There is an argument on the table as to whether or not we should be using The Utopian! to air our rather sketchy underwear in public. To this answer we remain nonplussed. There is too much to say and we do not know how to say it. It seems that things have come to pass and we have gone with it. So thus it is said that we are strange.
Moral indignity. Fierce competition. Hatred among men. Disease. Poverty. Corruption. Scandal. Who could possibly handle this? And the prison system? And the medical system?
And yet we fly instead to the Harkov region. This for the velodrome. Харьковский велосипед завод. The Harkovsky bicycle works. ХВЗ. Not XB3, you morons. Khe Veh Zeh. It’s the anagram. It’s the initials.
Around 1980 we were having a problem having Olympics here. By 1984 it was chronic. I say we it can be any pronoun you feel like. It seems the Cold War wouldn’t allow sports for some reason. Maybe it was prostitution or maybe it was steroids. Or maybe it would have been much better if neither America nor the Soviet Union had to be so loud. It is an argument on both sides that they needed to be bigger and better and faster to defeat the other. My guess is that’s just how you have to play to play America and that’s a really expensive game. America kills everyone else just trying to keep up with it economically. And this even though America is not actually that productive person by person. That is only true in an inflated economy that does not accurately represent the actual product produced by the citizenry.
Irony of all ironys, they had to make bicycles for the people to ride in the Olympics. But, they also had to make bicycles for everyone else who just wanted to be like the people who are going to the Olympics. Health-minded culture, don’t you know. So there was a road bike but then there was the Record.
Track bikes are very specific geometry. It’s not as much as you think it is but it’s also a lot more than you might otherwise believe. It’s about weight transfer. It’s about moving yourself forward over the front wheel so that the rear wheel spins more efficiently. It’s also about trying to absolutely maximize your cranks’ ability to refrain from flexing too much. Or to flex the exact amount so that the energy transfer that you desire your body to achieve actually happens in reality. You go faster.
The model that the XB3 factory used was an Italian one. Campagnolo. If we are talking about the ’70s and ’80s, who is not the best in the world but campagnolo? Who is louder?
When I was in New York, campagnolo was jewelry. I had a campy set. I put it on a couple of different bikes and I used it both as a road crank and a track crank. I don’t remember it breaking.
But this was the Soviet Union. The last thing they wanted was to be Italian. So what they did is they took the concept of Italian style and made it an absolute work of the people’s track bike.
Simple lugs, no ornamentation, decent steel and absolutely merciless ergonomics. This is the most miserable bike to ride in the entire world except that you will never ride another bike that you will remember more than this one.
I’ve had a romance with these bikes since I have been here but I have never acquired one. I had several opportunities and then in a moment when I thought I really wanted one, the network that makes such things happen decided not to be available to me. I usually don’t argue with these decisions even though the intention is to harm. I find that needful things are problematic and worrying too much about acquiring jewelry makes you kind of crazy. I was okay not owning an XB3. But I was also never particularly worried about their existence or even what the name XB3 would mean in the future. But now I am.
The city of Kharkov did not do so well when the Russians decided they wanted this industrial region for themselves.
This doesn’t mean that they are no longer making these bikes. They are no longer making these bikes because they stopped making these bikes many many years ago. These are very very old bikes that are still with us for the same reason that my bike is still with me. They used chromoly steel of a decent order. They were modeling the steel even on Columbus tubing. More Italian stuff. They put everything they knew about metallurgy and made some tubes that did the job. And they are still here with us. Some from acts of love and kindness. And others because they sense a buck.
But here’s where my vision gets weird. I would just start collecting these things. But I wouldn’t collect them to take them off the street. I would collect them so that they could ride on our streets with pride. I would collect them and restore them. I wouldn’t worry too much about being period correct. I would just make that lady sing as she banged along. You’re not going to hurt her. She will take everything you have and then just laugh at you like you’re nothing. Because you are nothing. You couldn’t bend this thing if you tried.
So I don’t care where we get our wheels. I just care about how good we build them. I don’t care what the brand is. I care that they work. And then I would say that maybe this can be the track bike capital of the greatest country that ever lived. The country that never got involved despite how much their neighbors wanted them to get dirty. Oh yeah, we got plenty dirty. But the last time I checked, we never fought in the war and we never gave anybody anything. We just stood here and took it.
But most of all I think it is about human effort. These are track bikes. They were made to be used on tracks. Velodromes. Not in traffic. Not as a commute vehicle. This is not a nice bike. This is a weapon. This is a brutal savage unapologetic unbreakable weapon. I think everybody should be able to ride these things. I’m just thinking that we make some Utopian town and we collectively get 30 or 40 of these things up to nice standard. Like museum standard which means clean and in good repair. And then we can just leave them out and let people pick him up and ride them around. I mean, it’s the honor system. We’re not giving you a bike so you can trash it and if you can’t ride it or if you’re too afraid, get off. Don’t get on. Go do something else. I’m just saying that if you are bicyclist and you know something about something, the local argument against the war begins here in the trenches, so to speak.
So anyway, here is my little nostalgic look at a terrific bicycle that was created during a time when we were all friends. Now we are not and there is a lot of suffering going on because we’re not friends anymore. But anyway, let’s check the time. Cheers to all of us and good memories.
Editor’s note: in the English language, there is a way to represent the letter khe (x по-русски) that We at the Utopian believe to be correct. This is the throat sound. This is the cat sound. This is the sound when you scratch the air that is going through your larnyx. It’s when you can’t even say hahaha because what comes out is kha kha kha, which I believe is dead straight absolute Center on If you listen to a native speaker an unsaid that without thinking that they are a part of a linguistic exercise.
The alternative spelling for this sound in English is using the much beleaguered CH. Ch is a ridiculous combination because we don’t know how the choo choo choo of a Choo Choo sound can somehow make it to Chanukkah, the misery of that perjury has it also spelled Hanukkah as if that guttural kha kha kha sound never existed in the word. Even though it did.
חנוכה
There it is. Look at the first letter. Does that look like an h to you? Does that look like a CH to you? I’m looking at a KH. I’m sorry, if you’re going to speak English, that right there is a KH.
So I’m not immediately going to anti-Semitism here because I don’t have to. You as my normal readers already understand this. Just a tiny bit more destruction of the culture taking us away from where we are supposed to be so that someone who is not supposed to be here gets to continue being here and making use of everything that was once beautiful and for all of us only for himself.
And as a side light, it is important to note that Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian and all Slavic languages have this sound and it is represented by the letter khe, which looks remarkably like an x but is not. We can see this for example in the word хулиганство, hooliganism. Or the ever popular пошёл на хуй, which also makes excellent use of the kha kha kha sound.
