, basically, with a population hundreds of times more dense than Hong Kong itself. It was torn down by the HK government in 1993-4.
Relatively few photos have been taken in the interior of the Walled City, among them is a book by Ian Lambot called City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon City, which sounds amazing but runs around $90, so I don't, as yet, own it.

In terms of video of the interior, that also seems sparsely available, there's some shaky but interesting hidden camera footage, Jean Claude Van Damme's film meisterwork, Bloodsport, and a German documentary from 1989 which is by far the most interesting look:

When I first started looking into the Walled City, it struck me that I'd visualized it already, in dystopian futures like Blade Runner and William Gibson stories. It's the logical conclusion, the ultimate urban future. I hate to sound like a nouveau Malthus, but have you ever heard of the world's population declining? When they pave over the last tree, this is what we'll have: a monument to our own importance eclipsing the sun. A hovel, a rat's nest Taj Mahal in which to cower in fear of ourselves. Twisted, like our logic.

Not that Kowloon itself was necessarily all that dystopian. Sure, it had its criminal element, but a world without cops can't be all that bad (at least it's worth experimenting in...) Gibson references Kowloon in a piece he wrote for Wired about Singapore called "Disneyland with the Death Penalty."

I'm also intrigued by Denmark's anarchist micro-country in the middle of Copenhagen, Freetown Christiania. A cop-free zone, the residents of Christiania handle their own shit. In an attempt to rid their town of heroin abuse in the 70s, some of the residents cooperated with police to drive the smack dealers out. The cops jerked them around and busted their hash connections instead, so the residents of "The Town" told the cops to fuck off, and, in 1979, launched the "Junk Blockade" and kicked the dealers out themselves.

DIY glass house in Christiania:
Don't worry--everyone is way too high to throw stones. Hash stand on "Pusher Street":
With hash bricks the size of Pop Tarts, I'm assuming this is a typical day in Freetown:
Freetown, like Slab City, was built on an closed military base. I hate to sound too much like a hippie twat, but wouldn't it be great if we could close all our military bases and make hash-head anarchist colonies on them?

Barring this, we can go the way of self help. We can, you know, bootstrap our way to the top of the heap, Horatio Alger style. Walk to school uphill, both ways, barefoot in the snow. Make New Year's Resolutions. I resolved to outdo myself this year and made 43. And, because I know you're fascinated by my soon-to-be remedied shortcomings, I shall present this list, with brief explanations when appropriate.

Enter, if you will, another dimension. A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. Step into Door 43:
1. No overdrafts.

I've paid banks more than I've ever saved in my life, that's for sure.

2. Lose 20+ pounds.

When I graduated high school, I weighed 194 pounds. This went up to around 215 until, in 2004 or 5, I trained for a marathon and went down to 180 pounds. Now I am a lard ass. Chinese people poke my tummy and giggle.

3. Take a Photoshop class.

4. Read more.

5. Ride my bike from Portland to SF.

Hear that, Gabe?

6. Move in with Laura.

7. Straighten out finances.

Money openly laughs at me.

8. Start meditating again.

9. Be more aware of my computer and phone usage.

To wit: right now my girlfriend is lying in bed next to me groaning.

10. Cut back on alcohol intake.

Five nights a week working in a bar and drinking "only" 6 or 7 shots of Jameson a shift is starting to sound perfectly reasonable.

11. Save money.

See No. 7.

12. Start freelancing again.

Since the Guardian got it's cake, I'm wondering if I can eat it too. Well, maybe not so much.

13. Start writing fiction again.

Jesus, it's been awhile.

14. Travel.

Setting this one off next month in the desert.

15. Scatter my father's ashes.

I'm thinking of doing this in the mountains around Downieville: carrying them in a backpack on the trail and leaving them in the woods.

16. Catch a ten pound bass.

17. Photo show.

I've got a spot in mind I'm going to approach about hanging my photos.

18. Buckshot swag.

Shanti and I are working on marketing and promotions.

19. Start running again.

L-A-R-D-A-S-S

20. Bike shop on target.

I'm planning on opening a bike shop. Anyone want to invest?

21. Work less nights and spend more quality time with Dolly and Laura.

Which would entail getting some kind of day job. Would love to work in a bike shop, or, you know, writing something worth writing. Anyone?

22. Ride Downieville and Northstar at least five times each.

23. Shrimp and white wine.

24. Go camping a lot.

25. Go snowboarding.

26. Surfing lessons.

27. Skydiving.

28. More amusement parks with Dolly.

29. Meet Laura's mom.

30. Go to more Giants games.

We are the World Series champs, you know?

31. Ride skateparks more often.

When I was a kid we'd skate ditches all day. Now that there's million dollar parks in every podunk town, I hardly ride them.

32. Ride a backyard/hotel pool.

33. Ride Bootleg Canyon.

34. Let go of obsessive thought patterns.

You know, like making 43 fucking New Year's Resolutions.

35. XXX hits a day for Freak Magnet.

Not telling you the actual goal, for fear of not appearing, like, you know...popular.

36. Build/sell more custom bikes.

Do you need a bicycle? How come I'm not building it for you?

37. Spend more time with family and friends.

38. Get in shape.

I think I was pretty stoned when I came up with these. Laura and I were smoking weed and thinking of them, and clearly my shape was on my mind. (Round is a shape.)

39. People stop foolin'.

Don't pay that no nevermind.

40. Get more massages.

Crucial.

41. Go to more museums.

42. Read more philosophy.

43. Get Cannon on DVD.

The whole fuckin' thing. A Quinn Martin production, bitches!

Well, that was a mouthful. Things ain't all bad, I guess. Do you remember when Wellgo MG-1 magnesium pedals first came out? Them shits was like $100 a pair. Now they're $19.87 on the eBay. The future is now. Thanks Kowloon City! Or Taiwan at least.
And you can buy the titanium spindles separately.

What really counts in this new year is that you motherfuckers play it safe. No, really. Safety ain't no goddamned laughing matter:

I'll tell you who didn't play it safe--if only for reasons of a tenuous, forced transition between random videos. The motherfuckin' Z-Boys, that's who! And Larry Bertleman, who fuckin' shredded skateboards as well as surfboards. The Bert slide has to be my favorite skate move, and nobody does it like the man himself.

Sometimes I check the stats on this blog (see number 34) and see shit that makes me laugh. For instance, the search keywords that lead people to my site for completely random reasons, thus giving me the false confidence boost that can only come from, you know, "hella hits."
If you click on the above image, you'll find:

1. give not all the to don't stop

Almost the title of one of my blogs. Almost makes sense in English.

2. matt caughthran bald

Matt Caughtran is the singer of the Bronx, who I've posted photos of. Far as I know, he's always been bald, so this search seems to make no sense.

3. pictures of men in with jumbo or super-sized testicles.

Your guess is as good as mine.

4. scheiße

Also the name of a blog post, but somehow I don't think it's what the searcher was looking for.

And finally, before everyone is completely asleep, the random shots. These were all taken by me:
Any fuckin' time:
You never know when you'll need some:
Savor:
Availability is the cause for much celebration:
Shoe manga sculpture at store on Haight. I forgot where...True maybe? They had a fuckin' DJ playing on a Sunday afternoon:Oh, is that a little girl peaking out the window?
Nope, it's the freakiest sculpture ever around the corner from my house:

Fresh Rhymes for End Times

2011-01-12T03:39:00.000-08:00

Birds are falling from the sky.
Shorelines the world over--from Arkansas to Maryland to Chicago all the way to Brazil--are foul with dead fish.

Of course, the internest is a buzzing with kooked out conspiracy theories ranging from HAARP to scalar radiation to chemtrails to UFOs to variations in the earth's magnetic field to early onset Apocalypse. Then again, the official reasons these things are happening are fairly, if not totally, lame. Why, the fish in the Chesapeake just got too doggone cold. Snapper in New Zealand ostensibly starved to death. The blackbirds in Arkansas were spooked by New Year's Eve fireworks and flew into things, dieing of blunt force trauma. Though, when hundreds of the same species of bird were found dead 300 miles away in Louisiana, that was, well, you know, we're not sure. Turtle doves in Italy died by the thousands because, heck--they were fuckin' hungry. Too hungry. Deadly hungry. Now there's even a Nor Cal die off in Sonoma County, apparently because they weren't nimble enough to avoid an 18 wheeler.

Even being an essentially level-headed skeptical type, these explanations bring about a certain my black ass reflex. I call shenanigans.

As if we don't already have enough signs of some kind of UFO-hoodoo-wrath-of-God-wrath-of-Khan-chemtrail-apocalypse-Mayan-2012-final-freakout, Ashton Kutcher is about to drop a new movie. And by "drop" I mean gingerly lay upon the unsuspecting world like a glistening new baby turd. And by "movie" I mean glistening new baby turd.

Wait'll you hear this: it's about a guy who has sex with his best friend, who's a hot girl and a doctor no less, and even though they mean to keep it "friends with benefits," it turns out they like--maybe even love?--each other.

The mind boggles. Seriously. Who could've come up with such an out there plot line for a romantic comedy? I can't even believe I absorbed all those intricacies in a mere 30 second TV spot. It's so revolutionary, I doubt anything remotely similar has ever even been thought of before, much less created by the magical dream factory called Hollywood.

And speaking of dreams, Jared Lee Loughner is a big fan of lucid dreaming:

And mind control through manipulation of grammar. And a "new currency." And really boring trip hop.

Oh, yeah, and shooting people at shopping centers, including members of Congress, federal judges, and 9-year-olds.

Yes, it's truly fortunate that we can always look to Arizona to be our land-locked island of sanity when shit gets weird. Because when a likely paranoid schizophrenic who'd been physically removed by the police from his community college no less than five times for shouting random shit like "How can you deny math?" aerates a few lefties--and future lefties--what can be a more logical response than heading down to the local Stop and Shoot and picking up that high quality Austrian piece he did all that fine work with? I guess American jobs count up to a point, but them Euros make better guns.

Who would've thought that a hero would rise amidst the habenero-dusted desert nuts of the "From My Dead Hands" state? Well, perhaps not a hero, per se, but someone with a little perspective, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik:

"When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Of course, this kind of straight shooting from what appears to be a high cap mouth backed by a high power brain has got the pundits of our storied Democrazy gunning for him. Perhaps they'll consider a "target list" with crosshairs when he comes up for reelection?

At least Glenn Beck is all about keeping it sane, as evidenced by this screenshot my friend John Mav grabbed off of his site. (Really.)
We've got to stand together against violence. Unless Glenn shoots you first, in which case you should sit the fuck down.

My mom was born in Toronto. She's been a naturalized citizen for decades, but it's times like these that make me think of a reverse migration. How great would it be to live in a country that can care for its citizens' health needs while not instilling virulent, violent jingoistic claptrap in them via every available radiowave and TV station? When was the last time you heard a tubercular Canadian cough "Canada--Love It or Leave It!" into a megaphone? And who wouldn't love it? If they were the type of people given to shouting sound bites a more fitting slogan might be "Canada--Love It, It's Reasonable!" but a Canadian would likely rather tell you this with a handshake over a plate of gravy fries at White Spot.

Barring heading to the Great White North, what can the average American--scared witless but not shitless by the madness, underpants indicating a threat level brown--do to feel safe? Who can we turn to in our time of sadness, desperation, and confusion?

Why, who else but Phoenix Jones, Guardian of Seattle?

And, lest we forget, his cohorts in the Rain City Superhero movement, Red Dragon and Buster Doe:

"But I don't live in Seattle," I can already hear you lamenting as you're cornered by five drooling ass-rapers in a dark alley. Fear not, Citizen, as the RLSH (Real Life Super Hero--duh) movement, perhaps inspired by the film Kick Ass, is setting to set it off, a utopian era of idyllic good times, with the possible exception of it being really hard to score drugs or whores. There's even a website and registry, so head down to Sears a.s.a.p. and get some bitchin' bright-colored thermals. What could possibly go wrong?

Of course, these masked vigilantes claim to be interested in helping the local Polizei, but the jury seems to be out on that. I live in San Francisco, however, and the cops here obviously don't need any help. Why, just look at these dedicated law enforcers shoot a guy in a wheelchair.

Right in the groin, bitch!

I say "guy in a wheelchair," as opposed to "wheelchair-bound guy," because he apparently has no physical reason to be in a wheelchair, just a preference for rolling over walking, I guess. I must say, he holds onto this preference rather tenaciously, though, in that he doesn't get out of the chair until he's been pepper-sprayed, hit with a beanbag round from a shotgun, shot in the groin with a .40 cal bullet, and pulled out of the chair, at which point, he does in fact stand up. And, knowing a few SFPD officers myself, I don't want to steer you wrong by showing merely the video and not pointing you toward the original article it accompanied. Seems that Wheelchair Man (he's testing RLSH monikers) stabbed an officer in the shoulder and was, you know, throwing stuff. Like knives. Not sure how much of a knock-kneed, two left feet, bungling Mr. Bean Goes to the Academy cop you have to be to get stabbed by a guy in a wheelchair, but who knows--that part isn't on tape. Maybe he was standing and stabbing at that point. Seems you could just dodge the feebly thrown knife and tackle the guy--if he had a gun he probably wouldn't be throwing knives, right?--as opposed to firing at his junk (if the guy was actually paraplegic he wouldn't have felt it anyway), but SFPD are nothing if not thorough.

Being fully ambulatory myself, I feel extra safe in my city and the Bay Area in general, as cops around here don't usually waste bullets on people who aren't in wheelchairs or face down at the BART station.

Finally, before I head off to lucid dreams of my own, how about some insanity of a more festive variety? Around the corner from my spot is a house with a yard full of crap. Instead of planting rhododendrons or a lawn or a cactus garden, the owner of the house planted junk, and it has blossomed. I finally got around to taking pictures of his plastic menagerie.

The lady and I are embarking on a very dangerous mission called Operation: Bait and Switch. First, we're going to add elements of wonder (read: junk) to his display. Then, we're going to carefully replace certain objects with objects of similar or greater weirdness. All of this will be done in the dead of night and photographed, semi-surreptitiously, in the light of day. The photos that follow are therefore to be considered "before" shots, with the "after" shots to come, one installment at a time.

Phone graveyard:
Bowling:
Scared of that:
Because nothing says "property value" like a sink in the yard:
No one here but us plants:
And tiki baboons in construction helmets:
Et al:
Om nom nom:
Don't Fear the Reaper:
His sickle is for sore eyes only:
No parking. Doesn't say anything about "no dumping" though:
Saving Private Hobbyhorse:
Just ducky:
Well, that's pretty much it. Sorry things were so depressing and/or bizarre this go round. At least we can look forward to a bright future:

Times like these call for an increased dose of Everything is Terrible, that's for sure. But not to worry: although birds are dropping from the sky, fish are washing up dead on the beach, and lunatics are circumventing democracy with "Second Ammendment Solutions," the Republic must stand. Move along. Nothing to see here.

Seriously though, in the words of what could possibly be the best graffiti I've ever seen:

Young Beaver's Oeuvre

2011-01-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

So there's this retarded kid up the street. He's a singer. He sits on a folding chair in front of his garage, and he strums a nylon-stringed acoustic guitar, and he sings. Like a motherfucker. Without regard to any kind of key at all. Without regard to the concept of "tune." Just like a Down's syndrome magpie on a phone line, singin' all fucking day.

Please note: he does this while listening to his iPod. Ears plugged with buds, singin' and a-strummin' away to what I suppose are Justin Bieber tunes. Why do I suppose that? Well, I've got a 9-year-old daughter, so it's safe to assume that I might be familiar with young Beiber's oeuvre. However, the fact is at the end of family camp dance this last July, Dolly and her cohorts, ardent Ramones fans, stuck their fingers in their mouths pretending to barf when his hit jam came on.

No, Friend-O, I got the hunch he was belting Bieber songs when I walked by and saw a picture of Bieber on the card table next to his folding chair. The photo, carefully torn from a teen magazine, was accompanied by a hand-written note explaining that there would be a Justin Bieber concert at 8pm that very evening. Next to this mind-blowing information was a bowl, resplendent with a few shiny bits of change given by passerby, with a sign stating "TICKETS."

I fuckin' love this kid. He is a living testament to the power of positive thinking; the will to power; the shit people let retards get away with. To wit: the kid sits out on the sidewalk making hideous squawks and selling invisible tickets to a non-existent performance in which he will play the part of a Disney-dipped and decidedly non-retarded, safety-wired and non-offensive Teen Dream (to wit: Justin Bieber). It's like when two-year-olds say shit like, "When I grow up, I want to be a bird." He didn't even have to think, "Fuck it--I like Justin Bieber and strumming the guitar and shiny coins so I think I'll just be him for awhile and sell tickets to myself as him." No way, Jack. That is way over-analyzed. He just did it. He was too busy being to worry about becoming.

Today, my lady Laura and I were walking the dog. As we rounded the corner onto 10th Ave, the retarded kid came into view on the other side of the street. On our corner, an elderly, mostly hunchbacked Filipino man walked out of the laundromat. He had on long, baggy shorts, Nikes, a large black backpack. A ball cap sat atop his head, and white earbuds snaked their way into his ears from his backpack. His shoulder-length hair was in a ponytail, and if it weren't gray, he'd look like any other 19 year old on the way home from basketball practice. Except for the slowness of his gait, and the hunch: not quite a hunchback, he was mostly stooped at the neck, as if he'd been, I don't know, craning forward toward a laptop computer at the wee hours writing a blog no one really read.

Anyhow, about five feet after we passed him, he started singing, wildly. And the kid across the street, well, you know he was singing already. He'd been singing already, motherfucker--go get a late pass. I was holding Laura's hand, and I laughed. I knew that somehow this serenade was meant for us: the intertwining passions of a kid with Down's syndrome and an elderly Filipino man with no concept of age and painfully poor posture. Lilting on the wind, I knew these manic, lunatic strains would, one day, be our wedding march.

What we need, Dear World, as 2011 pokes its head from out the shitter of last year to try and catch its shadow sleeping, is a good dose of retarded metaphysics and unrestrained vocalizing. Next level shit. Because with the way things are going, we could all be dog meat real soon:

In the spirit of letting it all hang loose, snatching the ruby, and grabbing that brass ring, I bring you the mind-blowing sounds of Steel Panther:

Any neo-retro-hairmetal band with enough swag to get Sarah fuckin' Silverman's hot box to lez out in their video is all fuckin' right with me. Their songs are fucking hilarious, as are their videos and live performances.

They're basically Spinal Tap meets late the excesses of '80s Aqua Net hair metal. Laura and I like them so much we're capping off our desert odyssey vacation (Joshua Tree, Slab City, Mojave National Preserve, and Death Valley) with a Steel Panther show at the Hard Rock in Vegas.

Also not afraid to let his inner retard roll is Stevil Knievel at All Hail the Black Market. So much so, that he may very well have coined the term "radtarded." And what could be more radtarded than a zip-up, wool, Smokey and the Bandit cycling jersey? Better hit him up and pre-order one before you're shit outta luck. And, in case you're not familiar with the wool cycling jersey, they're super fucking soft and cozy--think lamb's wool, not scratch Pendleton.

Front:
Back:
Yeah, it says "TRANS AM" down one sleeve and "BANDIT" down the other. Awesomeness and Awesomnosity.

Stevil claims Hipsters to be dead, but he never mentioned how they became that way:

While on the subject of the rad and the radtarded, let's talk Mongoose, shall we? Not Wal-Goose, but real, bonafide, made in America, old school Mongoose.
Which is not to say I've got a beef with the high-end Mongoose BMX and MTB models that are made in Taiwan and sold at actual bike shops. I own, and love--and ride Downieville with--a Mongoose Khyber. I don't have a beef with Taiwan either, per se--BMX went Taiwanese, for the most part, in the mid-80s. The quality there is good--though, for me, it'll never have the prestige of an American made frame. Mostly, I think Pacific watered down the brand when they made a big box store division. Pacific branded bikes weren't enough?

Actually, even though it was basically a necessity, I think the brand lost a lot of mystique when they got rid of the gusset. I think they'd do well to work that into their marketing--bring back the image of the gusset from the time when Mongooses were known to be nearly indestructible.

My first real BMX was a Mongoose Motomag. This was after a couple Montgomery Wards specials, the last of which I broke in half. When I grew up--ha!--I got a vintage yen and built a up a 1980 or '81 Team Mongoose from a frame I got at Pedal Revolution for twenty bucks. Teams were all chromoly, whereas the back half on the Motomag frame was mild steel:
Win V-Bars, the same kind that came on Kuwaharas and had the same bend as Redline V-Bars and crazy-assed Oakley 3 grips. I picked these up from Alan's BMX in England:
Takagi Tourney cranks, bought off eBay from a guy in Germany, and MKS Foot Jaws pedals, which, despite their fearsome appearance, were almost the slipperiest pedals ever made:
Profile shafted stem and Tange head lock:
This bike was the tits. It had all the '80s goodies: Bullseye hubs, Excalibur seat clamp, Dia Compe 890s, checkers. I ended up giving it to a girl I barely knew in a kind of "pay it forward" gesture. I met her when I was checking her old Supergoose out. It was locked up in front of her work and she came out and we started talking. She was soooo jazzed on it that when it got stolen a month or so later, I gave her my Team. At the time I had three vintage BMX bikes I hardly ever rode, so it felt good. Of course I missed it later, especially when I found out she'd let the crank arm get loose and stripped it out. But what the hell--it's getting ridden and that's good.

I also built a Moosegoose. The Moose was developed for über tall factory rider Danny Oakley, the guy on the left in the above photo. He felt cramped on a regular-sized BMX, which had really short frames back in the day, so, instead of lengthening the top tube, which ultimately became the correct solution to the problem, Mongoose stretched a short BMX vertically. This produced what is still a goofy-looking bike, but I've got to say, it was super fun to cruise in Golden Gate Park. I had a spinny gear on it--something like a 42-19, and you could get full leg extension, but it was still super short. Felt like riding a two-wheeled unicycle.

The frame and fork were candy red over chrome. Painting over chrome gave the paint an incredible satiny depth, but it didn't adhere well. This candy paint hardly ever survived since it peeled off at the first scratch. The frame and fork, purchased on eBay for a steal of around $375, were new old stock from 1980. Never built up.
Mongoose pads, stainless steel bars, gold stem, cranks--almost everything on this bike was branded Mongoose--even the unsealed headset and bottom bracket.
Terrycable (I later put front brakes on this bike as well), A'me cam grips:
The "Winner's Choice" sticker on the SS Bars:
Mongoose-branded Kashimax MX seat, fluted alloy post, Suntour clamp:
NOS Shimano SX pedals, Sugino snowflake gear, Mongoose one-piece cranks:
Schwinn Maximizer tires (started with knock-off Comp IIIs), and those gorgeous Motomag IIs which I hand-polished and repacked.
Boo Kitty, may she rest in peace, was the only thing that could make this bike more bad-ass.
I ended up parting the bike out on eBay to buy new race gear. Waza, a HEAVY collecter from Australia bought the frame and fork, which made me feel good, as his builds are freaking amazing. He's got basically every BMX Products bike there is.

A few months ago I came across another 1980 Team--don't know what it is with me and the 1980 bikes--via Andy, the cook at my work. I wish I would've taken a picture of it before I rebuilt it. It had a smattering of boring, no-name parts, mostly off a low end K2 BMX--including a FUBAR rear wheel, and some boat anchor heavy bars. It was chrome, but like the nickel-plated Team shown above, that was only because the original candy blue had peeled off.

I rebuilt her with a budget in mind and as many replica and used parts as possible, instead of new old stock. The theme, or at least guiding aesthetic, I had in mind was as Plain Jane, stripped down, get down to business, tough-ass, leather jacket, jeans, Converse style BMX as possible:
Mongoose replica grips:
Hunt Wilde plate with retro or actual old school stickers:
DG BMX sticker sent to me by Ben Orr way back:
The Winner's Choice:
NBA, meaning "National Bicycle Association," a long defunct sanctioning body, not "National Basketball Association," a circus for genetic freaks on steroids:
Always loved the BMX head tube sticker. Even better in rainbow tape decals:
I got new school Skyway Tuff Wheels in coaster brake for this bike, a fact that I regretted somewhat soon, as I never road coasters back in the day. I literally dolphin dived over the handlebars while trying to bunnyhop a curb. So fucking embarrassing. I've got to give it to old school heads like Drob, Den, and John for riding coaster. That shit is not easy. Brake arm mod is a replica Dia Compe seat clamp from Porkchop, a la Buff and RL.
Kenda "Billboard" tires. Fuckin' Motocross. That's what it was about back then:
GT layback post and ACS clamp from Rini's:
Got a bunch of stuff from Ed Ferri at Colored Tuffs, including this Mesinger style waffle seat. Really great site for retro stuff:
Bottema sticker, Maurice the Mongoose, perhaps the raddest bike company mascot ever, and a prism Fox sticker. Sharp bars and first generation DK stem:
Retro Profile spider, MCS chainring, Wellgo Shimano DX copies, and some awesome chromo cranks I got new for like $35 off eBay awhile back. They look like Hutch cranks:
Repop stickers from BMX Products:
Retro 1" threaded SE Landing Gear forks:
Tuff gnarl:
Well, that's about all the time I've got tonight. The lady is mumbling profanities at me from the bed, and I've got to wake up in a few hours to take the kiddo to school. But first, the randomized element of our programming.

Check this incredible drop in from the top of the Cunningham full pipe. The guy who filmed it is Matt Ballard, though he doesn't say who the rider is.

Whoever he is, he's got watermelon-sized nuts.

Many claim double aught buck to be the only way to go with zombies, but as you can see, because of its wider dispersal, birdshot can be a superior alternative. I shot this target...er, I mean, "prepared for the zombie apocalypse," with Shanti's 12 gauge Benelli:
Mr. Nick Cave is also a fan of superior firepower, as evidenced below:
Everyone runs afoul of the law now and again, even the True Blue:Here are a couple of random photos I've taken, run across while trolling the vast archives.

400 Blows, El Rio:
Rollins, Warfield:
In closing, I can only say I know two thing for sure:

1) It's not my place in the 9 to 5 world:

and 2) I want a Weinermobile funeral.

True Love Is the Devil's Crowbar

2010-12-31T20:50:00.000-08:00

Remember folks, as 2011 slides into view, you better come correct in the New Year. Keep ya fade tight and ya gear fresh:
Danny MacAskill is pretty much world renowned for keeping it fresh. So much so, that if you're at all into bikes, your grandma, or mailman, or pot connection has told you at one time in 2010 to check out a DM video. You've probably even seen this one:

What's with the dead stop front flips off of ledges, Danny? Ice cold.

It's been fairly fucking ice cold here in SF lately. Which is to say, the mercury has been into the high 30s on occasion. I've had a few rides face into some Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day type of gusts.
For those of you who may be reading this in, say, Minnesota or Gnome, Alaska, or the Gulag in Siberia, hey, I know it's colder where you're at. That's just one of the reasons it sucks to be you.

For us delicate, culturally advanced San Franciscans, however, it's fucking cold, yo. Thankfully, the legendary X played two shows at Slim's on the 28th and 29th to warm the cockles of our clam-chowder-in-a-bread-bowl hearts.

Actually, I started warming my cockles a bit early at Triple Crown on Market and Laguna. I'd throw up a link, but they're closing. That spot has horrible feng shui: it's been like three places in five years...and counting. But my boy Tophers was spinning the last Red Wine Social for a bit, so I stopped in.

Immediately after a shot of Jameson and a few pulls on my beer, I dropped my camera on the lens. Smash! Broke the filter. Here's a picture of Toph Rock and friend, taken through shattered glass:
I was hoping it was going to give me the awesome Black Flag Damaged feel, but the shattered glass was too clost to focus on. Just looks like it might be snowing in the bar. After ceremonially--which is to say accidentally--stabbing my finger with a glass shard from the smashed filter, I was off to see X.
You can keep your yellow-bellied sapsuckers and your red-breasted warblers. For my money, the sweetest sound in nature is John Doe and Exene Cervenka singing together:
I had the first three songs to shoot--no flash allowed. My lens is somewhat half-assed, in that the widest it opens is f3.5. New, faster lens soon. Also, while most people were friendly enough and let my by to get my three songs worth, there were a few cocknockers who were suuuuper pinched about yielding their spot at the punk rock show to let me sidle up to the stage. As a result, I got some dark shots with a high ISO, all basically from the same angle, standing in front of John in his mega suave western suit. Some are okay though:
The very next night I cut another finger, this time while pretending to stab someone with a busted pint glass. Kids, don't play with glass.
All right...I've got to head to work at the Buckshot. I want to let everyone who's been to the place know that there'll be some good stuff coming in the new year, including some awesome and unusual swag, a revamped, frequently updated website, and a blog full of drunken freakouts which I will be running. So come down and get yer drink on.

No idea where this came from, but I will say this: "Europeans look out!"Returning to the ice cold theme, does anyone remember Cappio? Far as I know, this early '90s treat was the first bottled iced coffee available in the states. I was stoked, because at the time I was a Creative Writing undergrad and had a huge iced coffee jones. I'd make a lemonade-style pitcher of coffee, throw half and half and sugar in there, and nail the whole thing while I was writing.

When Cappio came out, they were available in two sizes: the regular size, which was 12 ounces or so, and the whopping 32 ounce quart bottle. I had a Monday night five unit Shakespeare class that lasted three or four hours. At the beginning of class I'd start in on a quart of Cappio, and by the midway break, I was guaranteed to be shitting my guts out. The thrill, in addition to the chill, was it's unheralded, yet unmatched, laxative qualities.

Anyhow, Happy New Year and all that tripe. Here's to hoping you don't spend the first day of it hugging the toilet. Not sure what the Swedes say, so I'll just say "Prosit!"