All the colors I am inside have not been invented yet
Words by Alexa Daugherty
+ images by Luke Batten + Frame by Method Bicycles
We at Hero Headquarters are urgently trying to answer Shel Silverstein’s thirty-nine year-old inquiry into just where the sidewalk ends. Despite all our commotion, the only thing we know for sure is where the journey begins: just down the block from our studio. At this fabled start, Garry at Method Bicycle is busy handcrafting us a custom-made bicycle. From here, we know the frame may go many places – to the small produce market across our street or on a trek to wherever local Illinois amateur races might have us venture. In all these musings we’ve unearthed one rather special hypothesis: maybe the road never really does end. And so, in coordination with its primary color(s)-scheme, this bike has myriad destinies. Here, like a father for his newborn, we envision some (rather enviable) futures:
Blue + Yellow: Green, like the Illinois countryside where one Hero might ride to indulge in fantasies of storied western woods. Or like the ivy-covered buildings young co-eds cycle past en route to discuss objects’ Platonic form vs. function. At the least, this naturel hue enables a visual escape from the city in all its hot asphalt busyness.
Red + Yellow: Orange like the sunrise on race day. Holding this bike, we envision early hours spent munching on Belgian waffles smeared with marmalade and bike rides done at day-break down rural, beaten paths. Perpetually illuminating a new world abuzz with ripe possibility, our frame expounds upon this Pantone-enabled sense of renewal.
Red + A Little Less Yellow: Burnt Orange like the sunset post-race day. We have big hopes (or just big imaginations) for this bike-to-be’s affect on our willingness to sweat, strain, and succeed. And to succeed at TSH is no normal victory. It means finding joy in a fully-clothed jump off the rocks at Lake Michigan’s edge, identifying commonalities between a Macy’s couch and cycling (one guess: Biking down Couch Street in West Town, Chicago), and bounding to the beat of some Shaggs-esque bass drum. Jovial, we bask in burnt orange glows of not just accomplished, but enjoyed, explorations.
Red + Blue + Yellow: Black like warm summer nights spent dreaming under stars or beneath covers. Black evokes a sense of deep-time where edges and ends blur into one pliant future, up for constant revision and reevaluation, malleable like the True Temper OX Platinum from which this frame is crafted.
But yet, what is this bike you now see? No doubt, its potential is non-asymptotic. Magenta. Cerulean. Caput Mortuum. The frame’s color-wheel will spin with each new Hero that hoists him/herself up upon its custom-made seat. Currently, the frame beholden awaits a final painter. More idealized form than anything else we, as Heros, hope to save the bike from ever fully forming into a static structure, a Platonic shadow. Rather, it is our duty to envision the bike as a moveable piece, capable of literally rolling with any possibilities imagined by our occipital cortex, fulfilled by multifarious ligaments, and proven in many miles. We will ride, to infinity and beyond, no sidewalk in sight.