For those of you who read my links post for the month of August (if you didn’t, read it now! click here) you may remember me writing about a little bike shop called Trackstar. Good shop selling good product (american made). I stopped in yesterday to pick up one of their newest offerings, a plain black hoodie. Perfect to ward off the chill of the descending fall weather, I am wearing it as I type out this post.

As stated on their blog, the sizing on these sweatshirts runs small, so please make sure you order up a size. For reference, I am five foot one and on the petite side. The “small” fits me just about perfectly which is great, because I’m one of those people who can rarely get away with anything but xtra small which are usually particularly difficult to come by. The fit is also aided by the cut, which is slimmer than the average hoodie. Another plus one, as this sweatshirt doesn’t make me feel like I’m swimming in it.

Nicely designed, this hoodie is cycling specific (not that you can’t wear it if you aren’t on a bicycle, but some of it’s attributes really shine if you spend any time in the saddle). For starters, the sleeves are a touch longer than usual, nice for staying around your wrists and will be a nice buffer between jacket and gloves when it really gets cold out. Second, the waistband is a bit lower, and a good deal more grippy than I’m accustomed to. What does that mean? That means that the drivers behind me don’t get exposed to my plumber crack. Nice for them, and for me! Last but not least, the jersey style pockets (three of them) keep things outta the way if you’re hunched over your bike. I like them in particular for the simple reason that I’ve had my cell phone fall out of front kangaroo pockets on more than one occasion. I will rest assured that my fancy new iPod Touch will not fall out (like my current iPod did out of a track jacket slash pocket, whoops!). The hood is small and fits well to the head- not too large as to impair vision, but definitely large enough to give your ears good coverage.

I generally like Trackstar’s logo designs, so I wouldn’t have minded if they had included one on these hoodies, but I suppose the fact that they are unmarked will definitely be a big thumbs up from lots of people sick of logo branded everything. All in all, this sweatshirt is super awesome, and I highly recommend it. If you stop in Trackstar, tell em Pricklepear sent you!!!

Hey BFSSFG people. Welcome to the site. Try not to destroy my server!

While we haven’t covered a lot of bike stuff on this site yet, you should know that behind the scenes, we are total bike kids. Yoda and I both have two bikes, and up until a little while ago, I personally had 4. Since moving to New York, we simplified and liquidated some assets. Yoda has a nice bike (her Bareknuckle) up here, with her IRO Mark V beater waiting in Philly. I on the other hand, have my nice bike (Bob Jackson Vigorelli) being built up in Philly, and only have my beater to get me around town.

At the point in the post, you may be asking yourself what exactly constitutes a “beater bike.” Well, I’ll tell you. A beater is a bicycle that you honestly don’t care about when it comes to aesthetics. You are willing to lock it up against anything, cover it in stickers, jump it off a cliff, whatever. Typically, a rider only gets to fully appreciate a beater bike after they’ve had a couple different frames that they’ve been attached to.

While not the case for everyone, if you are a 20-something that rides bikes seriously, yours probably went like this : rode a bike as a kid, most likely a huffy or schwinn. With no concept of build quality, parents picked up some garishly colored mountain-bike-ish POS from Walmart or your closest LBS. Maybe you got a hybrid as a teen, but by highschool you were too cool to be seen on a bike, especially if you had access to a car. By college, the car is gone again, and if you go to school in a major metropolitan area, you are stuck taking the smelly, unreliable public transportation. ENTER BIKE AGAIN! Only now, you are totally broke. You lurk on craigslist, not really knowing what you need, but you end up with some 70’s/80’s roadbike with a rusted out interior and squeaky brakes. This is the make it/break it period. You either ride in warm weather, and chicken out during the cold weather, or you fall in love with the increased freedom and low cost of maintenance and decide to further invest in your newly rediscovered passion. You begin researching the different types of bikes, and become aware of what other people are riding. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you became aware of the fact that big knobby tires and mountain bikes as a whole are slow (see: no fun), and that while nice road bikes are super expensive, you’ve been noticing these road bike looking things on the streets with the cool kids.

They seem very simple, clean, kind of beautiful. Sometimes they have 1 brake, other times none at all. You realize that they are actually called “fixed gears” or “single speeds” and that they are popular with this weird urban athlete known as the “messenger.” You decide to take the plunge and buy a bike you can be proud of.

Most people start at the “off the rack” tier, buying a $400-600 complete bike like the Mercier Kilo TT, KHS Flite 100, or a Bianchi Pista. The problem with this bike is that the components are absolute SHIT. While it got you into the game, its various pieces are slowly starting to fail you, and the cost of replacing them is adding up. Now you either (a) keep the frame, replacing the parts, or (b) sell the thing for as much as you can get and move up to Tier 2.

Tier 2, where I currently am, is where you buy a nice frame. Just the frame. At this point, you know enough about bikes to choose threaded or threadless forks, steel versus aluminum, and what spoke count will keep your fat ass from hitting the ground after you bombed that monstrous pothole. You are now friends with a bike mechanic, and arrange to have it built up. You are now totally comfortable with the idea of riding a $1,200 bike, and don’t bat when someone points out that your stem cost as much as their complete bike. You know why its better.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much room to improve from here. You either get a more expensive vintage frame, or you jump to the head of the line, the holy grail; you go custom.

While this evolution is taking place, you have a honey-moon period with your newest bike. You clean it frequently, wrap protective layers around the tubes, and promise yourself you will never lock up outside for fear of what the vicious world might do to your innocent pride and joy. Then the first big scratch arrives. And the honey moon is over. This bike slowly gets more and more beat up as you get more comfortable with it, slipping slowly down the path towards “beater” until the day that you have saved up enough money and make the jump to the next tier.

The reason that I’m writing about this today is because my current beater bike, the Bianchi Pista, didn’t actually follow that path. Because my Bob Jackson was fraught with some many issues in the shipment process (subject for another post entirely), I arrived in New York bikeless. Within the first week, I wandered around Manhattan trying to find a used bike shop that just might have a fixie or single speed that I could buy and lock up all day without caring whether or not the “smog was bothering it.” By the 4th day, I came across a shop that was willing to sell me a brand new Pista for $350. And I thought to myself, “thats a steal!” This is a bike that I would have cherished two years ago.

Today during work, I road it through a rain storm, and then got a flat. And then I rode the flat home. Well, home from the fucking subway stop. Because I really don’t care about it, and yet, I love it. And thats a beautiful thing. A beater bike from day one. Just wait till I get some spray paint….

Recently, the company I work for relocated their office to this gigantic building that used to be some sort of warehouse right off the west side highway in Chelsea. There are plenty of neat things about it, including the view and the fact that there is a cafeteria on the 8th floor.

The cafeteria is pretty good, considering they are a cafeteria - carry a ton of flavors of vitamin water, assorted naked juice, spicy thai chips, organic this and that. Today, in search of a snack, I picked up something called a “Think Green Superfood Bar.” I thought it was a good idea, it wasn’ t too big, the packaging was pretty, and the print on the side reeled me in hook line and sinker:

I was all gung ho till I ripped open the packaging- the bar looked like animal turd of some sort. I couldn’t find a photo of it online (obviously, the company itself is not going to post that up, nobody would buy it!) Like something my sixty five pound black lab dropped on the front lawn, someone ran by and scooped up and reshaped into a bar, and packaged in a pretty wrapper. A bit daunted, I cautiously took a small bite. It wasn’t god awful, but it was pretty terrible. If it hadn’t cost me two dollars, I would have thrown it out. But seeing as it DID cost two dollars, I ate the whole damn thing on principle alone. It wasn’t the tastiest snack, but at least I wasn’t hungry anymore. Too bad I forgot to take a photo.

I think next time I’ll just try a Luna bar.

Atmosphere, I feel, is a large part of an excellent show experience. I have an underage entrance stamp from my favorite club on earth, the 9:30 Club in Washington DC, tattooed on my wrist. No, really, I do. That club is THAT fantastic.

The Knitting Factory in NYC is not that fantastic. Here are the things that bothered me the most- 1)The bar sucked pretty bad. If I’m going to have to pay seven dollars per beer, I feel I should have a nice solid bar to lean against, maybe a few stools to delicately balance on, a few choices on tap. Nope. NONE of these. Well okay, so there were stools, but the bar itself felt like two pieces of plywood thrown over some sawhorse legs in mom’s living room. And nothing on tap. Bummer. 2) Has the management heard of lighting? I think the only place adequately lit was the stage. How you managed to make your way around any other place was a mystery to me. The balcony level was nearly pitch black, and I tripped about three times on steps halfheartedly marked by glow tape (that didn’t glow very well) on my way to the dressing room. 3) Dressing room sucked. 4) Parking my bike sucked bad, that block of Leonard has exactly three poles. Hope you get to lock to one of them.

One good thing was that the bathroom was a lot cleaner than expected. That’s always nice in music venues. The other thing that was good was the band You, Me, and Everyone we know.

Check out their myspace and purevolume. Buy their cd here. They’re gonna blow up huge in the most gigantic way possible really really soon, so jump on it and say you were one of the first who loved them BEFORE they got on tv and magazine covers.

Sad as it may be, I am not afraid to admit that a large part of my life takes place on the internet. It’s just so convenient. Sometimes my real life takes a hit for it- more time is spent on Myspace than I would like (although admittedly, I have cut back so that I spend only half the time on there that I have at the same time last year) because it’s often easier to leave someone a comment than to call them up and chit chat. However, for the most part the internet’s part in my life is quite helpful- I order movie tickets ahead of time on fandango, google directions using google maps (which, PS, since my relocation to NYC has become a life saver– at least I know usually have SOME broad idea about how to get where I’m going, and a general sense of direction), do all my word processing/spreadsheets in google documents, and purchase any music I download from the iTunes store. Last, but not least, a few times a year, I purchase shoes online, from Zappos. I haven’t purchased a pair of shoes in a shoe store in I don’t even know how many years. Ain’t it amazing?

I say amazing because like clothing, shoes are something that many people are very fickle about. People are not likely to plop down upwards of eighty dollars on something they haven’t been able to try on and walk around the store in. Zappos free shipping for returns no questions asked policy lulls potential customers into ordering because, hey, if it doesn’t fit, just send it back and get the size that does! Tactile investigation aside, this site has fantastic photos of their products from every angle- including details like the stitching or riveting, in every color offered. What you see is what you get.

The most annoying thing I find about this site is its layout and navigation. I can’t offer any ideas on how to improve it, but I do find after browsing for a few minutes I find the site cluttered and difficult to navigate to get to where I want to be. Also, they are able to keep their prices lower than you’d pay in store by offering old stock and last season’s styles. However, for cheap shoes (with free shipping!!!) I guess its a small price to pay…

They carry most popular brands in a variety of styles, color, price range, all with some sort of free shipping offer. If you haven’t made the leap to online clothing/shoe shopping, Zappos is a very friendly place to start. Go check it out!

Shortly before moving to New York, I swapped out my rev. A macbook for the recently-released Santa Rosa equipped Macbook Pro. As it stands, this is my third Apple laptop, spanning back all the way to my switch computer, a 1.5ghz Powerbook, and if I’ve learned anything it is that while Apple’s products may be beautiful, they are easily made not-beautiful. I vowed that this time, I’d protect my precious, even if it meant protecting it from myself.

The Powerbook, nickname Scully (X-Files thing, don’t ask), lost its factory perfect finish after I sent it flying off the bed in the middle of the night and dinged the palm wrest directly above the drive bay. As a result, it became damn near impossible to insert or remove discs without a gut-wrenching sound and possible data-loss.

My Macbook was thankfully a black model and was not plagued by the yellowing of the white models. That said, the matte finish definitely scratched, scrapped, and smooshed itself whenever possible. And this happened despite my constant use of an InCase neoprene laptop sleeve whenever it wasn’t open and on a secure surface.

Needless to say, when I picked up the Macbook Pro (what I’m typing this post on), I wanted something that would protect my computer no-matter-what. After loving the case that Agent 007 made for my iPod Nano, I realized that the only surefire way to protect my computer

was to get a “sleeve” that was in force 100% of the time. And that sleeve would need to be molded plastic. Enter Speck and its SeeThru Hard Shell Case. Please ignore the fact that Speck’s logo looks a bit like a tightly pursed butt. I promise their stuff is quality.

Made out of polycarbonate plastic, the case snaps onto the screen enclosure as well as the base of the Macbook Pro, providing sturdy protection to almost every part of the computer. Be warned that this is a very model specific case. Not only does it include custom cut-outs for all your ports and placements, but this will NOT fit your 15″ Powerbook, no matter how hard you try.

A little known fact is that when the Macbook Pro re-appeared on the scene with its Intel processor, it also gained .4 inches in size. The case WILL work for Core Duos and Core 2 Duos, and the company provides other cases for the 13″ Macbook and the 17″ Macbook Pro. 7 color choices include blue, black, red, green, pink, orange, aqua, and clear for those who prefer the look of brushed aluminum.

To be perfectly honest, when I first saw a Speck case being used, I thought that the owner had chosen to have their precious mac painted by a service like ColorWare. The fit is so snug and perfect that I assumed it was the machine’s skin bathed in a rich red tone, with the apple logo shining through. It even has ventilation spots cut to allow for the hot running laptops to get some much needed fresh air.

Although I doubt everybody will agree with me, using the Speck case has one added benefit: By covering it in stickers, I have been able to disguise my expensive and beautiful laptop from would-be NYC thieves, something I would never do to the actual machine. From a distance, it looks like just another shit-box Dell, until I crack it open to reveal its true nature. And at $40 dollars, when I get sick of the sticker design, I can just pop the case off and start over.

My one grip with this otherwise perfect addition to my work companion is that the back of the case wasn’t a perfect fit. Sometimes while opening the case, the screen enclosure would catch with the bottom and make a load snapping sound. While I haven’t seen any real damage, I could see this messing with the already delicate alignment of the screen. I have since filed down the back edges and the sound is long gone.

Also: It’s hard as BALLS to get off. To remove the bottom enclosure, with the case closed, flip it upside down, and wedge your finger nails under the sides. Pull up until it makes a snapping sound. To remove the top, you need a credit card or other tough thin plastic card. Wedge it between the side and the screen, and slide up and down. With a little practice you can get everything off pretty quickly. Prior to visiting the site and reading the FAQ, I was completely dumbfounded as to how to free the machine of the case short of sawing through it.

In my previous links post, I mentioned Modblog, one of the blogs on my daily checklist. Modblog, for those of you who didn’t bother clicking on the link and exploring it for yourself (shame on you!) is the brainchild of Shannon Larratt (read his personal blog at www.zentastic.com)

Shannon also runs the largest body modification zine on the internet (bmezine.com). I have read this zine since I was 14 years old and my fascination with tattoos began in earnest. The user submitted galleries (bmeink.com) of images and reader experiences became a feeding ground for my imagination in planning my future modifications, and perusing the site has had a pronounced influence not only on my views of body modification but on my general outlook on life.

While BMEzine.com covers the modifications that mainstream america has grown comfortable with, ie lip rings, navel rings, small inobtrusive tattoos, and even tongue studs, the zine also delves into more radical modifications- including but not limited to scarification, branding, self amputation, and extreme genital play.

When I first began exploring this site, these radical modifications scared me- they were shocking and I didn’t understand the reason or need for them. However, as I continued reading about people’s experiences and their feelings and reasons for having, wanting, or needing these modifications I came to an understanding that it didn’t matter that I didn’t understand why they had, wanted, or felt the need to have these modifications, it simply mattered that I understood that they had a RIGHT to have, want or need them.

It surprises me today as a twenty three year old the number of people I meet who have no tolerance for things they fail to understand. Tolerance for difference in people, in beliefs, in morals, and in all other things is something that I believe all people should strive to have. Click through this site, maybe it will help you along, even if you don’t understand why, or how. Check out Shannon’s latest post on leg spines for a taste of the culture.

Just a quick post, but I felt I had to share this.

Cadbury (you know, the candy people) has launched a guerilla gorilla viral marketing campaign.

The site is flash based, and I didn’t feel that embedding a youtube clip did it justice, so stroll over to A Glass and a Half Full Production’s official site. Prepare to be amazed.

Kudos on music choice, and flash animation. All together well executed.

Be sure to post your reactions in the comments section. First posters will receive invites to Scrybe, Pownce and/or GrandCentral (supplies willing).

Here we are almost exactly one month from our last site update. We promised to write more, and during the month of August, we pumped out 17 quality posts. During the month of September, you will see a minimum of 30 posts, at least one every day. We will continue at that rate come hell or high water.

Along with site updates, we are implementing another monthly tradition: link collections. In the process of finding material worth writing about on this site, we come across a lot of unique sites that for one reason or another didn’t get a devoted post. In the last week of every month, you’ll get one post from each author containing their favorite links and why they like them. Check out the inaugural posts here: Pichote’s Links - August, Yoda’s Links - August.

On the comments front, we had a couple cool things happen. First of all, Yoda’s post about Crumpler bags managed to grab the attention of a Crumpler employee. Ryan (from crumplerbags.com domain) chimed in, saying

“AWESOME REVIEW!!!!!!!!!”

Thanks, Ryan. We think your bags are pretty awesome too.

We also had Tech-blogging heavy-weight Paul Stamatiou stopped by and comment on our review of the GlobalSat bluetooth GPS receiver. He said

“Great post. Unfortunately for me and my Curve the version of Google Maps for some reason leaves out GPS support and I’m working on hacking up an 8800 version of Google Maps to work on the Curve - in the meantime it works with BlackBerry Maps (eh).”

Sorry bro, best of luck with the hacking. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope for the Google Phone to come out soon.

Pricklepear is participating in the Blog Action Day event, so on October 15th, expect to hear what we have to say about the environment and the web. Hopefully we’ll be able to contribute something valid to the cause, but either way, we are really excited to be involved with such a noble cause. If you don’t know about Blog Action Day, stroll over to their beautifully designed site and check it out.

On the backend of the site, we have a little news as well. The FeedBurner RSS situation got sorted out, and we now have a fully accessible Pricklepear RSS feed available for your sampling. We’d love it if you subscribed.

We also implemented the Sociable Wordpress plugin by Push CX. This means that you can bookmark any of our posts with a multitude of services quickly and easily. A couple of our posts are now on Digg, (Pichote’s August links and our post about the fastest printer in the world. If you have an account, we’d really appreciate a digg. If not, you should totally sign up. Digg is a great resource for hot news.

Everybody knows the saying “hindsight is always 20/20″ and recently it has been applying to us. When Eli designed Pricklepear, the scope of the site was meant for a single author with a slower turn-out. Now that we are posting every day on a variety of topics, the site is beginning to reveal its weaknesses. Expect to see a redesign of the structural components as well some graphic elements in the next month. We are going to make it a little narrower for smaller screens, and bring in some AJAX to make life a little more exciting.

Well, thats about it for now. Keep checking back everyday for new material.

Love, The Pricklepears.

If one is bored, and one enjoys movies, one should go watch movie trailers.  While I’m sure there are many places to see trailers, I go to apple’s site, which holds a pretty comprehensive collection of upcoming/currently in theater selections.

In one of these periods of trailer watching, I stumbled upon this little gem of a trailer for the film Hannah Takes the Stairs.  Check out the trailer on Apple Trailers for high quality, or YouTube for easy embedding.

I have  to admit my heart did a little flutter, for a number of reasons: 1) Boy did I identify with the main character.  Not that there are films lacking confused twenty something post grad students, but I haven’t seen one so focused on how confusing LIFE is since Reality Bites.  Could this film be the Reality Bites of my generation?  Is Hannah the new Leliana?  2) The truly indie filmmaking style struck me as stark and real and really really admirable in a time where the Theaters are largely dominated by CGI enhanced films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, Transformers, and 300.  This isn’t going to be a blockbuster, this is going to be a small film that really touches people.  3) Yo, these guys aren’t moviestars.  They don’t LOOK like movie stars.  I won’t watch the film and think about who they’re sleeping with in REAL life (if you can call it that).  They look like people I know, people I’d be friends with.  4) I really really want to see this film.

I’m a huge fan of Reality Bites, and if this film comes anywhere close to being as good as that one is, then I will be ecstatic.  I have my fingers crossed that it will have a scene comparable to this famous one: