Bike Snob on Nike

Recently Veesh posted a video he made of the Nike Wind Runner Ride in L.A.

I found the video right after it was posted because sometimes I search “fixed gear” on vimeo, youtube, etc. to find the newest videos to digest (see where the sport is going) and put up on the blog.

I did not post the video because of Nike’s leadership in mass consumer culture, past human rights abuses, and predatory exploitation of free trade zones, among other things. I don’t put any advertisements on my site, and support very few corporations or businesses (locally run shops, bicycle media, radical book stores, etc. usually being the exception) why would I advertise for Nike?

I also thought the video was boring, so I posted a comment, and gave examples of videos that I liked that were made by members of those communities and that weren’t commercials.  In retrospect I could have glossed my argument up with some stronger rhetoric, but whatever, it’s a vimeo comment.  His newer videos are better . . . Anyway, Veesh took down my comment, but not before emailing me saying, “. . . thanks for showing me some other videos now i know how they should look. A bunch of gay guys and butch girls ride bikes like bmx bikes.”

So you can see why I was thrilled when Bike Snob threw in his two cents:

Still, even a pandering corpo-whore such as I can sometimes be shocked at peoples’ willingness to be rolling advertisements. I was thumbing through trackosaurusrex recently to see if fixed-gear freestyling has progressed past wheelies, barspins, and skidding yet (it hasn’t) when I saw this:

[Nike Wind Runner Ride]

I guess this happened over a week ago now, but word travels slowly to the East Coast. At any rate, it would appear that Nike has harnessed the irresistible lure of the free windbreaker in order to get a bunch of people to ride around Los Angeles on fixed-gear bicycles and make a free commercial for them. It’s like a Critical Mass of consumerism!

Like many people, I just assumed that when Nike ended its relationship with the Great Trek Bicycle Making Company last year, they were leaving cycling altogether. And even though Nike said that Nike Cycling would continue to offer products into 2008, judging from their website the Nike Cycling line consists entirely of these two items:

However, judging from the Nike Windrunner ride, they’ve actually managed to stay in cycling, only in a much smarter way. Now, they no longer need to spend extra money on costly things like making cycling products and buying ad space for those products. Instead, they can simply take some of the non-cycling products they’ve already got lying around and then get a bunch of people to ride their bikes in them. Also, they’ve wisely chosen to focus on fixed-gear cyclists, who not only readily accept fashion over function but who also live to make videos of themselves wearing those fashions. This is a vastly more intelligent approach than Nike’s previous one, which basically involved selling cycling-specific products (like their rebranded DMT cycling shoes) to bike racers who are notoriously fickle and who occasionally demand irritating things like performance.

See, no company with any sense would ever sell something as specialized as a cycling shoe. You can’t wear those things anywhere off the bike, and you definitely won’t find a bunch of kids who don’t ride bikes deciding that carbon-soled road shoes are cool and wearing them to the mall. So making something like that is not good business. But what is good business is taking a windbreaker you’ve been making for 30 years, getting a bunch of people to make a free commercial for it, and then maybe–just maybe–if that pays off making it “cycling specific” by putting a bike-related logo on it.

Because why should something be purpose-built when it can be re-purposed? It may not be cheaper for you, but it’s definitely cheaper for them. And isn’t helping people sell you stuff what cycling’s all about?

Word. And yes, I understand the irony that posting anything about Nike at all is only advertising Nike more.

Tags: Bike Snob NYC, Nike, Nike Windrunner Ride L.A., trackosaurusrex, Veesh