Re: [CR]T-Town Report/Confente Sighting

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In-Reply-To: <5D7622C111F78A4C8A27817E18BBAEB7013600@mlsswn02p.WAS.INT.IMF.ORG>
References: <5D7622C111F78A4C8A27817E18BBAEB7013600@mlsswn02p.WAS.INT.IMF.ORG>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
From: "joel metz, ifbma/sfbma" <magpie@messengers.org>
Subject: Re: [CR]T-Town Report/Confente Sighting
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 17:51:58 -0700

>Yes, it is, indeed, true. There was a Confente track bike at the
>T-Town swap yesterday. The gods were smiling. Of course, if the
>gods had been a little more benevolent, the Confente would have been
>a 56cm! Alas, this one was 61. That wasn't much of a deterrent
>though, and I was the lucky one to score it before the gates opened
>to the masses. I like to think that I may have saved it from a life
>of messenger duty on the streets of NYC.

hey, there *are* worse fates...

i know it might be tantamount to heresy to suggest that a confente be ridden daily as a work bike, on one hand, it could be argued that a wholly different, yet just as valid, type of enjoyment of such a bike would occur in that event.

i do think, though, that you wouldve easily been able to convince any messenger worth their salt that theres no way they should be riding a bike of that rarity and cachet on the street...

theres a lot of fine messenger steed out there, worthy in some minds of far "better" treatment than what theyre given, but this gets into the extreme end of the "ride or display" argument, out of which there is no exit :)

youd be surprised how many messengers would gladly lend an ear to the confente story - trust me, were a hotbed of people who care about the classic/vintage/ etc bike world... and theres a lot of minds out there who just need that switch flipped into appreciation of a bike as more than just a great ride...
> I was also lucky to score some frame facing and threading tools
>from the now defunct Outback bicycle frame builder from Rockville MD.

theyre defunct? yeah, tig, i know, but they were one of the few producing fixies that had a distinctively street-worthy bent to them...

-joel

--
joel metz : magpie@messengers.org : http://www.blackbirdsf.org/
bike messengers worldwide : ifbma : http://www.messengers.org/
po box 191443 san francisco ca 94119-1443 usa
==
i know what innocence looks like - and it wasn't there,
after she got that bicycle...