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 lively Fb, Instagram, and Flickr accounts, the latter with over 139,000 photographs unfold throughout 1,391 pages. There’s additionally a complete 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’ll study loads simply by watching, or get concepts on your dream bike or present trip. Even if you happen to’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, vogue, and practicality.
“They put bikes collectively in methods nobody else has considered. They take note of particulars,” Keating says earlier than diverting into slightly 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 motorbike from one in every of Blue Lug’s tallest staff—thanks, Kaisei!—hop on, and trip into town. The bike is a two-year-old All-Metropolis Area Horse with a good looking blue shade I’ve by no means seen, good fats tires, and crisp, dialed-in shifting.
I begin off choosing little neighborhoods to go to and navigating my solution to them. That is sorta enjoyable, however a number of pulling the map out and attempting to determine a solution to get from one place to a different. It’s doable however fussy. However then I cease attempting to navigate and simply trip. The fellows on the store really helpful 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 fulfilling croquette sandwich from a meals truck within the park, I get again on the bike, ditch the map, and level myself in a normal route—”towards the water”—and simply trip. 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 manner. It leaves you on edge. In Tokyo, issues felt extra built-in and equal. No person honks. Merely following individuals makes opposite-side driving surprisingly straightforward. It’s very a lot about getting into the movement, and there’s usually a bike owner in entrance of you main the best way.
Contemplating I used to be on a motorbike that was new to me in a city that was new to me on a facet of the street that was new to me, it was exhilarating and created a brand new solution to join with town. You don’t actually let ’er rip that usually. On a trip via Tokyo on an ideal bicycle, you benefit from the movement state.