Single mindedness

Ive been cranking the single speed bike for a week or two and I must say I’m feeling it. (especially in my calves). I really like the simplicity and sense of mechanical unity with a bike that light and responsive. When I’m riding I often realise that Im banking a turn or swooping around a pothole without even making a conscious effort to do so. Sometimes it feels like I’m not even turning the handlebars, i just need to go left and the bike does it. Maybe that is what is so amazing about a bicycle, its a machine that (unlike a car) doesn’t separate you from the tactile presence of the world. The smell, temperature, light, the texture of the road, the sound of a car turning a block away are all present, immediate, a part , an important part, of the act of riding a bike.

On top of all that i swear i can actually feel myself getting stronger with every ride, not just in my leg muscles either. My lungs don’t feel like they are going to explode even on a climb and my heart rate doesn’t become alarming anymore, I can and do ride for hours at a time. I may be waxing poetic, but in a very real physical sense riding a bike is making me a better person.

Sick of hearing about bikes yet?

Ok then how about some BIG NEWS? Well its big to me anyway.

It is no secret that for years I have wanted to move the shop. When it was still Eye Candy, Brian and I looked at a few places, even took a few tours with landlords. Nothing ever seemed to fit the bill for us. Partly it was because the rent where we are now is really low, however every year it goes up slightly, after 10 years it has gone up to the point where it no longer feels like the insanely good deal it once was. As the rent has gone up the neighborhood has gone down. I say “neighborhood” but in reality its just the block that we are on that has slid into the shitter. One by one the ‘nice’ businesses went under leaving us with 3 shitty, drug dealer infested bars, a beer store, and various shady cellphone stores and fly by night barber shops as neighbors. The local crackhead/panhandler population is at an all time high and I’m sick of feeling nervous for my clients when they have to walk the gauntlet of cat calling shitbags and scroungers just to get to my door.

When the shop became mine I decided to put some real effort into improving the shop. We accomplished a lot in a short time but I began to realise that no matter how cozy and comfortable I made the shop itself, the area was going to drag down the enthusiasm of my clients. For all I know the neighborhood has already deterred customers.

So I began looking around for locations that would suit my artsy fartsy nature. Anyone who has had the misfortune to hear me talk about this subject knows that I have always had my heart set on South Craig street area. Its only 3 blocks from where we are currently but aesthetically it is a world away. It is home to an assortment of comic shops, art stores, coffee shops, restaurants and bookstores. In short, the kind of place we want to be. Having spent the majority of my life as poor white trash, I’m ready to make the move up to arty pretentiousness (just kidding. . .mostly). Its between CMU and Pitt universities, and I don’t feel that vague undercurrent of criminal danger when I’m there, frankly I can relax walking up and down that part of Craig without having my ‘game face’ and attitude on. After 10 years I’m tired of having to do that.

The first place we seriously asked about was huge and was $4000 a month! My heart sank, if that was the going rate, I figured, I was just going to have to be satisfied with the ghetto. However, the next place I looked was well within our budget, much smaller (which appealed to me) right in the heart of the area I had always wanted to be. Cara and I told the building manager we would take it!

But nothing is that easy.

The buildings owner is a retired Syrian who is currently living in Syria. Tattooing is completely alien to this poor guy and I’m sure this caused him some serious doubts. Fortunately the other tenets of the building know and like us and the manager of the building seemed to dig on us (and the fact that we were ready to jump on it) so he put in the good word. The Owner had the manager call the health dept to see if it was kosher and we finally got the nod.

We sign the lease on Monday.

I cant fucking wait.

There will be some work to be done before its ready, Ill have some pictures up shortly of the progress. Wish us luck!!

Progress report

There is something about a bicycle that encourages me to try things I never would before. From the moment I climbed onto the saddle and gave it that first push a part of my brain that had been asleep for years woke up and said ” HEY! lets go further! lets go faster! lets go harder!”  I was hopelessly out of shape, (I’m still out of shape, but now not hopelessly so) and yet the third day I owned my new bike I decided to ride 10 miles. In Pittsburgh this leaves you with two choices; the first is to ride in a circuit that is relatively flat, it ends up being fairly boring to see the same sights over and over every 5 minutes, but at least you are not climbing some monster hill. The other choice is to bike the hills as they come, and lord let me tell you, they do come.

So on that day I took a route which was basically downhill all the way to a trail the city had thoughtfully provided out of an old railroad route, since it runs past the city jail its called the jail trail. My legs did fine the whole way there, but my lungs and heart protested at these new demands almost immediately, “fuck you guys” I thought, and rode. Now, even the most basic of minds can grasp that when you go down hill a bunch that eventually. . . probably soon. . .you will have to go up hill quite a lot too. And i did. Long gradual hills that sapped me with every pedal stroke, and 30 degree monsters that loomed over and laughed at the fat ass and his puny gears, even the granny gear was like trying to run a marathon on your knees. . hopeless.

Twice I stopped on the way home, my chest on fire, my lungs heaving, a dull throbbing ache in my head that I realised was my poor heart struggling to keep oxygen going to my atrophied arteries and muscles. I sat next to my bike and wondered what the fuck was wrong with me!? Why would I subject myself to this, I’m an old fat guy, I should give up, I should accept the fact that Ive decided to be smart and funny and NOT athletic a bit. In fact Ive spent a good part of my adult life mocking physical accomplishments! I recently even had the terrible realization that I had not actually run in years. . .did I even know how anymore?

But I was in the middle of nowhere and nothing motivates you like the lack of choices, so I got on again and rode toward home. One more time on that first big ride I had to dismount and walk up a steep-as-fuck hill , and not that anyone gave a shit what I was doing,  but as the cars drove past me I had the unbidden thought “man, I hope they think I have a flat” and took some solace in the fact that Id only ever seen bikes being walked up this particular hill. . .

That was a month ago. I’ve probably put a hundred miles on my bike since then, which is not really a lot to some folks, but I can already see and feel the difference. A couple days ago I rode an even longer circuit around the city. I took leisurely detours just to look at areas I had never seen when I wasn’t zooming past in a car at 30 miles per hour, I rode in the mix with downtown traffic, slamming on my breaks and my back tire skidding in that satisfying way to dodge cars and buses, I hit the jail trail from town back toward those same long climbs and the sudden behemoth hill between me and home. I didn’t stop where I had the first time, I was sapped, but my body wasn’t about to collapse anymore, I stood up on the pedals and powered through the last of the tiny rise, past the rock I sat on and wanted to give up. I was breathing hard and my thighs ached but I didn’t stop because I didn’t need to anymore. In a month my body had become better and I knew it. When I got to the monster hill I had recovered a little so I stood on the petals again and crushed as much as I could, about halfway up my gas ran out and I had to stop. I was huffing like a freight train but there was none of that feeling of “I think I’m about to have a stroke”  that usually happens when I do anything more strenuous than opening a jar of pickles. I looked back and there was another guy at the bottom of the hill walking his bike. I drank some water, let my breathing get closer to normal, got on again before he was even close to me and rode the rest of the way up. I secretly loved that guy in that moment.

I was so fucking proud of myself. I rode to the  Starbucks Cara works at and sat there sweating and grinning and I just wanted to tell everyone, “Hey i just rode 15 miles!” or “Didja know there is a riverfront trail from the strip district to downtown?” or “I almost made it all the way up Neville from Panther hollow!” Then I took a shower and rode to work.

How fucking  COOL is that!? I did all this before work!

I wanted to go right back out again. I always do on my bike, I want to go so far that people who don’t ride bikes will either be amazed or think I’m lying whenI tell them i rode 10 or 15 or 20 miles today. I want to push the envelope of my body because it is at such a great pushable state. At their peak, a professional racer can shave seconds off their time, they can add to their endurance times in minutes. Me? I can shave my bike commute to work time in half, I can double or triple my ability to go without stopping, I can and will climb those giant hills, at the end of a ride, in the heat and I will do them without stopping. I can feel it getting nearer, and the more I notice how much better I feel the more I want it.

When I bought my bike I thought only in terms of convenience, of riding to work or to the store. I never would have guessed that a simple machine would do what no amount of self-loathing or advice from friends or even common sense had done for me and that is to motivate me to push further, faster, and harder.

Who’s crazy? We are.

But we love it. So we are doing it again. its fun, its hectic, its financially unrewarding but its some of the most fun i have had tattooing in years. SO. . .

If you havent already. . .

. . . Check out the Black Cat tattoos page. For reals we got everything squared away and looking pretty.

www.blackcattattoos.net

The shop is shaping up, ive already thrown about 40 tons of crap into the black hole i call the shop basement and we are slowly, but surely, beginning to remodel and spruce the place up. Ive already gotten one big wish and that is to have natural light, after a decade under flourescents I cant tell you what a mental difference that makes! Plus my mutant bamboo plant is exploding with new shoots, I think its the vegetable equivelent of a boner.

Coming soon, Pictures of the shop in all its ghetto fabulousness!