K...ya..the guy who ate pavement on the bridge is insane

Every time I see one of these videos I think, man, New York is flat. No hills = no thrills.

who was that that fell on the bridge?

That is Austin. He got 3rd place.

word

i dunno, i seem to recall taking full responsibility for my actions that day..


also, that's not all lucas brunelle footage. austin going down on the willy b certainly was, and a good portion of the footage was, but there were multiple racers that contributed footage. helmet cams were provided by play in traffic productions and all the editing was done by them as well. i think its a really well put together piece and i know they spent an awful lot of time orchestrating this video.

i for one am incredibly happy and grateful to the people that can throw an alleycat where over 200 people show up from across the country and have such an amazing weekend together. hell, i met aeroplane that weekend because he needed a couch and i offered him mine. him and i have become really great friends since then. i'm going to that dude's wedding in two weeks!

you can call bs on "mystical brotherhood" all you want, but i most certainly do not.

This thread is the barrel of a handgun pointed square at what shred of respect I still had for this forum. The tweaked-out deathgrip of puerile ******bags is nudging the trigger back little by little, the hammer ready to let fly at any moment.

Is it the unseasonable heat making everyone into raging peckerheads? Seriously - every forum I've checked recently is like this. Everybody's pissed off and taking it out on each other in phenomenally childish ways.

oh, hey dave!

i'm gonna go ride around and have a beer.

you down?

honestly there is nothing exciting about drivers who don't give a crap about your safety. On the same note it is exciting when you successfully avoided the car. now the video is something the drivers could not avoid since you had cyclists coming straight toward them in a race. when the race is over its the other way around here in NYC.

* but I feel you it def is an exciting city

Hell yes.

So to recap:

1. Skitching is impressive, but scary. For some, the same goes for riding off of the sidewalk.
2. Some people think we're getting a bad rep, and so they hope that aggressive riders get hit by cars.
3. In the end, all we can really agree on is that riding bikes is fun (and sometimes we even forget that)

thats why monster track takes place in NYC and not the hick town you grew up in.

Apparently this only holds true if it's done in the country, with shotgun toting rednecks in pickups. I hear they don't even stop if you're in front of them. On second thought...

Who's up for a Monster Track in West Virginia?

hey guys! guess what?! that video is pretty sweet!

people get way too stirred up over nothing. gordiep's reaction was completely normal for someone who thinks riding bikes is fun as long as you're not endangering anyone. they could have broken some hips going through peds like that... and in that situation you're not some valiant knight facing the iron dragons on your noble steed, you're a psycho trying to win a race at any cost to yourself and those around you.

which is cool, sure, but definitely irresponsible and if you don't understand why it would be looked down upon by a 'normal' person well, that's your own failure to access the situation properly.

street racing like this in cars makes me want to shoot people. i don't have a gun, but it makes me want to be a very violent and vigilante ******* who puts hurting on people who are too hopped up on adrenaline to respect other people's safety. the only thing different here is:
1. the skill it takes to perform the acts (car street races often require less skill than actually lacing up your shoes in the morning)
2. the size and destructive capability of the vehicle. i don't get angry seeing it, but someone's seriously going to get injured and it doesn't make me happy seeing **** like that go down for a bag and props. though the bag was ****ing sweet.

maybe i've been in a hick town for too long, but the alleycats here aren't like that unless you want them to be... hell, we stop at red lights if there's traffic in the alleycats i've been in. maybe this is like the world series of alleycat racing, but it was worth getting upset over. saying something incendiary like 'i want to run over them with my car' was pretty uselessly rhetoric and got a lot of people all butt-inflamed for no reason, but the argument that this kind of **** is dangerous and disrespectful still stands, and by getting pissed off, the people who posted back only made things worse for themselves... especially the 'don't bike get a car it suits you' comment. **** that dude, the more who want to bike the better. and i'm going to bet that most of us on here have cars that we regularly use. i go many days at a time without using mine, but i still love it and use it. you sound more asinine and polarizing than a fundamentalist christian religio-political republican.




about the video... they were REALLY REALLY fast going through checkpoints and starts/stops... they were also really really fast going through certain intersections. they also displayed a huge skillful ability to assess the manifest and figure out routes while at the move at what seemed like near full-speed...

all of those things are, i'm sure, what makes someone crazy fast at this kind of race... however, other than that it looked like a bunch of people frantically going medium-fast through traffic in a panic, not necessarily with any finesse or huge speed, with the only distinguishing characteristic of any athletic value being stamina. which is cool and all, but it wasn't awe-inspiring the way a race should be or even the way a really cool trick competition is.

i've seen ice racing videos where the cyclists were more impressive as cyclists... and messenger films where the messengers appeared to have their **** together on a much more esteeming level.

the fancy edits were cool, but it wasn't raw like previous films and the quality of the editing wasn't to blame, it was the style of editing. quality doesn't mean you can't have a raw style... this was much more of a hipster 'holy **** it's so cool check out this tunnel from twenty of our ultra sick hipster angles.

so after two more pages of ridiculous posts, i'm adding mine into the fire. bike for fun, do it at your own pace and no one elses, but don't be a jerk. if you're putting other people in danger, you're not biking to your fullest potential. it takes more skill and prowess to bike safely than it does to bike like a ****ing jerk.

a) if you don't want to be part of a cycling community, that's your prerogative, but i'm willing to bet that you've benefited from other cyclists who care about your well-being just because you're on a bike too.
b) no one asked you to defend anyone's actions.
c) no one asked you to applaud anything.
d) your comments about running someone over, given the frequency of cyclists' deaths at the hands of angry motorists, are uncalled for and in incredibly poor taste, regardless of whatever sarcasm or irony was intended.
e) the pretentious pseudo-intellectual grandstanding thing is seriously tired, and it isn't impressing anyone.

i liked the video, i'm a simpleton i guess.

ohhh schnappy.

And you totally have to give these cyclist credit, that race is more than hard work, no doubt about it. Serious hard work.

You are correct; you clearly do not know what you're talking about. This race is not for you, it does not happen in your suburb or driveway, and it has nothing to do with the way you ride your bike.

The same goes for anybody trying to apply what they see around the country to the way riding works in New York City. And calling people "junior" (twice), "cowboy," "lad" or "dingus," and going so far as to talk about shotguns in the cabs of... pickup trucks ...and relating that somehow to New York only serve to marginalize your whining further.









Again, you are simply wrong. The top finishers at Monstertrack--who were the most prominently featured in the video--are just insanely, insanely fast, completely aside from their traffic maneuvering abilities. Many of them win UCI road races regularly, race at the track, and if nothing else take top standings in every single Alleycat race in the region; not just this best-known one.

Austin, for instance--the guy who crashes on the bridge in the video--was the North American Cycle Courier champion in 2006, and wins most of the alleycats around New York, including two in one day on July Fourth of this year.


Also, every one of the top finishers in this video is a working messenger. Every single one. "Middle-Class ******s?"




Finally, and most tellingly, it is just hilarious that you are telling people to look up "Rhetorical Irony," a term that specifically translates to "saying the opposite of what you mean." So apparently, murder jokes and all, your inherent jealousy over this phenomenon you don't understand is shining a little more brightly than even you realized.

Such mixed feelings...

Alley cat races are a really great way to write cyclists permanently into the **** list of hundreds of pedestrians and drivers on any given day. I mean, you gotta figure the ten or so people who that cheesedick plowed through in the crosswalk will be thinking evil thoughts the next time they drive past anyone riding a bike. For that reason I think these videos are ******** lame ass.

At the same time, I am wildly amused any time a driver has to stop for a moment and becomes insane with anger. Don't know why. I guess I can't help but see them as lazy *******s in motorized recliners who think they shouldn't be interrupted for anything, ever. I am also easily entertained with bike crash footage, which is sick in a lot of ways I suppose, but there you have it. I've crashed plenty, and I've been hurt bad enough that it was no "laughing matter," but it doesn't change my appreciation for a good concrete sandwich when I see one. Cuts both ways of course; if one of those dumb f*cks who pulled the pedestrian ramming maneuver was immediately sideswiped by a garbage truck after yelling "get out of the way!" at the people he almost knocked over, I would have enjoyed it just the same.

So what can I say? Those guys are dumb f*cks, and I'm not all that impressed with their riding or their "bravery" (sure it was hard, but as hard as a legit race? Not when the winner had enough lungs left to scream and stomp around like that). I was pretty entertained nonetheless.

If I won monster track I would seriously just poop, right there at the last check point.



This thread is great.

i liked the video. somewhere in here someone said it doesn't take skill to ride through traffic like that, i would say that i'm not skilled enough to ride through traffic like that. i would also say that i'm too much of a poosie to ride through traffic like that, but skill has something to do with it too. or maybe i'm just a poosie. yeah.

thats the **** I like eat **** hard and still place yaboi

Playing in traffic requires skill. Mostly situational awareness and spatial awareness (evaluating the speed of objects) not to mention being able to choose the right course of action in a split second. I think this is what draws people to Alleycat racing (or riding in traffic). Reminds me of a video game.

I really enjoyed that. If it was taking place where I lived, I'd probably ride. I probably wouldn't win, because I wouldn't ride like quite such an *******. I normally stop at reds, but I guess I'd run them when I felt safe to do so, but would I just ride right across a busy street? No. Would I ride straight at pedestrians, or along the pavement? No. But I'd still race, given the chance.