Certainly, you may spend hours on the web site, which has Japanese and English variations, and the store’s social media channels. Blue Lug has very energetic Fb, Instagram, and Flickr accounts, the latter with over 139,000 pictures unfold throughout 1,391 pages. There’s additionally an entire set of YouTube movies of bikes being assembled up from a unadorned body to a accomplished customized construct. The movies are usually wordless and mesmerizing, following the method as a talented mechanic works. Many are over 20 minutes lengthy, and one, a 44-minute Crust construct, will get a customized paint job and a dreamy soundtrack.
The movies have a soothing, ASMR high quality, and you may be taught lots simply by watching, or get concepts on your dream bike or present experience. Even in the event you’re not paying that a lot consideration, a pleasing half hour would possibly slip away.
What Blue Lug creates are usually works of magnificence that sit on the nexus between enjoyable, trend, and practicality.
“They put bikes collectively in methods nobody else has considered. They take note of particulars,” Keating says earlier than diverting into somewhat soliloquy about micro crazes the store has created for bicycle trivia like cable hangers and top-tube protectors.
With the assistance of the store’s workers, I borrow a motorcycle from one among Blue Lug’s tallest workers—thanks, Kaisei!—hop on, and experience into the town. The bike is a two-year-old All-Metropolis Area Horse with a wonderful blue colour I’ve by no means seen, good fats tires, and crisp, dialed-in shifting.
I begin off selecting little neighborhoods to go to and navigating my approach to them. That is sorta enjoyable, however numerous pulling the map out and making an attempt to determine a approach to get from one place to a different. It’s doable however fussy. However then I cease making an attempt to navigate and simply experience. The blokes on the store beneficial visiting Yoyogi Park, which seems to have a devoted biking path with an indication in English that tells you to “Simply get pleasure from it,” and I attempt to internalize {that a} bit.
After a extremely pleasurable croquette sandwich from a meals truck within the park, I get again on the bike, ditch the map, and level myself in a normal course—”towards the water”—and simply experience. It’s surprisingly chill. In Seattle, I say, tongue in cheek, that the drivers are fast to honk. Much less jokingly, they have a tendency to imagine proper of means. It leaves you on edge. In Tokyo, issues felt extra built-in and equal. No person honks. Merely following folks makes opposite-side driving surprisingly straightforward. It’s very a lot about coming into the movement, and there’s typically a bike owner in entrance of you main the best way.
Contemplating I used to be on a motorcycle that was new to me in a city that was new to me on a facet of the highway that was new to me, it was exhilarating and created a brand new approach to join with the town. You don’t actually let ’er rip that always. On a experience via Tokyo on an ideal bicycle, you benefit from the movement state.
