I got so many comments from last month's piece about the top 10 selling bike brands' dealer counts, I did it again with 19 brands overall.
Also, how many bike shops do Trek, Specialized and Pon/Cannondale actually own?
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
My latest piece for Bicycle Retailer shows the top ten US bike brands by size of their dealer footprint. There's some surprises in the data, and some comments about why dealers are still critically important to the success of suppliers.
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
My new piece for Bicycle Retailer is up. In it, I explore the long term effects of excess inventory on suppliers, and how it just might mark a change in the supplier/retailer dynamic of the past 20-odd years.
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
Question for the day: people involved in an oligarchy are rightly referred to as oligarchs. Is it therefore correct to refer to people involved in a kakistocracy as "kakistocks?" Asking for a friend.
Might want to correct the name of the Gulf, though.
This month's post for Bicycle Retailer follows up on my search for Authenticity in the cycling industry, and finds it in an unlikely place...the cream of local bike shops.
See what you think.
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
My current piece for Bicycle Retailer is all about authenticity, and why the cycling industry could use a whole lot more of it.
Read the whole thing here:
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
Speaking of The Rapture, Wikipedia lists almost 200 predictions about the end of the world. To date, about 165 of them never happened. The rest are for dates yet to come. Me, I'm betting on the heat-death of the universe.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
DISNEY: "OK, we are putting Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. You can resubscribe now."
ME: "I unsubscribed because you immorally bowed to fascism. I'm not going to resubscribe because you immorally bowed to finances."
"Taiwan has been the top overseas supplier of screws to the US for more than three decades, but steel and aluminum tariffs are now forcing some factories to close." —The New York Times
Sometimes the punchlines just write themselves.
Things I think About (That No One Else Ever Would):
Why isn’t "anagram" an anagram? If it was, it would be an "anagramargana", which, in addition to sounding a whole lot cooler, would be far more appropriate.
Part Three of my three-part series for Bicycle Retailer on oversupply on the bicycle industry is up. In it, I tie together some of the ideas from the first two installments and suggest some changes for how we might move forward as an industry.
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
Image caring more about stopping a memorial for people killed in a mass shooting than stopping mass shootings. #Priorities
Thank you Mrs. Bowers. You nailed it again.
Just a word to the wise: the autumn equinox isn't until September 22nd, which means it's still summer for almost four weeks yet.
This whole summer-ends-at-Labor-Day business is just a plot hatched by the nefarious international Pumpkin Spice Cartel. Don't fall for this scam!
Score one for the Good Guys. AI maker Anthropic caves following its blatantly illegal use of copyrighted material from authors to train the company's LLMs.
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...
This poster is currently up in Washington DC. We'll see how long it stays up. Because They hate it when we laugh at Them, no humor will be permitted in the coming shining city (or cities) upon a hill.
Please govern yourselves accordingly.
So now Trump has claimed 10% of Intel's revenues. As Molly Ivins put it, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power." She attributes this quote to Benito Mussolini, although it's never been confirmed.
Of course not. But the shot was too cheap not to take.
Air Canada is stalling negotiations since they realize their traffic will be curtailed in any case because so few Canadians want to go to the US anymore.
"For grifters who prey on angry, bitter rubes, stealing from the rubes only makes them angrier and more bitter—and thus easier to fleece."
—Cory Doctorow, Conservatism Considered as a Movement of Bitter Rubes, 22-July-2025
Any relevance of the above quote is left as an exercise for the reader.
My latest Bicycle Retailer piece is "Another Fine Mess We've Gotten Ourselves Into, Part Two."
www.bicycleretailer.com/opinion-anal...
From this morning's Morning Brew newsletter:
A Wall Street Journal reporter attended the wedding of two friends who were married by the Hellman’s Mayonnaise mascot, Manny Mayo. There’s nothing as beautiful as seeing two people bonded in aioli matrimony.
An Occasion Worth Celebrating.
51 years ago today, Richard Nixon resigned. As a young man, I remember feeling an enormous sense of relief, triumph, and personal validation.
Score one for the Good Guys.
Thought for the Day:
“What does the AI machine eat?
It eats youth, spontaneity, life beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity.
It eats quality and shits quantity.”
—Paraphrased from the Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs (Burroughs originally said "money")
Microsoft adding its Copilot AI to Word and Excel is exactly like bringing back Clippy. Only not as cute.
Do better.
"Based on the information provided in the Snopes Archives, there is no mention of any professor at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) claiming Donald Trump was the dumbest student ever." —snopes.com
Lest we forget.
I note that Joey Chestnut has once again won the Fourth of July Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.
If there's a more All-American sport than Competitive Binge Eating, I'd surely like to know what it is.
Image: NYT
Decisions, decisions.