Rollapaluza

tynan mongrel, bad luck mate !

I am one of the few (only!?) who doesn't go into moral apoplexy at the idea that a magazine (I may or may not like) doing a piece on an aspect of cycling culture.

You could, of course, have simply grabbed a few male models with lovely hair, nice tight trousers, the 'right' shoes and £260 cycling bags - stuck them on off-the-shelf bikes loaned to you for promotional reasons, you could then have gone out of your way to do zero research and even write up a disparaging and inaccurate piece. You would have needed no permission from anyone nor would you have needed to seek people's input.

That would have been fine.

Your mistake:

You seemed to have done some research (at least enough to end up here) You would have appeared to have attempted to involve people knowledgeable in this area, people who have perhaps done an alley cat, you made the dreadful mistake of even appearing to get permission or seek peoples views on this piece. Worst of all you are a cyclist with a fixed wheel bike, and if things are as bad as I think you even ride it !

Similarly as people's moral outrage - at first time posters attempting to so rudely sell people here a secondhand front wheel without first taking everyone on the forum out for a meal and getting to know them - drives people to sell elsewhere allowing forum members here to shop at Chainreaction, Evans and Wiggle with their cognitive dissonance intact - you should have left this kind of journalism to uninformed and uninterested Evening Standard and Daily Mail writers who can very capably lift a lifestyle gloss from half an hour's Googling.

I think that would sit better with the more officious standard bearers and moral defenders of 'the scene' ;P

Like I said bad fucking luck ! :)