Partly Cloudy, 64°
Last weekend, local hipsters were delighted by the discovery of a new, extremely hard-to-ride bicycle, made exclusively as a joke by a 1920s comedy troupe. Local bike historian and Subway sandwich artist Dwayne Porter found the skeleton of the bike in a local river bank where he and his friends listen to Sufjan Stevens and late-era Green Day, straddling the line between ironic and authentic listening.
“I looked at it and immediately knew it would change the face of transportation,” said Porter, tightening several screws in places where the screws hold no significant importance. “It’s quite genius, actually. It works using an innovative system of anchors, ropes and hexagonal wheels.”
According to several archive films, the bike was apparently immobile, leading to various gags where the actors would try to push it down a busy street and fail, which finally led to a climactic ending where they resort to throwing it down a cliff and into a river bank.
“I rode it to the coffee shop the other day,” began Morgan Woodley, smoking two cigarettes at once. “Handles pretty good. I like the feel. Good wheels. I might take it home and replace the seat with an old table saw blade I found the other day.”
During the trial run last Thursday, several cars stopped to help the new machine make it up a hill. The riders flipped off the drivers, dove onto their bikes and struggled to make it a few feet before getting into coughing fits.
“I think they’re trying to be organic or something,” said local businessman Bob Totino. “I thought the tires were flat, but it turns out they’re just painted onto pieces of rotting wood. In fact, the whole thing looks a lot like graffiti and driftwood.”
