The Mysterious Bike Snob Reveals Himself
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Mon March 29 2010
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Posted Mar 30, 2010
- 8,861
New York
Cycling's Mystery Man Shows His Face
After Years of Anonymous Opinion on the Blogosphere, the
Bike Snob Finally Reveals His Identity
Over his nearly three years of obsessing over, satirizing
and deftly puncturing the sport of cycling, the anonymous
blogger Bike Snob has made his worldview clear. He loves
to ride his bike. He wants you to ride, too. Just maybe
not on those florescent wheel rims. Or pedal against
traffic. Or with your helmet on the handlebars. And even
if it's not fashionable, he'd like you to consider using
brakes.
Such style and safety points are well known to the readers
who log on daily to the Bike Snob's sharp-edged and
fetishistically detailed Web site:
bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com. The site established the Snob as
an acerbic sports blogger, earned him a monthly column in
the prominent U.S. cycling magazine Bicycling and won him
admirers like seven-time Tour de France champion Lance
Armstrong.
Still, there's one thing most readers don't know about the
Bike Snob: his real name. While not exactly going to Bruce
Wayne-levels of protection, the Bike Snob has shielded his
actual identity from the public, preferring to let his pen
name take the credit. He's posed for magazine and
newspaper articles with his face shielded, revealing only
fragments of detail about his personal life.
"Just hiding in plain sight," is how the Bike Snob put it
recently over a beer at Henry Public, a gastropub in
Brooklyn, N.Y.
But now the Bike Snob is ready for his close-up. With a
first-ever Bike Snob book on the way—and facing the
logistical problem of how to do a promotional book tour
while staying anonymous—the Snob has decided to unmask
himself.
The Bike Snob's name is Eben Weiss. He's 36 years old,
grew up riding BMX and is not a stranger to the media
world. After a brief stint as a New York City bike
messenger, he spent more than a decade in the publishing
industry, working as an agent with the Ralph M. Vicinanza,
Ltd. literary agency. His wife, Sara Goodman, is an editor
at St. Martin's Press, and the couple are expecting their
first child in May. Mr. Weiss races locally on an amateur
bike team sponsored by Gotham Bikes, a New York City shop.
But by his own account, he's a mediocre racer.
"I'm just a regular guy," Mr. Weiss said.
But "Who is the Bike Snob?" has been a popular guessing
game in cycling circles. Mr. Weiss's name has occasionally
popped up as a suspect on the message boards of cycling
Web sites like NYVelocity.com, but the Snob has never
stepped forward to confirm his identity. There will surely
be those who will say they knew who the Snob was all along.
Mr. Weiss, who also reveals his real name in the upcoming
issue of Bicycling, said he never intended to stay
anonymous forever. When he launched the site in June 2007,
he simply wanted to offer an alternative, common-sense
voice within the world of cycling, where amateur riders
might spend thousands of dollars on unnecessary equipment.
"A lot of cycling media exists to tell people about
awesome stuff they need or should want," Mr. Weiss
said. "And there is awesome stuff we all want. But it's
important to have a voice that says, 'You don't need it.
You don't have to want this.'"
Ms. Goodman, Mr. Weiss' wife, said that the Bike Snob blog
was briefly a secret from her, too. "He didn't tell me for
a little while," Ms. Goodman said.
Mr. Weiss would tell his wife as well as a small circle of
friends, including Paul DeBartolo, a Gotham racing
teammate. Mr. DeBartolo said the Bike Snob blog
contains "stuff we always talked about on rides." Gotham's
co-owner, David Nazaroff, described the real-like Bike
Snob as "very reserved."
Mr. Armstrong, who is competing in the Tour of Flanders in
Belgium on April 4, also learned the Snob's name early on,
and has ridden with Mr. Weiss on visits to New York. "He's
really smart and well read," Mr. Armstrong said. "I have
no problem spending four hours [riding] with him."
Mr. Weiss's book, "Bike Snob: Systematically and
Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling," will be
published by Chronicle Books in May. Mr. Armstrong said he
initially wondered how Mr. Weiss could promote a Bike Snob
book and stay anonymous. "I said, 'You're the Snob - you
can't go out on tour,'" Mr. Armstrong recalled. But in
June, Mr. Armstrong's bike shop in Austin, Texas, will
host a book signing by Mr. Weiss.
Mr. Weiss, who now writes full-time, has no intentions of
ending his blog.
"The book and dropping the anonymity pretense is a little
celebration," Mr. Weiss said. "And then it's back to work."
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