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Industrial Wastrel: O'Grady on Interbike

Published: Sep. 26, 2006
Industrial Wastrel: O'Grady on Interbike
Industrial Wastrel: O'Grady on Interbike

Editor at large Patrick O'Grady is roaming the halls of Interbike again this year and threatens to send occasional updates whenever he finds a tavern with wireless Internet access. Here's the first installment. — Editor

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — It beats me how they always manage to assemble this monstrous trade show in time for opening day, especially considering that some outfits (not VeloNews.com) can't even arrange a hotel room for barnstorming libel artisans who turn up at dark-thirty with a Subaru full of electronica, drawing tools and attitude.

Remember, we want a nice, clean carpet for people to drop slobbery PowerBar crumbs on
Remember, we want a nice, clean carpet for people to drop slobbery PowerBar crumbs on
Photo: Patrick O'Grady

After sorting out my living arrangements for the next four days, I hit the show floor shortly before lunch to scope things out and it looked like that final scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where some menial is parking the Ark, boxed and stenciled, in a giant warehouse filled with a few jillion other stenciled boxes. Here the Teamsters handle the boxes, the parking, and if you slip them enough money, the quiet assassination of a publisher.

It wasn't all booth assembly and body odor at the Sands Convention Center on Tuesday, though. Chris Zigmont at Pedro's was contemplating a bit of guerrilla marketing that involved stealing wheelsets from the next booth over, which belongs to his former employer Mavic, and giving them away two at a time with every purchase of the new enviro-lube Chainj.

Meanwhile, Soulcraft's Sean Walling, the man behind last year's revival of the Golden Toiddy Awards from the Society of People Who Actually Make Their Own Shit (SOPWAMTOS), announced he had moved beyond, or perhaps slightly below, guerrilla marketing to "baboon marketing." He didn't elaborate, and I don't have any idea what it means, but it apparently doesn't involve displaying his giant purple hindquarters and flinging dung at passersby, if only because there are so many burly Teamsters around.

Tonight brings the annual challenge to digestion that is the Bicycle Retailer & Industry News staff dinner at Gordon Biersch, a miserable excuse for a brewpub whose offerings approach the lofty standards set by Coors, or perhaps Grain Belt. The only known antidote is plenty of Scotch; happily, Ruth's Chris Steak House and our favorite cork-puller, Mistri the Bartender, are but a short stroll away. Besides, we've already taken preventative measures involving a 23-year-old bottle of Guatemalan rum.

No carbon-fiber bicycles were harmed in the production of this column, but your brain may have suffered an irreparable abrasion or two. Send your thoughts, scrambled or otherwise, to webletters@insideinc.com. Remember, if you can, to include your full name, city and state/nation.

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