And I say fucc it, like I care if it’s o.k.

Via Juice Studio, pictuere by Matt Lingo.

Because this just came in by e-mail;

good evening.

according to the ecmc-registration-statistics, 523 out of 723 people registered are messenger, ex-messengers and vet-class.
59 registered as polo-maniacs, 37 consider themselves as fakengers and 27 stated that “they have a crush on bike messengers”.

485 ride fixed-gear-bikes.

i had discussions with a lot of different people, messengers and non-messengers revolving around the question “how can we keep the ecmc “real” and not sell out?”

at first, the organizing comittee decided to let everyone register, but inly active and ex-messengers should be allowed to race.

that decision did not last very long, then it was decided that everyone who registers can race.

why?

#1: how do you define a “messenger”? how do you compare? is a messenger from nyc more real than a messenger from freiburg in the black forest? how many winters does it take to make you a messenger? are you a real messenger when you work in barcelona? what about people who have their handful of customers they ride for? are you allowed to race even when you just started 2 months ago? (obviously this was not allowed in berlin 1993, personally i am really happy that this rule didn’t last, as i raced in zurich 1999 just 2 months after i started my first messenger-job. the zurich cmwc definitely tied me to the community).

i fear that these will be discussions we will run into if we decide to let only “real” messengers compete.

#2: an event of this size is an opportunity to promote the idea of urban cycling. the message behind this idea is too big for such a (comparably) small community as the messenger community is. i believe that CMCs should be about integration of all kinds of bike enthusiast, and not about exclusion.

#3: i think it is about time to try out what happens when an ECMC gets big and attracts a quite large number of cyclists who are not messengers. let’s see what happens. if we don’t try, we’ll never know. maybe it is a model for the events to come, maybe not. this decision will not be made in Berlin, but by you.

#4: it’s an “european” cycle messenger championships. but there are couriers coming from japan, canada, the states, etc. etc. its something i learned from talking to the media, and listening to their reactions: it seems to be very very uncommon that the couriers don’t really care about nations.

i think we should apply this openness to non-couriers as well.

the most important thing is, that a CMC is organized with the messengers needs as #1 priority in mind.

and this happened in berlin. we cannot look into your heads, we did it all in a way we figures out you might enjoy.

see you soon!

akeem

And although the alleycat is canceled for fakengers/possengers I really like the message they send out with this mail!

The e-mail I got about the allecat;

this alleycat will be for former or working couriers only
this race is limited, so reply to this mail in case you want to race!
start will be around 8pm – meet at keirin all day for registration
we like anyone riding a bike, but we feel the courier should get the respect!

You all know we from FUCCIT are pro fakenger and the reason I post this is just to let all of you guys and girls what to expect. And maybe I will set out a fakenger alleycat who knows.

And now it’s bed time for me got to take the train of 9:10 this morning.

You probably meant: button down that blouse, baby. And show us what you got. I bought my nextdoor neighbourgirl some steel toy to play with. And apparently she liked the reflector on the front and the seat was very comfortable too. Enough about bicycles now, time to get buttnaked and fucc. Afterwards I’ll throw in some buttons with the BMX.

So this one completes the four FUCCIT buttons I’ll bring with me to Berlin. So try and collect them all. Aden and myself (later on also Votske) made 400 of them this morning so I hope they will be well appreciated.

First of all Thijmen wrote about the second button:

I like that, but why not make it look like a Polo bike?As in, disk cover front wheel, straight bars and a small front blade…

Well Thijmen FUCCIT is not all about bike polo it’s about fixed gear in general so I made two buttons in a bike polo theme and two in a fixed gear theme. So there is at least one of them that you would like.

But here’s number three, track bike style:

And tomorrow I will post the last and final one. And that’s gonna be a special one, FUCCIT style!

So in a couple of day Ill go to Berlin for the ECMC. And I saw a incline in our stats due to the germans finding our site. And I know a couple of things about the Germans they eat a lot of of bratwurst, drink beer all day and don’t speak english. So for our German friends I put up some translation thing on our site. So they also can read the bullshit written here. Which is also lousy English (I think) but maybe Google translation can make something of it. See you guys in a couple of days!

Although there game of bike polo sucked they “Those Guys From Eindhoven” (TGFE for short) took fuccing good pictures yesterday! And mailed them to us so I can post them. And thanks again guys!

We might not all be graphic designers like MalleT, but since I’m a Feyenoorder (THE best football club from Rotterdam and The Netherlands) I had to join the Rotterdam Fixed Gear jersey design contest with this design!

And “those guys from Eindhoven” (TGFE isn’t that a good name?) got some insane wheel covers. They really make an art of it. 

So in the first time in our existence we went abroad to play some bike polo. With seven of our crew members we went to Eindhoven to meet the other crew. We didn’t know the guy’s and were a bit nervous, what if they are total dorks (which you find often in Eindhoven). But it was the opposite the guys were really friendly with the same kind of attitude we’ve got. So it matched really well and we played some good games.

So thanks to Eindhoven! And we meet each other in Arnhem I presume?