If this were a Friday quiz, which it isn’t, I suppose this would be the essay question:

The primary reasoning I’ve heard behind people running bigger and bigger bars is this: “It gives you more control.” Now personally, I think this is true up to a point. Back in the good old days of 19″ Castillo Bars, when men were men and those men slid their grips all the way to the crossbar, wider bars were definitely a step in the right direction. The thing is—to me—things have now gone way too far the other way. If you’re an 85-pound kid with shoulders the size of the average house sparrow’s, a pair of 30″ wide bars is probably going to give you less control than a pair of 25″ wide ones.

But that’s not even my point.

My point is this. If the reasoning for wider bars is “more control,” why do many people with super-wide bars also have a) no brakes, b) super-short rear ends, and c) vestigal seats? Brakes give you more control. Longer rear ends (arguably) give you more control. And a seat raised to a reasonable height absolutely gives you more control.

So my question is this:

If you run super-wide bars because they give you “more control,” why do you intentionally set up the rest of your bike to give you less?

I picked up the current copy of Road Bike Action this week to accompany me on a train ride, and less than 20 pages in I found the most amazing bike part in the history of history. You know all that stuff I’ve said about pointless BMX parts? This takes the cake, eats it, then shits it on my head and eats it again.

I present to you the $1,600 carbon/ti brakeset.

Unbelievable. But hey, at least you get free shipping.

*EDIT* Changed the title to what it should have been in the first place. Sorry, Brett and Greg, it won’t happen again. (Why can’t I remember what video used this? I remember Hallman riding to Bad Religion in a Standard video, but I think it was a different song. Stupid faulty memory.)