Don Giovanni Premiere Recap

Spoiler: It went incredibly.

(clicky make biggie, thanks Greg!)

I'm one of those people that's hard to please, as a general rule. But I can firmly and happily report that if not one more thing came from this entire movie project I'd be satisfied. Everything went off without a hitch, and exceeded my expectations. From the turnout to the weather to help from strangers to my two best friends winning the race, I was blown away. My only worry is how I'll ever top it, in terms of things I organize and in terms of personal satisfaction.


The alleycat swelled to 67 people, which I believe is a record for Salt Lake. It was a scramble downtown then up to the theater, check out the manifest here. At one of the stops Cory, Mark, Mark's friend and Meera decided to make a little high art with the help of the racers:

Pretty talented bunch, I gotta say. After that they got photo-shot by Tom Fleming halfway up the hill, here are some of the best ones:

Tony was first up the hill, and apparently took Tom by surprise.

Joergen's suffer face.





For more alleycat awesomeness check out this great little video shot by John Schafer. Thanks John! Check this shot of Heather and JC he nabbed through the Sketch Alley:




Once people started to accumulate up top we gathered up and went inside to watch the movie. Full house! 250 people came out to watch the inaugural screening! They were very kind and energetic and appreciative as an audience, they laughed in all the right spots and made me feel pretty great about the movie. I had to laugh, because as a filmmaker it probably never gets any better than an auditorium full of your closest friends and family. That experience will stick with me for quite some time, I imagine, I'm thankful for it.


Afterward I got to announce the alleycat winners and give them their prizes in front of a roaring crowd! Must be nice... We got some GREAT prizes from our sponsors:

For the top Women's Prize we got a brand-spankin' new pair of Outlier's Woman's 4Season Pants and a Pink Damselfly Saddle from Terry for runner up. We got a ton of great stuff from Pikey Bags, Blaq Design, Archive Bags, Discrete Headwear, Lifetime Collective, Velo City Bags, and Hold Fast. Schwalbe sent in 2 sets of Blizzard Tires, and Peonfx gave us a wild riding hoodie I wanted to keep.

But the top of the toppest, the best prize, by far, came from Burro Bags out of Jacksonville Florida. They sent us Salt Lake City's First EVER champion/bragging-rites bag, custom-made for the event:

And gawd damn it's beautiful.




Speaking of, this gawdy creation will rest on the shoulders of Alex Haworth whenever he feels like stepping his hipster-cred up a notch. Not only is this Al's first Alleycat win (He's placed second twice before, I believe), he's also my best friend and the Director of Photography on Don Giovanni! I swear I was surprised as everyone else when he won the race, even though between that and what comes next I should be accused of rigging it.


Because little Jessica Gilmore, my girlfriend, accomplice, and stunning supporter, won fastest woman and 7th Place overall. You go girl.

I can attest that she wanted the win BAD, going so far as to strap a map to her handlebars for the logistics of the race.

I felt great organizing this event, and extend my sincere thanks to all the friends, family, groups and organizations that helped me along the way. Off the top of my head I'd like to thank Dima, who helped land all the prizes for the race.

friggin' cutie.

Lindsey's Mom, who stepped in to help me sell tickets, otherwise I'd have been swamped. Greg Hebard, who is a good friend and puts up with me making mistakes. And for all of those who toiled, lent, waited, froze, and worried for me these past several months, I cannot thank you enough. You know who you are.

Here's the rough placement for the cat:
1st (Overall, 1st SS, General Badass): Alex Haworth (DP/Editor, Don Giovanni!)
2nd (Fix): Patrick Beecroft of Legal Messenger Inc.
3rd (Fix): Tony
4th (Fix): Joergen Trepp of Jason's Deli!
5th (Fix): Chase
6th (1st Geared): Greg Hebard of Jason's Deli!
7th (1st Woman's Fix, Overall, and Stubborn as Hell): Jessica Gilmore
8th: Max Hoagland
9th: Nate Borganicht (Birthday Boi!)
10th: Adam
11th: Lindsey (1st Woman Geared, 2nd Overall) (Plays Bike Punk in Don Giovanni)
12th: Benji
13th: Nate
14th: Peter Andersen
15th: Max Goldsmith
16th: Inacio Lopez (Plays Ottavio in Don Giovanni)
17th: JJ of LMI
18th: Zach Pina of Salt City Couriers
19th: Gary of SLCBikeCollective
20th: Tobi (3rd Woman)
21st: Dima Hurlbut (FLATTED, better luck next time :P)
22nd: JC of U of U Bike Collective
23rd: John
24th: Raphael
25th: James Miska (Musician on Don Giovanni)
26th: Matt Delporto (who designed our movie poster!)
27th: Luke Williams (Main Musician on Don Giovanni!)
28th: Connor Rickman (Producer, Don Giovanni!)
29th: Heather (4th Woman)
30th: Suzi (5th Woman)
31st: Gudrik
32nd: Skyler Chubaks
33rd: Simon Williams (UPM on Don Giovanni!)
34th: Matt
35th: Cat
36th: JD
37th: NOPE (First Tallbike!)
38th: Chris Rugal
39th: Vinnie of Jason's Deli! (He's a Car Driver, relax :))
40th: Al
41st: Lexie (DNF)
42nd: Joellen Morisson.
DFL: Matt Lemmons (Maybe?)

NOW, let's keep this sort of thing happening. Alleycats all around, everyone plan one. I don't care if there are no prizes and the stops are manned by pieces of paper, let's DO it! I'm waiting to hear if this movie gets into the Bicycle Film Festival, in the mean time lets make some more. I wanna ride in one! Thanks Salt Lake, and good night.


All the pictures we've seen and TONS MORE (Like EVERY SINGLE RACER GOING UP THE HILL) can be seen on my flickr page. Thanks to Tom, Al, Greg, and Zach Pina for the photos. Read More......

First Cyclocross race attempt full of awesome.

After doing really well in Alleycat races I started to feel like a jerk. They're great, really fun, and I'll continue to race them, but taking all my competitive energy out on a group of my friends in a non-serious race seems unfair. So after MUCH deliberation I decided to try cyclocross for my first real competitive sporting event since... 10th grade lacrosse? (which was an epic fail). I dislike the idea of just pedaling...pedaling...pedaling until you want to die, which is how I see roadracing, and I suck enough at mountainbiking that I would actually die if I went into that competitively, so Cyclocross is the perfect compromise! It's a freak sport where you take a road bike and strap mountain tires on it then go really fast and fall over when the course is hard. Oh yeah, and when the course is REALLY hard then you're encouraged to jump off and run! I had a tremendous time, needless to say.

By sand:


Running around like a sissy:


Good ol' pavement:


I registered in the beginners category and did really well. I got off to an ok start and slowly gunned past people whenever I had a chance, never getting passed. After 2 or 3 laps of holding 3rd place they called the last lap, which I made it halfway through before getting a flat. I wobbled along on my flat tire and got passed by everyone I had worked hard to sneak around before. They were all super-nice though and asked what had happened, commiserating in my hobbling state. At the end of it all I got 8th.
Sadly bumbing to the finish:


Thanks to Tom for coming and taking pictures, and to Chris for trying it out (he hated it, but then again he knows how to ride a bike properly so that makes sense). It was a great way for the first race to go, I can't wait to do it again! Read More......

Seriously Cool Bike

I love all my bikes, always have, always will. I think they're beautiful, and attention-worthy, but they're essentially replaceable tools, to be exchanged for the perfect combination that will both meet all my transport/fun/nerd needs and last awhile. But today (or yesterday, whatever) marks the completion-ish of a project that will test my resolve in regards to resisting material object lust and excessive use of superlatives.



This bike began over a year and a half ago, when Lindsey Howard decided she'd pursue frame building. She was 18 years old at the time and largely taught herself how to build, reading a ridiculous amount and apprenticing at the shop of a semi-retired hobby builder. She's brilliant at most things she tries to do, and manages to cram much more into a day than most. Lindsey wants to build bikes that are long-lasting and practical rather than flashy and expensive, she would like to learn a ton so she can teach people to build their own bikes and have things purpose built to fit rider needs for a long long time.

So she started by building me a completely impractical bike. A true Bicycle Quarterly enthusiast and fan of racks, fenders, and gears, she gritted her teeth and built a brazeon-less track frame with tiny clearances. Sorry, Lindsey.

She ordered some heavy-gauge Reynolds 531, that butts from 9 to 6 to 9 rather than 8 to 5 to 8 (i think?), and joined it with 74.5 degree lugs. The fork is still unfinished, it'll be taller and overbuilt straight-blades, set into a Henry James raked crown.

I thought Lindsey's skill at brazing was extremely impressive for her second frame, and I figured this thing would be around for a while, so I had Greg's friend Lance powdercoat it clear so all the bike's braze, flux, and heating marks show through over the bare metal. I love it, he did a fantastic job. I know the thing's new but I just stare at it, in different light, it has all these subtle underlights and luster from the polished metal.



My cameo on the frame was getting to file out that triangle in the seat lug.

It got my main Brooks Professional seat and the Nitto Pursuit bars I've had on all my fixed gears, which are a little long, so they may change in the final build. I shellacked the bars as an experiment and really like them. The wheels were Chris Ginzton's idea, as the bike's starring in my Don Giovanni movie. He ordered 2.0-1.5-2.0 DT swiss spokes with this amazing rifling on them and we laced my Miche hubs to Mavic open pros for a very light, strong wheel set.

This bike still needs its new fork and a brake to turn it from movie prop to daily whip (for me), but I've never been more enamoured with an object.

Thanks. Read More......

48hr Winnars!

So if you recall, we participated in the 48 Hour Film Festival this year. Good times were had by all, our spirit as a team was indomitable but we weren't in it to win it, so to speak, just trying to make the best film we could.

.... well, we also WON! Yay! The award of Best Film was presented to us, we get to go on to the NAB confrence in Las Vegas next year. In celebration and as a very special treat to you, I present you with our 48hr film festival submission, Halcyon. Enjoy!:
Read More......

Dada Robotnik Turns 1!

That's right, one year old! Time for reflection...

Reading my first-ever post, it appears I've gotten a lot less eloquent. Or maybe just learned to shut up more, I'm not sure. I was still thinking a lot about my place in the world, but more from a writerly perspective. These days I envy my former self, in that he had time to reflect, to crystallize his readings into coherent thoughts. Now I'm reduced to full-throttle babbling, but I'm more multi-media in my efforts!

I'm passionately and exquisitely looking forward to the end of the semester, when I'll graduate, and get to play with all of my ideas in the real world a bit more. I have only the most quiet and private of grand aspirations, in the meantime I'll learn a lot more and hopefully have time to fit in a book or two. And a date. A date'll be nice...

Big ups to ya'll for being paid by my mother to be my friend, and I'll leave you with a song.

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DD: First Post!

You have to start somewhere, right? Well, not really, you could not start at all, but then what would become of the planet?

Great. two questions, no answers. Off to a great start.

I'll begin by copying pages at random out of my Globalism and Visual Culture seminar's notebook. I don't understand the readings much, but I sure get a lot out of them and they set me off on all sorts of interesting tangents.

The Sublime
Is it a concept only for the coddled, for those who haven't suffered the terror of the object evoking such emotion? Or does genuine experience simply deepen the emotion? For who is the experience more sublime, the student gazing out at the tempestuous sea with loss in his eyes or a sailor with a shipwreck in his past? Basically my worry is this: that in creating art or soul with a link to the sublime moments of life we are tourists, partaking in things deep and real with and relating them only metaphorically to our own struggle. IS this the processing of real trauma, or does it cheapen the processing of real trauma?

The US as unsustainable
I suppose I should back up. The basic claim of this idea is that in academia there has been a progressive slide towards the corporatized or compartmentalized intellectual, those who are too busy fundraising and skating political lines to really push new radical ideas, or those who are so disconnected from the real world that their ideas have no weight or play in non-academic society.

If we find it as true that an informed democracy stems from an educated populous, who use the very act of reading as a mode of learning which forces reflection (takes time, doesn't it, to absorb the written word?), then the growing disconnect between a writing academia and the educated masses is just one more symptom of the way our democracy is becoming less informed. In other words, our education system is intellectually unsustainable because, simply put, people aren't taking time to think deeply about relevant things. If you follow the train of logic supported by these humanist writers (Rey Chow, Jeffery Harpham, Henry Giroux, Carol Becker), then the democracy created from education is unsustainable as well.

I live in an age of a sort of utility/nihilism, where I'm uninterested in a career and more interested in base survival. The idea of working from an uprooted reality is more appealing than working within the political system, I'd rather strap boots on and fend for myself than network and research. This allure is simply apathy taking another form, the apathy of the sensitive individual vs. the global. You need to either believe in a sentient, benevolent god or be really good with large numbers, I have neither trait.

Deus Ex Machina? will the blog save us? because if academia can be non-academized, thrown out into the unsheltered realm of public speech, than perhaps it can maintain its link to reality. Perhaps then we can have a new conversation that includes both the starry-eyed student and the shipwreck survivor. Read More......