NBR: Multiplication

I still have not quite finished up with a recap of the Los Angeles Handmade Bicycle Show, so in the meantime, to tide you over, here is a little story from the showroom floor:

So there I was, at the Los Angeles Handmade Bicycle Show, just sort of standing around, taking it all in, and I noticed a can in my hand. I wasn't sure how it got there, or where it came from but there were some contents to it, and I finished it up, or down, as the case may be. Looking around I didn't notice a trash receptacle right away, but I did notice a couple similar cans, along with one that was different, up top of this steel cabinet. When I added the one in my hand to the collection I thought, "hmm, look at that three out of four people prefer Pabst Blue Ribbon over Bud Light." A little later I found another can in my hand, and it was the same as the first. I went through the same procedure as I did with the first can, but when I went to put it atop the cabinet with the others I noticed that the collection had already grown, and now there were seven to the one; "hmm, this little preference study is getting kind of interesting."







Well, needless to say, and even though I never found another can gripped in my hand for the rest of the day, I felt like I should see the little survey through to the end. So, I paid one more visit to that steel cabinet before leaving - the Bud Light can was all alone, and thoroughly outnumbered. I don't know how much can be read into the results, but perhaps Pabst ought to look into increasing their local presence.

I realized that little survey kind of mirrored the bigger picture of what was going on all around. Think about it, this is southern California after all, not the Great Lakes region. Bud and its Anheuser relatives are the behemoths in the piss-water beer category, yet here was PBR  showing them up. In the same way, all the handmade manufacturer's showing here are little guys in the cycling world, the underdogs, yet here they are fighting for their niche, their place in the order of things, their piece of the pie.

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