Bicycles in Town is Dead, Long Live Ypsilanti Cycle

This past Saturday I biked to downtown A2 on an errand. I took Packard out but decided to take Washtenaw back since I like to do loops. My pedal crank had been wobbling for a couple of weeks but since it had yet to fail me I figured it would hold out.

Unfortunately, it did not. I made it as far as Arborland before the pedals became so loose that they wouldn’t even spin. I broke down almost exactly in front of the bicycle shop next to All Creatures Animal Clinic. “How fortunate!” thought I.

Last time I took my bike in to Ypsilanti Cycle, Paul had noticed the loose crank but told me it was nothing to worry about. It would give eventually but was a simple fix. So when I wheeled my bike into the Arborland store I figured that I would just enjoy the air conditioning for a few minutes while they made the necessary repairs.

The guy there looked at my bike for about two minutes before he told me that it would probably cost more than I had paid for the bike in the first place. I wasn’t offended because this was probably true (I bought it for $50 off a friend five years ago) but I was a bit surprised by his attitude. I got the felling that he thought it was both a waste of time and money to even consider fixing it.

I asked him to take a look at it anyway. He wandered off, wandered back, and told me they didn’t have the part in stock. I thought about asking him to see if he could possibly order the part but decided against it. The guy didn’t seem that interested in my business.

It’s four miles from Arborland to downtown Ypsi, but it was a nice day so I didn’t mind the walk. I wanted to stop at the credit union anyway.

I’ve been going to the Michigan Avenue bicycle shop for as long as I’ve lived in Ypsi, from the original Bicycles in Town, through the new Bicycles in Town, to the latest incarnation as Ypsi Cycle. Usually I've dealt with Paul, who greeted me by name. It had been several months since I’d last been in but he remembered the crank problem. It was late in the day by then and they are closed on Sundays but he told me they would have it ready by Monday.

I just picked it up. In addition to replacing the entire crank mechanism---it turns out that the threads were entirely worn away---they put on new pedals. The total cost, including labor? 15 bucks.

Riding away, I realized that they had also polished the rust off my bell.

I just realized "all politics is local" is a paradox

Lately I've been reading (and writing) about the postmodern condition (how much more über-hipster can you get, honestly) and its relation to art and commodities. I'm not going to name-drop (well I will, just not here and now...) but I did want to write for just a minute on how I see these forces playing out in my own personal life.

One of the things these high-falutin' intellectuals write about is the erosion in the (post-)modern mindset of the idea of place: the copy machine , the (cell) phone, the camera, the automobile, the projector, and the internet have all worked to turn presence into (functional) omnipresence. Increasingly nothing is anywhere, everything is everywhere. (1) And business has mirrored this, too, moving to meet popular desire wherever possible. No matter where you go there they are: a Starbucks, a Walmart, a McDonald's, a Best Buy. Or better yet, amazon.com. This is the essence of Western Culture as it conceives itself: the love affair between desire-satisfying boxes and desiring bodies; it's hard to know which is reproducing faster.

This is, of course, an illusion. Meijer is at the corner of Carpenter and Michigan Ave (among other places), and the products within all have a history and an origin. Nothing "comes from the store." You can do a google image search for "Magritte pipe" and find a copy (of a copy of a copy of a copy...) but -- çeci n'est pas une tableaux! -- you'll find neither a pipe nor a painting. The real one (the painting, I have no idea about the pipe) is still in the LA County Museum.

But, and this is where it gets interesting, there is this emerging counter-desire that unsentimental ad execs tell me is taking America by storm! (True story.) Apparently The Charm of The Highway Strip has faded with middle-age; people are really into local business now. Well kind of. How many people do you know who shop at the Food Co-op exclusively, for instance? But, the unsentimental ad execs told me, local-ness is the Most Valuable Thing local business can sell. In other words, our most precious, most fetishised commodity.

As cool as that sounds, and as much as it would seem to promote a decentralized, heterogeneous culture, I'm not sure I'm buying. The unique, cool, and firmly localized Ypsilanti Food Co-op does not transfer a portion of its essence to that can of tomatoes you bought. Just check your receipt, it's not on there. Local-ness in not another commodity, like crude oil, coffee, or the iPhone.

And what about all these other things we are being sold along with our cars, diamond rings, and mutual funds? What about security, love, and happiness? What is up with this collision of consumption and desire? It's one big mass delusion. Commodities have to be objects of exchange, the fact that we desire them is not enough.

Can we let ephemera remain ephemeral? I hope so, or we risk the madness of confusing closeness with control, and like The Duke of Ferrara, ending up with a rather poor substitute. People cannot purchase presence, except in real estate, fine art and (still, lamentably) the slave trade.

It's something to think about as I drive my Japanese car with Venezuelan gas on my way to the local East African grocery store (where they now call me brother) to buy a Bermudan phone card to call my girlfriend. In Azerbaijan.

1) Critics are split on whether the fact that nothing is anywhere means that nothing means anything anymore, (man, how's that for a brain teaser) but Kevin Dole 2 thinks so.

Lookout! Names dropping!
Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Robert Browning, and YOU.