Amazing video (and totally real) from kottke.org.

*Pant* *pant* *pant*

Happy Bike to Work Day.

Thanks, Systemics. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Systemic James sent me this cool post on MAKE.

Contrail is a device that applies chalk to the rear tire of your bike, leaving a trail behind you. It leaves trails for motorists and other cyclists to see, enabling bikers to “reclaim this crucial shared space.”

Link.

True story.  I guess bike mechanics are just like car mechanics in terms of always needing more than you thought you needed.  What got me was the guilt that went along with it.  Like if I didn’t re-bear my ball bearings the bike would be mad at me.  Not to mention additional guilt for using my bike year round and not taking better care of it.  Would they rather I didn’t use it at all?

Remember, shirt preorders through this Friday (April 3rd)!  Do you want a Jimmy the Murderdog shirt of a HELL Vetica Shirt? You know you do.  If you order now, it is $18 total including shipping!  All shirts are American Apparel 100% cotton and 120% awesome.  Be the first on your block, and then buy ones for the rest of your block!  Nothing makes you a trend setter quite like buying things.  Preorder now, before it’s too late!

Pedestrian darwinism.  Everyone has to move out of the way for someone.  Except for the fat walkers, they own the pavement.

A great article about biking in NYC, how it’s gotten better, and how bikes should stop acting like a bunch of pissed off children:

Despite the presence of bike lanes, we see many bikes on the sidewalk, and the bikers riding the wrong way down streets, alarming cabdrivers at the light. For biking to make it to the next level, for bikes to be completely accepted as the viable form of city transportation that they are, bikers must switch sides. They must act like people and stop acting like cars.

This means doing things that we, the bikers of New York, would have laughed at just a few years ago. It means getting a little personal, though not that personal. Acting like people means that we have to do things that we frankly don’t want to do and things that we want cars to do, like slow down.

As far as bikers go, I’ve become a kind of laughingstock because I wait at traffic lights. Recently, as I waited in a bike lane at Atlantic Avenue for a light to change, a woman in her 70s, walking hunched with a cane, approached the crosswalk smiling — until she spotted me. Then she began shouting as I waited behind the crosswalk, “Well, are you going to stop?” I assured her I was waiting. She grimaced. “How do I know you’re not going to go?” she asked.

Link.

UPDATE: Available now at Hilariawesome.com, my online store!

It’s true.  I’m making T-Shirts.  Soon as I get the store up, I’ll show them to you. Meanwhile, post your typeface / font puns below.  Also thought of for this strip:

• Never an Aksidenz.
• We make tracking.
• Kern and Burn.