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And (ferociously snooty comment coming up) they then reveal that they've cycled 'several hundred miles' in three years. I don't consider myself particularly dedicated, but I do that in a month. Which perhaps explains why I choose to do it on an expensive bike, wearing clothing designed for the purpose!
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Hello, this is Peter from the Guardian bike blog, venturing over into unfamiliar territory. I've just spotted this thread and thought I should correct one fallacy above: we don't get "targets" for page views or comments. In fact, the entire blog is run by a handful of people in whatever spare time we have during our main jobs (I'm a news reporter for example), on virtually no budget. We'd love to cover more subjects in greater depth but just don't have the time.
I should also add: in retrospect, maybe "ferociously snooty" was misjudged. Sorry. Comments like that only add to the endless, artificial and pointless sub-division of cyclists into competing tribes, something I criticise other people for doing.
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Hippylovescontis ?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/user/HippyLovesContisI LOL'd..
.. and then ordered my flying midget death squad to kill the perpertrator.
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Good of you to swing by into LFGS Peter.
Maybe I should only speak for myself, but I’d think most people take less umbrage with you/your writing with the quality of the bikes which get promoted and or bought buy uninformed people thinking they’re getting a bargin and some cool points too. Unipack/Create/lower end SE Draft from a couple years back - for example – are notorious around here because either are poorly assembled, wear out quickly or expose themselves as uncomfortable and poorly designed. There are many posts and folks who’ve bought one and then over time replaced every item on the bike in an effort to get comfortable and stay safe, and then sell the frame because it’s not right either – too heavy or, say, only being offered in one size. These are usually people who consistently cycle after buying a bike, which is kind of the point.
Only nincompoops on fixed gears and SS would describe themselves as urban warriors needing bomb-proof gear for teh mad streetz of London. None of us need that – mostly because that crap doesn’t exist. What we need and want are quality bikes and parts that are customisable and suit our needs for, you know, safely cycling at high speeds and for extended periods of time. Aesthetics too, yes.
These sorts of bikes because - aside from the colours and deep wheels - they just aren’t good bikes and are unsafe. If you UTFS for Unipack and/or create and ‘crash’ or ‘mechanical failure’ or ‘the fucking rear cog fell off at Elephant and Castle roundabout after 9 days’ – you’ll find that we are rightly deride them for the poor quality bikes they are.
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Nothing positive has come from your article. I'd go as far as to say that it's really ill-advised.
- It's not an interesting story - Create have been doing the exact same thing for years and as a result are probably the most common bike on the road these days. Also Charge do a very similar thing but to a much higher standard and have won over much of the cycling community with their budget bikes. Either would have been a better subject.
- You've slated a forum which is pretty unequivocally apposed to dangerous bikes and helps a lot of newbies to be safe. (For free.) At the same time you've spotlighted a company churning out poor value, dangerous mechanics (see brake cable pic above) that WILL lead to injury or worse.
- You've contributed, in a national newspaper, to the shitty stereotypes that we all face on the road every day.
Nice work, Peter.
- It's not an interesting story - Create have been doing the exact same thing for years and as a result are probably the most common bike on the road these days. Also Charge do a very similar thing but to a much higher standard and have won over much of the cycling community with their budget bikes. Either would have been a better subject.
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The Guardian article took me to this youtube video
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The comments are hilariously uninformed. Why do they think anyone on a fixed gear/ss upon encountering a slight incline will shriek and instantly fall to the ground weeping (admittedly I nearly did this on LDN>Brighton several times)? Hills are hard but definitely doable, jeez.
Fully loving squelch though, for real
if you pedal about Shoreditch on a gaily coloured fixie while wearing a tweed flat cap and aviators, you're proclaiming yourself a cock in letters six feet tall.
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The comments are hilariously uninformed. Why do they think anyone on a fixed gear/ss upon encountering a slight incline will shriek and instantly fall to the ground weeping (admittedly I nearly did this on LDN>Brighton several times)? Hills are hard but definitely doable, jeez.
Fully loving squelch though, for real
I can't even be bother to read that shit... specially when the same guy admits to read the Daily Fail.
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Fair play fo Peter Walker for coming on here to set the record straight, but..
I should also add: in retrospect, maybe "ferociously snooty" was misjudged. Sorry. Comments like that only add to the endless, artificial and pointless sub-division of cyclists into competing tribes, something I criticise other people for doing.
Its kinda self defeating to admit you are against the sub-division of cyclists, and then dismiss this here forum - whose original purpose was to provide a space for people to talk/discuss/ask questions about a specific type of bike, even though it has grown into much more than that, when that space wasn't available on other bike forums - in such an offhand and some would say offensive manner.
You tar us with the self same attributes that you have now stated that you deplore.
We don't do ourselves any favours, and we are not to everyone's liking, what or who is, but we are at the sharp edge of this current reinvigoration of cycling in this city, and the rest of the country. And with the explosion of people wanting to ride fixed/ss, we are for many their first port of call in the quest to find out information, and your comment only perpetuates the myth that we are unfriendly and unwelcoming..
Your blog post and the comments that come after have done nothing but provide a platform for other cyclists - who should actually know better - to get their prejudices and ill conceived notions of riding fixed and single speed off their chests.
Hope you spend some more time here in the future and the experience is a better one than you may have had before. If not, hopefully you'll choose a better way of expressing your bemusement at y/our forum..
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..it's also now his forum.
The article was boring, the (non-WiganWill) comments depressing and having further discussion on LFGSS is irksome.
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stand corrected jono
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Hello, this is Peter from the Guardian bike blog, venturing over into unfamiliar territory. I've just spotted this thread and thought I should correct one fallacy above: we don't get "targets" for page views or comments. In fact, the entire blog is run by a handful of people in whatever spare time we have during our main jobs (I'm a news reporter for example), on virtually no budget. We'd love to cover more subjects in greater depth but just don't have the time.
I should also add: in retrospect, maybe "ferociously snooty" was misjudged. Sorry. Comments like that only add to the endless, artificial and pointless sub-division of cyclists into competing tribes, something I criticise other people for doing.
I for one thought the article quite splendid. Peter says what the rest of us only dare to think when we are under the influence of wrongly prescribed medicine.
Chapeau! -
youramericanlover -
I can't comment on the other brands but - notwithstanding that slightly alarming photo above - the No Logo bike I rode, albeit briefly, felt pretty solidly put together and surprisingly fun. My personal view is that if a bargain price and some shiny colours tempts a non-cyclist into buying a bike, even if it turns out to be a big of a dog, more often than not this simply makes them want to go on to something better. I started out riding in London more years ago than I cared to mention riding a crazily heavy Raleigh MTB with knobbly tyres. It was utterly unsuitable, but it got me hooked.tibbly -
Are you always this grouchy? These sorts of bikes might be familiar to LFGSS regulars, but the Guardian blog is, very deliberately, aimed at a more general audience. It's perhaps not your place to decide what is or isn't interesting for them. I'm also not sure how precisely I've contributed to any "shitty stereotypes". The overriding message of the blog post was that anything which gets people riding is a good thing. How's that so controversial?cornelius blackfoot -
You quote my apology and then pick me up for precisely the fault for which I just apologised. That's just strange.More generally: yes, some of the comments under the blog are a bit mean-spirited and ignorant but don't think it's always that way. The Guardian bike blog readership is, in general, very well-informed and helpful. If slightly grumpy. But as this thread shows they don't have a monopoly on that.
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TBH I'm actually quite glad Peter's come in here to directly engage with you monsters. It does show a level of professional integrity that in the (fairly short) time I've been here I haven't really seen very often from journalists (thinking specifically of that awful creature from the Hackney Hive and the various hack job articles that were done after interviews / material was provided), so fair play to him.
Peter, I don't agree with your view that horrible, dangerous bikes are good 'starter' bikes, even for a general audience, and if I were selling horrible, dangerous bikes I would certainly make sure that they held up at least long enough for the cyclist to pedal away from the shop before it fell apart. That said, it is good of you to turn up to be disagreed with ;)
I do hope you stick around, grumpiness notwithstanding.
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tibbly -
Are you always this grouchy? These sorts of bikes might be familiar to LFGSS regulars, but the Guardian blog is, very deliberately, aimed at a more general audience. It's perhaps not your place to decide what is or isn't interesting for them. I'm also not sure how precisely I've contributed to any "shitty stereotypes". The overriding message of the blog post was that anything which gets people riding is a good thing. How's that so controversial?Not "anything that gets people riding" is good. The bikes aren't reliably safe. For someone completely new to cycling they would be scared away and even less likely to ride again. As mentioned - Charge are a british company producing many decent OTP bikes as generally low prices. From what I've seen the bikes are well made and reliable.
Yes, a general readership won't be as informed as we are but as a national paper you should be promoting safe stuff and pointing out the differences between good and bad. Maybe it would be more interesting for your readership (which includes me) to read about these companies exploiting trends. -
...My personal view is that if a bargain price and some shiny colours tempts a non-cyclist into buying a bike, even if it turns out to be a big of a dog, more often than not this simply makes them want to go on to something better. ...
So, according to you, your personal view, it is OK to advise (or in this case, to write about) people into buying poorly manufactured bikes,
because based on your experience, eventually, if they don't get seriously hurt, people might get on to buy something better? Is this it?
This sounds tremendously irresponsible Peter, I mean, you as a journalist have a role a responsability, social, moral, ethic, whatever.
But you are also responsible for this sort of "analysis", of something you've tried for 3 min at the buildings garage, and "felt solidly put together".If I'm allowed, and obviously comparisons aside, but it's a bit like saying: "There's not much wrong with buying these "legal highs", even if
they might kill you or leave you fried for life, cause more than likely you'll be buying coke and ketamine by the end of the month..."Basically you're advising people to educate themselves when it comes to where to spend they're money, because they don't want to be told
where to spend it. However, you've already advise them somehow... too weird.
CTank
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peterwalker
Ludd
hippy
youramericanlover
tibbly
nuknow
Scoot
cornelius_blackfoot
JonoMarshall
bothwell
O'Shane
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@matt_r_p
they're like daily mail comment pages, with an extra dollop of sanctimonious self-righteoussness (sp?)