Singular Girl and I took a leisurely ride downtown to the Picasso for this month’s Critical Mass. Little did we know we were in for the ride of a lifetime.

The usual activists were there, taking advantage of the crowd to hand out flyers on issues ranging from “Dump Daley- bicycling is his environmental fig leaf” to police brutality. Women received an invite to the Top-Free ride, a ride protesting the illegality of exposing one’s breasts in public, where women will ride topless to combat our culture’s breast fetish. Some guy was handing out an article about President Bush’s upcoming colonoscopy, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I always end up with a big stack of flyers at these things. I try to at least read them all and consider their issues.

There was an impressive turn-out of choppers this time. I counted seven. I rode Noam Chopsky, of course, and Al the Pal was there on Choppasaurus Wrecks. I don’t know why he prefers to ride the sketchiest of his three choppers, but I’ve seen him ride it 30 miles. His neighbor set out for the ride with him on the Little Chop of Horrors, but got a flat and decided to give up rather than fix it and get a ride downtown. Then we saw some other fellow, an older guy, on an impressive no-weld chopper. He took a little bitty freestyle bike and extended the fork, adding a third pipe in the middle for extra support, which he attached a brake to, giving him two-wheel braking. Then he bolted two factory sissy bars together to make an extra long one, and replaced the handlebars with one of those teeny chain steering wheels. He also had a siren, controlled from the steering wheel.	Abigail the Chicken
The rest were Rat Patrol choppers: Abigail the Chicken, the Bluebird of Happiness, the Stars ‘n’ Bars, and a chopper wrapped in Mardi Gras beads that I didn’t catch the name of.	The Bluebird of Happiness
Choppasaurus Wrecks and an unnamed Mardi Gras chopper	Stars'n'Bars

During the ride, some guy kept coming up to me and saying, “hehe... Chewbikea” and riding off. He did that at least ten times. Whatta weirdo.

Aside from examples of just about every bike ever manufactured (highwheelers, lowracers, recumbents, xtracycles, and even a Strida folding bike with its rubber chain), there was Ms. Joey (a bikin’ dog), kids in trailers or on ride-behinds, and one guy even brought along a tree bungeed to his back rack. Adding to the party atmosphere, the Red Bull reps handed out free cans of their sweet sweet elixir, some people brought along Old Style or forties of St. Pauli Girl, and at one point somebody passed me a joint. A man and a woman were naked for most of the ride.

There were over seven hundred of us. We were invincible. Once a month, cars are guests on roads that belong to the bicycles, and have to give up the sense of entitlement that causes them to be angry at bicyclists for sharing the road. This time, we took over the Eisenhower Expressway, a four-lane interstate.

We rode down the entrance ramp and filled up the merge lane. As cars to the left slowed down, we took over successive lanes (as crazy bike messengers wove through speeding traffic like Kouriers out of Snow Crash) until the interstate was ours. Words cannot describe the feeling of cruising down a four-lane interstate on a bicycle. Screaming, hollering, honking, ringing bells, naked, drinking beer, seven hundred bicyclists rode for about three miles before exiting and continuing with our ride. At one point, four choppers formed a flying vee in the middle of the highway, and we were kings of the road. It was the best time I’ve ever had on a bike, and one of the best times I’ve ever had.

Took the Hi-Riser down to 63rd street to visit Blackstone Bicycle Works and raise the handlebars up a little higher for greater comfort. While I was down there, I found a nice little woven basket with plastic flowers on it for the front. The Hi-Riser's lookin right purdy.

I didn't ride the whole way, ooohhh no. That's 12 miles each way. Being a little girl's bike (modern PC euphemism: "Smaller step-through frame"), it has wee tiny pedals, so you have to spin 'em like a hamster in a wheel in order to get up any steam. Not good for long distances. So I took the train until it ended and rode the rest of the way.

Yes, dear reader, your intrepid host rode a little girl's bike through the south side of Chicago, notorious for its crime, poverty, and hostility, seeing nary a white face from the minute the train left the loop until meeting the volunteers at the bike center, with the same results on the way back, seven miles through a city that may be the most segregated in America (just look at this map, at the solid yellow swath on the south side that represents 90-100% African-American). Some sort of suicidal game of counting coup? Not at all. I didn't receive a single threat, yell, or buzz by a car. As soon as I was back in the loop, it was back to being called "jagoff" and "faggot" again by rich white businessmen in luxury cars. I don't know why this is. Maybe it was the crazy-honky factor, like I was such an anomaly in Woodlawn that people were too stunned to react. Personally, I think it's because Joe Ulcer, in his $40,000 Lexus, knows that for all his success and acheivement, I'm out there having more fun, and this pisses him off.

On the way back, I encountered an interesting and unexpected quirk in the mass transit system. You're allowed to bring your bike on the train anytime except rush hour, right? So between 4 and 6 the attendants won't let you on. Well, I boarded at about 3:30, and by the time I got to the loop, it was past 4 PM. Apparently, if you remain on the same train, you can stay on all the way to your destination, but if you try to transfer trains, you're shit out of luck. So the rule is not "you can't ride during these hours" but rather "you can't board a train during these hours", which resulted in me being escorted to the exit and told to come back in two hours. If my destination had been along the green line, I would have been allowed to go home, but since I had to switch to blue, I was politely but firmly escorted down the platform, up an elevator, through a set of double doors, up another escalator, out the gates, and through the front door, while the whole time the CTA staff's walkie talkies jabbered my location as if I were some crazed gunman that they were staking out. Imagine! Me wanting to ride home on the train, with my bike, like the people in the posters they put up in every station and on every train! What am I, some kinda looney?

So here I am stuck downtown with three options: Wait two hours, catch a cab, or ride five miles on this little clown bike. I remembered that some Critical Mass folk would be flyering downtown at that time, so I just joined them, and put our little party invitations into the hollow seat posts of every bike we saw. That's what the ride is, really, a party on wheels.

Then I was scooped up by a passing angel, as Singular came and picked me and the Hi Riser up in her car. We headed to the Ha Mien Vietamese restaurant for another Feast of Fools. This one was definitely more bizarre than the last one.

Sure, there was the usual- fire eating drag princess playing violin, Joan Crawford impersonator, aggressive dyke poetry involving flung sausages, amazon witchcraft, dyke rock- your basic bizzarro theater. But this show also featured a male nurse, drunken sleazy priest, a female Elvis impersonator, Joan Jett-Blakk (Cockette and former candidate for President), and some weird red-skinned, gold-wigged bishop who sang while he cut the penis off of his guitarist/altar boy.

So in other words, I had a pretty ordinary day.

Friday night I engaged in a massive chop session in order to get ready for Saturday. First, I headed down to Fishman’s, the fabric store that RMG recommended that was closed when I went to the other one he suggested, which had thousands of of fabrics but no fur beyond the usual short-hair leopard/tiger stuff and cow patterns.

It seems that the only long, deep shag available on this planet is the safety-orange or lime-green that Hancock carries. Not even Fishman’s, the mecca of fabric stores, had any blue shag (or anything of that length), which is what I dream of coating Noam Chopsky in. However, they did have a nice selection of medium-length furs, which I settled on. Still, if you happen to come across any long-haired blue novelty fur, buy me a yard, I’ll pay top dollar for it.

So that night I took Noam fully into Phase Three. But first, I built the High Riser (the original name of the bike), a funnybike for Laura. Unfortunately, she rode it maybe three feet before she wrecked and cut her leg open. I hope I can convince her to get back on it. Meanwhile, I’ll strap a basket on the front and use it as a “nipper” to run around the neighborhood or for trips to the store.

Then I tried an experiment with Noam, lowering the seat and positioning it beyond the back axle, hoping that my weight wouldn’t have enough leverage to tip the bike. It did. Oh well. I also bought a conduit bender and bent myself a new sissy bar, which I will soon replace with an even taller one.

Once we had as many freak-bikes as attendees to the chop session, we terrorized the neighborhood. There were four choppers and three funnybikes. The group lent itself well to the “Flying Vee” formation. We rode up to the second floor of this odd parking garage, which was basically the paved roof of a mall. I’d never seen any parking lot so large (maybe long-term at the airport), and this one was on the roof. It was wonderful to ride around up high under the night sky, at least until the cops chased us out. Can’t have bikes riding around in the parking lot, you know. By now, you’ve guessed that the mall was just outside of the Chicago border, in Norridge. It took four cops to restore order to the parking lot. Probably half the Norridge force.

On Saturday, I headed bright and early down to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. I had been asked to display Noam as part of their Summer Solstice Celebration. Volkswagen and Trek were two of the sponsors, and Mayor Daley’s Bicycle Ambassadors wanted some art bikes there to add to the image of bikes as fun.

First, the Trek Racing Team put on a freestyle show, which was pretty damn amazing. Most of their tricks involved a van, jumping up onto it and off of it and such. I was most impressed by the guys hopping on their back wheel across four platforms four feet off the ground.
	This fool hopped on his back wheel from that platform on the right, across each platform, and then to the ground!

A little kid does a one-handed-handstand stall and I feel like the biggest loser in the world.

At the same time, some breakdancers were busting moves, two of whom were about seven years old. These little kids were busting more moves than I shall ever bust in my entire life.

I gotta say, as cool as a fuzzy chopper is, we freak-bikers were out-cooled by breakdancing seven-year-olds.





Then there were some drummers and some dancers, some arts and some crafts. We sipped yerba-mate and rode each other’s freak-bikes. UV, frankenbike genius, was there representing the Blackstone Bicycle Works, a program that lets kids in Woodlawn learn about bike maintenance, earn their own bikes, and eventually get jobs as bike mechanics. He brought along three of his lil’ choppers and his tallbike, which I fell in love with.

	The choppers were an interesting design. He uses a flipped girl’s bike frame with a new crankset shell welded to the bottom. They were very functional.
He flips a girl's bike upside down to get a better rake from the head tube. Then he welds on the extra bits where the seat goes and where the pedals go, and this is the result.

A tallbike is two (or more) bike frames welded on top of each other. That look on my face is one of concentration, as it looks higher from up there than it does from the ground.	Next to me is Chopper Bob on Al the Pal's "Chopalong Cassidy", which uses a crutch as a sissy bar. That grey building behind us is the Westin Hotel.

His tallbike was a smooth dream. Tallbikes and choppers are exactly opposite: Choppers look easy to ride but are nigh impossible, and tallbikes look impossible but are easy, aside from the falling to your death thing. You just have to push them, get them started, and climb up and go.

I want one, bad. UV commuted on his for about a month, but got sick of all the negative vibes, the raw anger that is unleashed by unusual bikes and bikes in general. It’s gonna take welding, though, and I don’t think I can ride it in traffic regularly (though I did, up and down the Magnificent Mile). That’s just asking to be catapulted into the side of a bus. So I’ll continue to try and perfect the commuter chopper, and hope that I can get some help with the tall’un. Those guys were already encouraging me to “get some tanks”. I dunno, though. As much as welding is in my blood (my grandfather is a welder), I like to have boundaries. Once you can weld, it’s like deciding what to make out of a lump of clay. As long as I’m limited by what I can buy at Ace, I have a framework to work within.

All that day, there were tons of cops and reporters across the street at the Westin Hotel. I found out later that they'd found St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile dead in his hotel room that morning. He was slated to pitch against da Cubbies the next day. Those Cubs fans, they'll do anything for a win! So if you saw some footage of the scene over the weekend, I'm just out of frame, riding some ridiculous contraption.

Check out non.primate.net/chopper soon for pictures of Phase Three of Noam Chopsky. In the meantime, here's a sneak preview:

Aiight, everything seems to be in order. I'm particularly interested in your feelings about my last post. Please re-comment, if you had 2c to add.

Norah Vincent, writing in the June issue of The Advocate, said something that caught my eye:

...lesbians, wittingly or not, had never shut themselves off from the considerable appeal of masculinity. Instead they had merely co-opted it, borrowed it, made it their own in such a way as to enjoy it from, as it were, a safe distance. All along, ever since the advent of butch and femme, lesbians have been compartmentalizing bits and pieces of masculinity, not because they feel beholden to straight culture or obliged to imitate it but because lesbians of all varieties have grown up admiring (cryptically) the male virtues- whether the bodily or the cultural ones- and have found ways of incorporating them into an all-female culture. Meanwhile, of course, they have effectively repudiated all the undesirable baggage that goes with having a penis, pasted it onto an effigy called the "typical male", and left it out in the rain. And why not? Gender is a supermarket.

This article, superimposed against the hyper-male issue of Maxim sitting next to it on the coffee table, made clear for me how much my own sexual identity is a repudation of the undesirable baggage that goes with having a penis. However, contrary to what you might expect, I don't seek to flee from the label of "Man", but rather claim it back from the knuckle-dragging types who might read Maxim and think, "This is not an insult to my gender, rather, it is written right at my intellectual and maturity level, which is that of a fifth grader."

I say that a Man can live his life without engaging in violence and still be a Man. That a Man does not need to possess a woman, but rather considers himself blessed by her presence. That a Man is emotional, caring, and communicative. This assertion is directly contrary to the image that I and everybody else has been fed by everything from myth to MTV. Maxim's popularity is, after all, a symptom and not a cause.

That said, I'm frightened by hyper-femininity in bottle blondes and drag queens alike. As much as hyper-masculinity makes me cringe, hyper-femininity is a huge turnoff. All of the women that those guys on the road trip thought were hot, I thought were desperate, disgusting, and pitiful. All of the women we encountered that I thought were hot, weren't impressed by the name of Maxim and shot them down like George Costanza in the model bar without his fiancee photo. I remember distinctly the group strolling into Ed Debevics and saying, "We're from Maxim Road Trip" and the hostess saying (in as droll a tone as possible), "Is that that magazine about big boobs?" The guys were stunned- a woman unimpressed at the prospect of getting into Maxim?!?! Meanwhile, my heart skipped a beat. You go girl!

I love gender ambiguity. I love not knowing at first glance what plumbing someone comes with. I love a mustache on a drag king. I like girly-boys and boyish-girls. I like the thrill of meeting someone online without knowing or caring what gender they are. Unfortunately, I wasn't born with a very androgynous body, and I'm self-aware enough to know how nasty a manly drag queen looks. Additionally, my sweetheart has a very feminine look as well, so from the outside we appear to be a typical couple. But many who have met Singular have said that she is like one of the boys. Spend enough time around us and you'll quickly see that she's the butch and I'm the bitch, not in the formalized manner of a BDSM relationship, but rather in the sense that I will do anything she says and derive satisfaction from doing the household chores and bringing her drinks and such. There's a very negative term that could be used to describe that sort of relationship. I am neither afraid of it nor particularly representative of it. I am no less of a man because I try to keep my partner happy.

And that's the secret of our relationship, not that I subjugate my will to hers, but rather that we compliment each other in matching ways. Isn't that what a long-term partnership is about, finding somebody who is twisted in the same way you are? Time after time, more traditional people do the traditional head-bonk and hair-drag thing, all the while expressing "concern" over our relationship (manifesting itself anywhere from jealousy thinly veiled as a friend's concern all the way to seething hate) and time after time we watch traditional couples crumble into misery. I'm not saying you can't be a manly man and a womanly woman- there are no rules at the supermarket- just that you gotta do what's right for you, be who you are, or else you'll be miserable your whole life.

To be honest, and I'm treading dangerous (and personal) ground here, I don't think that I could date anyone who identifies themselves as "straight" or "gay". Despite the fact that a facet of our sexual identity would match, the fact that those boundaries are there affects many other aspects of their life. How could I crush with my partner over David Duchovny if they can't crush with me over Gina Gershon? It would be like a free-range chicken dating a coop-hen.

In fact, that sums it up pretty well. When it comes to gender, I'm a free-range chicken. Oh, give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above....

I'm an Ameritech local phone service customer (because I have to be). Today I got a call from Ameritech, begging me to switch to Ameritech local phone service. I knew those phone solicitors were persistent, but sheesh! What do they want from me?

KC's Maxim Road Trip won 1st prize! The issue with Shakira on the front, page 140 starts the article. They're the ones with the bus. I don't know if I should be glad or sad that none of the pictures from Chicago made it into the magazine.

Note that 1st prize is not "coolest of the cool". It was some guys who went to the Superbowl. Big whup. It's the holy grail of guydom, but a rather uninventive road trip. So KC and his buds only got $3800 worth of road trip supplies. I think that about covers the cost of gas for the Notorious B.U.S.

You know, for anyone else I would be surprised that they won 1st prize and got into a magazine that sells 2.5 million copies of every issue. But for KC, it's sort of expected. When I got the news thought to myself, "Well, of course." It's just another day in a long, bizarre, epic life. Every time I think I live a wild and wacky life, I just think of KC, and realize that there are those out there for whom life is like a cartoon.

There was a bike festival in Wicker Park today, the West Town Bike Fest, and the parade was to be led by the combined forces of the Chicago Cruisers and Just Cruisin. These two clubs were guys obsessed with beach cruisers- adding lights, extra chrome, radios, raccoon tails on the ends of the handlebars(!?), even fake exhaust pipes- making their bikes into the closest thing to a car on two wheels with no motor. So of course we choppaholics had to represent. I took Noam, now geniunely rideable, and met Al the Pal (riding Chopasaurus Rex) and Chopper Bob (riding Hoser). Also present was Lee Ravenscroft.

Lee is the guy who runs the bicycle foreign aid program out of the basement of a building his wife owns. He has a lot of bikes on hand to mess with, and apparently a lot of time too.

This guy is a genius, and an artist, though probably not intentionally. What he does is directly opposite of me, he tries to take function as far as it can go, rather than form. His specialty is making those homemmade recumbents. One of his was there, with a big honking 2X4 platform on the back that supported the rider's folding camping chair. There were pictures taken, I'll show you all these things. He also brought along a 2 wheel drive bike where the handlebar is another set of cranks that you pedal and steer with, a bike that you can swap off your legs and arms on but is otherwise functionally useless. Then he rode a 10-speed with a clamp around the seat post attached to a long 2X4 that was attached to a 2-wheel dolly, laid down with a platform on it. On this platform were two plastic lawn chairs, facing each other. During the parade, the driver in the race (see below) sat in one of the chairs. That Lee is crazy and amazing.

We rode around the neighborhood and made a lot of noise. Some of the cruisers had devices on them that made a *lot* of noise, sirens and sound effects and such. We had several portable stereos. The three choppers rode behind in a flying vee, along with Lee's freak bikes. I'd say there were 70 people on the ride, maybe more, and the freak bikers were out in full force.

Then a bike messenger rock band played, and a troupe of belly dancers called "Read My Hips" danced. There were free bike repairs and a free bike workshop. There was a race- go to three stores and buy stuff and come back here- between a person on a bike and a car. The biker won, of course, but it would be something else to see that race to Ikea. ;)

A bunch of us left and rode to the beach. We each went into the supermarket and grabbed what we felt like eating, and then we all shared it out on a breakwater looking out at the lake. The beaches were packed, and we wanted to get away, so we rode our bikes way out there. It was a genuine childish moment, going "riding bikes" and then taking a snack to the lake. An act of pure innocence, free of motivation other than fun, so rare in my life these days. These days, I do a lot of things for a reason, and chopping and riding my bike is what I do not for a reason.

One person commented about the amount of comments and curses we were getting. I guess I'd grown immune to it. Sure, people like freak bikes and say, "cool bike! bitchin chopper! love your bike!" but just as many say, "Dumbass! Fuckface! Retard! What the fuck are you doing on that dumb bike? Fuck you asshole!" and so on. Even cynical, joyless little kids, seven years old, telling me to fuck off because my bike is wacky. There's a lot of anger out there, and I don't think it's at choppers, but the bike unlocks it. Bikefreeek won't even ride one of his funnybikes unless it's a parade- he hates the way every day is a parade on one of them. Me? I dunno. I'm physically incapable of doing some things normally. I can't explain it. The PR guy who I met on Fullerton, who had chopped his bike, said it best. He didn't speak any english, so when I asked him why he chopped his bike, he just shrugged. That's my answer to the why question as well, I guess. Eh, why not?

We made sure to stop at Hammacher Schlemmer to peer at their Zero Emission Machine. It's basically a bike car- headlights, disc brakes, and rideable by one to four persons. The neat thing is that each person has a shifter, and can adjust their pedal rate independant of anyone else. So you can take the fam or some buds and each person can bike as much as they feel like. This thing is high-tech, Hammacher Schlemmer (German for: "Crap You Don't Need But You've Got More Cash Than You Could Ever Spend") wanted $1600 for it (+$150 S&H). I'd bet the web site would sell them cheaper. Depends on where you are I guess.

Then we chopped on home. Total distance: 21.4 miles. That's the longest measured distance I've taken Noam on. Oy gevalt, my butt-bone hurt! I can feel Phase 3 ready to swoop in, with a more comfortable seat. Stay tuned to non.primate.net/chopper.

The two best parts of the day:

1) All the kids in the park tried to ride our choppers, and they were all too small for bikes made for us. But they figured it out anyway. Those kids can ride anything with one or more wheels.

So for the rest of the day, anytime an adult tried to ride it and failed and tried to give up, we all yelled, "Those little kids did it!" and it would force them to show those shorties up.

2) I heard one of my favorite types of comments today. It's a rare one, because it requires a certain situation. A family walks by, and the little boy says, "Wow! What kinda bike is thaaaaat!?!?!" and the father puts his hand on the little kid's shoulder and says, "Son, that's a chopper."

The author, doing a little off-roading

One glorious summer, KC lost his driver's license, and his immediate response was to buy three gas-powered scooters. All summer, KC, Monkey Boy, and I terrorized the town in our own little scooter gang. Sometimes Singular and other girls would be a girl scooter gang. We got to where we could do tricks, like little jumps and drops and such. These kids with Razors don't know what they're missing- and the geezers with electric putt-putt cruising scooters don't, either. Give me that three horsepower!

So of course Singular and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to ride a Segway. And, as you would imagine, it was pretty damn cool. They won't replace scooters, I don't think, but they could realistically replace cars in dense urban environments.

When I hopped on, the thing was whipping back and forth like a spraying tomcat's tail. The Segway balances for you, and so when you try to balance while on it, you overcompensate and it oscillates until you give in to the machine's balance. What I ended up doing is closing my eyes- for what really needs to happen is that you allow the thing to become an extension of your legs, like you have wheels on your feet.

Once I grasped that concept, I was a Segwayin' fool. The slightest pressing down with your toes sends you forward, and the same on your heels sends you back. Stand still to stop. You turn the same way you throttle on a motorcycle. The learning curve was very short- as soon as you relax, you can drive it.

And it was zippy! It was set on the lowest setting- the beginner setting- for minimal sensitivity, coasting stops, and a low maximum speed. Still, it was surprisingly fast. The coach said it could stop on a dime, too, at higher settings. Yet I never felt like I was anywhere near to falling off of it.

It was not a toy. It was a vehicle. I can see kids riding them, but since the wheels are not tandem, you can't carve out corners like you can with a scooter. You just turn like in a car. This thing was overwhelmingly designed as a human transporter, and it did it well, regardless of other applications people are dreaming up for it.

The paper mill where I used to work used "lard carts" to get around, electric mini-golf carts so called because each supervisor got one and got fat after they didn't have to walk anywhere. The compressor factory where my uncle worked used pedal-trikes. I can really see how this would come in handy in an industrial setting. For them, the choice is obvious- if the price is right, why buy a huge cart to tote around a fat supervisor when a vehicle just his size will do the same thing? Lard cart parking took up tons of valuable square footage. For civilians, well, there's other issues.

One is the issue of where it would ride. The company is buying up a lot of political power to get them legalized for the sidewalk. In an urban setting, these things make a ton of sense- think about how much it takes to get someone around the city in a car. With the Segway, there's no issue of traffic, parking, rocketing gas prices, pollution, or planned obsolescence. The only reason people don't walk or ride bikes in the city is because American's are lazy asses- in Europe, plenty of cities have banished cars from their city centers.

But we also LOVE our cars. We love them so much that we drive them to work, and then they're so costly that we work in order to drive them. In the city, a parking space sells for $45k, and rents for $250 a month. Then there's the city sticker ($175), insurance, gas, tickets, and repairs- all for something to get you from here to there. As long as you're not hauling heavy cargo or going long distances, the Segway makes sense every time... provided you're dressed for the weather.

I think America will be reluctant to give up its big honking autos. I think they'll slowly carve out a niche in the city, and then it would take a revolution in urban planning to take the step away from a car-choked downtown. But already GE Plastics and the USPS have bought some Segways for a trial. One of the benefits they list is the fact that you can have human interaction while on it, something that a car prevents.

On the way home, I almost got creamed by a dumbass who blasted through a three-way stop, because he was going the wrong way down a one-way street and therefore didn't have a stop sign. If only he had been on a Segway, I coulda smacked him upside the head.

My brother and his sweetie came by this weekend, as I wanted them to visit before they went off to spend a year in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. They brought with them two treasures which I will attempt to photograph and display here.

My brother is like my polar opposite. He's quiet and slow. I'm hyper and loud. I thrive in the city, and he rarely leaves the woods. He only talks when he has something to say. I talk- well, if you've met me, you know. He's very wise, and knows everything about the woods- which mushrooms are edible, which trees you can get bait out of, what to do if you run across a baby owl. He's what they call an "old soul". I'm lucky to have him.

He was a bit out of his element in the city, but he weathered it well. His sweetie comes out of the woods now and then so she didn't seem so out of place. She's a fishing widow, if there is such a thing.

My grandpa once said that he loves to go fishing with my brother because they'll be out on the boat for five hours and at the end my brother will say, "Thank you, grandpa, I enjoyed that very much." My brother says he just likes to listen to Grandpa's stories. I don't know which one of 'em gets the better end of the deal.

[awaiting encryption]

Tagboard started to put crappy ads in the board, so the subtitle feature had to go. I'll try and find a suitable replacement. Ads on the Phoneblog? As if.

Had a chop session at Al the Pal's. There were just two chopaholics, and three guys who wanted to get into it. I spent the time extending my sissy bar so that I could ride the bike normally, with full leg extension, to save my achin' knees. It worked excellently- Noam is now one step away from perfection. Meanwhile, Al was helping the other guys jimmy up a few bikes to ride around the neighborhood.

Al is a chopping fiend. It seems to be all he does all day, every day. Last time I visited, he had Big Poppa (a "reverse chopper"- huge wheel in front, teeny wheel in back), Wildchild, (a funnybike) and the Humpsicle (in a class of its own). They were all gone. Big Poppa had rematerialized as Little Chop of Horrors, with the extendo-fork front and huge apehangers to make room for your knees, as this is a kid's bike frame. He cannibalized the other two and made Skeletor, a gazelle-style chopper. So by the end of the night we had four guys and three choppers. We took to the streets.

The fourth guy just chilled on a trailer. The guy shlepping him was in front, with the two choppers on the side in a flying vee. It's really fun to take over traffic in freakbikes. People are too "ber?" to be pissed, as they would be with three guys on regular bikes disrupting traffic.

After a while- SPROING! I broke a spoke. No biggie. I was actually about to replace that wheel anyway, with my final step towards perfection, the addition of a big fat slick tire on the back. I'm also looking for some wacky fur, but I can't find any good fabric retailers online. If you come across any far-out fuzzy stuff, shoot me the link, okay?

Leaving the city this weekend had me on the lookout for cops once again. I didn't get pulled over, but I sure saw a lot of them- at the catering hall where the rehersal dinner was, at the bar, at the nunnery where the wedding was held, etc etc. Until I moved to the city, I never knew what a police state the burbs were.

Even the goody-goodiest of people has a love-hate relationship with the cops. You love them if you're the victim of a crime, and you hate them if you're the perpetuator of a crime. My mother, who has never so much as drinked a drink or smoked a smoke, hates the cops in our small town because they're so polite when they pull her over for speeding on a weekly basis, and she would find it so much easier to blame them if they were mean about it. Instead, they know her by name.

Now, I've never gotten harrassed by the cops in Chicago, not once in two years. I've talked to a lot of them, since they tend to be pretty friendly when they're relaxed. In general, though, they serve but don't observe- I've passed a cop while going the wrong way down a one-way street, and he didn't even look at me. Crit Mass has plugged an intersection, had some lady screaming that she was calling the cops on her cell phone, and all the while a five-oh was sitting there in the interesection, looking for french fries dropped between his cruiser's seats. I have no doubt that my skin color has something to do with the fact that I haven't had at least one interaction, but even so, talking to my black and hispanic friends, it seems that the cops are more likely to harrass you if you're not white, but the overwhelming numbers means that you're less likely to be the one they pick that day. Piloto calls it "doing the Macarena"- picture yourself putting your hands on the car, and then behind your head for the pat-down, and then behind your back for the cuffs... HEEEEYYY, MACARENA!

The one time I did get pulled over was when I left the city and went to a suburb. Not 15 minutes after crossing the border, I was pulled over. My crime? Turning around in a parking lot. Never know what kinda crooks might be turning around in a parking lot.

Or consider this incident from my home town:

Some friends and I went out drinking. We had a designated driver, of course. The cops were waiting outside of the bar to pull over anybody who left the bar and got into a car. Our DD was perfectly sober, of course, but we still got searched, the car got searched, and we got harrassed for two reasons: One, somebody there was carrying some prescription allergy medicine that a friend had asked them to hold earlier that day (it was confiscated), and two, the car our DD was driving had a typo on its registration, CHR instead of CHY. Good thing there were two cruisers and four cops on hand to handle these incidents. :|

Not that there's anything particularly traumatizing about that incident, but the fact is, it was pretty much expected when you went to a bar. The cops bird-dogged. They had nothing better to do. It was a $75 ticket for jaywalking.

In contrast, Chicago is a war zone. We have military-trained snipers holing up in abandoned projects, taking out members of a gang coup. Heck, one time the Latin Kings knocked over a national guard armory and made off with, among other things, an M-60! So I'm sure you get harrassed by the cops, lots, if you live in one of these war zones. But they just don't have time to bust people for speeding, moments of stupidity in traffic, jaywalking, or drinking on your stoop.

Of course, there's more to the story. Da Mare tells the cops who to bust and who not to bust. He likes bikes, so CM is off limits except to the occasional loser-cop who doesn't think through the logistics of trying to single-handedly stop 400 people from riding their bikes on the street, where the law says they should ride. Da Mare makes sure the cops crack down hard on graffiti artists. I'm sure there are a thousand other little things that determine if the po-po are going to harrass you or not, but overall, having cops ignore the little things makes me feel more free. How odd is that? I feel freer in the nitty-gritty city than I did on the manicured streets of my one-stoplight hometown.

I guess it's a small example of the bigger world situation, as our personal freedoms are taken away in the name of safety. It's definitely not a black and white issue. On the one hand, there's less risk in your life. But on the other hand, is that life worth living?

On Sunday, we had only one mission: Lawn Party. We told everyone to meet us at four, and by six the porch was packed with snacks and booze and Slyph's Red Healing Potion, which I drank all night. I brought Noam Chopsky out and let everyone give it a try. Around Midnight, a band spontaneously formed, with Leaping Lynx on sax, the Pope on guitar, and Perkusi on drums. We didn't think it would matter, since most summer Sundays the Baptist church across the street has concerts on their steps. Everything was great until a certain attendee, who shall remain nameless, decided it would be wise to strip down nekkid and run up and down the street screaming, an activity which soon drew the attention of a passing officer. Fortunately, indecent exposure seems to be a ticket offense.

The next day, Memorial Day, we went to breakfast at the Zephyr and then folks hung out at our place until they had to leave. As soon as the last ones were gone, I rode Noam over to Kabuto's house, where we had a BBQ with Piloto, E-D, Thomas and his g/f Erica, Thomato, and Paul.

Thomas was also sporting a tat done by Piloto, and the lines and shading were done very well. This does not bode well for the whiteness of my skin.

Erica was a member of C.H.U.N.K. 666 when she was in college. She's in the movie. We talked a bit about freak-bikes.

Kabuto tried to ride Noam, but the thing is, he doesn't know how to ride a bike at all. We decided he'd better start with a regular bike. He also kept trying to convince me to fight him, as he had just been watching Fight Club. He said he wanted to fight me because he loved me. That seems to be the point of that movie. I'm not sorry I missed it.

Paul showed up with a huge shiner- on the way over, he had cut some PR guy off, and then for some reason decided to stop his car to talk to the fellow. The fellow didn't have anything to say except a punch in the face. Poor Paul- he's your soft-spoken Polish-American stoner type- it was really odd to hear him say, "Yeah, dude, I'm totally okay, it's just one of those things, maaan" and then call his mom and ask her in Polish to schedule a dentist appointment for his chipped tooth. Piloto and Kabuto wanted to go kick some "chuleta" ass (again with the Fight Club fever), but Thomas wisely said, "Forget about it. Somebody picked on that guy when he was a kid and he will be miserable for the rest of his life because of it." So we went back to my place and smoked his troubles away.

On my lunch break I came upon the scene of an accident. A taxi had been broadsided in the middle of an intersection. As the paramedics were carting the cab driver away in a stretcher, he was yelling, "I shouldn't have run that red light! I shouldn't have run that red light!"

Well, duh!

My brother's coming up this weekend, and he's bringing my standup arcade version of KLAX! Huzzah! It is the 90s, and there is time for Klax!

I thought I'd heard a cell phone go off in just about every situation where it was rude- in restaurants, at the movies, in the bathroom, in class, etc etc- but I was wrong. I heard a DJ's go off in the middle of playing a song on the radio. He didn't answer for a while because it was 80's night and he thought it was part of the synth track. Dumbass.

Cell phone rings have replaced the car alarm as the ill-conceived gadget that everybody thinks is annoying when other people have it, yet they still have it themselves.