[MikeD]

Check this vid out

Alleycat rampage...I dunno quite what to think...on one hand, it's truly crazy crap. Makes me feel like Dhing is a safe sport...and it makes me think that even clumsy trail-wrecking, 8" travel, no-skill, new-line-cutting jackasses are more considerate, less selfish people than the courier crowd.

Kinda have mixed feelings, ya know? Impressive vid, though.

MD

 

[surfinguru]

Hey MikeD, cool find. That actually looks kinda fun, but then I am a little off.... <--oops, looks like the meds are kickin in

 

[Brian HCM#1]

Hey MikeD, cool find. That actually looks kinda fun, but then I am a little off.... <--oops, looks like the meds are kickin in

Hey Rich, hows the arm doing? Is it healed up yet? Been back to N*?

 

[kidwoo]

I always used to skateboard around nyc when I'd go there. Bikes look fun too. Can you say "helmet?"

 

[Cave Dweller]

Man, that was farily crazy. I can't belive some of the spaces they went through, like between cars and buses. i thought for sure they wouldn't make it.

I thought the crasiest thing about it was they were riding fixed track hubs!!

 

[kidwoo]

Man, that was farily crazy. I can't belive some of the spaces they went through, like between cars and buses. i thought for sure they wouldn't make it.

I thought the crasiest thing about it was they were riding fixed track hubs!!

I assumed that at first but check again. Most of them weren't. There was definitely some coasting.

 

[surfinguru]

Hey Rich, hows the arm doing? Is it healed up yet? Been back to N*?

Brian, naw man. 12 weeks in the cast and counting. (Damn those scaphoids take a long time to heal!) Anyway, more pictures on the 28th and then <fingers crossed> hopefully no more cast.

Looks like N* KO'd my happy arse in round 1.

 

[zedro]

after awhile i started trying to predict how to navigate the pedestrians...was expecting someone to get cloaths-lined.

i guess its alot like DH...exept for the trail and trees are constantly moving

 

[chicodude]

i couldnt see the video

 

[zedro]

i couldnt see the video

update your player to get the right codec. Or get the VideoLan VLC player which seems to be able to play just about anything

 

[Hrelp]

This is those X-men couriers right? I saw them on tv.

 

[Cave Dweller]

I assumed that at first but check again. Most of them weren't. There was definitely some coasting.

When the guy goes over the bridge at the end of the movie and puts his feet up the cranks keep going. Maybe only some of them had them, anyway, still crazy stuff.

 

[ÆX]

When the guy goes over the bridge at the end of the movie and puts his feet up the cranks keep going. Maybe only some of them had them, anyway, still crazy stuff.

that was awsome feet up coasting

 

[Tame Ape]

Yah, I competed in two alleycats in NYC a couple of years ago. No fixie riding on my part, I used my CX (not my XC) bike and tried to represent.

To no avail. Those guys (and the occasional girl/groupie) go right to 11 on those bikes. The crazy thing is that a lot of those people will work a full day couriering and then go race at night.

Funnier still is how the races are organized. Its set up to be more of a scavenger hunt that purposedly replicates what their day job looks like. You get a manifest and then have to visit all the locations and then secret locations on top of those. Between bobbing for apples (tough!) and then having to take shots at the next location... It get hairy. Fun, but hairy. Regular peeps race too mind you.

 

[kidwoo]

When the guy goes over the bridge at the end of the movie and puts his feet up the cranks keep going. Maybe only some of them had them, anyway, still crazy stuff.

If you get a chance, get on a road bike, shift into a gear that gives you a straight chainline and haul ass down hill. Do the same thing he did with his feet and watch what happens after about 50 feet. Not saying it's definitely not a fixed gear but any single speed will do the same thing going that fast.

Whatever they were riding, that video made me believe I could tolerate living in a city again..........almost.

 

[Westy]

Looks like a bike it she best way to get around the City. Those cars did nothing but stand still.

 

[Tame Ape]

Looks like a bike it she best way to get around the City. Those cars did nothing but stand still.

Yah! Just watch out for car doors and jay walkers!

The guy with his feet up was fo'sho on a fixie. Old bikes used to have foot mounts on the fork for when the bike was moving at a more then comfortable speeds.

 

[Tap]

that was sick.

i love the part where the bimmer get's hitched on as well as the bus swipe.

stoke high now!

 

[kidwoo]

Yah! Just watch out for car doors and jay walkers!

The guy with his feet up was fo'sho on a fixie. Old bikes used to have foot mounts on the fork for when the bike was moving at a more then comfortable speeds.

That's cool. It's like when I lived in florida and our only hills were bridges. Fixed gears are scary.

 

[Tame Ape]

That's cool. It's like when I lived in florida and our only hills were bridges. Fixed gears are scary.

Yup! I like my knees attached to my tendons!

Hey, whatever happened to that Shockster?

 

[kidwoo]

Yup! I like my knees attached to my tendons!

Hey, whatever happened to that Shockster?

It's waiting for me to get a mig welder.

I just got back from burning man and oh the ideas are a flowin'. Unfortunately the metal isn't.............yet.

 

[Slugman]

Fixed gears are scary.

So are big drops and super steep fast trails... but isn't that the point?

I loved riding my fixed gear in Boston... it's not only faster than a car, but more exciting as well.

 

[eastcoastzigzag]

that was cool $hit!!!! the one thing i wanted to c was the guy coasting the bridge put his feet back on the pedals. if that was fixed iduno how he would do it.

 

[Horrendous Hack]

So are big drops and super steep fast trails... but isn't that the point?

I loved riding my fixed gear in Boston... it's not only faster than a car, but more exciting as well.

I don't like fixies... I was riding downhill, no I was rocketing downhill on a road race fixie. All is good (apart from the fact the bike was getting pretty squirly under me), see the lights are green and just as I am about to come to the light a car goes over I back pedal/give up - FLY. I was hurled and I mean hurled I completely flew a rediculous amount of feet and landed face first in... gravel. So I used my face as a brake for a few hundread feet. Yay.

However that does look damn fun. I do something like that here. £20 ($35) is hidden, we are told where it is and then we race to get there, across town. We have had some damn sketchy incidents (one of which a giant train of us hit a stair gap damn fast, with no one spotting of course, all over shot and landed at/on market stools. 2. Riding down a river 3. Hucking off bridge in to roads 4. Nearly running over old women 5.Crashing in to a cop car 6. Nose diving on to car hood- theres a drop where you fly down a hill, jump off the end, over cars and onto the sidewalk that points the same way as the hill, this guy ****ed it last minuite and his front wheel met hood))) but it is excellent. You should try it, get out a nice comfy bike and take the hortest route poible, no matter what the huck.

 

[MikeD]

The best is racing messengers around SF on the slalom bike. When you get to a stopping point they're always like "dude! you're f'in crazy! you a messeneger? how'd you learn to ride like that? I've never seen someone do that on a mtn bike!" Best response: "I race." Then gate start outta there!

Do you wear aviator shades when you do this? It'd be cool if you did...because then, you could tip them down before you say, "I race," and then push them back up over your eyes and ride away. A leather jacket would be cool, too.

For some reason, I'm picturing you, Abe, and Chomps bumping chests and saying "I feel the need! The need...for SPEED!" and then perhaps playing some homoerotic volleyball with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer.

MD

 

[-BB-]

Yeah... I used to be a courier in Boston, and that was about how all the riding was.
The only difference is that you aren't in a "grid", so streets are coming in at weird angles and they are narrower.

I got hit 5 times in the one summer i did it. I hit two people as well.
Mostly b/c I was going the wrong way down a one-way street and the people don't look both ways before crossing.
F'in dumbarses

My funniest accident was when I a cab drifted over and pinned my handlebars between his car and the parked car next to me. The bike suddenly stops, I go OTB with my feet still clipped in... but I never hit the ground because I have one hand on the Cab's hood and one on the parked car with my feet sticking straight up in the air.

Oh.. and grabbing onto a car as it accellerates from a stop is harder than it looks.
you need STRONG arms to deal with the acceration.

 

[WestCoastHucker]

looks similar to my drive to work, but i do it on a crotch rocket......

 

[sod8]

Anyone ever read The Immortal Class by Travis Hugh Culley? I thought it was a very interesting and fun read about bike messenger life.

If I lived in and knew my way around a big city, I would definitely like to try it out for a while. I have had too many close calls with idiot drivers just around our fairly tame streets in S.B., I can only imagine what it would be like to haul ass around a big city.

 

[MikeD]

Anyone ever read The Immortal Class by Travis Hugh Culley? I thought it was a very interesting and fun read about bike messenger life.

Ugh, I read that, and think our Mr. Culley is a sanctimonious, overinflated, self-eggrandizing prick. His book, however, does bring the oxymoron of most courier-culture to the surface; on the one hand, it wants all road users to respect bikes as fellow users and increase bike usage on the whole, and on the other, it wants to retain the bad-boy, outlaw aspects of riding as a courier and self-imposed societal outcast in general. He revels in flounting the laws that would be necessary to achieve a more bike-friendly city.

I guess he can navigate that contradiction by claiming that he has to be an outlaw merely to survive at this point, and that if his utopia ever actually came to be, he'd become a law-abiding citizen.

Anyhow, he's a crappy writer. All I really recall of the book is some crappy, page-long metaphor about the city as a grey death-face. Belch. Take it to your high school literary magazine, pal.

MD

 

[Tame Ape]

Ugh, I read that, and think our Mr. Culley is a sanctimonious, overinflated, self-eggrandizing prick. His book, however, does bring the oxymoron of most courier-culture to the surface; on the one hand, it wants all road users to respect bikes as fellow users and increase bike usage on the whole, and on the other, it wants to retain the bad-boy, outlaw aspects of riding as a courier and self-imposed societal outcast in general. He revels in flounting the laws that would be necessary to achieve a more bike-friendly city.

I guess he can navigate that contradiction by claiming that he has to be an outlaw merely to survive at this point, and that if his utopia ever actually came to be, he'd become a law-abiding citizen.

Anyhow, he's a crappy writer. All I really recall of the book is some crappy, page-long metaphor about the city as a grey death-face. Belch. Take it to your high school literary magazine, pal.

MD

I actually met him once randomally during the March 15th anti-war protest in NYC. Happened to be out on my (new) bike and fell in some bike bound protesters. Either he found us or we found him, but he was rocking a jailish jumpsuit and a BIG smile the whole time. Loved lighting it up and getting people into the streets. After a while I bailed rather then tempt the fates and get arrested.

I've heard people call him all those names before and they're probably right. After all it only takes a read of the book's title to figure that one. :

 

[Damn True]

Cool vid, good riding.

I love riding in cities, but I wear a helmet.

 

[zedro]

I hit two people as well.
Mostly b/c I was going the wrong way down a one-way street and the people don't look both ways before crossing.
F'in dumbarses

uhhhh....yeah

 

[thaflyinfatman]

Oh.. and grabbing onto a car as it accellerates from a stop is harder than it looks.
you need STRONG arms to deal with the acceration.

I saw a guy doing that today, up a major street right in the centre of the CBD. Pretty sure it was a courier, he'd grabbed onto this rail thing on the back of a van (it's kinda like a rear bullbar) and was getting towed up the hill (whilst leaning down to reach the rail, as well as sideways so as not to get pulled over) at about 60km/h. Decent effort!

 

[Guess?Who]

"My Posse's On Broardway" That's Sick how they know the city streets like that. It's hard enough to drive a car there.

 

[Heath Sherratt]

Werd, S.F. like that on a skateboard...we would have to time lights because once you hit 35 plus mph on a skateboard you ain't stoppin'.

 

[kidwoo]

Werd, S.F. like that on a skateboard...we would have to time lights because once you hit 35 plus mph on a skateboard you ain't stoppin'.

At one point I had a pile of wheels that were coned beyond use from sliding down the avenues and such. That was back in the day when people rode skateboards rather than carry them to the skatepark or wherever they were sessioning of course.

 

[OGRipper]

Nothing you don't see every day in SF, or any other big city. Plus blowing lights and pissing off peds doesn't do much to help when we argue that bikes are entitled to the protection of the rules of the road.

Anyway I saw an alley cat race in boston around '95 where they had a wooden kicker set up - about 2 feet high - guys were hitting it on their fixies...that is wacked.

I love my fixed gear but I go slower on it than my regular road bike, especially downhill...but that 'cuz it's only got a front brake.

 

[goodtobeIrie]

looks similar to my drive to work, but i do it on a crotch rocket......

Work?? You don't work...you sit in front of a computer and read mtb forums all day...while in the midst of looking like you're doing work... At least you're gettin' paid for it...Hope you enjoyed Utah...

Nice vid though...Glad I don't live in a "City"

 

[SlackBoy]

Nah the dude on the bridge is def on a fixie, when you see him earlier on in the vid look closer and he has no brakes, how does he slow down with no brakes to do the big dodge betwen the cars. I was under the impression his super powers weren't working that day so he'd need a fixie to slow down without brakes.

I miss been a courier but my body doesn't. 6 odd years of couriering and mountainbiking take a toll. Altohugh it is the best downhill training. Interval sprints all day long 5 days a week.

 

[Westy]

Do you wear aviator shades when you do this? It'd be cool if you did...because then, you could tip them down before you say, "I race," and then push them back up over your eyes and ride away. A leather jacket would be cool, too.

For some reason, I'm picturing you, Abe, and Chomps bumping chests and saying "I feel the need! The need...for SPEED!" and then perhaps playing some homoerotic volleyball with Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer.

MD

Bump!