Clipped Demeanor – Bike Snob NYC

Further to yesterday’s post, a reader asked an excellent question:

No, it’s not because of the Mets–though nobody’s more smug than Mets fans now that they’re finally having their moment, and of course if you’re both a Mets fan and a bicycle advocate you have certainly attained something close to Peak Smugness:

No, the key to understanding why people want to live here is knowing that New York is the clipless pedal of cities:

You know how cyclists who use clipless pedals think it’s the only way to cycle “seriously,” and even feel special because they use them? That’s how New York works too. It attracts people who think the rest of the country is full of rubes and think they’re morally and intellectually superior because they live in an expensive place full of crowds and rules.

And you know how if you’ve been one of those people for years and then you spend a little time on flat pedals you start to realize they’re actually quite liberating and after awhile you don’t even miss clipless pedals at all? That’s what happens when you spend a little time away from New York and you realize people aren’t rubes at all, they just don’t derive a sense of moral and intellectual superiority from living lives of inconvenience. In fact maybe it’s you who’s been going about it all wrong all this time.

Then there are some of us who go back and forth between clipless and flat pedals just like there are some of us who live at the very edge of the city so we only need to be clipped in/inconvenienced when we feel like it. (I happen to fall into both categories.) We like to think we’re open-minded, but we’re really just insecure, fickle and wishy-washy.

As for people who ride flat pedals but still wear special shoes and dork out just as much as people who ride clipless pedals, that’s a whole other category:

[Uh, what science? With one your shoe is attached to the pedal and with the other it isn’t. It’s not complicated.]

They may think they’re liberated but they’re just as uptight and gear-obsessed and insufferable as their clipped-in counterparts, maybe even more so. I’m not sure what city that would be, but I’m leaning towards San Francisco.

But if we’re being really honest here, the real reason anybody wants to live in New York is for the pussy:

Sorry.

Actually this is not the city, this is Elmsford, and I ride by this cat regularly:

I don’t know the current status of the bike shop, which has been “coming soon” for a couple years now. It does seem like an ideal location, being situated right next to the South County Trailway. I’m not quite curious enough to call the number, but I did ask the cat, who was aloof and disdainful, like a bike shop employee when you ask them to install flat pedals and a comfort saddle on your brand-new Pinarello Dogma.

Maybe it was just the Shimano 105:

I’m not sure what city Shimano 105 would be, though it would have to be someplace eminently livable and affordable despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of cachet. It is on a Milwaukee, so could that be it? All I know is it definitely wouldn’t be New York.