The Worst Idea Ever

I want to like 2Hip, I really do. Ron Wilkerson obviously means well—he's been riding forever, and every year he continues to put his money where his heart is. But then he comes out with stuff like this, and I literally reel in amazement:


The "Groovetech" steering system hasn't been written up on the 2Hip site yet—no surprise, since said site seems to be updated semi-annually at best—but it did earn an article on RIDE (a glowingly positive one, no less). Sigh. Basically what we have here is a four-piece bar with an oversized, splined clamping area, a stem that is complementarily (!) splined, and a steerer tube with three notches that match up to splines on the stem. Greater engineering minds than I could probably write 50,000 words on why this is a terrible idea, but allow me to just present three or four reasons I thought of all on my own.


1. It's too obvious.

If this were truly a good idea, it would be on the market already. I have no doubt that other companies have prototyped (or at least sketched up) similar products and rejected them. No doubt whatsoever. Virtually anyone who runs three-piece cranks has wondered "hey, why don't they make splined steerer tubes?" Then someone explains why it's a bad idea, and they move on to wondering why that hot girl from Thursday never responded to their text message and whether her Myspace would be easy to find even though all they know is that her name is Heather and she lives in Brooklyn. Or was it Manhattan?


2. Some slippage is good.

Back in 1985, when Ron was airing five feet out of six-foot quarters on bikes built for 12-year-olds, slippage was bad. You had tinfoil bars held by beercan stems, and death (or at least unconsciousness) was always waiting right around the corner.

Things work better now. And even if your bars do slip, it's generally not catastrophic. You go to your bag (or someone else's) pull out the multi-tool, re-adjust, and keep trying those tailwhip flyouts. With the 2Hip setup, your bars and stem won't slip, but they WILL bend. Or crack. Or shear off. Which means instead of a simple re-adjustment, you get to go home and order new bars. Or a new stem. Or a new fork. Which brings is to the next point...


3. Compatibility.

Unless this system catches on (which it won't), you're buying a whole 2Hip front end. Good luck with that. And once this is patented, other companies would have to license the "technology" before making their own gargantuan stems and hideously ugly four-piece bars. (Can you even make two-piece bars to fit that stem? And if so what would they look like? Maybe éclat will make a converter for "regular" bars.)


4. They're ugly as sin.

Not sure whether anyone's noticed, but BMX is all about aesthetics these days. Damn kids painting their bikes to match their outfits and whatnot.

Hold on, I'm shaking my cane.

OK. Regardless, if you're gonna come out with some sort of revolutionary new product, it had better look as good as it performs. Otherwise it's just not going to catch on. And this setup, while it may have looked cool back in like '95, just isn't gonna cut it today. Like my man Jules Winnfield once said, "sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know 'cause I wouldn't eat the filthy motherfucker." It's the same thing. Trust me.

I kind of hope this whole setup is just a hoax like the Lumberjack Slams. But I don't think it is.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••

This feels strangely appropriate:

Turning Titanium Into Garbage

I would love to hear a rational explanation for these pegs.

Let me see if I have this right: KHE (who, in case you forgot, are also in the process of bringing us the one-piece bar/stem combo and the baseball seat) developed a plastic/fiberglass peg called the Alchemy. Relatively cheap, apparently slid on everything. Yet somehow they decided that the plastic compound wasn't durable enough for street riding, so they made a titanium-sleeved "street" version.

This is odd because no one even makes titanium pegs anymore. Odyssey, Macneil and DK all discontinued theirs. Heck, you can't even find ti sprockets or bolt kits anymore. Remember RNC? Titanium is prohibitively expensive, grinds slowly, and wears down quickly on rough surfaces. What's next? Gold- and platinum-sleeved versions? Ones with $20 bills glued to them? Apparently there will be a steel version, which actually DOES make a fair amount of sense if you want light, inexpensive pegs that still feel 'normal'. But the ti version just seems like an awful waste of money and material. Is there a titanium glut in Germany that I'm not aware of? Is this what we're doing with the remaining F117s?

It would make more sense to me if they made a titanium-cored peg with a replaceable composite outer sleeve (kind of like this but different). That way you ruin the cheap part.

UNIfied Theory

In the beginning, there was the Uni Seat. And it was awful. Part of it was that it looked like a mutant duck, part of it was that most bikes were way too short and required layback seatposts, and part of it was that you needed a shim to run one in pretty much any frame.

But most of all they just sucked. A plastic seat bonded to a fiberglass post, the Uni setup was considerably lighter than the usual '80s seat/post combo (which normally included heavy steel guts), but hardly anyone ran Uni Seats. Not even many big-name pros used them. It wasn't worth running something disgusting looking just to save a few measly ounces.

Perhaps the following photos will better explain:


So of course now that LITEWAIT is the be all and end all, style be damned, companies are falling over themselves to bring this atrocity back from the dead. Never mind the fact that the Macneil Pivotal design is both light AND adjustable (and you can choose from 4,892 different seats), the good ol' BMX industry is once again providing a solution to a non-existent problem. Different seat angles? Who needs them?


First off we have an offering from Eclat, the new, pretentiously named parts division of We The People. (The name has an accent mark on it, but I couldn't be bothered.) If you look online, you can find an equally pretentious 70-page 'book' that shows their whole line of entirely unnecessary and derivative (but oh-so-refined) products.

Among them is the seat below, a one-piece molded horror that Charles and Ray Eames wouldn't piss on if it were on fire. I'd actually prefer to see kids running the newest FBM innovation than this lame excuse for a seat. This seat is like a cosmetic artificial limb—it makes everything look right, sort of, but it's no replacement for the real thing.




This next fine piece of bike-related sculpture comes from Fly, who have given us such fantastic items as delicate $100 Ruben pedals and 2.5 piece cranks that—surprise!—became three on a regular basis. Note the cover, which makes it LOOK like a 'regular' seat/post combo, but—surprise!—it isn't. This is like a cosmetic limb with nail polish and a wedding ring.




This last new creation comes courtesy of KHE, who apparently are trying to develop a one-piece bicycle. That way, when you snap an axle or a pedal spindle, you can throw the whole thing out and buy a new one.

These are probably the worst of the bunch. For starters, they look like beanbag chairs you'd buy for a five-year-old. (Baseball stitching? Seriously?) And they're actually a two-piece design just stuck together. Allegedly the seat and post combined will cost the same as a seat alone, but we'll wait and see on that. And I'm curious to know how much less it weighs than a stump Pivotal post with a lightweight seat. I'm also curious as to how strong the bond is—will it hold together when you dump the bike? (When you inevitably break/bend it, you get to throw out the seat AND the post.) Not to mention it's obvious that NONE of these combos are made for those of us who like to run their seats high enough to, you know, sit down. But hey, there I go being practical again.



P.S. Of course, if you really want, you can always track down the (updated) original. Twice as light and four times as disgusting. At least you can run it high.

Supersize Me.

Combos. The simultaneous sale of multiple items which enables the seller to make them available as a group at a cheaper price than they would be individually. This is a good thing, yes?

Not necessarily.

Today, let us address the KHE Centaur bar/stem combo:


The concept is simple enough, I suppose—it's basically a set of Macneil Silencer XLTs welded to an Odyssey Elementary. (Of course you couldn't actually weld those two together since the Elementary is all aluminum except for the bolt, but I digress). First, let's review the positives:

• Cheaper
• Lighter
• You can chrome the WHOLE THING!

That's about it. And that's not bad, really. (I'm assuming the combo will cost less than your average lightweight bar/stem, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $130.) Because usually you only get cheap AND light at the cost of strength, and in this case—well, you probably get those two at the cost of strength. Which brings us to the negatives:

• No adjustability

This causes two problems, actually. Let us, for the moment, disregard the fact that people normally run their bars at many, many different angles, even if they appear the same. One could get used to a few degrees difference quite easily. That said, there is a big difference between, say, straight up-and-down and even with the fork rake. So one would think they'd have to make at least two variations to account for that. Then if you want to have versions with different sweep or height or width (cutting down butted bars that have holes drilled in the grip area doesn't seem like such a great idea), you're getting into an awful lot of variables.

Then there's the second problem, which is this: When you have steel bars bolted into an aluminum stem, and you crash/land hard enough, they shift. It's happened to everyone, I'm sure. This won't happen when your bars are welded to your stem. One of two things WILL happen, though. They'll either bend, or break. Add in the huge amount of leverage you get with tall/wide bars, and the fact that these are butted AND have holes drilled in them, and—well, I wouldn't run them unless I had health insurance.

Which brings us to the second point.

• More expensive

I realize this directly counters one of the positives, but bear with me. The bar/stem combo may very well be cheaper initially, but it'll cost you in the end. Look at those bars again. Wide, drilled out. Quite light, I'm sure. Now think about bailing and watching your bike bounce away. Where does it hit? The tires, the seat...and the end of the bars. Which in this case are built like crumple zones in a car, and will probably work in much the same way. One hard hit and they're done for. Which is fine—bent bars have been an issue since the first days of BMX—until you realize that when that happens with the Centaur, you have to replace your bars AND your stem. All of a sudden the whole package deal doesn't seem like such a great idea, does it? Like many of today's products, fine for a team rider who gets them free, not so much so for someone who has to pay for everything.

And then there's my final point:


Yes, a company called Vector did a bar/stem combo back in the '80s. The one shown is a Bob Haro signature version that was quite popular with, um, Bob Haro. Can't say I really remember anyone running them back in the '80s. And I can't help but think the KHEs will have the same fate—seen more on "vintage" builds in 2040 than on bikes that are actually ridden.