Too Many Bikes: A Postscript

Additional to yesterday’s publish in regards to the bewildering number of bicycles out there to the fashionable client, this morning the next story caught my eye:

Now, I need to be completely clear right here: I’ve no drawback in any way with the author touring to Vermont on a press journey for a motorbike. Should you’re a author, and also you’re a bicycle owner, and somebody desires you to come back to Vermont and journey a motorbike, it’s best to go to Vermont, and it’s best to journey that bike.

Moreover, she is totally appropriate that accessibly-priced bicycles are much more necessary to most of us than five-figure superbikes with ugly-ass forks or no matter:

And he or she’s proper that each one these ultra-high-end bikes are principally all the identical anyway. (Not that I’ve actually ridden any of them, however all of them use the very same elements and the very same geometry, so how may they not be?)

Most of all, I undoubtedly don’t have any drawback together with her recommending the bike. If she rode the bike, and she or he favored the bike, then she ought to give anyone inquisitive about buying it the inexperienced mild to take action.

So be assured I’m not impugning the author in any means–fairly the alternative, in truth. If something, I’m un-pugning her.

Nonetheless, its necessary to recollect this weblog continues to be known as “Bike Snob NYC,” not “Joyful Inclusive Bicycle Lover NYC,” so after all there was one thing that aggravated me, and it’s the bike itself:

Even accepting that accessible bikes are a superb factor, did the world really want the nine-millionth utterly indistinguishable gravel bike that makes you sleepy simply taking a look at it? What number of of these items can the human race probably take up? We’re already previous the purpose the place the biking media is pushing 28 (!)-bike sub-$2,000 gravel bike round-ups and “testing” them by the tons of. HUNDREDS! And but right here’s one other one, precisely like all of the others, solely this time from the world’s largest big-box sporting items retailer:

Once more, I’ll remind you I totally assist the author. Moreover, I’m additionally not morally troubled by commerce, capitalism, company development, non-public wealth, burning fossil fuels to go locations in airplanes, or any of the opposite issues folks rail in opposition to with their smartphones, utilizing the social networks run by the very folks they so despise. I went to Bentonville, I rode the Walmart trails, I visited the Walmart artwork museum, I loved myself very a lot, and I’ve no qualms about it.

Nonetheless, I do discover the ensuing bikes mind-numbingly boring, which is why I can’t actually relate to this:

However whereas the revenue margins could also be small, relating to the variety of bikes offered, that $1400 bike goes to outsell the $11,000 flagship three to at least one. It’s the form of bike that provides somebody their first style of gravel driving or bikepacking. The one which helps an grownup fall again in love with driving for the primary time since childhood. The bike a guardian buys for a teen simply entering into the game. And the bike you see each Saturday morning, leaning in opposition to the wall of your favorite espresso store, well-loved and unfazed if it suggestions over.

I imply sure, it’s true, a brand new rider could very nicely get one among these GRVL AF (I assume that’s gravel-ese for “Gravel As Fuck,” what an terrible identify) and start a life-long love affair with biking. And I hope they do! (Start a life-long love affair with biking, that’s. I’m largely detached to which bike they select.) However it’s not like Decathlon are performing some type of mitzvah or performing altruistically right here. Relatively, for some motive they merely really feel the necessity to convey their boring-ass gravel bike over right here to America of America (Canada and Greenland pending) to compete with all the opposite firms already promoting equivalent boring-ass gravel bikes.

Why? I dunno. Progress? So that you received’t stroll into your native bikes store (when you nonetheless have one) and purchase a gravel bike from a smaller bike firm (if there nonetheless are any)?

I don’t imply to get all paranoid and dsytopian right here (that’s a lie, I completely do) however it seems like we’re perhaps a yr and a half from your entire bicycle business, media included, turning into one nice massive drop-shipping operation run utterly by AI.

Joyful Friday!