the hundreds

one-hundred; Blake, Schwinn Premis

2009-11-20T00:24:00.000-08:00

Sartre once said, “Every age has it’s own poetry.”
He’s just trying to hear it.
If journalism is dead then he’s a gravedigger.
If the Internet is pushing people away, then he’s pulling them back.
He’d like to think people read what he writes, but realizes he’s painting sepia-tone in a Technicolor world.
When he grows up, he wants to be a good son, a decent friend and a competent speller (can’t blame a guy for dreaming).
Foreign here, he’s always home where someone’s telling him their story.
He’s ridden awhile, and tonight this looks like a good stopping place

ninety-nine; Amber Bob and Ripple (the dog), Mountain Bike

2009-11-19T00:59:00.001-08:00

The world often appears divided into binaries; black/white, giver/taker…
She’s a testament to the beauty of grey.
Her basket loaded with clothes for donation, she watches kids and teaches people how to weave hemp jewelry, (like Ripple’s collar, holding a cork-sized capsule with a personal message replacing dog-tags).
She got into FNB because, she “needed to eat, they were vegan.”
She gives back with her homegrown vegetables.
Family brought her back to Berkeley, though traveling peppered her heart across the states.
She even shares with her atmosphere, carrying tiny speakers flavoring the streets with a taste of 1967 era Beatles.

ninety-eight; Chris Perry, Bianchi Fixie

2009-11-18T00:24:00.000-08:00

In order to define themselves, every generation simultaneously looks to and rejects the past.
He recognizes ours is an epoch without a voice,
We’re constantly denying our one element of unifying identity (the evasive “hipster”),
And that “now” is pretty cool and worth documenting as it’s happening, not in some Ken Burns retrospective 20 years afterword.
This outlook made him quit Cal Polly for the love of school,
Quit culinary school for the love of food, to make pancakes at a greasy spoon.
He says, “there will always be time,” tattooing T.S. Elliot to his sleeve,
“Life is very long.”

ninety-seven; William, Trek Mountain Bike

2009-11-16T23:58:00.000-08:00

He repeatedly removes and replaces the lid to his coffee cup as though it’s a metaphysical quandary he’s debating.
Coffee is the ambrosia of intellectuals,
And his with his lineage, it must have been in his baby formula.
In some families all the children must go to war; in his they go to Cal.
He’s traveled more countries than US states (“Like 20 or 30?”),
Knows the bitter of Danish licorice and the sour of Hungarian textiles,
Insightful and informed, yet he lacks the predictable pompous of inbred academia.
He listens more than he interjects,
tastes more than he gulps.

ninety-six; Amos, Maroon Cruiser with fenders

2009-11-15T23:58:00.000-08:00

He says that writing software is just like anything else;
Once you’ve been doing it long enough, it becomes natural.
“Just memorize the pattern of movements, and repeat.”
He says the same thing about juggling,
(apparently he’s good enough to have moved from tennis balls to the two-foot clubs hanging out of his backpack).
His outlook is more nurture than nature,
Though he draws the line at Rubik’s cube,
“I’ve never been able to do it.”
He’s seems to enjoying life the way our grandparents want us to,
He likes his job, his friends, his Sundays and his Hawaiian Burgers.

ninety-five; Jeff, Craig's List Cruiser

2009-11-15T01:00:00.000-08:00

No, he did not go to the game,
But he is the after party.
He’s running with a rowdy pack of Saturday night, two 24oz Bud Lights, some skateboards and a genuinely genuine disposition.
Apparently he’s in sales and distribution of some sort, but he cant say much about his product.
Oakland is where he landed after Germany, though he discloses little more than that.
He’s playing with the idea of community college in S.F…but he’s also playing with the idea of buying a Kombucha (the green one apparently).
In line at the liquor store ,everyone is victim to impulse.

ninety-four; Francois, Mountain Bike

2009-11-14T00:50:00.001-08:00

“It’s a book called the Bible, you may have herd of it, it’s written by God,”
He’s referencing the copy of Gideon’s in his chest pocket.
He’s not a Christian,
He’s just a well-read socialist, as was Christ.
The book is for research on a story he’s writing about Job’s wife,
“She really got the short end of the stick, on the whole sin thin thing.”
It’s been a little while since art-school, but he’s finding time to sculpt and animate.
He talks about media with realistic insight that’s rather prophetic for a guy who’s still publishes words on paper.

ninety-three; Lorenc, Black Commuter with Fenders

2009-11-13T00:10:00.001-08:00

In Switzerland, children spend two weeks of every school year on a ski trip as part of their physical education,
They learn Swiss, German, French and English,
They fall in love on vacation, and travel to America, bouncing around the most elite Economic Universities in the world.
They study the most interesting Global Political Economic crisses in the past 100 years in the eye of the storm.
They settle on Berkeley for the weather…
Or at least he did.

ninety-two; Ewa, Bike

2009-11-12T00:17:00.001-08:00

She’s wanted in her mother country of Poland for,
“Playing and dancing the streets, much like a child.”
Secretive, she only says what is asked of her;
She is in America to do some reading, she’s here indefinitely and if we are going to talk, it can only be about bikes.
She tells me about Polish critical mass, about laying down Astroturf and kiddy-pools in the middle of intersections,
She speaks of the ridiculous lengths the government went to in order to cover up a DIY bike lane painted by renegade cyclists.
She tells me all this and nothing more.

ninety-one; Kevin, Mountain Bike

2009-11-11T00:18:00.000-08:00

Smiling over a postgame slice of veggie-laden pizza, he subtly discloses his ambitions for his MBA,
“I plan on going into renewable energy.
I want to change the world.”
He’s aware of the cost of his time here, but unlike many, he turns it to fodder, utilizing all his resources (be it international, elite-level business model competitions, or a soccer field and a nightcap at the campus bar).
His passion seems clean burning and sustainable,
His Teammates and a few Girls dressed for the mid-week holiday pull him into the bar.
A true gentleman, he bids me to join in.

ninety; Alex, GT Mountain Bike

2009-11-10T00:10:00.000-08:00

There are those who drift through college, with a rough idea of a job doing something kind of enjoyable after wondering a while in the post collegiate glow….
… not his story.
Didn’t finish high school?
Not a problem, once he plotted it out;
Major in Macro Economics, do a semester at Cambridge Senior year,
Post graduation; go directly into the importing and exporting of calcium carbonate from Guatemala.
There are skeletons in everyone’s past, he decided to burry his.
All his math classes are old school pencil, paper and brainpower.
I guess you’d say he has a ruff sketch.

eighty-nine; Nick, Cannondale Mountain Bike

2009-11-09T00:05:00.000-08:00

In Romania, while in the Peace Corps, he helped polish the character of a small town until it shown bright enough to attract the lightning-bug buzz of international tourism.
Now he’s driven by his passion for history (initially he wanted to teach it) to guide tours across the world.
He acknowledges the potential exploitation of indigenous culture,
“Its an inevitability of a global village,” he tells me,
“It’s about the intentions of those involved.”
His, clearly, are pure.
He’s studying for the GRE, and though he doesn’t know what he wants to do, he’s definitely capable of finding his way.

eighty-eight; Brad, Black Fixie, (with hand brake)

2009-11-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

Though, “not a breeder,” going to a wedding tonight without his wife still feels awkward.
He’s old school L.A.
We reminisce like seniors over the old neighborhood, global warming and high school harassment.
He’s traded the vernacular of “dude” for and “hella,” only goes back home for family and tattoos.
Playing percussion in experimental bands and roasting coffee, he can’t remember why he moved here, but he certainly does fit.
Imbued with thoughtfulness, he apologizes for not having a pump to lend me, and yells after someone who drops their sweater.
“This BART drivers pretty considerate, don’t you think?”

eighty-seven; Anya Silver Commuter

2009-11-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

She’s like the organic, local, apple pies she’s selling; an American spirit, that’s revolutionary in practice.
Moved to S.F. from Russia at five with her mother, a mechanical engineer, who settled for a paralegal job (her degree didn’t transfer).
This one’s passions, however, wont still easily,
She’s the wheels behind the local food movement, working at farmer’s markets three days a week, editing the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology’s DIY zine and turning the earth into edibles in the community garden.
She tells me how to make my own butter and signs her work, “Be bold in your endeavors”

eighty-six; Robert, Bianchi Road Bike (with a homemade Smiths card in rear wheel)

2009-11-06T00:40:00.000-08:00

Four Germen engineers walk into an American bar and decide that our social life is more like a cardboard representation than good time.
He would know, he used to spin at a theater in Munich and he’s wearing personalized Morrissey shoes.
By night, he stencils, drinks till he’s good and rosy and listens to Block Party,
By day, argues about the efficacy of design.
“They make us build massive amounts of models so rapidly, we can’t possibly get it right. If I had a week to compute I’d get it the first time.”
He certainly seems to understands America alright.

eighty-five; Rustin, Trek Mountain Bike

2009-11-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

Hard as the world tries to define him; second-generation, Persian-American, Southern-Californian, Pre-Med, fourth year…he’s always been independent.
He lives in a Wild house, where people call to check up on him, where he danced and DJ’d on Halloween and where housemates smile when mentioning each other’s names.
A man of his own passions
His blog about music caused so much legal drama he stopped writing, he likes the more obscure Tarantino and has traveled a good chunk of Europe.
Skeptical of being painted as the “Dr., Lawyer or Failure” stereotype, he asserts (convincingly) that he’s actually “totally fascinated by science.”

eighty-four; Debbie, Cannondale Road Bike (dad's)

2009-11-03T23:47:00.000-08:00

She has a 10:30 Boba appointment and this seems to be a fitting metaphor for her kind of balance,
shockingly lighthearted considering the weight of her workload.
Shooting for her PHD because she thinks teaching seems fun (in part inspired by her father who teaches adult ESL).
Traveled Thailand with her mom for fun, but ended up a volunteer for the Red Cross in a hospital for Agent Orange victims.
She’s not particularly political (didn’t vote in the last election) but she is profoundly principled (smiles at strangers).
I’d argue it’s her San Diego roots getting grounded in Berkeley’s soil.

eighty-three; Tj Trek Mountain Bike (Oakland Flea Market)

2009-11-02T23:51:00.001-08:00

When he tell me that he worked in “anti-piracy” in the Navy, I think it’s strange that military is so concerned with Napster.
He means Actual pirates.
When he tells me that he spent 8months in South Africa I think Endless Summer.
He was volunteering for a youth organization in Cape Town.
He says Legal Studies; I think corporate law,
He means physics.
Genuinely considerate, he offers to move inside when I mention the cold.
His are not the drilled in manners of boot camp, rather the refined epaulets of real world knowledge.
Transfer students are what hold Cal together.

eighty-two; Paul, Felt Single Speed with Coaster Brakes

2009-11-01T23:33:00.000-08:00

He’s got a year clean, but tells me that’s nothing in “user time,”
His habit started with a broken back and a prescription, and it ended with o.d.-ing twice in one week.
OC took away a lot of good memories (childhood tinkering on old single speeds) and burned in new ones (the phone number of his former dealer).
Last week he celebrated his birthday by signing the lease to his own bike shop, building a new life around an old passion.
And though he doesn’t claim to be an artist,
He welds $20 yard sale finds into $1000 track bikes.

eighty-one; Joe, Univega Road Bike ($20 thrift store)

2009-11-01T01:16:00.001-07:00

Some are defined by the things they’ve done; he has done things, but he’s the one making the definitions.
He was in a Grind Core band that toured the East Coast; he’s traveled the entire continental United States and lived in several of them.
He doesn’t feel this entitles him to anything (in fact it’s a journey getting him to tell me anything).
My questions make him nervous, but he lets me walk beside him a few blocks.
It’s Halloween and though he tells me he “has little patience for stupid people” he certainly appears to be amused by them.

eighty; Kat, Red Commuter (with a milk crate)

2009-10-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

She’s the only person I’ve known who can pull off a tattoo of the Sun Records emblem (I lived in Nashville).
She studies Behavioral Economics and listens to the Bad Brains, the type in class that should speak but rarely does (unless its about Kosovo… honestly impressive), in a school filled with the opposite.
Fell asleep today in Sociology (apparently she’s read a book on the lecture topic), but prefers to nap on the grass.
She made her own Halloween costume (a skunk), literally lives with Swine Flu and knows who wrote the screenplay for “Where the Wild Things Are.”

seventy-nine; Gialiana, Specialized Mountain Bike (with a silver bell)

2009-10-30T00:42:00.000-07:00

A talent can both be a suture and a binding tie.
She plays viola with passion that’s beyond physical constraints, literally.
In fact it’s so strong, her fatherly conductor has to check her back pain after nightly rehearsals, regularly running until midnight.
A one-track mind can often be mistaken for an absent one; ATM card and laptop in plain view as she unlocks her bike alone at night.
She’s learned to loosen the tension and the need for perfection, with a knitting habit.
Such little time fraternize (she’s playing on Halloween), someone surely will be wishing they were her strings.

seventy-eight; Michael, Diamondback Mountain Bike

2009-10-29T00:06:00.000-07:00

Dawning a cardigan, tie and loafers is not just an ironic fashion statement; it’s practice.
There has never been a moment in his life where he can remember not wanting to be a judge.
LSATS are what he is, does, eats, sleeps and breaths.
He comes from a “horse family,” wallet is branded with an image of his grandfather buggy racing.
His whip/carrot pragmatism is both current (for school) and vintage (for style).
He has a heavy future and a light heart.
Admittedly the shoes came from the basement of his Co-Op, and his Halloween costume is better than yours.

seventy-seven; Kevin, Road bike (just sold)

2009-10-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

Appropriate that when I receive my first C in years, he reminds me of the futility of education in relation to joy.
Outside the bar, he chides his friends for riding without nightlights.
Majored in literature because he “was good enough at it,” the only way he foresees using his degree is if, “I don’t know, I go back to school.”
He started working on his future (literally) in college, when, strapped for cash, he taught himself to repair bikes.
Started as an apprentice 3.5 years ago, now he’s the head mechanic at my favorite shop.
More importantly, he’s happy.

seventy-six; Patrick, Diamondback Freestyle

2009-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

His handy work hangs around his neck in intricate copper spirals, laced through bone, glass and stone.
His craftwork ascends the Bob Marley shirts and “water pipes” typical of Telegraph street peddlers.
One might call it art.
He has aspirations of becoming “a kickass dad, with an awesome, hot wife and maybe do carpentry or something.”
Claims to be better with wood than wire, but since he moved from Virginia to the Bay, he hasn’t had a chance to get his hands dirty.
Wandering, but not lost,
Grounded yet adrift;
only bumper stickers hold the kind of truths he embodies

seventy-five; Blake, Mongoose Commuter

2009-10-25T23:38:00.001-07:00

He has three different mustaches tattooed on the inside of the fingers of his right hand, providing a spectacle of expressions when he plays the mandolin.
He has his best friend (of 23 years) on his side, for whom he has provided his old bike.
He has a bit of a buzz, providing him with an enviable smile, and the fuel to make a doughnut run at 10:30pm on a Sunday.
He has a job doing something he likes (video game journalism), when 9.8% of Americans don’t, providing him just enough means to get bye.
He has no complaints tonight.

seventy-four; H. Scott Prosterman, Vintage Road Bike

2009-10-24T23:41:00.000-07:00

The mans a “professional,”
In his words he, “helps people get in, and then gets them out”
So ahead of the curve he finished his Middle-Eastern studies degree 30 years ago, (lived in Egypt during the Camp David Accords).
He provides;
Tutoring for writing, grammar, citizenship, and accent reduction.
Editorial, Copy and Counseling support for academic, corporate and non-profit projects, as well as college and grad school admissions.
Marathons, Triathlons and “the shortest white-boy to dunk,”
he’s published various opinion, theoretical, and scholarly papers,
and most impressively, he makes an attempt at his own 100 words.
Did I mention modest?

seventy-three; Roman, Trek Road bike

2009-10-23T23:52:00.001-07:00

Though history fills his sales tonight, he is shipping-out on physics, economics, politics and a lifetime of inspiration.
10 years military, scholar for life;
he’s filled with a modesty that is unrelenting, etiquette that’s to the letter and a sincere curiosity that is breathtaking.
He shocks my jaded sensibilities when he tells me, one, U.S. media coverage of Iraq isn’t half bad, and two, the only reason he didn’t need to drop out of school was the present administration.
“If you want to know what a country thinks of its poor, look at how they take care of their Veterans.”

seventy-two; Agnes, Rebuilt commuter

2009-10-23T00:42:00.000-07:00

Transformed into Thursday night, she rides her bike in heels to find her evening’s niche carved into a bar and a double date.
She has a harder time hiding her daylight self than her companions. Their eager to crack into detachment, but she lingers just long enough to appease me (and just quick enough to appease them).
Public Health, immigrated from Hungry, likes cooking soup, Mother’s an American liaison for a European magazine, just out of a bad relationship…
She answers my questions like she’s taking a test, offers a professional exchange of email, and tends to her appropriate indulgences.

seventy-one; Natalie, Silver Road Bike from Austin, TX (Brooks Saddle)

2009-10-22T00:04:00.001-07:00

If the gods were honest, life would be a lot less fun; poets wouldn’t need to suffer over subtleties, painting would be technique, not perspective, the bible would be written in Physics...
and she would be out of a job.
Thankfully (for her) the gods are inherently dishonest.
Her work is like that of a parent, trying to put together an idea of reality based on the fibs of children whose faces are covered in crumbs, but swear they haven’t touched the cookie jar.
I ask her how she feels about spirituality,
“I believe in the beauty of the natural world.

seventy; Johnny, Centurion touring bike

2009-10-21T00:43:00.000-07:00

He’s utterly unfazed by the fact that the stranger borrowing his iphone is covering it in tears.
Just laid off of his corporate job in the city, now he part times, nickel and dimes, and plays music on the side.
It was a high-dive to low-end, but the music works wonders on his disposition, he even manages a full-toothed grin as he tells me the man who fired him didn’t know his name.
He’s got a direction (employment of just about any kind) but I think he should stop trying, because, as his bands name implies, The Aimless Never Miss.

sixty-nine; Justin, Specialized Mountain Bike

2009-10-20T00:27:00.000-07:00

I taught performance-poetry workshops at his former high school,
Needles to say, he was bent left before he moved to the bay,
Three years of protests resembling parties (and parties resembling protests),
he’s growing disillusioned.
Jürgen Habermas spoke of two stages of the democratic public,
first, active, united and relevant voting community,
second, an apathetic couch-potato democracy, where no acts with trust or solidarity.
He stopped trusting limousine liberals when his first bike was stolen in broad, busy daylight,
“I’ve invested $150 in security”
he tells me referencing his bike,
“I’m more conservative now than I ever thought I’d be”

sixty-eight; Brian, Brother's Commuter (first day)

2009-10-19T00:45:00.000-07:00

There is a kind of sixth sense that surfers share.
We can spot each other across thick rooms and crowded pretence.
Maybe it’s the sandals despite the sub-sixty bite in the air.
He got hooked two years ago at school in San Diego, ever since, his hart cant rest at home in San Jose.
It realigns all ambitions; initially, as a Pre-Med he had intended to do R&D, now he wants to do humanitarian work in Mexico.
His brother took up the family pharmaceutical business (the only lingering obligation),
Now he just has to finish Medical school, easy enough, right?

sixty-seven; Morton, Beach Cruiser

2009-10-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

He was studying philosophy in Central America, after his Norwegian Punk band broke-up, when he met his wife, who was on a five-day vacation from Baja.
His professors told him to chase her, so he left town days before the tail of Hurricane Katrina leveled his town.
When he found her, she told him she was moving to Berkeley to get her Masters in design.
So he moved here, and got a job at a movie theater.
Though the most dramatic life gets these days is probably skateboarding, he is far more entertaining than any movie at the playhouse tonight.

sixty-six; Andy, Blue Mountain Bike ($99.99)

2009-10-17T00:23:00.000-07:00

The Internet is faster in South Korea but the hamburgers are better here, and though the occasional Sympathy For Lady Vengeance comes out of Seoul, the heart of the media industry is in California.
He convinced his parents to send him to America to Master English (in a year).
Sure, they may have done so because they thought he was going to use his new language for a job as an engineer (considering that’s what he went to school for…and considering they paid for school).
“I’ll get an internship doing anything and work up from there.”
At least he’s realistic.

sixty-five; Camden, Rebuilt Road Bike

2009-10-16T00:24:00.000-07:00

“Ideally I want to work for a magazine writing music reviews…and then go to law school whet I get tired of living in squalor.”
He’s optimistic about his future in journalism.
He’s convergence incarnate; raised on Orange County Hard Core, schooled in rhetoric (literally), climbing through free-lance music blogging, volunteer radio and student run newspapers.
Corporate media’s gears are greased with the oil of dreams like his.
With a bit of creative logic, his life seems to be about making these murky horizons look a bit more buoyant.
“I kind of feel like a storm chaser driving into a tornado.”

sixty-four; Kevin, Bianchi custom build

2009-10-15T00:33:00.000-07:00

If he were a knife he would be a serrated blade:
Dull under blunt pressure, effective with momentum and direction.
In his fourth year at Cal studying Public Health, this weekend he’s off to Florida to interview for medical-school, but he doesn’t really want to go.
He could speak fluent Mandarin, understands it so well he tells me the inadequacies of hip-hop in Chinese, but doesn’t feel like practicing.
Competitive in speech in debate, now estranged.
Used to ride centuries, now he just commutes.
Regardless, he is possessed with infectious buoyancy,
even if he hides his smile from the camera.

sixty-three; Andrew, Raleigh Grand Prix

2009-10-14T00:33:00.000-07:00

Talks about oil dependency usually end with, “someone should really do something about that.”
Here’s that someone;
A microbiologist from Marin researching bacteria,
Bike commuting in the nastiest rain Berkeley’s had this year.
Remarkably charming, contrasting the awkward we’ve come to expect from science.
Perhaps he’s the face of a new super hero; one in a lab coat, one who fights injustice with his lifestyle and not just some freakish biological endowment (besides his brain).
Perhaps I’m just endeared to him because he let me ask him some questions in time to get home before the rain started back in.

sixty-two; Marcus; Univega Mountain-Bike

2009-10-12T23:36:00.000-07:00

The shine of this college town is rusting on him.
Working full-time as a chemist doesn’t feed the itch anymore.
Companionship has been mixing with disappointment like biter vermouth.
He needs a new chemical cocktail, so he’s trying serotonin in the end of a pen.
All day at work he ties his science arm, until his creative veins ache for an injection of late night inspiration.
Unpacks his pencils, orders a Panini and fills his pages with literally hundreds of hours of the high he finds in drawing.
“I used to think I would teach chemistry, now that’s highly unlikely.”

sixty-one; Andrew, Raleigh Road Bike (Moms hand-me-down from UCLA)

2009-10-11T23:28:00.000-07:00

Chivalry isn’t dead, is just walking with a limp, and he might be it’s cane.
It’s not the fact that they stayed together over summer, though 344 miles away, both working in movie theaters.
It’s not the fact that he walks her back to her apartment (on cold nights, across town).
Rather the subtle way he pulls her into our conversation, telling me about her exotic bug collection, the way he walks closest to the street, the way he answers my questions with stories about her, like who had better high-school biology teachers:
The little big things that mean everything.

sixty; Ben Steel Road Bike (Salvaged)

2009-10-11T00:11:00.000-07:00

If palm readers told the past instead of the future, his calluses would speak of two generations of craftsmen, a week of poring concrete along side his Father and perhaps some time in personal demolition.
Now he’s all about building.
Spending Saturday night in Berkeley, clasping a cup of coffee and plans for s bathroom, he’s up from Oakland with only his headphones, some indi-rock and the occasional bad memory to keep him company.
He knows contracting intuitively, designs with pencil and pad and makes lumber and land into somewhere you can store you heart.
He drinks coffee, not Americanos.

fifty-nine; Javier, Steel Ten-Speed Commuter Bike

2009-10-10T00:24:00.000-07:00

What does one do after spending seven years in medical school?
After your brother and parents have left you and moved thousands of miles away?
He decided on country whose language he only knows from medical books, where he has to start at ESL classes in community college?
Why?
This is where his family is, so this is where his future is.
He just got out of Friday night salsa class, says it’s a good way to meet people.
He assures me he’s not nervous about becoming a doctor here (medicine is bilingual), its talking to people that worries him.

fifty-eight; Shaelyn, Univega road bike (complicated lock)

2009-10-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

As I help her lock up her bike, I read the tattoo on the palm of her right hand,
“Let Go.”
She wins the “What do I want to be when I grow up?” contest.
She ran off the sugar high of being an “artist” after two years of art school in San Jose.
Now she’s working on getting into the Piece Corps, primarily because she wants to apply her knowledge while offering real humanitarian aid to a developing country (instead of just saying that ‘someone’ should)…and she thinks it would be ‘rad’ to live in the third world.

fifty-seven; Chelsey, Bianchi Road bike

2009-10-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

At some point most actors are faced with the reality of their craft, innocence lost; waiting tables for the rest of their life is a scary possibility.
Perhaps it’s the fact that she’s from Southern California (and smart) that she realized this before she finished college.
Now she follows the flow of content across media platforms, drinks yerba mate and takes classes in DIY kombucha making.
Flashcards, study groups and typed lecture notes; she can do school, or at least portray it convincingly.
Though tomorrow’s midterm is sitting in the wings, she’s already got this weekend’s denouement within tongue’s reach.

fifty-six; Carlos, Amalgam commuter bike

2009-10-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

His shopping cart is full of bunt cake and chewing gum; face draped thick with skepticism as I start interviewing him in the deli section of Safeway at 10:30pm.
This is what happens when one moves into their first studio apartment senior year of college; they eat food that would disappoint any mother and don’t trust strange men questioning them in public.
He’s studying pre-law (which explains the wariness).
He balances all this with a gallon of skim milk and his desire for social justice or environmental law (plus the fact that he drives a bio-diesel B.M.W. back at home).

fifty-five; Sean, Steel Peugeot Fixed Gear with Carbon Forks

2009-10-05T23:55:00.001-07:00

A champagne cork hangs from his seat, a throwback to 1920’s track racing when it represented the celebration of inevitable victory and the stored explosion waiting to pop from the rider’s legs.
Untapped potential like a Cornell Geo-Physics degree hanging on the wall of a Peat’s barista.
“In this economy I’m just grateful for a job,” he spouts with sincerity, not at all shy.
His interest in physics sprung from a love affair with a rainbow, he commuted to and from SF this weekend for 45min of music and studies the earth just to say he knows how it spins.

fifty-four; Susheel, Trek Mountain Bike (free from a bike shop)

2009-10-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Though aware of the price of his time at Cal, he allows himself the occasional Patriot’s experience of getting beer faced at homecoming.
What would be the point in transferring from University in Scotland if he didn’t enjoy some U.S. debauchery rite?
He’s getting his American dollar’s worth, studying Latin-American Art History, riding his bike across the Bay Bridge and going to American football games instead of pseudo-European raves in the city.
The cost of admittance inspires his diligence, so he picks his vices wisely.
He has learned the price of Saturday night,
“That’s what Sundays are for right?”

fifty-three; Charley, Raleigh Road Bike

2009-10-03T23:31:00.000-07:00

So what if we lost?
It’s homecoming, Dads in town and it’s Saturday night.
Gone are the warm months of summer paralegal practice, now he’s neck deep in infinite briefs.
But Law School’s labors subside tonight just long enough to gulp in a bit of October bite (a warm one by his Salt Lake City standards) and watch the slaughter of the home team.
“I guess we can’t be good at everything.”
I ask him why law and he replies modestly,
“Well I knew I wanted to go for a PHD or something.”
This is one hell of a something.

fifty-two; Mikael, Steel Road bike with big baskets

2009-10-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

He didn’t like school, wasn’t into Washington.
He did like bikes, he liked coffee and he liked friends.
How can he make this work?
(First try)
Move to Panama with friends and grow coffee.
It was worth a shot.
Hopped a plane and went all in.Way more pricy than practical.
Scratch that.
Move to Berkeley, make friends, roast free-trade coffee from contacts made in Panama and deliver it…by bike.
Make business cards, make good with neighbors (“who doesn’t like free coffee?”), and make sales.
Made it happen.
Celebrate! Friday night burlesque show in Oakland, paper-bag IPA and a bike ride.

fifty-one; Planet, Schwinn Varsity 10-speed

2009-10-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

“Too much dessert can make you sick.” And apparently Austin, Texas was a cakewalk.
Eight years ago he gave up everything but his van, drove to the heart of abandon (Telegraph St. in Berkeley) and fed on frugality.
He learned to live without the big luxuries (like a job) and the little ones (like his ego).
“I try to let go of things, and I have to trust that they will come comeback when I need them.”
They did.
He has an apartment now, and he runs a bike repair service with no advertising relying on the “boomerang of karma.”

fifty; Aaron, Schwinn fixed gear with carbon forks

2009-10-01T00:15:00.000-07:00

He left college in Aberdeen just a handful of credits shy of a degree in urban social development to actually live in an urbanized social development (“with way better weather”).
Though he sports northwestern fixed gear intimidation like a second skin, it’s clearly just a familiar coat from harsher environments (he sheds it like a winter coat in spring the instant he starts to speak).
Now he reads crime novels (because he can) and sucks in bits of California between pulls of hand rolled cigarettes and coffee.
His head now firmly in the clouds: his feet loosely in the street.

forty-nine; Daniel, Road Bike (little brothers)

2009-09-30T00:33:00.000-07:00

He’s holding a healthy chunk of man’s most precious commodity (time) and it’s burning a hole in his pocket.
He’s got time; to decide on a major (History or Econ), to sit up until 5am writing fanatically about protest, to follow the evening without (much) regard for midterms.
He’s thinking of letting his days in speech and debate “die with high-school”, but he still holds an intrinsic ability to speak intelligently (or not at all).
Berkeley was a choice he made over a beer and a professor’s turn of phrase,
“He just said it perfectly, just at the perfect time.”

forty-eight; Tristan, Ibis Cyclocross bike

2009-09-28T23:45:00.000-07:00

He’s a grower: of plants, of family, and of future.
The independent landscaping business sprouted from necessity (his lady was having twins),
“It all changes when you have kids.”
The triathlons stopped somewhere around then.
But that was four years and a few community colleges ago.
Now he commutes to Cal from Oakland for a program in agricultural architecture and races Cyclo-Cross (he probably likes the dirt more, anyways).
The kids in day care, the Lady at work for a non-profit in the East Bay, he’s loading up on a little warmth and caffeine for a night of building trees.

forty-seven; Becca, K2 Commuter

2009-09-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

With a Masters in Anthropology from SFSU, it only makes sense that she would become an educational culinary entrepreneur.
“I was fascinated with people and essentially food is people.”
A love for culture drove her to Mexico where she gleaned the only ‘formal’ training in cooking she’s received.
Tonight she was in the city for Yom Kippur service.
Though imbued with an inspired curry, apparently it missed the spot and it’s looking to be a long twenty-five hours until this can be reconciled.
Until then, she modestly recites the fine art of banana-leaf wrapped tamales for me (free of charge).

forty-six; Gabriel, Red Commuter

2009-09-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

He’s spiked and studded, friendly and faithful.
We laugh about the ironies of Berkeley’s “liberal free speech” attitude as he walks to grab dinner for his lady,
“Like say whatever you want, as long as it agrees with them.”
Exhausted from hosting an all day card game, it looks like he’s going to miss the Dead and Gone show tonight.
He’s heading to San Jose in the morning for his sisters wedding, but he commits to a few minuets for me.
Kindly he invites me to bike polo in Oakland (they’ve got loaner mallets)
“My other bike is a skateboard.

forty-five; Barrett, Ten-Speed Road Bike

2009-09-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

Flipping through discarded books and vinyl under a street light on his way home from practice, he feels that he really started to grow once his options were stripped down (referring to playing in a two-piece band on a borrowed kit).
His band is named after the giant squid and there’s truly something epic within him.
“The best work I’ve done has been shorts stories about my life.”
On paper he’s a philosophy major; in practice, a drummer; in spirit, a writer.
Under no delusions about his future, he knows that no one is hiring philosophers (not in this economy).

forty-four; Kyle, Mountain Bike (brand new, way more fun than a road bike)

2009-09-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

It’s a toss up between civil and mechanical, but it is most definitely engineering.
Freshmen year is full these new definitions.
The kind that changes the way he perceives time,
“Fifteen minuets or an hour.” (Referencing to how long it takes to get to his hometown to grab essentials like…cereal).
“We’re getting started at 11pm.” (Referencing his bike ride).
He’s designing a human powered vehicle for competition and he thinks he wants to go into alternative energy.
I assume then that his eyes are on the future, but he his smile assures me that he is thoroughly enjoying the present.

forty-three; Peter, Mongoose, Mountain Bike

2009-09-24T00:53:00.000-07:00

He left New York in the Navy, but kept it in his handshake.
He hopped from Georgia to Japan, from San Diego to Tahoe, from the Yankees to the A’s, from an intro Anthropology class at community college to molecular biology Berkeley.
He is the kind of man who earned his beard and the right to a G.I. bill side by side.
He’s in his last year at Cal, and when I ask him what he wants to do next he takes a contemplative deep sigh loaded connotation and offers up,
“Probably take a break.”
I’d say he deserves it.

forty-two; Valerin, Sister's Mountain Bike (a loan)

2009-09-23T00:28:00.001-07:00

He’s Bay biking to the bone.
Not spandex clad entitlement; not fixed-gear fashionista; not even “gave up my car” commuter.
He’s never known the indulgences of personal petroleum powered transportation.
He runs a bike valet operation out of a shop in Oakland.
“Seemed like a good way to help people who weren’t driving.”
He’s sporting the wariness of a man who just had to ask his sister if he could borrow her bike because his was stolen (U-lock and all) from the S.F. BART station.
“Strangest feeling, you think, ‘I guess I parked it somewhere else.’”
It’s ‘us vs. them’

forty-one; Brittany, Vintage Cruiser with coaster brakes

2009-09-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

Working at a corporate second hand store, riding a power-generating second hand bike, she’s making Berkeley new (to her at least).
It’s a far sketch from her hometown in Sonoma where she fell for the idea of high school art teacher in a big city.
She studies the ancient art of portraiture at a cutting edge design school, painting nuance onto the tight canvas and denim of her hipster contemporaries.
She is a neoclassic rock star.
For now she has to be taught (and re-taught) the tedious technique of vintage T-shirt on coat hanger,
You can’t spell retail without art.

forty; Enrique, Steel Single Speed (flip-hub rear wheel)

2009-09-20T23:57:00.000-07:00

Walking out of church at 10:45pm he’s a solid wholesome 6’2” 190lbs.
He remarks that it’s fitting I should meet him on the 40th night.
I ask him if he missed morning mass because of a big Saturday night and he tells me that he was working graveyard for the campus escort service, walking people home too scared to go alone.
I ask if he meets a lot of interesting people that way and he tells me they’re usually drunk and disappointed when he shows up on a bike instead of a car.
It’s no surprise that he’s studying Law.

thirty-nine; Renne, Steel Road Bike

2009-09-20T00:49:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long road to Biology at Berkeley but he’s a traveler: first Jersey then Colorado, first a skateboard, then a bike.
He’s been in California so few years that he doesn’t need a full hand to count them. It’s already starting to itch like cat fur under the collar.
A vegetarian studying to be a Veterinarian, he’s not the type to throw himself under a buss to save a squirrel.
Driven to a point, he shuts it off at eleven, letting me know he needs to run to ketch his girl and the tail end of the weekend.

thirty-eight; Morgan, Dad's Old Red Steel Commuter

2009-09-18T23:27:00.000-07:00

Waiting for his friends on the fringes of campus, he says this year is going considerably better than the previous three.
He goes to one of those “transitional” high schools that you read about in the newspaper and suddenly feel better about paying your taxes.
He speaks insightfully about the problematic structure and focus of public education in America.
I ask him how he likes his school and he tells me,
“It would be better if it weren’t in Piedmont, its hard to relate when every other car is a Mercedes or a Lexus. That’s just not the real world”

thirty-seven; Duncan, Red Peugeot Road Bike

2009-09-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

We talk coffee shop connoisseur and he professes his preference for the lighter grind and thicker grit of the off campus café a block away.
Bright but not overbearing, he feverishly juggles notes, laptop and books, with a unique style nuanced by caffeine and intellectual adrenaline.
Though he transferred from Calabasas two and a half years ago, he rocks carless co-op living like an East Bay native.
Majoring in Philosophy, he humbly settles on my simple definitions for epistemology (“Like thinking about thinking?”) and metaphysics (“Like thinking about why thing happen?”).
Clearly he is well studied in being a student.

thirty-six; Emma, Nashiki Road Bike

2009-09-17T00:32:00.001-07:00

Though she’s Bay by birth, it must be hard to transition back after finishing up her Psychology degree at Vassar three months ago.
Working two jobs (the Bike Coalition in SF and a Thai Restaurant Berkeley) she shockingly still has strength to provide me with a handful smiles.
She has the San Francisco commute Cinderella syndrome; at midnight the BART turns back into a pumpkin.
Understandably skeptical of my intentions, she asks more questions than she answers.
“Do you really have a blog?”
She lets it linger like a philosophical proposition.
I blush, responding with the URL of a Philistine.

thirty-five; Craig, Shwinn Super Sport

2009-09-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

Every move on the soccer pitch has a myriad of motivations, but one essential catalyst; Berkeley was always the goal, she just happened to be the ball.
That shot being gone (along with San Diego and school) now his love is for the game.
Recently hired at an indoor soccer club, he talks about the sport with the pride and presence of a sixteen-year veteran (skipped AYSO and started with heavy competition first).
I ask if he’s serious about tryouts for the international league and his friend smiles,
“I wake up at 6am most Saturday just to watch a match.”

thirty-four; James, Lemond Road Bike with Aro-Bars

2009-09-15T00:14:00.000-07:00

The sweat on his brow has more to do with focus than fatigue.
The three-mile ride to make last call at a coffee shop is a speed bump compared to this summer’s ride across the country for cancer.
He was riding for a reason, not just completion.
He’s driven.
One lecture at Johns Hopkins about the way one relearns the meaning of images after brain trauma and he was hooked.
He watches from the back of the brain and determines what people see by how they think.
At Berkeley he studies the “why” of vision; he’s already completed the “how”.

thirty-three; Cara Shea Eberhardt, White Steel Fixed Gear

2009-09-14T00:21:00.001-07:00

She’s a self-diagnosing psych major.
Nashville Ivy League by birth (her parents worked at Vanderbilt), Berkeley by choice (she had the grades and connections to go anywhere) and Brooklyn by summer internship, she is academia incarnate.
She spent a solid four hours neck deep in case studies this morning so she could cook dinner for her Roommates tonight, and her advice to me is to worry less.
Her house is one of reputation; with ten people living there every outing becomes revelry, every dispute an epic battle, and every meal a banquette (and there’s a guy living in the closet…literally).

thirty-two; Chris, Lemond Road Bike (for now)

2009-09-13T00:33:00.000-07:00

A house full of Saturday night and he’s upstairs working on Monday morning.
Formerly the president Penn State’s cycling team, he doesn’t ride for Cal, he says,
“Because I go to school now.”
When I ask him why he chose Berkeley for Grad School he just smiles for a while and then jokingly tells me it was for the weather (he responds similarly way when I ask him if he’s competitive).
Clearly preoccupied with second floor computations, he only steps down stairs for coffee.
I spent four hours studying today; around him I feel a little guilty I stopped there.

thirty-one; Jim Black Cannondale Road bike

2009-09-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

He rides up next to me with a thoughtful prudence that’s often mistaken for unnecessary caution; he’s smart not scared.
Smart is continuing to work in Journalism after establishing twenty years of solid contacts, but still studying up on software programming (“Newspapers are dead”).
Smart is stopping racing before it stopped him (he used to be Cat-1).
Berkeley Alumni, he loads my head with so many contacts and internships I have to turn off my ipod.
“I used to live to ride, now I ride to eat,” he yells “I don’t descend fast anymore, I have AYSO games to attend.”

thirty; Bird, Schwinn Beach Cruiser

2009-09-11T00:16:00.000-07:00

We both confess that we don’t accomplish enough in a day, but I’d argue that she’s done quite a bit.
In Cusco, she missed Machu Picchu but caught a stay in a squat with some Peruvian punks promoting the rights of indigenous peoples.
In the Bay, she works twenty-hour weeks at a coffee shop, lives in a house Named Hell(arity) with thirty other people and volunteers for Food Not Bombs.
She’s got a thing for the hand-made and tells me to write Zines, not Blogs, and suddenly she flies off to read the backs of documentaries at the video store.

twenty-nine; Eric, Dad's hand me down road bike

2009-09-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

The leap he made up the coast looks small when compared with the grin on his face barreling down a Berkeley hill after a class on Scrabble strategy at Cal.
He’s riding on nerves and anticipation; he’s just been told this will be the harshest reality shock of his academic life.
A third year transfer from Pasadena community college, he’s not here by accident, this is an example of the system actually working.
We coast side by side, he kicks a watermelon thrown into the gutter and we both confess to feeling the heavy head wind of rolling alone here.

twenty-eight; Peter, Black Vintage 10-speed

2009-09-09T00:15:00.000-07:00

When we raise money to throw at some disease, this is one of the people who ketches it.
Shockingly, we both buy groceries at the same place.
He’s a Biological Physicist, doing research and working on his P.H.D. at Berkeley, writing genetic code; from DNA to RNA to Protein.
“I just thought it was interesting…” he says, “well, I kind of think everything is interesting.”
He’s got Ivy League in his every cell.
I ask him what he wants to do when he grows up, and he replies with the only practical thing I can think of,
“Become a Professor.”

twenty-seven; Senator Christopher Franco, Specialized Road Bike

2009-09-08T00:07:00.000-07:00

Note: avoid asking Rhetoric majors to define Rhetoric.
He’s oddly wholesome, buying over-priced milk at 11pm on a holiday weekend.
There’s something unsettlingly car-salesmen in his concern when I tell him about the Cycling teams recent suspension.
“This sounds like a rather draconian way to deal with this situation, perhaps I can help.”
He assures me that it was with the sincerest altruistic passion that he decided to be the student liaison for his dorms and later to run for his position as ASU Senator.
I’m sure it’s not at all related to the compiling of his Law School résumé.

twenty-six; Nick, Vintage 10-speed (first day)

2009-09-07T00:36:00.000-07:00

He’s a different kind of learner; feels that the world has more to offer than any classroom.
A self taught photographer, years ago he traveled through Portland and Seattle shooting bands, but settled back in Oakland. He says its for the weather but I can sense its people, which he describes using words that I would use to describe a blanket (“comfy,” “warm,” “soft”)
He’s endeared to nostalgia; rides a vintage bike, wears Buddy Holly framed glasses, and pays bill in trade and skill.
He has a genuine disposition that is from a better time: looks hipster, but lives hippy.

twenty-five; Kat, Black Centurion Road Bike-14 speed

2009-09-06T00:39:00.000-07:00

Colleges were made so that people as creative as her could drop out of them.
She’s a rebuilder: going to Tech school learning how to weld, strapping kitty liter to the back of her play-it-again racer with a trashed tube (actually biting through it in an act of sheer engineering brilliance).
She has unabashedly started and restarted her adult life a handful of times, circa Seattle, circa New York, circa Berkeley.
She works in a bike shop (nine hours a day, six days a week), saw BOTCH play when she was twelve and laughs at my jokes; a true badass.

twenty-four; Bill, Lemond 21 speed road bike

2009-09-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

Sipping High Life at an Oakland Art Murmur, he’s where artists go when they get tired of starving; community college graphic design.
His art is transcendental in theory but transparent in practice, and though he describes his “works” for fifteen minutes I can only piece together that they have something to do with cars…maybe.
I think he sees the world through his neon orange colored glasses.
Though he’s out alone in the cold, staring sourly at the star filled eyes of hundreds of hipsters, he tells me,
“I just met this girl, see, and we’ve got everything we need.”

twenty-three; Teresa, Black Mountain Bike

2009-09-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

She’s as genuine as the calluses she earned pushing pencils in community college for the past two years.
Obliging but not foreword, she explains that she's a functioning Christian, apparently it runs in the family (her mother moved the two of them from New Mexico to run an incapacitated fellowship out of the ground).
She decided to study civil engineering because she has a passion for people and water (and she doesn’t like writing essays).
In spite of the doubts of those closest to her, she’s floating on fresh admittance to Cal,
“Coming here is a matter of pride for me.”

twenty-two; Jose, aluminum single speed with reversible rear hub

2009-09-03T00:24:00.000-07:00

“I make choppy problems that my characters solve, like a tiny body that needs to open a huge door”
An eighteen year-old computer animator who never learned to illustrate figures, he’s starting from scratchpad.
His small hands draw his way into the giant gates of Art School aspirations, one community-college class at a time.
Uninformed of the storyboard he needed to follow to get into CalArts, he was just taking it frame by frame.
We chat the classics, waiting for his ride back to Richmond,
“There’s emotion in every move the 7-dwarves make.”
He’s starting to see the big picture.

twenty-one; Shayne, Steel fixed gear

2009-09-02T00:28:00.000-07:00

He tries to pedals but his legs are as heavy as two-ton tree trunks after Oscar’s Burgers closes before he can order. His face is long with the prospect of riding back to Oakland on empty.
I’m a bit shocked that he stops to talk to me considering the effort he needs just to cross the street.
He dons heavy hipster garb yet absent the ironic snap and sneer that I expect; in fact he’s downright pleasant.
Patient with my questioning though not forthcoming,
He’s on the Dole so I point him to the $2 Thai joint I visit nightly.

twenty; Danielle, Fuji mountain bike

2009-09-01T00:49:00.000-07:00

She’s the accumulated grind of three years of university, waiting in agony to start her long night in the studio. She can’t stand to write anymore; lost the patience to make subject and verb dance to the song of story.
She no longer can stomach a lecture,
“I have to eat something or chew on an erasure just to get through a class.”
She’s so far from the beginning (a private school in The Valley), yet so far from the end (a degree in urban design).
Soon she will paint civics, but tonight she has to sit through the prerequisites

nineteen; Daniella, Treck commuter

2009-08-30T23:49:00.000-07:00

She’s in America studying European history because her native Poland was “suffocating” her.
On arrival, she did a short stint in Santa Cruz, waking up at 5am every day to work in a bakery.
She recounts the ritual of riding to work in a downpour so vividly; I get chills from the timber in her voice alone.
With understandable caution, she wont let me take her picture. Just this month someone tried to mug her on her bike.
“Riding a bike is just like a relationship,” she says, “your in the honeymoon phase now, but just wait until winter.”

eighteen; Rebecca, K2 commuter bike

2009-08-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Cross-legged outside of the Library, she holds her IPhone in the prayer position, as her husband collects books about Buddhism inside.
I can see the fifteen years she spent in Seattle in the color scheme of her weekend wardrobe; all black in the worst heat of August.
I hear her native Berkeley when she advises me to inquire about the true “organic” certification of Farmer’s market venders when looking for a bargain.
Coolly, she smiles when I tell her why I’m asking about her bike (she writes blogging software).
I write this timidly; no doubt she will remember the URL.

seventeen; Aaron, Cannondale Road Bike, aluminum, purple

2009-08-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

Given that he once taught English in Korea and Taiwan, that he speaks fluent Spanish and that he “teaches English to rich kids in the city,” its shocking that his Friday night should be the victim of a random act of senseless miscommunication.
His movie missed, his bike locked then unlocked just as quickly.
He watches his girlfriend make it off the BART just as their movie (the reason they came up from Oakland) sells out.
But as soon as he sees her (the reason he moved from Eugene) the evening’s events, or lack there of, seem of little importance.

sixteen; Roberta, Huffy mountain bike (purple)

2009-08-28T00:31:00.000-07:00

Passion beams through her every atom; she is a composite sketch of vibrancy bouncing between searching and researching.
Her Brazilian origins were a powerful prerequisite for the PHD she is working on now; it imbues her with an energy that is sincerely cellular.
When I ask her how she deals with the controversy over an issue like evolution back in South America, she laughs and explains that unlike America, fundamentalists are few and far from manipulating science.
She also confesses that the majority of her work is concerned with a small species of lizard; not how man came from monkeys

fifteen; Steve, Surly Fixed Gear (the winter bike)

2009-08-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

At five, computers were his AYSO; how he learned to play with others. His parents, both professors, naturally scraped his TV at two.
He refers to going to MIT as when he lived in Boston and started riding a fixed gear.
What he did learn in college was how to interact with people, not how to program interfaces.
“I think, ‘what do I want the user to do’”
He makes his job sound like a Social Psychology experiment, trying to motivate button-pushers to learn, manipulating us through binary and html, imbedding his best intentions from a coffee shop in Berkeley.

fourteen; Jason, Peugeot road bike

2009-08-26T00:20:00.000-07:00

He rides the line between wary and weary well; perhaps it’s a little of both.
It must have been something he had to learn in his six years studying in D.C. coming fresh from the Midwest.
He is a balance of functioning opposites; back from South Africa after organizing a traditional dance festival, though I mistake him for a Cal student,
he’s a not-for-profit Entrepreneur, competing for a job in a industry where people are trying to lessen competition and promote upward mobility for the less fortunate.
He loves his new bike, but is anxious about the long ride home.

thirteen; Emily, Huffy mountain bike (Craig's List $80)

2009-08-24T23:21:00.000-07:00

She’s why people get nervous about going to Berkeley.
Yet strangely she’s nervous; about starting her graduate work at Cal (though her undergrad is from Columbia), about losing her German (not her Spanish, she was born in Guatemala while one of her parents was doing archeological research), about what she should do with her running (she ran D1 cross-country and track).
She looks at chemistry like college bachelors look at duct tape; it could solve almost any problem.
She dashes between South America’s pollution and the milk she’s getting at Walgreens without skipping a breath,
“I’m thinking about trying triathlons”

twelve; Dr. Robert Meagley, Schwinn Le Tour

2009-08-23T23:46:00.000-07:00

Innovatively, he explains what he does three different ways to no avail.
Finally we settle on “inventor.”
As a young man, he devised pitches selling chain-link fence door to door, while studying firecrackers, building lasers and riding on the same bike he’s had for 30 years.
Eventually, he envisioned “future in his passion.”
So he built community college work in Delaware into post-PHD fellowships at Cornell and Berkeley.
Unfortunately, the recession has finally hit bio-nanotechnology;
Investors aren’t looking to gamble on protein detecting microchips,
he still tells me,
“Make what you love, just don’t make your passion a job.”

eleven; James, Surly fixed gear with a front brake

2009-08-22T23:31:00.000-07:00

His philosophy undergrad shows when I ask him where he’s from. He explains politely that that is a 30-second question with a 30-minute answer.
After being laid off this summer in DC he took up riding a fix gear bike and a job pedi-cabing.
Strangely though he doesn’t think he could keep up with the campus cycling club,
“I just don’t have the wind for it.”
A smile the size of his Law School loans, a proper button up shirt and a beautiful girl with an accent on his arm;
He wears the heart of Saturday night on his sleeve.

ten; Robb, Steel Schwinn Commuter bike with a new used rear wheel

2009-08-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

He wears a coffee shop o’clock shadow and torn jeans with the integrity of a degree in something he’s sure he will never find a job doing.
A certified cinematographer with no desire for L.A., he knows the nuances of Berkeley like a black box one act.
Peddling next to me, he patiently narrates the symbiotic character patterns of the seasons and populace,
“Early summer is bike stealing season.”
He pulls over, dramatically takes his hands off the bars and begins to count.
He needs all the fingers to tally the number he’s had taken in the last few years.

nine; Michael, aluminum fixed gear "Frankenstein"

2009-08-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

He looks like he just fell out of Vice Magazine’s “Do’s” list, waiting for his girlfriend to get off work.
On closer inspection however it seems there is integrity to this structure:
economy.
He’d like to study art, like to ride a geared bike; he’d like to drive a car, but Berkeley only gifted him $200 to build his future with this year.
So he settled for architecture, an American Apparel hoodie and a bike with one gear and no breaks.
“Everybody I know with an art degree is looking for a job.”
This is the cornerstone of America’s future.

eight; Daniel, GT Avalanche Mountain Bike

2009-08-20T00:28:00.001-07:00

His Austrian accent cellophane wraps his words with mad scientist importance as he explains he is working on a fellowship doing postgraduate research in Material Science; a huge title for a very small thing.
“I study structures smaller than the air you breath. You understand that your bike can support you, but as particles shrink they do not remain proportionally sound. Often they become far stronger ”
Going smaller always seemed right for him in science and in life.
Berkeley, to him, is a structure that works because it’s small; small enough for a bike, small enough for a community.

seven; Casey, Steel Schwinn Commuter ($80 Craig's list)

2009-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

He wears his Midwest in the shoulders, lumbering around a messenger bag stocked with 50lbs of law books.
He’s spent the last three years doing social work and its apparent in the patience with which listens, the intention in his voice and his willingness to sacrifice.
Gave up the car, the job and self-sustainability for massive student debt and a job in the public sector.
“Effecting change systemically is something I can get passionate about.”
Aggravated by this steel clunker he now rides, he confides,
“I actually started racing six months ago, we’ll see what I have time for now.”

six; Tree, GT Timberline mountain bike

2009-08-17T23:50:00.000-07:00

A traveler, Berkeley’s just another stop on the road he does not claim to be driving down (since the law separated him from his license ten years ago).
His hands dance like seaweed in a current around his tools. I believe he can make anything.
“I can build houses, but I’d rather not ruin my body like my Dad.”
He manages to float out, “We are all gods” and “No one is a god” in the same breath, and remarkably, I'm convinced.
A seller of remade broken things, he bends spoons into rings, and makes the eccentric look extravagant.

five; Colleen, steel Bridgstone track bike

2009-08-16T23:57:00.000-07:00

When I asked her how she quit her job she said,
“I told them I needed time to study for my MCAT, so they finally decided to fire me for my tattoos.”
In a quarter life crises she gave up the office job for a basement bike shop, business casual for spandex, the water cooler for the velodrome.
She is the human manifestation of her bike; fast, inviting and neon pink. She talks in a language of stem, gear and seat post, I can hardly keep up.
She is what every guy hopes for when he calls up the repair department.

four; Aaron, vintage Schwinn rebuild

2009-08-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

Only in Berkeley can someone seriously ask where the beans that brewed their decaff Americano (poured into a stainless steel eco-friendly mug) came from.
He’s thoughtful in his recommendations for bike shops,
“It takes a while to tap into the sole of a store.”
He expresses two issues of guilt; one that he still drives his bio diesel every two weeks and two that he pays the bills with a “joby job” working at a hospital.
He could easily be the subject of a This American Life vignette. “You have to be careful where you choose to plant your ass.”

three; Sverra, IRO fixed Gear

2009-08-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

“The only thing I need money for is vinyl, bikes and travel.” Balanced between naïveté and wisdom, between unemployment and another barista gig, between fixed gear and free wheel, his smile reflects the joy of limbo.
His Friday night consists of a seven-mile ride from Oakland, free nachos on Telegraph and a warehouse party, a stretch from his boarding school on the east-cost.
Self proclaimed composer with no instruments, student with no school (“Ya know, whit the state budget cuts and all”) he has been riding bikes so long he actually needs to pause and reflect when I ask him.

two; Ayo, Giant Mountain Bike

2009-08-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Locking his bike to a tree with a 5lb Kryptonite “New York” chain, he’s so Oakland.
He rides a bike because he’s legally blind, thus they “punked” his license. He wears a full-face helmet, gloves and kneepads to the grocery store because after running stoplights and “paying for it” on the roof of a mini-van with a shattered face he just put new forks on his ride.
He’s smiling because he just got his bike out of four-months of “lockdown” for being “pulled over” with a concealed weapon; he no longer needs to walk to pick up his disability check

One; Ron, beach cruser

2009-08-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

With a voice like a public radio DJ, he makes a lukewarm insistence that try to walk on his tightrope.
“Its addictive,” he tells me, and the swarm of yoga bodied twenty-something’s hanging around his slack line speaks truth to this.
His long kinked hair, callused feet and patchouli halo mark him as 25 years Berkeley. The façade waivers slightly when I ask him where he went to school (Stanford), and I can hear the rivalry get caught on the T.
He sits behind me on the tightrope, keeping it steady. I ask him what he does,
“I’m a teacher.”