BIKEFRENZY

Couldn't sleep last night because I was daydreaming about riding around NYC on a vintage road bike. 

(via the sartorialist)

It's one of those far off dreams where I'm riding around on the streets of Philly on my vintage Schwinn roadster when I happen to come across Scott Schuman and Garance Dore who stop and ask to take my picture for their respective blogs... right, maybe I have daydreamed about this a tad too much considering I can easily count the amount of times I've ridden a bike on one hand (I blame the fact that I take the subway everywhere).

(via the sartorialist)
this photo is one of scott schuman's personal favorites as well as one of mine.

But why bike now? For one, I'm sick of paying for public transportation. The $2.25/ride and the lack of unlimited passes (there used to be 3-, 7-, and 21-day passes that allowed you to ride as much as you wanted) is slowly draining my money and it's time to invest in a decent bike that will last me for the next couple of years. Thinking about this mathematically, if I buy a vintage bike for $100 + repairs for about $50, that's $150... divide that by the price of rides nowadays ($2.25) and the bike pays for itself with a whopping 67 rides. That's not bad, considering I'll probably be riding this bike for the next two years averaging about a ride a week. So, it will eventually pay itself off.

Another point is that I've always associated my view of college as a campus crawling with bicycles. It started early, when I was touring college campuses with my older brother at the age of 11 and 12. Most of the schools we looked at were in the Northeast, and the schools I fell in love with were the Ivies - e.g. Yale and Harvard had beautiful campuses, with preppy boys riding around on their bikes. This association of bikes to college was further instilled when my roommate purchased the Take Ivy book by Teruyoshi Hayashida which had all these old school shots of the Ivies back in the day.

(via Take Ivy)

(via Take Ivy)

Old school prep + vintage bikes = utter and complete happiness. I want to be that guy on the far right of the second picture - books casually strapped to the back of the rack of my bike, tweed jacket, cropped chinos and (I'm guessing here) leather penny loafers. In my dreams, that tweed jacket would have leather elbow patches as well.

So I'm going to continue trolling Craigslist to find a suitable bike (currently begging my father to help me buy and transport one from Queens). And then somehow I'll have to bring it to Philadelphia when I head back to school so I can fulfill my dreams of riding a bike around my campus. 

Keeping my fingers crossed, 

ess.