Of bikes and men(?)

Only one thing angers me more than seeing Charge bicycle being ridden by a 13-yr-old, and that’s seeing a Charge bicycle ridden by a chav of any age. These jokers do not deserve such a fine, sexy riding machine as this:

Why am I writing about this? Because today on my walk to get lunch I saw both. That’s right. On my way to Tesco, I spotted some kid riding down the street on the bike pictured above. He was riding behind a man I assumed to be his father, on whom I place 100% of the blame for this travesty. This is the equivalent of receiving:

• a Ferrari as your first car; or
• a Gibson as your first guitar; or
• Heidi Klum as your first girlfriend

The problem isn’t only that it’s not fair. That does not bother me. The problem is that these kids will be messed up for life.

This segues nicely to my walk back from Tesco, when I spotting a chav of some indeterminable age riding down the same street on a Charge bike, a single speed like the model pictured above but this one was red. For those of you reading this outside the United Kingdom, chav is a derogatory term used to describe certain teenagers who typically wear tracksuits or hoodies made by sporting brands and who typically are part of a lower socio-economic group. They nonetheless find the resources to take up smoking from the age of 6, raise pit bulls (and pit bull type breeds) that will bite your face off, pierce themselves multiple times, and obtain mobile phones that play tinny-sounding music at a volume too low to enjoy but just loud enough to annoy every other person on the bus.

In terms of bicycles, your typical chav will ride a full-suspension mountain bike with 3-inch tires and possibly disc brakes. This bike will have not seen any mountains, trails, or streams, unless you count the stream of urine running down the Camden sidewalk. So when I saw this kid with frosted spiked hair wearing a light-blue popped-collar t-shirt and track pants riding a single speed racer down the street, it struck me as being visually quite strange. My surprise turned to anger when he passed me by and I saw the Charge label stuck across the frame.