Friday, June 20, 2003
May Day 2003
Two Rats went up to Minihopeless for their May Day 03 festivities. It was the 29th May Day parade, and the 8th year the Black Label Bike Club has participated. It was also the first year they'd participated legally!
The parade started out in a park, where over a hundred Bike Club brothers and sisters came out of the woodwork for the biggest ride of the year.
We made a stuffed rat for them and the Minneapolis Scallywags, each wearing a wee set of colors.
I love the Twin Cities style of bike, where any ole part can be slapped in for extra support. This tallbike actually belongs to a rare unaffiliated lone wolf, a sort of ronin of the West Bank.
Just to the right of it is Jake, the new President, conferring with the Grand Marshall.
Throughout Per's 11 years of sculpting bikes, he's moved away from experimentation towards a perfection of a certain few designs. This bike is one of his later sidecar bikes, an impressive union of form and function. Look at those lines! And it rode like a dream.
A "full suspension" tallchopper, meaning it flexed like a rubber band when you went over bumps. Also, imagine the stretch required to put your foot on the rear wheel and stop the thing!
This pic shows the size of the crowd. Amazing! Also check out the front view of the World's Tallest Bike, and the stabilizing cables put in to make it not so floppy.
Some barefoot hippie who brought his sweet chopper to the ride. He said he does lots of distance riding on this thing.
With his "kickstands" down, Strange mounts the WTB.
We felt it neccessary to represent on choppers, seeing as that's what we roll on down south in Chicago. Strapped under my seat here is the new and improved Pollution Emission Emulation-Unit, which emitted bubbles to show that, just like me in my armor, sometimes tough things are fragile on the inside.... *snif*
I'm feelin' pretty shorty next to all those trip-his.
More rats.
Zoom in and check out the scary skull on that chopper.
The organizers of the parade had decided to skirt the ole who-can-be-in-it issue by designating a "free speech section" after the parade. So they had people marching with a banner that read END OF PARADE and then this one. About the most controversial float in the free speech section was the water-birth one, or maybe Support Your Community Radio. It seemed a little extreme to single them out like that. But nevertheless the Scallywags were shunned to the rear of the parade, because their colors say "Jesus Is Lord". Scandalous! They took it well, though, and ended up having the best bike of the day anyway...
To the left of the Super Star there is the summersault bike, which blew the rest of the parade out of the water. I'll never forget the sound of 200 people sucking in their breath as he sped up...
...and flipped with a CLICK-BAM! He'd ride around giving fives to the kiddies, then do two in a row as an encore.
Mr. Sun rowed across the lake to visit all the happy elves in spring-land.
A glimpse of the famous Scallywag Pennyfarthing.
The three clubs declared a truce and met for weenies at the Scallywag house.
This is the circus wagon for the Scallywags's bike circus. "Before you ask," they told me, "that's the bearded lady, not Jesus."
Johnny Payphone 9:06 AM |
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
The Scallywags Come To Chicago Critical Mass
The Scallywags came down to Chicago to attend the mass and start up a chapter here. They made a grand entrance and, the next day, invited me to a build day.
Johnny Payphone 7:17 PM |
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
A Rat Retreat to the Redneck Riviera
Johnny Payphone 11:52 AM |
Monday, April 21, 2003
A Visit from the Black Label Bike Club
Johnny Payphone 10:57 AM |
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
032603 Rat Ride
Too many rides of late had not been in the true Rat style. It was time for a real Rat Ride. An alley-riding, garbage-digging, skulk-through-the-darkness ride, not like St. Ratrick's Day.
Chopacalypse Now
The bike that was given as a peace offering by the Black Label bike club, but was taken back the day after this picture was taken. They replaced it with a much nicer one, though, and peace was restored to the lands.
The Pidgin, followed closely by the KellyKiller.
The Captain.
Ever circling.
The first real rat to come on a Rat Ride.
Supa choppa powa battle!
This homemade lowracer eventually suffered a crippling bend in the middle, which took two people standing on it to bend back, and the ride continued.
The Pidgin got some ape-hangers, befitting a tallchopper.
We found numbers! So many numbers!
A shill for Big Tobacco? Also note that thing Nathan is holding, which is one of those doohickeys you put on the conveyor belt at the supermarket to distinguish your crap from the next person's.
The Scallywags present were ceremoniously presented with the Holy Warrior armor, which included this shield (bearing the word "FAITH" above the cross), a helmet, and two gauntlets that said, "GOSPEL OF PEACE". They can be seen two pictures up.
Check out this sweet homemade springer fork.
Okay, this looks real nasty, but what is actually occuring is not an act of pederasty at all. The Choppapillar is comprised of two frames welded together to make one long one. This leaves a seat tube unoccupied. So when we find a bike, the Rat call goes out("Eee! Eee! Eee!") and we take the seat off the found bike, flip it, and c~l~a~m~p it into the waiting seat tube. Using this method any bike can carry one other bike with only the addition of a single tube.
Tallbikes are good for the big 40-foot dumpsters.
The Sugar Train.
Here you can get a better view of the Choppapillar.
Well if you didn't want your book to be left unread leaning against the side of a confectionery, you shouldn't have written such a crappy book, Mr. Author!
Ahhhh! Too tight!
Johnny Payphone 4:51 PM |
Thursday, March 20, 2003
030903 Build Day
St. Ratrick's day was rapidly approaching, and there was much to be done in anticipation of the annual celebration of St. Ratrick, who drove the snakes out of Ireland to free the rats from reptilian oppression. There were so many half-finished bikes laying about! With the deadline approaching, we bore down on building and chopped as though our masters' whips were at our back.
Cutting out stencils for jackets, banners, and flags.
We had a huge flag that used to hang at the Art Institute, and said "Some Crusty Old Artist: 40 years of Pretension" or something like that. We had to rip off all the letters to paint our own on.
Neon Lady
Shakin' that stick and drivin' me crazy
Your eyes look red and hazy
Doin' that stuff that you do
Messin' me up with your voodoo
You drive me crazy with that
Boogie oogie oogie oogie oogie
Big or little, thick or thin, a big ol' mallet will get it in.
Sure is dusty down there in the Rat Hole. My pants used to be white!
Sayyyy... who stole the trail from my fork?
Testing out the lowracer. I pulled that rear fender off an old Harley Electraglide.
Chopping a bike together really brings two men closer to each other. I just hope they lube up their bottom brackets first.
Propaganda in the finest Maoist tradition.
This guy took a really shitty bike and made it sweet. I'll have the after pictures here eventually.
Uncle Grandpa warms his ole bones by the fire.
Johnny Payphone 10:16 AM |
Friday, February 28, 2003
022303 Build Day
This build day was a notable one, for many reasons. It represented the opening of Bubbly Dynamics as the Rat's Nest. The newly-formed Chicago Scallywags came down to work on starting up their chapter. A strong alliance was formed between them and the Rat Patrol. And much work was done, with the participants working hard rather than gabbing and goofing off. Over a dozen bikes were started this day, and at least five of them were rideable after ten hours of chopping.
Here's the "before" picture of the Rat's Nest. By the end of the day the bike pile had been severly diminished and there was nary a complete fork to be found.
A project brought in by one of the Wags. That front tire is solid plastic- not a comfy ride!
Another work in progress, the "Queen B". Check here for updates about this bike.
How do I chop thee? Let me count the ways.
I chop thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
Chopigator-style fork, very strong. Akirakurachoppa gave his life to become part of a still-greater machine.
Flame on!
We were glad to see something made out of this old Pacific Waves girl's bike. Plus white tires lay white patches.
The Holy Trinity of chopping: Sawz-all, pipe bender, crescent wrench.
What are those Scallywags doing?!?! They're chopping that fork in half! Well, I never!
This will become the front half of a tandem. "In great attempts it is glorious even to fail"
This was the first chopper in the Chicago Scallywags fleet, so they decided to call it "The Alpha".
Annie the dog hates front wheels, she always bites 'em.
The Shamrock Shake. Never was a ride thicker and sweeter.
This bike's rear wheel was stuck in the highest gear. It started like a locomotive.
The Rat in the Hat.
Don't ask.
Johnny Payphone 9:21 AM |
Friday, February 14, 2003
020803 Pack Rat Ride
A Pack Rat is a subspecies of Rat that loves to find goodies in the trash and bring them back to its nest. These rats can be identified by their purely functional appearance, often splattered with mud and dumpster juice.
On this day, a few pack rats and a few of the standard variety gathered at The Edgewood on a mission to transport a large quantity of raw materials to the new Rat Hole in the basement of Bubbly Dynamics.
Most of this stuff came from this Rat's basement. Once the word gets out that you're building a bike pile, everybody's eager to clean out all their old crap and foist it on you. I wonder if Bubbly Dynamics' Master Foamer knows how many relationships he's saving...
All in all, there were two Fresh Aire trailers, a Bob, the Gimpy Trailer, and three escorts. Note the fork still bolted to the side of this shopping cart, from an early attempt at Scallywag-style basket bike construction.
Here, the Freeek Spirit is loaded with Rat Patrol helmets. In the background you can see the baby-hand on the end of a Dumpster Stick, a very important tool for the avid diver.
We musta looked like a parade of the richest bums in the land. In the back there is the Freeek Spirit's sister bike, I think it's called Super Basket Bike.
There's the Electric Chopper, and then the Junk Pumper (a StumpJumper). That trailer belongs to the Catholic Worker, and its flagpole is made from a fishin' pole.
Riding overloaded bikes across icy metal-grate bridges is fun! In the middle there is the Good Life Bike, part of NordicTrack's "Outdoor bikes" line. It features a ridiculous braking mechanism- the entire rim of the rear wheel is a drum that a band of metal is wrapped around. Squeezing the lever tightens the band, which makes the bike stop on a dime. The only problem is, that band is always rasping around the rim and slowing you down.
The total length of this ride was about ten miles.
Pushing the Workhorse and the Gimpy Trailer up the loading dock ramp at Bubbly.
I can't tell if this helmet signifies that he's an Imperial Gunner or an Imperial Fleet Trooper.
The beginnings of the shop. That's Foamy's TIG welder in the back.
Johnny Payphone 1:30 PM |
Thursday, December 26, 2002
Rat Ride 073102
Nine choppers (interestingly all choppers, no tallbikes, sleds, funnybikes, etc) met at a location halfway between the north side and the west side to fuel up at a nearby taqueria and take the obligatory test-rides on each other's contraptions.
We soon took to the alleys.
Unnamed chopper, featuring the longest fork of the pack. Like the brontosaurus and his two brains, a front wheel this far out often makes its own decisions as to where it will go, leading the rest of the bike into parked cars and such.
Ever circling.
Choppasaurus Wrecks on the left.
Chop Suey.
Noam Chopsky.
Big Poppa Choppa.
Choppasaurus Wrecks.
Unnamed chopper.
As true today as it was... when it was written.
Make a wall of discarded couch cushions and try to bash through it and stay on your bike.
The Electric Chair.
Having the greatest rear-to-front-wheel radius ratio is a source of great status among chopper riders.
Our secret meeting location, and secret meeting activity.
We ride off into the night.
Johnny Payphone 2:22 PM |
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Rat Ride 120602
The call went out for an Arctic Rat Ride. We had a destination this time, so we gathered not in the usual spot but rather by the Mural of the Naked Lady Pouring Water out of a Fish. Six brave Rats gathered this day- The Bluebird, Chop Suey, The Hammer, The Electric Chopper, Count Chopula, and on its maiden voyage, The Pidgin. We soon took to the underground, entering an alley that led downward under the city and not surfacing for about three miles.
As we hit our first dumpster, the Pidgin suffered a flat. The pause offered us a chance to score some great photos to use as covers for our new Rat Patrol Soundtrack.
The Bluebird of Happiness waits patiently.
We pried open a rat trap to see what waited behind the little holes on the side. Looks like some rat even managed to drag some poison halfway out before croaking. At the Amoco building, these traps are disguised as rocks.
The Hammer cruises across the Chicago River on the lower level of a bridge.
The Electric Chopper soon follows, as we turn onto Lower Wacker, recently opened after becoming the largest poured-concrete construction project in history. It was barren, clean almost- no place for a rat.
It really is colder up there.
The Electric Chopper stops for a recharge.
Roosevelt Boulevard.
The Hammer.
Count Chopula.
We enter the Amtrak switching yard.
The Pidgin is a rare bird, a tallchopper. It's so called because the pigeon is the rat of the air.
A ghostly tallbike in front of a passing freight train. Chicago has more raising bridges than any city in the world, and there's one of 'em.
The Bluebird of Happiness and the Red Bat of Bleak Dispair.
We arrived at our destination, Bubbly Dynamics, and quickly set about eating greasy food and drinking Hot Toddies. The graffiti indicates that we were in "Goog's Office". Note the tape over all the bullet holes in the windows, to keep the heat in. Bullet holes are bad for any home's energy efficiency.
Hey, man, if you'd just ridden six miles on a single-speed tall chopper in the snow, you'd be tired and hungry too.
The honey from the hot toddies and all that ketchup ended up getting all over everything.
A toast, to the Rat Patrol.
As you see here, the Pidgin is merely a Schwinn Continental with a vertical step-through frame welded where the back wheel would be.
Whenever I see The Hammer, I always think of that Veruca Salt song, "Seether": "Can't stop The Hammer (haaammerrrr), can't stop The Hammer (haaammmerrrr)...."
The heads of crack who used to live there left a bag full of miscellaneous medical supplies that, in six months of new ownership, noone has been brave enough to take down, despite the fact that there are literally 10-foot poles laying around.
We set about on the task at hand: Assembling trash we found into cases for the Rat Patrol Soundtrack, available now for the low low price of four monthly payments of $0 plus shlepping and fondling, order now, no C.O.D., use your credit card and email ratpatrolhq@yahoo.com. Hey, is that the Rat Patrol Soundtrack? Yeah? Well then TURN IT UP, MAAAN!!
Count Chopula was in cargo mode, pulling the Ghetto Buggy, which held the stereo blasting the Rat Patrol Soundtrack. Order now, and you'll get all your favorite rat- and garbage-related tunes, including:
Rat
Rats
Rat Fink
Rat Velvet
Rink Rat
Bold Rat
Hood Rat
King Rat
Sub-Noize Rats
Dirty Rats
Killin Rats
Rat Killin
I Smell A Rat
I Think I Smell A Rat
Rats In My Room
Rats In The Garbage
Garbage Dump
Total Trash
I Love Trash
...and many more, including "Rat Patrol" by Naked Raygun, "Rat Patrol" by They Might Be Giants, and "Rat Patrol" by Elephant Man.
Chopula's front headlight is powered by a dynamo, and that teeny-tiny wheel has to spin very fast, and so the generator is very effective when it doesn't fall off.
Can't stop the HAAAAMMMERRRR... okay, enough, sorry! It's stuck in your head now, idinit?
I vant to chop your bike, blah.
The Rats disappear into the mist from whence they came.
Johnny Payphone 12:37 PM |
Saturday, November 09, 2002
| Rat Ride 110302 |
Count Chopula, flapping in the night in search of wictims, blah.
Abigail.
Cake?
See the Rat King? Look for his beady red eyes and his crown.
A foiled theftery.
Punkin Poppin.
Efficient Affordable Housing.
Our mascot?
Chop Suey.
Riding with a bear behind.
Neon Girl.
Rat King.
Car. See the car horn on the handlebars.
Chop Suey, Neon Girl, Abigail.
Count Chopula.
Baby, Bottle.
Don't look at burning magnesium.
Hawgs outside the pancake house.
Johnny Payphone 11:02 PM |
Saturday, November 02, 2002
| Rat Ride 082102 |
Emily on "Ann Margaret".
Digging for treasure. On the right, I'm preparing myself for my favorite part about the Rat Rides- tossing old shoes up onto the phone lines.
Nathan falls victim to one of the Rat's most feared enemies- the dreaded Nocturnal Alley Yak.
Alley Yaks fear but one thing: Chopper-riding Alley Panthers.
Behind one house we found a bunch of mirrored furniture and a bunch of stuffed animals. It looked like the result of a marital compromise: "I'll throw out my stuffed animal collection if you'll get rid of all that damn mirrored furniture! Our house looks like a coke dealer's!"
Emily said, "Better not touch that bear, I can almost guarantee it's been humped." Then she proceeded to demonstrate how it might have been humped.
I tied a string from one of its arms and we dragged it through the streets.
Eventually it was "bombs away!" as I cut the string in the middle of a busy intersection.
This baby wasn't looking too good after a rousing game of Kick the Baby. I left one of its hands in a water fountain and chucked the head in somebody's pool.
"Hey kids! Be cool, stay in school!"
Me: "Hey, look, an electric organ! Let's plug it in!"
Craig: "I could take it home! It's the best in the city of Chicago!"
Me: "This chunk o' shit? Come on, Craig!"
Matt: "I mean, really Craig, there's no action left on this piano."
Craig: "Excuse me, I don't think there's anything wrong with the action on this piano."
Craig: "Well I heard about the fellow you've been dancing with
All over the neighbourhood
So why didn't you ask me baby
Or didn't you think I could?
Well I know that the boogaloo is out of sight
but the shingaling's the thing tonight
But if that was you and me a now baby
I would have shown you how to do it right
Do it right (U-huh)
Do it riiight (Do it right)
Dot it riiiiiiiiight
Do it riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
Do it riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight...."
Johnny Payphone 10:57 PM |
Wednesday, October 23, 2002
Rat Ride 100202
The Rat Patrol gathered at the usual spot on October 2nd, 2002 for another group scurry through the goodie-rich alleys of the City of Big Shoulders. And Lo, the alleys were rich with discarded wealth! The best time for dumpster-diving is moveout day, and almost in anticipation of the treasure/trash that awaited us, we brought along a lot of cargo space.
Early in the ride, we encountered one of our marsupial brethren. He pretended to be dead, and we pretended to be fooled.
At our first stop, we found a big pile of books, Flowers for Algernon and The Catcher In The Rye and the like. Who could throw such things away? We all browsed and picked out a few favorites. The next pile had belonged to some musicians, as we found drum heads, gig bags, and a mic stand; along with a complete tent, a cell phone, and this pair of shark jaws.
Two trikes were in attendance... while not freaked-out themselves, one had a nifty custom trailer made from the rear of yet a third trike.
To the left there is Wigry, then the Electric Chopper, then behind the trike is the Hammer
Kickin' it senior-citizen style.
The ride ended behind the Odwalla distributor, where crate after crate of their vitamin-rich ooze had been set out because it expired within a week and there wasn't time to ship it to a store and sell it. Check out The Hammer to the left and the Electric Chopper's new wastebasket attachment to the right.
"Superfood- Experience the Refreshing Taste of People"
Some of us can't handle our people.
And, as usual, ice cream afterwards.
Johnny Payphone 9:46 PM |
Sunday, October 06, 2002
Top o' the Mall
Sometime in late June or early July 2002, a ragtag assortment of choppaholics gathered at "The Chopping Center" to see what could be made from a big pile of bikes that someone's dad had been glad to see removed from his garage. After some work on four existing choppers and the vertical stretching of three kid's bikes into funnybikes (one of which had been the owner's mom's when she was little, how cool is that?), we had an impressive fleet of four frigates and three corvettes.
We set sail to the Harlem-Irving Plaza, a desolate suburban mall whose parking lot is located on the roof. It's a vast expanse of pavement that could accommodate 2,587 cars if anybody shopped there. It served as a fine place to ride around, especially since the demising walls of the mall caused the sections of the 2nd-floor parking lot to be connected by huge ramps. Everything was fine until we decided to go up into the tower-like third story, where we interrupted to Norridge Police cruisers, no doubt engaged in something very uncoplike. They were none too happy to see us and chased us out of the mall.
To the left is H4N55 on Choppalong Cassidy, in the only picture to have surfaced from this ride. Perhaps more will turn up soon.
Johnny Payphone 11:56 PM |
