d&f 7/4/21

D&F 7/4/21

Happy 4th, I guess? In Oakland fireworks are such a regular occurrence that I fear this day as it usually sounds like a war zone on the holiday. On the upside, I have tomorrow off, so I’m excited to bike off my sleepless explosionful night.

Are you grilling today? Cooking-up some wings? Near my apartment is a “cloud kitchen” which will soon join the world of the great wing shortage. Even as I eat more and more vegan meals, I have a hard time resisting the siren song of the wing. This week I even made a pilgrimage to the chain Bonchon to get wings and kimchi. It was delicious, though I almost kept face planting because their flooring was not kind to my very terrible-for-walking cycling shoes.

Other than cycling, a long time hobby of mine is buying and reading tons of books. This week I read about how book pricing really hasn’t kept up with inflation, making it very difficult for small presses to survive the race to the bottom of pricing that Amazon enforces. As always, the best way to get books is either at a Library, from an author directly, or from a small bookstore where you can slowly build a relationship that leads to great personal recommendations. If you can’t do any of those, I’ve also found Bookshop to be an ok place to purchase things during a pandemic. Not to be all “47 lambos” but I had to buy another bookshelf during the last year to hold all the books I was stress-buying.

I mentioned him a lot last week due to his wild Alt tour, but Lachlan Morton is a really interesting character. This wild solo tour of France isn’t even the first time he’s done a strangely epic bike ride. He’s ridding across many a desert and through tiny towns around the world. I don’t think I’ll ever have the endurance and grit this guy does, but every time I watch one of his videos, his enthusiasm is infectious, and I immediately want to hop on my bike and ride.

Finally, I generally treat TikTok as something to be kept at arms-length, occasionally enjoying something as it’s sent to me, but not to be sucked-into. The world of influencers is both sad, and bizarre but it really challenges the idea of celebrity. I can’t particularly blame younger folks for trying to scrape together a living in this capitalist hellscape, but I think it’s telling that selling your entire existence 24/7 and becoming a living meme is somehow preferable to the “work” available. I guarantee I’m not the one to coin this, but Warhol’s 15 minutes now seems to be down to 15 seconds. Fame was a mistake.

Links

• I learned about this movie last week during a live event from the Rude Tales folks. Just trust me, it’s a delight:

Closing

Apologies for being late with this week’s edition of D&F. I went on a long bike ride yesterday that led me to a wine bar with friends (hi Haley, Dan, and Wonja), where I enjoyed a little too much wine and came home in a fugue-state before passing-out watching a bike race. I hope you enjoy your holiday weekend with a little more moderation than myself, but also a fair amount of whatever liquids you enjoy. I’m watching the Austrian GP as I write this, and loading my belly full of oats so I can go on a long bike ride later today.

Stay safe, and please don’t start fires with fireworks this year, space cowgirls~