It’s the most beautiful time of the year, when just about every website on the internet is directing you to Black Friday round-ups. No judgement: these listicles keep the lights on for those publications and the people working for them. But that’s not how we do things here at Escape Collective, because there’s a conflict inherent in it: what seems as a genuine editorial recommendation is all too often a trojan horse with advertising lurking within.
There are broader ethical considerations than just editorial independence, too. We live in a world where overconsumption is out of control, with ever-widening gaps between the richest and the poorest. The profit-engorging lessons from the fast fashion industry have spread elsewhere. There’s less friction in the buying experience, less consideration, less patience, and always more more more stuff to buy. Black Friday is maybe the key monument to this: a day where huge companies make huger amounts of money, small companies feel increasingly pressured to slash their already thin margins, and consumers are sucked into the vortex. There are winners and losers in this – I just don’t think it’s the little guys, or the people who actually have to make or deliver the products.
Now, everyone has to look out for themselves – and if you are in the market for a new rain jacket or bike computer or pump or whatever, this is probably a great time to do that. And that’s fine! But around this time of year, it also sometimes can’t help feeling like all these listicles and sales and never-to-be-repeated savings are calibrated to numb you into a kind of compliance, scrolling feverishly in search of a bargain for something you maybe, if you think about it, don’t even really need.
If that’s sounding a bit like you or those around you this Black Friday, here’s a listicle of our own to maybe help bring you back from the brink.
1. Go for a bike ride
If you’re in the US, you’ve probably just spent Thanksgiving Day with those you love (and maybe those that you don’t), searching for the gleaming core of friendship and family at the bottom of a plate overflowing with food. You’ve cooked; you’ve cleaned; you’ve fallen asleep on the couch. It has been A Big Day. The day after, you wake to a quiet house and a day of possibility.
You could head to the nearest megamall to be assaulted by bright lights and a different pop song blasting from every storefront all at once, and kids screaming in trolleys while their parents wrestle with strangers over cut-price Nutribullets. You could lose a morning staring at a computer screen, credit card at the ready, comparing best-ever deals. Or you could grab your bike and go for a ride: short or long, hilly or flat, none of that really matters. Turn your legs, feel the air fill your lungs, and for the time you’re out there, just be.
2. Patch some tubes
If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a drawer in the garage with a bunch of old tubes* that you’ve been accumulating waiting for a moment that never seems to come. Now is that moment. Grab your little box of patches, your little tyre levers, your little tube of rubber cement. Get that little silver circle of serrated points. Pump up the tube, and look for the tiny hole that condemned this tube to the drawer in the first place. It never looks like much, but it’s enough to have brought your ride to a grinding halt way back then, and now it’s time to resurrect it.
Chuck something soothing on the stereo: Nick Drake’s a good one for this task. Rough up the tube around the puncture, squeeze a little blob of glue out and spread it around. The steam rises from your coffee cup on the counter beside you as you wait for the glue to turn from slick and wet to touch-dry. Press the patch on, and hold it there a while, feeling your heartbeat pulsing in your fingertips. It takes five minutes, ten tops, saves you $10, and it’s a little exercise in mindfulness.
*You may be on Team Tubeless, and if that’s the case, no stress: unthread the valve core and top up your sealant. Or check that all your bottle cage bolts are tight. Or spin your wheels picking out the tiny slivers of grit or glass working their way in.
3. Work on someone else’s bike
You, a bike person of exceptional intelligence and charisma and ravishing good looks, are equipped with a superpower: you know things about bikes that your friends or family probably don’t. It’s a good bet that they’ve got bikes sitting around gathering dust, slowly atrophying, tyres flat and gears clunky. All of those barriers stopping them from being able to experience the joy that bike-riding brings – each an added mental load on a list that is already overwhelming in its length.
For them, it probably requires them to pile the bike into the car, take it to a bike shop, feel a bit shameful or stupid about letting it slip this far, and wait for a week to get it back. For you, getting their bike back into a rideable state is probably a fifteen minute task that will make both of you feel good.
There are lots of levels of involvement you could take with this. You could just patch a tube, or turn the barrel adjustor on their rear derailleur a couple of times to get their shifting working again. Or you could take it a bit further: salvage a bike from the side of the road; build it up for a friend, or a friend’s kid, or someone who lacks the financial resources to get a bike of their own.
It doesn’t need to be a big thing. But do the nice thing, and share your love of bike riding.
4. Clean your bike
Chances are, you’ve got a bike (or more) in need of a bit of attention – maybe there’s something substantial wrong with it, but more likely it’s just a bit grubby. Maybe you rode in the rain a week or two back, and it’s spattered in grit. Perhaps there’s a Jackson Pollock original in tan-coloured mud speckled across the underside of your mountain bike’s downtube. There’s character in that, but there’s something to be said for a clean bike too.
Maybe you’ve got a bit more time up your sleeve: a chance to clean or wax your chain, or take the brake pads out and check how they’re doing in there. Unfray some cables. Clean some pistons. Regrease some bearings. Make sure your fork steerer doesn’t have any rings of death. Torque some bolts. Could be a big project, or could be as small as grabbing a sponge or a hose set to a gentle mist, and getting your bike gleaming again for next time.
5. Support the things you care about
There’s lots of institutions and businesses clamouring for your time and money – and especially so at this end of the year. Some of these are purely transactional: input X, receive Y. But others are a bit different: causes you care about, contributions to a world that you want to live in.
The media landscape is no different, with publications that give you the stuff you need and the stuff that you want. We’ve got a soft-spot for the little guys: the folks (like us) that are independent, member-supported, and exist because they’re trying to forge a different path to all the listicles and commerce.
If you’re into music, that might look like The Quietus or Hearing Things. If you’re into sports and culture, it might be Defector. And if you’re into cycling (which, just quietly, I reckon you are) and want to spread the word about Escape Collective, become a member, or gift a membership, or share an article with your ride buddies. It all helps keep the lights on, and is a little vote for a corner of the internet that tries to not be like the rest of it.
What are your Black Friday tips that aren’t actually Black Friday tips at all? Drop a comment for how to make bikes and riding them a better part of your day/week/life.
Did we do a good job with this story?