An Amusement & Diversion for The Genteel Cyclist. Daily.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Interbike and anti-French sentiment


Fritz at Cyclelicious has a nice summary of summaries on Interbike, including the persistent complaint about holding the festivities in Vegas. Folks have suggested Denver, Chicago, and Anaheim -- all notable for their crap bike riding. (OK, we're being a little harsh, but there is literally no decent mountain bike riding within several hours of Chicago and Anaheim, when you factor in the drive to get there. Not sure Denver is any better, given how distant it can sometimes feel from the mountains looming over there. Not that you need actual mountains -- God knows, there is 8 miles of singletrack within a 10 minute bike ride of the Minneapolis convention center. Just sayin.)

Anyway, another interesting spin on IBike comes from Wired magazine, whose reporter avers that this isn't so much the year of the Simplespeed as it is the Year of Steel... but as far as we're concerned every year is the Year of Steel. For the rest of the industry, it's kind of like that old saying: A broken clock is right twice a day.

Also subverting the Year of the Simplespeed proposition, Specialized is apparently planning a new line of integrated componentry, and this bums us out probably more than it bums Grant Peterson out. Integrated components are dedicated components, and that means no swapping out, and that means... well, remember the French bike industry, and what happened to the French standard? (It died, but it still haunts used bike shops around the planet.)

4 comments:

Snakebite said...

Vegas, being in the desert, has a very high probability of no rain. I don't think that would be true for the other locations.

Anonymous said...

Every couple of years (or is it every year) the bicycling media get's all crazy about the renaissance of steel. Blah-blah-blah. What a bunch of crap. How about stating the obvious, steel is an excellent material for bikes and will always be used.

And as for interbike, next year it's at my house. Start planning now.

rigtenzin said...

I went to Interbike when it was in Anaheim and Atlantic City. Those were terrible locations, especially Atlantic City.

I've never been to Interbike in Vegas, but I bet it meets the industry's needs pretty well overall.

KM said...

I went to the show in NYC a few years when it was regional. The riding was non-existent but of the NY social scene (aka bars) was enough to keep one forgetting why you went in the first place.

It depends on what is integrated. racks, fenders, chainguards good. Drivetrain, headsets, seatposts, etc. bad.