Buy the Future, Now!, Young Consumer

BusinessWeek has come out with their 2007 IDSA IDEA Awards. They give gold, silver or bronze medals to companies for innovations in design (91 in all). I thought the sweet Samsung LCD Mobius monitor was well designed. Look at it fold! Also on the site I noticed a cool new integration between a personal LCD monitor and a stationary bike. This had particular salience for me because I was granted a free 10 day trial at the nearby Boston Sports Club in Allston and was surprised at the sheer volume of machines with their own monitors. Basically, I think that caters to the whole skewed idea that “modern” means “separation from other people to enhance multitasking and not really enjoying any one activity”. Personally, I wish I had a bike around here but Boston was only dubbed “America’s Walking City” and not “Bike Wonderland USA” since it is a notoriously treacherous land for bikers (“Ah… biker. I’m such an idiot.” – Super Troopers).

The other week I was walking to Cambridge and was crossing an intersection, and saw a makeshift shrine to a girl who had died at that intersection in a bicycle wreck. Strapped to an electric pole, her mangled bike was painted white with fresh flowers in the spokes, and the whole area was surrounded with pictures of the girl. Shudder. Oddly enough, a few days later I went to Pita Pit and they had a clipping from a local paper about the same girl – who happened to have been an employee there. Very saddening.

Essentially, due to that grim experience and my knowledge of the local street congestion, I know that I’ll never buy a bike here and may have to join a gym, although I’ve found some purely body weight exercises that do the job just fine and make me feel incredible pain. Pain is good. Ahhh, if only I could just be a disciple of Gym Jones.

~ by caspring on August 4, 2007.