Eastern, the company that brought you the ventilated frame, has joined the list of companies (Solid and, uh…Solid) who offer nine-inch rise, 30-inch wide bars. What we have here is the Wonder Years Nineties Bar, which makes absolutely no sense seeing that The Wonder Years actually took place in the ’70s. Or was it the 60s? (It was actually the ’60s AND the ’70s. Oh.)
Anyway, this guy is stoked to finally have a choice when it comes to bars.
Hey, look, if you want to run huge bars, that’s your business. If you’re sitting there looking at your Grand Slams and saying, “man, these would be PERFECT if they were only wider and taller,” you’re stoked. Or if you’re one of those guys running a flipped-over Fit DLD stem with 12 spacers under it and grips that stretch past your barends because you fucking hate Solid and you’d rather give your money to al Qaeda, you finally have another choice. If you like your barspins to sound (and look) like the blades of a Huey, cool. (You could run white barends to really get that helicopter vibe going.) Now it’s easier than ever to have your grips a full foot higher than your seat. And what I really want to see is a set of these on a flatland bike—the idea of bars wider than wheelbase just gets me all sorts of excited.
No, what bugs me is the name. Wonder Years Nineties Bars? What does that even mean? A long time ago I did a post where I listed all the bar names I could remember. Many of them were terribly clever-sounding, others were, well, not so clever. And you’d think the second-ever set of super-giant bars would get a clever one.
Apparently not.
I understand that the name “Sasquatch” has already been taken. I understand that type-of-bar name—strip, gay, crow, dive—has been beaten to death, resurrected, then beaten to death again. But within two minutes of seeing these Eastern bars, I came up with what I think would have been the perfect name:
The 9:30 Bar.
It’s short. It’s simple. It makes sense. And it references an actual club* in DC where Minor Threat and Fugazi more or less lived.
Oh well, whoever comes out with the next set of super-giant bars can use it and thank me later.
* that has a bar in it
