ROLLAPALUZA

It's been ten years since the start of what was to become Rollapaluza, well done guys.
This event is essentially this years Donkey Derby but Winston and Caspar are wanting to try to get as many couriers from anywhere to come and celebrate this milestone. Racing is only open to current working messengers but anyone is welcome to come and hurl abuse at the riders. It's supporting the LCEF and you can come and soak up the atmosphere, and by atmosphere I mean smell.

You can do all your pre-race trash talking here.

GALLUS

Jeremy Schlachter used to be a courier in Glasgow but he's now building frames in Texas and they are lovely. I've been meaning to post something about Gallus Cycles for ages but Hey! What are you gonna do?

I can't really be bothered writing much so here's Jeremy's Bio lifted straight from his website and not changed in any way:

I would be lying if I said I grew up on a bicycle, or had some successful racing career. That wasn't really how it happened for me. I stole bikes from a young age to buy drugs, but not till the last ten years or so has it played such a major part of my life. I grew up mainly skateboarding and working on my crack habit. I'd kick around the neighborhood on stolen bikes, but my real fascination with cycling and bikes didn't happen until, in a deal with The State to avoid prison, I began college.

I started college in 2001 at the University of Texas. Once I moved to Austin, I immediately crashed my car (still car free by the way), but after a short spell inside for Grand Theft Auto a decided it was much easier and safer getting around town on bicycles I had just “ Found “. I was also finding that I was getting too much attention from my parole officer to do drugs. I was looking for a new way to get my thrills, and cycling provided that. One of my roommates encouraged me to do a Porno Movie with her, and I thought I would give it a shot, just to see if I could do it.

This lead to me earning enough cash to buy a road bike, an entry level Fuji. The following year the State of Texas found that due to my Scottish great-grandmother they had a loophole to deport me to Scotland where I continued to bum around as a workshy student, studying buildings at Glasgow Art School. My bike provided a great way for me to discover my new home. During my second year, I managed to get a job as a bicycle courier, when the infamous messenger James "Jailbait" Tait drunkenly offered me a job when I started a fight with him at a pub. He told me to turn up the next morning, not really expecting me to. He didn’t know I had just been evicted, so with nowhere else to go, I did turn up. It was December 21, 2003, the shortest day of the year, albeit a cold and nasty day in Glasgow. My road bike was instantly ridiculed by the gritty Glasgow couriers.

I ended up borrowing, then just keeping a pal’s Trek 850 mountain bike. Which I eventually sold without his knowledge to a junkie and bought an On-One Il Pompino. It was a great bike for messenger work, but it fell out of the Fugly tree and hit all the branches on the way down then bounced back off the ground and hit a few more branches, nowhere near as good looking as the classic handmade frames cool messengers like Xander were riding.

During my Westcoast Messengers period, a love for drinking and fighting continued to grow. Though I enjoyed learning about architecture and the design process, I could see that my true passion was in cycling. I also found that once the Art School installed a Firewall to filter out porn I did not enjoy sitting in front of a computer all day, but preferred crafting things by hand. I made the decision to combine my passion for cycling, love of making things and my knowledge of the design process to begin building bicycle frames.

After five years in Scotland, I used the last of my couriering money to buy a new identity and returned to the United States to pursue frame building...

It goes on a bit more. He studies frame building with Yamaguchi ( who I have heard of ) then I think that in order to clear some gambling debts Jeremy eventually has to go to the Ukraine to build bikes for Priests. But that’s all sorted now.
You can read the full version HERE.

You can check out his work here:
Gallus Cycles

And if you didn't think Jeremy said " Uhmm.." enough in the first clip there's more here:


He's wearing a Millportpoloco shirt in this one which makes it better to watch.

I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT A FANDAN IS

MORE INFO HERE

THE STINKER

At this time of year everyone's bike is pretty filthy and if your approach to bike maintenance is as lackadaisical* as mine then it's really bad. So while cycling up to sunny Camden Town today, confident that I was riding one of the dirtiest bikes in London, my bubble was burst when I saw this little treasure:

It's not even locked. In Glasgow someone would've been away with it.

What you can't tell from the photo is how badly the bike smelled, but I've been writing a blog for a couple of years so I should be able to evoke the senses using the written word as skillfully as, say, Cormac McCarthy. Right?
Here goes:

Imagine if a dog ate a week old tandoori chicken thigh, then shat it straight out, then a cat came along and ate the shit then sicked it back up, you put that sick in a jar and add some milk then leave it next to a radiator for three weeks. When you open that jar, that's what this bike smelt like.

Fortunately the stench particles were so heavy they didn't travel very far so you had to get within a couple of feet to fully experience the nasal delight that was this bike, unfortunately in taking this photo I got that close.


*There's no S in lackadaisical, that's two things I learned today. The other being satanist Aleister Crowley used to live above the cheese shop we pick stuff up from.

AS IF BY MAGIC...

Here's that photo that was supposed to be at the top of the last post:

No expense spared on the headsets round here.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

The picture above was supposed to be a photo of my filthy and fucked up bike after another year of couriering but The Pistette lost the cable that plugs into the camera* so I've just had to scan the whole camera instead...
looks shit.

That's another decade in the bag, somehow HOP has managed to get through another year without starting an online shop although with the header designed it can't be that much longer til it becomes a reality:



This year has ended with a lot fewer riders on the road. It was looking really bad for the bike messenger at points this year and not just financially: Ten years ago people would say couriers look like Pirates ( if they liked you ) or Homeless ( if they didn't ) nowadays they nearly call security because they think you're a suicide bomber... times have changed. I personally had to spend most of my none riding days printing shirts for other people to keep myself in the manner to which I'm accustomed, which meant there was little progress with HOP stuff.
Fortunately the year ended with a proper Christmas rush on the road so it looks like bike couriers won't be going the way of the Buffalo hunter just yet.


HOP's general hope for the new decade is a return to the days when you could get a kicking just because of the sort of music you listen to.
On that note:

HAPPY NEW YEAR
MTHRFCKRS







*This was pretty much her last task as a member of HOP as she's off to Austria for the next six months to lose things for Swarovski as part of her real job. No one is sure what exactly she will be doing there but she plans to learn the ancient art of "Blinging" things ( she has plans to try to "Bling" a sausage and a dogshit ) a task she's taking so seriously she even got the tooth that couriering claimed fixed back into her head.
POSER!



This departure leaves an opening for a girl of equal hotness to come in and replace her for the next half a year. Your main tasks will be moving things and then forgetting where you put them and never fixing your bike even though we know fine well you know how to. An aptitude for burping and farting would help but is not a requirement.
All applications should be made in writing to the address at the top of the page.

RIDING THE LONG WHITE CLOUD

A skate trip with a difference or a bike trip with a difference?
Fun by anyone's standards.
Watch the trailer HERE.
I think you can see the full movie on FuelTV but no one at HOP can be bothered wading through their website.

CHRISTMAS PARTY

Flyer says it all.

Chandra says there's 10 couriers exhibiting in the Art Show, so it looks like while the downturn during the recession has been bad for courier wallets it's left plenty of people with enough energy left at the end of the day to produce something creative.
The All**cat is going to be short and sweet and tailored towards racers.
By short I mean not longer than 1 1/2 hours cos I'll not be hanging around to collect your manifests when there's liquor to be drunk and artwork to be accidentally leaned against and knocked over.

PROGRESS

Obergruppenpistard: So we really need to get on with organising an online shop.

Xander: Yeah I know, don't worry I'm on top of things.

Obergruppenpistard: Great, every time I've looked in today you've been on the computer so how far have you got with it?

Xander: Well, today I've made the words at the top of the blog say "Elitist Dumbfuckery".

Obergruppenpistard: You know if anyone actually ran this place you'd be sacked by now?

Xander: Yup!

HOP SUPERFANS

The bold Mikey QBoss has joined the ranks of idiots superfans who have got themselves some indelible House of Pistard ink. I have been putting off posting this because as you can see from the photo Mikey sent the logo is back to front:



We'd been debating whether to tell Mikey, but if we didn't tell him and then posted the picture someone would notice and if we posted it and then laughed at him for getting it wrong that wouldn't be very nice ( we're wankers but we're not pricks ). Fortunately this photo of the tattoo actually getting done surfaced on Jack Crank's* Flickr and if the London on his hat is the right way then the tattoo is on his left leg and the photo he sent was back to front... phew!



So this is how the photo should have looked:



Much better.
It is however, upside down.**

The first retard ummm...superfan to get their love permanently attached was Take A Worm For A Walk Week and Loss Leader singer Joe Quimby:



Then Nhatt and Ryan got some done for an Al**ycat checkpoint:





They all got free shirts for their trouble ( although Nhatt disputes that claim ) which, what with our current ordering process, would mean that the easiest way to get your hands on a Tee Shirt is to get a tattoo.
It brings a tear to our eyes ( even The Obergruppenpistard's glass one ) to see such devotion and we thank you all for displaying your support in such a permanent fashion.
Anyway as of next week we're changing our name to Super Colossal and we'll only be doing snakeboarding tees.




*Jack briefly rode for Creative but now he's living in an NY borough who's name escapes me...what is it? Oh well never mind. He also does No Gods No Vegetables which is the only thing keeping me in touch with young peoples music today. As I type this I was supposed to be watching Dio singing FUCKING STARGAZER! but he went and fell over in the shower or something and had to cancel. BALLS.
**Our logo is a bit like the UnionJack in that it's really hard to tell if it's the right way up or not.