Mission Mission

For sale now at Pushbike. Even better than the Mondrian Cake, am I right?

Hey what do Google, cheese, authentic consumer electronics, and now “fixed gear bicycles” have in common? They are all hard to come by in China.

Poor Nie Zheng (pictured) had to wait his entire life to complete his Mission hipster look:

‘It’s been a dream since I was a kid to get a bicycle like this,’ the 40-year-old fashion photographer told me. ‘But no one sold them here.’ It took nearly nine months, he said, to get a track bike he wanted sent from England in 2007.

Someone throw a benefit show for these guys, already.

(via Slate)

Previously:

Kevmo goes to China

How To Drink From a Bag o’ Brew

If only Muni went someplace you couldn’t get to faster on a bike. If only.

But seriously, can we please start a non-profit devoted to at least getting these guys some decent action-sports helmets?

[via -...]
[We tried to find the original source using Tin Eye, but no dice.]

Reader James read the story about an undercover police officer allegedly saying, “Shut your fucking mouth bitch or I’ll knock you off your bike,” to a female cyclist, and responded thusly:

wow. just another reason to always carry a gun when you ride.

(link)

What, like G Baby here? It’s cute for a second, and then it’s like WESTERN CIVILIZATION IS CRUMBLING THE HORRORRRRRR!!

We hope James is joking, but wouldn’t be surprised if he is not. So fess up, anonymously or otherwise: Who’s packing heat in the bike lane?

Photo by Willicious Images.

One thing that I noticed right away about the hipsters in Tijuana was that their style was a few years behind that of San Francisco hipsters, who themselves are a few years behind New York hipsters (this is a good thing).  LA hipsters are not included because they never know what the fuck they’re doing anyway.

Hoping to buck the trend, this one is carrying around a unicycle.  The new fixie, anyone?  I feel like it’s been tried before.

Previously:

Hipsters Live in the Mission

Costco Hipster

Hipsters Don’t Deliver

Hipster Pizza

The Modern San Franciscan Has Real Boobs and Lives in the Mission

Adrienne the other day had a troubling encounter with an SFPD officer behind the wheel of an unmarked police sedan, allegedly. According to Adrienne, he cut her off, she expressed her frustration, and then he said, “Shut your fucking mouth bitch or I’ll knock your off your bike,” and proceeded to drive alongside her in a threatening and erratic manner down a section of Valencia Street.

Read the full account, and pay attention to the comments.

[via Streetsblog]

The powers that be have been installing these safety posts dividing the bike lane from the rest of traffic on Market Street.  The latest ones (pictured above) can now be found on the stretch between Gough and Van Ness. 

I like the spirit of this idea, since it creates a visual safety barrier and clearly denotes to vehicles that it is unnacceptable to use the bike lane to pass other slower vehicles on the right.  Ultimately, this will foster an overall sense of cycling security and will probably encourage the more cautious riders to start commuting to work every day.  Furthermore, this will definitely prevent delivery trucks from parking in the bike lane.

However, there is another side of me (the one that doesn’t think twice before splitting Muni buses with an inch of clearance on each side) that so far has only experienced these things getting in the way.  Sometimes it is necessary to exit the bike lane and veer into the traffic lanes, such as when passing slower riders who are travelling side by side or when a car inches out of a driveway a litte too far without looking and you need to make instant evasive maneuvers.

like this jerkface

Was it really so bad before?  I don’t recall ever feeling unsafe on this stretch of Market Street while riding in the bike lane.  On the other hand, the ubiquitous placement of these posts would probably have come in handy when fellow blogger Adrienne Johnson of Change Your Life, Ride A Bike was antagonized and almost purposefully knocked off her bike by a douchebag cop in an undercover vehicle.

What do you guys think?  At least they’re fun for slalom practice; that is, until THIS GUY shows up:

The Mission SF Federal Credit Union will loan you up to $2500 to buy a bike and the interest rate works out to less than half of what you would pay on your maxed-out credit card. So now is the time to hit the “buy” button on that painstakingly customized, feminine colored single-speed that’s been sitting in your Mission Bicycle cart.

Get the scoop at SF Appeal.

This is old news to a lot of you, but the Bike Kitchen rules.

My Peugeot had an unfortunate run-in with a BMW some time ago and I’ve been needing to replace the front fork. Local shops were estimating a >$125 repair and some even refused to do the work due to liability. Eventually, I said “screw that, the bike isn’t even worth that much” and took it in to the Bike Kitchen Saturday to work on it myself.

An old-timer volunteer, Rudy, patiently showed me how to use all the headset installation tools, bitched about how he didn’t have such extravagancies in his day (“We just did this with a hammer and screwdriver!”), and even offered some MacGuyver workarounds that any reputable shop wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot seat post (coke can stem shimming! using old headset parts as spacers!). I stuck around a bit longer to true my wheels and adjust my brakes and I was back on the road in a couple of hours.

Yeah so maybe I’ll be scraping myself off the grill of a bus in a couple of weeks but it’s my life, dammit, and it only cost me $5 to use their space, extensive set of tools, and replacement parts for the day.

The Bike Kitchen is right here in the Mission on Florida between 18th and 19th. Open hours are: Tue, Wed, Thu 6-9pm; Sat noon-5pm

Previously:

Rainy Day Bike Kitchen Caravan

I’m still trying to figure out what a “fixed-speed” bicycle is, but this product review (written by a San Franciscan, of course) seems to clear things up: