Rage Against The Meh-chine – Bike Snob NYC

Further to yesterday’s post, in which I mentioned my blog’s anniversary, I find myself nostalgic for some of the Bikey Internet Celebrities of Yesteryear. And one of them is Lucas Brunelle:

Today, if you want to look for cycling thrills and chills there are lots and lots of daredevil cyclists on YouTube from whom to choose. For example, there’s that guy “SAFA Brian,” who goes down hills really fast:

I find absolutely nothing interesting about SAFA Brian. By no means do I wish him ill, nor am I one of those people who thinks that he’s setting a bad example or whatever. (Or, more accurately, I do think he’s setting a bad example, but I couldn’t care less. Exemplars are only as bad as their imitators are stupid.) Basically, I just think he’s the roadie equivalent of a Watermelon Humper, and I’d rather watch one of those Calling In Sick videos where a bunch of people noodle around the Bay Area on their Rivendells.

But hey, it’s a good way to get a helmet “collabo:”

Anyway, before there was SAFA Brian, before there was Terry B, or before there were even SICK FIXIE EDITS like this one…

…there was Lucas Brunelle, riding around and looking for trouble with a pair of cameras strapped to his head:

I mean I think there was, anyway. Frankly I’m a little hazy on the chronology. But it sounds good so I’m sticking with it.

In 2011, Lucas Brunelle explained that every seat he has is “as sharp as a razor:”

Do you ride like that even when you’re picking up groceries?

Yes. Every seat I have is as sharp as a razor, so you always play to roll.

To this day, I have absolutely no idea what that means, nor has anybody else offered up a satisfactory explanation.

Then, like many aging people from the Northeast, he became a snowbird and started spending half the year in Florida, where he’d have really contrived confrontations with the police right down the street from where my grandmother used to live, which was just weird:

Though occasionally he’d return to manufacture increasingly bizarre and pointlessly dangerous situations for himself:

Anyway, it recently occurred to me that I hadn’t heard anything about Lucas Brunelle in quite awhile, so I checked his YouTube channel and discovered that he’s “changing [his] YouTube strategy” in the wake of diminishing viewership:

The implication seems to be that he’s somehow run afoul of the YouTube algorithm, and that he must now “tone it down” to once again reach a wider viewership. However, a quick scroll of his recent videos suggests this isn’t the case, and that his viewership actually increases the more irresponsibly he behaves. For example, this video in which he runs a stop sign, rides right into oncoming traffic, then defends himself by saying he was “in the dirt” has exponentially more views than his other videos:

By the way, I’m not sure what the dirt has to do with anything. I guess the implication is that he couldn’t maneuver on it. Maybe he should get a gravel bike…or Just Buy A Rivendell Already. (Unfortunately Rivendell do not sell razor sharp seats.)

He also gets lots of views on this video, in which he once again has a contrived interaction with the police right down the street from where my grandmother used to live:

Hey, we all hate getting stopped by the cops, but when you run a light in full view of them you really have no choice but to take your lumps. Yet Brunelle–the man who intentionally rides on thin ice–condescendingly Fred-splains to the officer that they have to run the light for their safety, and that he’s been doing this “a lot longer than you have,” whatever that means. Oddly, the one thing the Jobst Brandt of Outlaw Cycling Videography doesn’t do is take the truly badass option, which would have been to ride away and force the cops to give chase, which would have immediately catapulted his numbers into SAFA Brian territory.

All of this may make it seem like I have nothing but contempt for Brunelle, but it’s exactly the opposite: I too have grown old and irrelevant over the years, so I know how he’s feeling. But I want him to know that it’s okay, and that there’s nothing wrong with sitting up and letting younger and dumber idiots take all the hard pulls up front. There’s a sense in our culture that it’s better to burn out than fade away, and that we should all rage against the dying of the light, but I am of the opinion that when night starts to fall one should go gently into it. There’s a time to hang up the crabon, and to wriggle out of the skinsuit, and to stop arguing with authority figures who are one-third your age. Or, to put it more succinctly…Just Buy A Rivendell Already.

You’ll be glad you did.