I used to know people who never bought furniture
or electronic equipment: They furnished
their rooms, apartments or even houses—and made music, phone calls, designs and
algorithms—with stuff people left curbside for sanitation workers to pick
up. I still know someone, a musician and
bike mechanic (If he’s reading this, he knows who he is!), who has never
purchased a power tool or even a vacuum cleaner: He has refurbished stuff other people
discarded. He even owns a couple of
bikes acquired that way. I, too, have had such bikes in my life.
Maybe it’s because most of my acquaintances and I
are well into middle age that I no longer hear of people filling their living
spaces with beds, couches or even desks or cupboards other people no longer
wanted or needed. Perhaps young people
are still doing such things and I just need to make younger friends. Or it may be that concerns over bedbugs and
contagious diseases have stopped people from constructing their living spaces
from the flotsam of other people’s lives.
I admit it’s been a while since I’ve done anything
like that. In fact, when I see piles of
furniture and books, or bags of clothes or concatenations of toasters,
blenders, food processors, microwave ovens, stereo equipment, light fixtures
and framed prints relegated to the edge of the gutter at the beginning or end
of a month (when people move out), I almost never stop even to take a
look. For now, I don’t want any living
being besides Max or Marley to take up residence in my apartment unless he or
she is helping me to pay the rent or is a partner in a recreational (not
procreational!) activity with me.
The other day, I rode by an apartment full of
stuff without the apartment abandoned in front of a recently-built waterfront
condo building on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg.
I wouldn’t be writing about it if I hadn’t noticed something from the
corner of my eye and checked it out.
It’s not every day that someone leaves behind a
pair of hammered aluminum fenders with a randonneur-style rack. It would be serendipitous
(Is that an actual word?) enough if they were from Velo Orange. But I knew, as soon as I picked them up that
at least the fenders aren’t.
The pattern on them consists of hexagons that are more sharply defined than the
polygons on the VO fenders:
I doubted then, as I do now, that they’re original
LeFol or other vintage French fenders.
But could they be Honjos? The
pattern matches. And, even more
interestingly, they are 43 mm wide, the same as Honjos, whereas my VOs are 45
mm. (VO also makes 35mm hammered
fenders.)
But I didn’t see any sort of markers to indicate
their provenance. I’ve seen a couple of
pairs of Honjos before, but I can’t recall whether they had any decals or
emblems on them. I also don’t know
whether some other company is making fenders that look so much like
Honjos. It’s not inconceivable: After all, how could Honjo claim a patent
infringement when its own fenders replicate 50- or 60-year-old French designs?
Anyway, the fenders are in excellent shape. There’s a little bit of dirt on the
underside, which shows they were ridden, but not much. There are a couple of indentations where the
fenders were fitted between fork blades or seat stays. They were drilled for some frame that had
threaded fitments in the fork crown and underneath the seatstay bridge, as
Helene (my newer Miss Mercian) has. The
holes don’t seem gouged or otherwise enlarged and have no cracks or other
stresses around them. So, if I wanted to use the fenders on Helene, fitting the
front should be no problem, but the hole in the rear might not line up with the
fitting on the rear bridge.
Of course, I could plug that hole and use the
fender with a bracket—on Helene or Vera.
But the rack is not meant to be used with panniers or loads of more than
a couple of kilos—both of which I sometimes carry on Vera.
Before I try anything, I want to
ascertain that these fenders are actually from Honjo (or LeFol?!) and not some
knock-offs that would be a downgrade, quality-wise, from my Velo Orange
fenders.
