Seattle is awash with bicycles in general and in the circles I travel it's that times 10. Even so, sometimes I see a bike that really amazes me; like this Schwinn Varsity here that I spotted on the UW campus one day.
If you look closely you will see:
- BMX pegs for crying out loud! Not like the rider ever uses them but still...
- The ubiquitous (for Seattle bicycle messengers anyway) top tube pad.
- The single speed drivetrain.
- Unlike most hard core messengers, this person rolls withOUT toe clips but has a front brake to compensate.
- Steel (or are they tin?) fenders.
- A full-on Brooks saddle! I see this so often, no matter how cheap and cobbled together the bike, the owner opts to totally pimp it out by breaking the bank on one particular component. In this case it's the saddle. I mean you could buy at least three of these bikes for what that saddle cost; including pegs for each one.
- Of course this ride is sporting the chopped and flipped (upside down) road handlebars. Nothing less would do for the messenger wanna be look.
- Note the chainstay protector, and it's protecting this frame from what exactly? Besides, it's a single speed bike,the chain will never get anywhere near that stay.
Anyway, it's pretty cool when people like their bikes enough to dude 'em up like this. Seriously. It won't stop me from making fun of these machines but style has no objective basis obviously.
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