New Langsters

Greenman I'm reading some of these posts and I have to laugh. Do you realize how self-absorbed you sound as you dictate the terms of what's cool and what's not? I am born and raised in NYC. I've ridden the streets of Manhattan since I was a schoolboy. Almost lost my right foot to a cabbie who ran a red light. Took me two years to walk properly again. After this long recovery, I'm back out there again, have ridden almost 1800 miles in 2007 thus far, with a long-term goal of riding Paris-Brest-Paris in 2011. Part of the preparation involves the Boston-Montreal-Boston 1200K in 2008. Because it' involves Boston and it's part of my recovery from near disaster and there's a Boston edition Langster and the geometry fits my body well, I reserved one. But if I read you right, because I want this bike I'm not cool; when you see me you will assume I'm just a coffee shop poseur. You'll disrespect me when you see me on this bike, blissfully unaware that I have eight other bikes in my garage (vintage junkie - and three of them I built myself from mongrels). You'll look at my bike and not my muscle tone as you decide I'm not worth speaking to. Perhaps you should consider taking a moment or two to get to know someone, judging them by their character instead by some artificially-created social standard. The coolest thing you can do is decide for yourself what is good instead of relying on the crowd to decide for you.

Perhaps you are buying a Langster for the right reasons but surely your not oblivious to the negative connotations surrounding such a bike. To most messengers/fakengers/early adopters the langster represents an ever encroaching commerciality on what up till recently has been an exclusive - read: Cool if you wish- past-time. They...We? Do not hate the riders of these bikes but the companies who so obvisously just jump on the bandwagon to make a quick buck. I simply think it is human nature to want some sort of exclusivity, to be unique, be it in the way they dress, the music they listen to or the bike they ride. Langsters are what Harry Potter is to The black Magician trilogy, what East 17 are to Take That!