BarterTown

Volume 2, Issue 8, October 1995

Oh boy… rereading this one made me feel all warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. I could almost taste the mocha from Polar Bear just down the road from The Bicycle Trip when it used to be on Soquel Avenue right across from The Crepe Place. I was overcome with a sudden hankering for a garlic bagel with hummus and sliced tomato from the Bagelry, some fresh Beckmann’s bread, maybe a pint or two of Seabright Brewery’s hangover inducing finest. Foggy morning salt-tinged air, and the ordered chaos of a life that involved not much other than bikes and friends. BarterTown was a pretty good place to live.

For historical purposes, everyone mentioned in this essay was based on a real person, and I did in fact trade a set of wheels and a pair of RaceFace cranks to Willie Bullion in exchange for a 1973 BMW 2002 that he still refuses to admit he had driven around on the bottom of a lake (judging by the undercarriage damage and the amount of water inside the transmission). I still have the Schwinn Panther that Hoffman gave me for the trip to Vail. I miss that ratty old 2002, and that old Band of Gypsies/3 Mustaphas 3 tape…

We interrupt the usual feed of Colin Meagher images for this one. In a very rare departure from the usual photo-based support imagery, this issue (and the prior one) featured illustrations. No credit is given, so I am guessing that this is something whipped up by our art director, Michael Welman, who was largely responsible for the vibe and texture of the first two volumes of BIKE.

Barter Town is a place (so to speak) where there is no place (so to speak) for money. Given that it only exists in a conceptual sense, that you can’t get on the interstate and haul off to BarterTown, you sort of have to live there already or fall into it by accident. But, once there, it’s a pleasant enough place to be, pretty easy to get acquainted with. There seems to be a healthy mountain bike riding population in BarterTown, which is fine by me. It’s almost a Moab of the Mind (only the riding’s not as good as Moab because there isn’t any actual topography) – a place that’s been around forever and that’s had mountain bike riders woven into the social fabric in a pervasive, but not too insidious way during the last couple of decades.

Like I said, fine by me. The more mountain bikes around for me to work on, the higher my BarterStatus becomes. Since there’s no money, here’s how things work:

JavaHead (not her real name) comes into the shop with a freshly pretzeled wheel. She’s the head coffee jerk at the Coffee Shop. Doesn’t have a penny to her name, but is, as could be inferred from her title, in a good coffee BarterPosition. I’ll say, “All right JavaHead, I can rebuild your wheel on my time. You pay for the parts; I’ll cop the labor. It’ll come to about, ohhh, 10 mochas. No, 10 double mochas.”

Haggling will begin. “But Mike, I don’t have a penny to my name, and besides, isn’t 10 doubles kinda steep?”

“Ten doubles, take it or pay shop labor, cash, 35 bones. Here’s what to do about the parts. I can re-use the spokes, so all you have to do is go visit HogBoner (not his real name). He doesn’t drink coffee, but he does drink beer, and he’s got a ton of rims. Before you swing by, go over to the brewery, cut a deal with Suds (not his real name) the Brewmeister, coffee for beer, and trade the beer for a new rim. Got it?”

“I think so...”

“Good. Now, one more thing. I owe DoughBoy (not his real name) for a few loaves of bread, so I’m gonna donate five mochas to him. He knows what you look like and you’ll know who he is because he’ll introduce himself with the code ‘Grease the wheels of diplomacy,’

OK?”

“I dunno, Mike. This is getting complex. And, what if DoughBoy starts asking for more mochas?”

“Complex? You could always pay cash, JavaHead. And he only gets five mochas. Any more and you two have to start dealing on your own.”

So it goes. Audi-O-Phil (not his...well, you know) needs the oil changed in his forks. He comes in, proverbial hat in hand. I’ll hedge a bit before saying, “Weell, Phil, looks like I can swing this in a day or two. But, you have to make me a tape. I want Jimi Hendrix A Band of Gypsies Live on one side, and 3 Mustaphas 3 Soup Of The Century on the other. Don’t try to scam me on the tape either. Maxell XLII-S at the least.”

Phil might respond with, “I’ve got a good TDK UDS that I only taped on once, but I think you’re out of luck with the Mustaphas. How about Les Negresses Vertes?”

And I’d have to come back with, “OK, Les Negresses Vertes’ll do fine, but I’m serious about the tape. You want me to pour olive oil down your fork legs?”

In BarterTown, everything comes down to the art of the haggle and the perceived leverage that a person can create for him or herself. And, since money only enters the picture occasionally – and then only to offer up some form of baseline comparison of values when a convoluted haggling session has flown totally out of hand – actual hard cash moolah tends to lose the nebulous importance accorded to it in the real world. A person’s worth ceases to be calculated in dollar figures, becomes figured instead in terms of physical value. “What can you afford to pay?” transforms to “What can you do in return?” It’s hard to say if this appraisal is actually any better than the worldwide standard, dollar value, but it feels a little warmer and more human to me and most of the others who inhabit BarterTown.

BarterTown. Some of us live there out of necessity, others by choice. After a while there, it’s easy to forget about living in the real world and what that entails. You don’t really pay attention anymore to the fact that all your T-shirts are from the same place, or how your diet now consists of milkshakes, PowerBars, and sourdough bread. You live in BarterTown, and money has no meaning. It’s cool.

There are those who live here more comfortably than others. I’m one of them. The transition to BarterTime was perhaps easier for me to make because I was already living visible proof of the term “lowest common denominator.” As such, I slipped into a new way of financing my life with lubricious grace. Personal injury lawyers, tax accountants, dermatologists, and realtors might have a more difficult time of it, but then, they probably don’t need BarterTown any more than BarterTown needs them.

Me? I’m just happy to be here. Happy with the car I bought via a set of wheels and a pair of Raceface cranks, happy with my 1950 Schwinn that paid for Hoffman The Derelict Downhiller’s gas to Vail and back, happy with the beer and coffee that flows from the plagued-by-flats and constantly out-of-true staffs of the brewery and café, the cookies and leisure suits in trade for use of my GT BMX cruiser, and the heady feeling that I’m somehow eluding the conformity-enforcing grasp of Social Radar, which pulses with a heinous, threatening “pay the piper just because” ethic.

Barter Town is a good place. Come visit. Bring your beads, blankets, and mirrors. Maybe leave with Manhattan.