Showing posts with label bicycle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bicycle. Show all posts

Monday, March 23, 2009

Elisa Gabbert and Kathleen Rooney were here for a few days to give a reading at Cal State San Marcos. While they were here, I learned several things.


1. A hipster is, basically, a kind of socialite, or sometimes just a wannabe socialite, with trendy alterna-style. Hipsters are to hip as beatnik is to beat.

2. Some of my peers are, like me, deeply suspicious and even totally against marriage.

3. I learned about The Sartorialist, which has an entire section devoted to people on bicycles. I'd never wear any of the outfits that the women have on, but I really wish I could get away with dressing like this guy. Don't worry, I can't. I'm not an art director living in Milan. My problem is that I don't just ride my bicycle down the street to the coffee shop/bar. I ride it six to twelve miles up and down San Diego county roads, and in between riding I teach. And, ahem, all the New York bikes featured on The Sartorialist were total hipster bikes. I think I need to do a whole blog post about stylish outfits that can survive six miles of hills on a real bicycle, plus a bus, and possibly even a train. Do any outfits actually exist?

4. I am late to the whole tag-cloud trend, but I am amused by it, still. "Body," "head" and various forms of "decapitate" are apparently some of my favorite words to use. I guess I'm not over that whole body-mind thing yet.

5. There are disputes over the right way to write an exquisite corpse poem. I enjoyed having the disputes, because it seems rather supremely ridiculous to argue about the correct way to play a Surrealist parlor game.

6. As Kathleen demonstrated, red lipstick is very wearable, and also, as Lucky Magazine recently noted, weirdly minimalist. I wore red lipstick today during my bicycle commute, and to teach. My students were fascinated and a little freaked out. We talked about color and tried to list all the kinds of red, blue, and yellow we could think of. People (ok, boys) yelled out their car windows at me. Was it the spring fever, or was it the red lipstick?

7. You can read more about their visit, as well as Kathleen's book tour, here.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Agressive Optimism in North County

I put my bike on the bus today to get it fixed. I need to take a basic bike mechanics course so I can do these simple repairs myself. Or I need to get a book and a few tools, at least.

A man got on the bus a few stops after me, put his bike on the rack, and entered the bus singing in a dangerously high-spirited manner. I was only on the bus for about ten minutes, but he managed to yell "EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY" or "EVERY DAY IS A FUCKING HOLIDAY" three or four times (in between the singing) at everyone who got on or off the bus after him. As I got off the bus I said, "calm down, man, today isn't a holiday."

The manager at Alan's bike shop fixed my bike in less than five minutes, and I was home fifteen minutes after that. A nice day for a ride.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Having working front and back breaks will improve my commute, no doubt.

Had drinks with a friend and her husband. Being social always feels good. Today was a beautiful SoCal day of the sort that visitors expect, and I was glad to be outside for most of it, even while driving down the 101 (listening to Pavement). I took the bike to REI to get it overhauled--new brakes, new saddle, a rack. The frame is a solid metal Gary Fisher original , and after the tune up, it's going to be even better.

Once I was over at REI I got coffee at somewhere in the Forum and did some editing. The music the upbeat yet soft jazz they pipe in everywhere is terrible.

I've been diligently reading through Krause's Design Basics Index, and it's been very helpful. I'm intuitively a pretty good designer, my clients think so, but this book is giving me the grammar of design. It explains the structures that design uses to talk about itself. It's very helpful.