red eye

i've been keeping my eye out for a suitable donor vehicle so i can build myself a single speed. i love my hybrid: it's durable and practical and has mudguards and panniers and stuff, so it's also useful. but part of me does also want a light, minimal, fast bike that i can just scoot around on, when i'm cycling more for pleasure and not carrying my laptop and suit to work. despite the stigma, the lightest, most minimal bikes around are single speeds and fixies; and complimenting my enjoyment of mechanics and customisation it seems likely that i'll head towards building myself one.

unfortunately they're also classed as the most trendy transport out there at the moment, which is great for the environment but not so great for me as i want it to be more of an inexpensive hobby than a fashion statement; so that when it gets stolen i can just shrug it off and make a new one. when something becomes this fashionable, the world of idiots comes out and boosts the price up. so for this bike =>
i found on ebay recently, that looks like a bunch of crap... someone ended up paying £131. that's about nine dollars! and there's me thinking an ancient, basic, no frills bike should be pittance.

a few of the american bloggers i follow seem to have no difficulty in finding bikes & parts in skips or on wasteland or in local scrap yards, but as far as i know the only things we have that are anything like that are the canals in north-east london. and i'm not about to go diving in those open sewers for the chance of accidentally grabbing hold of a rusty frame, when it's far more likely i'll drag up someone's thigh bone.

someone i met ages ago has just released a film called age of stupid, premiered yesterday in a solar-powered tent in leicester square. she also made mclibel, if you've seen that. i haven't, but i'm sure it shares my sentiment that big american
corporations are largely a bunch of cunts - only it does it with real footage and evidence.

anyway, i only mention the film premier as i saw that the main star pete postlethwaite arrived on a single speed. quite a nice one, actually - if it wasn't for the spoke cards that make him look like a 9 year old newspaper boy. and i reckon you could get away with removing the back brake.

anyway, it all links together nicely doesn't it?

or something.

finally, look at this. i hope these dancers do it all with an ironic smirk across their faces. if not, the world is a bad place: