Fixie

The customer recognizes my ragged youthfulness along with my chosen profession and interprets it all to include feelings of revolutionary resentment towards more traditional ambitions. "Most people don't choose a career path based on what they enjoy. The decision is a noxious combination of fear and convenience." This is just one of many generalities he preaches at me with exaggerated conviction because he wants me to agree with him with the same vigor, like we're suddenly going to feel a warm kinship because of it. Like if you underline a few common interests with enough enthusiasm, you could bypass the years it takes to form a real friendship. I own a garage and sell miscellaneous refurbished goods (appliances, tools, bicycles, etc), and I have these conversations with lonely idealistic souls new to downtown often enough to know that he is about to say something even more riddled with jagged camaraderie bait. "...and fear and convenience ought to be abolished in general." He's just another hack in a fedora who has mistaken my dusty shop for a drawing room in some Russian novel. He's been checking out my one bicycle, and he's touched his wallet several times in the 15 minutes he's been rambling, as though he's still trying to decide. I have no doubt that he is going to buy this recently repainted cerulean blue fixed gear Schwinn with the visibly marked-down price. He knows it to; it is the only thing in the world towards which he feels no ambivalence. Meanwhile I struggle to find the balance of being cordial enough not to alienate the sale but curt enough to get him to complete what is really a perfunctory transaction that requires no such declamatory statements. I turn 90 degrees to the right and tinker on my workbench as he tells me about how primitive it is that the city lacks proper bike lanes on its arterial boulevards, and how the city should adopt a filtered permeability model. While I may not have an associates degree in urban planning, I know that a several hundred year old city is not very likely to repossess its storefronts so the citizens with the highest smugness-to-profitability ratio can save their knees a few statistically inevitable scrapes. He takes the hint when I break eye contact and apply my Dremel to some lightweight titanium tubing.

There is a reason I tolerate vexing hipster rants to sell a cheap used bicycle in my otherwise surprisingly profitable shop. I keep track of all their inclinations so I know where they may be found. Within two weeks I will have stolen the bike I just sold them and sold it to somebody else, and it helps to have a general idea of where they'll be. Urban cyclists tend to conglomerate at the same few cafes, but daytime is difficult to work with. From the conversation I glean whether they are after indie music, poetry, slutty art school girls, jazz, DJ's, terrible punk shows, etc. After they basically read their Facebook profile to me, I know which venues to stroll by every Friday and Saturday night to find my bike. Sooner or later, it ends up on the rack, and I retrieve it.

Once the bike is at my shop, I am sure to repaint the frame and obscure any recognizable dings and scratches in case they return to buy a replacement, which is usually what happens. I stole my bike from the same guy three times in 2 months. Eventually I sold him a used Vespa for three grand, which he's had better luck with. He stopped by to tell me this, and he introduces his friends to me when I see him drunk swaying in front of clubs late at night. Many of them know me already.

Today's customer didn't give me any good leads... if I had to guess, he spends most of his time with the lights out watching Zeitgeist drinking pure grain alcohol. He wore a wrinkled white dress shirt with suspenders, so my first stake out is either Ellis Island circa 1921 or the jazz clubs. Given his disdain for the bourgeoisie, I avoided the places that charge admission and feature Pat Metheny covers in favor of the seedier venues. Places with names like The Rusted Oleander and Brazen Blue seemed like his scene, but I hung out all night and all I got was a free preview of tinnitus. After that I winged it for a while, hitting up all of my usual spots until I realized the one clue he gave me with his words. He spoke of career choices and civil engineering... so I scanned the 24 hour library at the university religiously for two weeks until I gave up.

Having exhausted all other options, I toured the cafes where all of my former clients have Sunday brunch. I found him at Merci Beaucoup sitting alone at the bar next to the spinning cakes. I sit down on the other side and order something to drink. Within three sips he recognizes me and starts a conversation. I ask him how the bike is working out and he says, "It needed a little adjustment and some new parts... and that color was hideous, I don't know who owned it previously but it was just awful." I paused to wonder what type of person takes such issue with cerulean blue, then asked if he had it with him today. "You know to be honest, I sold it to a friend. I needed something with more gears, y'know?" So my bike was lost, but there was one more thing I was looking for. I asked how he was acclimating to the downtown scene, and he replied, "I spend most of my time at home or at the library studying for classes." I didn't have to ask him which college or at what times he could be found there, I already knew I was right enough about it. So right, in fact, that I needed to close my shop and find a new city, somewhere I can hopefully never become so familiar with as I have with this city.