“Yeah, he can’t even do a track stand.”

“Plus his spoke nipples don’t match his hub ano.”

“Check it out — I saw him on 57th the other day … wearing a fanny pack!”

(Much laughter.)

“I’d like to kick his ass.”

“Yeah, next time we see him, let’s kick his ass.”

Eben Weiss revealed!

In actuality, we have long observed that BSNYC isn’t any more a snob than your average fixie rider. Or, for that matter, any cyclist from Portland.

What does separate the Snob from the cycling field is his affection, and flair, for the written word. If God had wanted cyclists to write, he would have given us fleshy faces, pot bellies and big beards … like Hemingway. Tolstoy. Walt Whitman. Instead we get Gary Fisher’s soul patch and Levi Leipheimer’s shaved head. Writers look like deep-sea fishermen heading for the pub. Cyclists look like the nihilists in “The Big Lebowski.”

But Weiss truly breaks the mold. His witty musings would be right at home in an anthology of Swift, Woody Allen and Stephen Colbert. Our favorite Snob posts use the bicycle as a literary device for miniature treatises on life, justice and the folly of mankind. The subtitle of his book, “Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling,” says it all. The guy can back it up.

But come see for yourself. Although Seattle is the next-to-the-last stop on his tour, and the very next day he faces the merciless crush of adoring fandom in Portland, Eben may be up for a post-appearance burrito run to Gorditos in Greenwood.

Ride or no, it’ll be great fun.

The San Francisco Chronicle has the full story on the man suspected of mowing down four bicyclists last week in the Mission District and Portrero, but Cyclelicious’ Richard Masoner caught the real lede: The guy was an “avid cyclist.” Good lord, talk about eating your young.

Despite the terrible serial mowdown of cyclists in San Francisco, the SF Bicycle Coalition reminds us that the streets are getting safer every day. (Certainly true in Seattle, where the Nickerson “road diet” appears to be moving forward.)

PinkBike has the full results from Fort William World Cup action last weekend. Gee Atherton took top honors, with Cameron Cole second and Greg Minaar third. Aaron Gwin put in a stellar showing for the U.S. at fourth, and Canadian Steve Smith just north of our border was said to be rippin’ before missing a turn. Great action; this is shaping up to be a dynamite World Cup series for 2010.

According to Bicycle Retailer, S.F.’s City Cycle has been sold to the owners of Marin County’s Paradigm Cycles. We used to live down the street from City Cycle in Cow Hollow and loved to take the latest, greatest models out for “test rides.” The place was the ultimate bike snob hangout. Every couple of months they would build a totally pimped, $10k road bike and slap it up in the window for the masses to drool over. I always wondered who their clientele was that could afford all the ka-ching ‘n bling till I found out they were the main supplier for Robin Williams’ notorious bike habit. Thanks, Robin, for letting us all share the dream!

And speaking of bike snobbery, BikeSnobNYC will be in Seattle promoting his new book next week. We expect to see every fixie owner in town to show up. From all accounts, Eben Weiss actually sounds like a decent, likeable guy, and Lance Armstrong says he’s super smart. When the King checks in, you know you can’t go wrong. Catch Eben at University (District) Bookstore, 2 p.m. a week from Saturday (June 19). More from Tubulocity.

Spokespeople’s monthly ride is this Saturday. Start from the Wallingford Playfield at 2 p.m. for a tour of the Ship Canal Trail, it’ll be a relatively laid-back pace, with a stop to watch the big boats going by for Opening Day of Boating and another stop to enjoy a free snack at the Fremont PCC. The ride will go past the Republic of Fremont’s signature Lenin statue and Fremont Troll. Michael Snyder, the bike guru behind SeattleLikesBikes, will lead.

Now there are doubts about the big NYC bike commuter count.

Cycle University is holding a swap meet on Sunday to bikeswap Cascade Bicycle Club’s Major Taylor project.

Lexus is touting a hybrid (e-bike) concept bike using … 20-inch wheels? Further confirmation that when a car company tries to do bicycles, the result is what we saw with typewriter companies trying to do computers.

Cascade Bicycle Club blog: What can we learn from a bike striking and killing a pedestrian?

Car counts are down in Seattle. So why is the city so focused on huge highway expansions like the 520 project?

La Vuelta de Bisbee has no apparent relation to Gene Bisbee of BikingBis, but it sure seems like it ought to.

Lance Armstrong has bought into Honey Stinger energy foods.

Bike to Work Day in San Francisco is shaping up nicely. Plans by Cascade Bicycle Club and the mayor’s office are still being formulated but it looks like a blowout year. The League of American Bicyclists has the overview on Bike Month 2010. The full schedule for Seattle is still being finalized, but promises to include some interesting wrinkles.

BikeHugger on the Bike My Way app. “We’ll use this with our Biologic iPhone mount when we ride the Mobile Social in Portland during Webvisions next month.”

BikeSnobNYC reports in Outside magazine on Portland’s relentlessly velocular culture.

Glenn Erickson, the remarkable Seattle cycling icon who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease last year, will host a Davis Phinney Foundation benefit ride on May 16 starting from Marymoor Park velodrome. A great way to say hi to Glenn and support a worthy cause.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) is Women on Wheels at Gregg’s Greenlake Cycle. Raffles, clinics, talks and presentations — it all gets rolling at 7 p.m. More here.

And just for reference purposes, BonesOverMetal has posted a full (and growing) calendar of “Women of Dirt” showings all over.

Spokespeople will ride from Wallingford to U Village this Saturday starting at 2 p.m. Much of the ride will be on the Burke-Gilman Trail. Ride leaves from south end of Wallingford playfield at Densmore and 42nd. If you haven’t made the acquaintance of Spokespeople yet, these are really great social rides, especially for riders just getting into the Seattle scene or back to cycling in general. More here.

Looking ahead to the following weekend, March 13-14 will mark the return of Seattle Bike Expo, this time to a spanking new location near the Magnolia Bridge (Smith Cove Cruise Terminal 91). Following the smash turnout for the Seattle Bike Swap meet last weekend, the Expo should really rock in its new venue.

And jumping even further ahead, Portland’s first ever Trail Fest will be April 22 to 25. Great idea at just the right time, given the sorry state of Forest Park advocacy.

We’ve often noted that the way to get away with the Perfect Crime is to run over someone and claim you didn’t see him or her. The only catch being that the victim has to be riding a bicycle at the time. There is one exception, though: You can’t be drunk when you do it.

What’s up with The Stranger? We appreciate its shall we say rarefied sense of irony, even when it is misdirected. But to call cyclists “self-satisfied turds,” even if the reference is just to Critical Mass, and to “fantasize about mowing down” any cyclist, even if it happens to be in your way while driving, promotes the kind of stereotype phobia that, with most other prefixes, The Stranger rightly rails against.

Speaking of irony so subtle as to entirely escape detection, BikeSnobNYC explains himself, in his own exasperatingly desultory way, re the case of the mistaken Craigslist ad. [Update: Snob just tweeted that all's cool now.]

More Ultegra chain failures, which means more buzz in the Beehive!

Cups for boyz? Really? So how are you gonna enforce that one?

Now we in the cycling community know perfectly well what’s going on here. Fat Cyclist isn’t really fat, and Bike Snob isn’t actually a snob. Fatty may have started out that way (using the term loosely), but for quite a while now he’s been a barrel-chested, iron-thighed, pedal-mashing Thor of muscle and bone. The guy has ridden with Lance Armstrong and Team Radio Shack, fer crissakes. He’s training for a freakin’ marathon. You and I know that.

Odd maybe...but not fat

But the non-velocipedes who make up the vast majority of the American public do not. The American public sees “Fat Cyclist” and thinks folds of lycra’d flesh balanced on two wheels like mounds of whipped cream on a spoon, with a flabby pear-shaped head that makes his helmet the size of a yarmulke. The American public sees Chris Farley on a comfort bike. They see someone called Fat Cyclist is in line for a Bloggie, and they go Wha??? Is that the best they can come up with?

Well, as a matter of fact, it is. Because the alternative is the Snob.

Now we all know that Bike Snob isn’t really a snob or he’d never blog about something as common and filthy as cycling. He would be some bow-tied oenophile blogging about what Bordeaux goes with foie gras and Muenster cheese. Or about the definitive interpretation of the libretto to The Magic Flute. A true snob would not be caught dead riding some oily contraption along the besotted gutters of 42nd Street. A snob on a bike would perspire on his tux. He would get grease on the cuffs of his Armanis. Snobbery, really, has no place in the cycling community, except when a roadie meets a mountain biker. And the outcome of that is never pretty.

What a BikeSnob fan looks like

The mainstream public doesn’t realize that Bike Snob is just another loser who can’t scrounge up cab fare home. They think he’s some epicure putting on airs, carrying on like he’s better than the rest of us. They think he blogs for Slate, or maybe The Daily Beast.

Unfortunately, we bona fide members of the cycling community are stuck with a choice of incredible political incorrectness. It’s either obesity or snootiness. ShopWrech.net and BottomBracket.org didn’t make the cut. If we really want to support our precious avocation, we have to ignore public perception and vote for a cyclist. Knowing this, knowing they’ve got us between a proverbial fat rock and snob place, both candidates have put together shameless self-promotional solicitations worthy of Donald Trump on crystal meth, which as a public service we are linking to because … well, because we care.

FatCyclist: “Vote for me because my third win means I won’t be eligible to harangue you next year!”

BikeSnobNYC: “Vote for me and you could win a new bike that is too declassé for the Snob to be seen with, let alone ride!”

The Capitol Hill Seattle Blog is tracking what happened to the neighborhood Bike Corral.

NY Times writeup on Danny MacAskill is also about how YouTube makes celebrities out of everyday folks … the way newspapers used to.

RC asks for help tracking down this weird unicycle. Never seen one, would love to ride one!

If you have the time BikeSnobNYC has the loquacity.

More coasting backwards: Easton Bell, joining Shimano, SRAM and Mavic, says sales are in the tank, down 11.3 percent for 3Q.

“On the Bell side, preseason orders increased in the low single digits in part due to demand for the new Variant mountain bike helmet. At $80 retail, the helmet fills a desirable pricepoint and allows for increased presence in the important mountain bike crategory, Harrington said.”

Right on. Mountain biking will save the bike industry yet!

Local boyz do good: EVIL, FSA headline Bike Magazine’s “10 promising new products.”

Just when you think cyclists are making some headway in the political-justice system, the surreal, goofy, bizarre, inexplicable 3-year-old injunction against the SF Bicycle Plan rears its antediluvian head. And here’s the list of what the injunction is holding up.

Cyclelicio.us: Analysis of bike accidents show t-bone is most prevalent (not right hook). Like Yokota, I’m a bit surprised. You certainly read more about “hooks” causing fatalities. Studies like these are important, though, for establishing baseline data from which to make policy. Numbers work wonders for getting legislators to move. (The riding against traffic one hurts, though.)

This is part of an ongoing snit between the UCI, the international cycling governing body, and French anti-doping authorities over the rigorousness of dope testing during the Tour de France. The UCI undoubtedly considers the irregularities, including the infamous 45-minute delay at one point during the Tour, as trivial. If the AFLD is correct in its allegations, however, it raises serious questions as to the diligence of UCI procedures.

It’s hard to know — particularly based on a reading of press reports rather than original documentation — whose side to take, other than the truth’s, which will always remain in question. As we’ve said before, doping at this point is not an athletic issue or even a political issue. It’s a financial issue. Say they found doping on Team Astana and Lance and Bert got kicked off the Tour. Where would that leave the Big Money — TV and commercial sponsors — that makes the Tour possible? This is the main reason why the worst penalty a steroid-soaked baseball star can expect is an asterisk next to his records.

So cycling governance just muddles along, engaging in petty feuding and self-righteous posturing, while the doping continues.

Bert’s and Lance’s main transgression here may be that they’re not French. I mean, where was the AFLD (or equivalent) when Hinault and Fignon were ripping up the Tour?

BikeSnobNYC takes a swing at the doping scene as well, with his usual amusing speculation (every time Lance is tested he tweets? really? or does he tweet only when he knows full well that supposed irregularities will get reported?) thrown in for comic relief. Worth a read as always.

Meanwhile, doping is migrating its way down into the amateur ranks as well, and even the excuses are the same.

And back in Italy, yet another suspension.

Attendance a mixed bag. Overall attendance declined, but buyer numbers were up. Exhibitors were said to be happy, so that’s good, because if the exhibitors aren’t happy, then the booth bimbos aren’t happy, and if the bbs aren’t happy, well, you know…

Great video from Mountain Bike Action with Richard Cunningham showing off Ibis’ new HD Mojo (beefy, very beefy), Magura fork/brake combo and a new rack from Kuat that, face it, puts the Thule T2 to shame.

And BikeSnob goes off on Reynolds’ $6,000 set of carbon wheels.

Finally, re our standing feature This Day in Doping, check out this video on new anti-doping controls that somehow feels like a 5th grade tutorial on urine testing for pot. No wonder Lance gets annoyed with these people. We support rigorous dope testing of cyclists (emphasis on rigorous, because so far there’s little evidence testing is inhibiting doping). We also support doing it in a professional and respectful way.