one-hundred; Blake, Schwinn Premis

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.