Spinaci Fought the Power
Fitting that this Spinaci sticker was spotted on a time clock at a bike shop – representin’ ya know, “the man” and “fight the power.” A reader on our Flickr photostream asked us “what do they do” and we replied, “Spinacis are bar extenders that were banned by the UCI (bike racing’s international governing body) – that lead to a battle between Cinelli and the UCI and the popular belief that the UCI is political and ridiculous.”
This was in the 90s, when Italian bike racer’s hair looked like Cipos (and never moved!) and before anyone was popularizing “city bikes.” We also only had 8 speeds, not eleven and a $450 dollar Shimano chain ring that lasts two thousand miles was unheard of. Would’ve been laughed out of the bike shop, actually.
A world away in local races, racers were being told they had to take their Spinacis off by uptight officials and the racer’s response was that’s ridiculous. The same argument with officials, without the public fight from the manufacturer, happened later with Spinergy Rev-X Wheels. A 4 spoke large carbon wheel that, according to urban legend, would julienne body parts in crashes. The bigger reason was that when they failed, they failed massively.
I had a set of Spinacis and that became my first eBay sale. Didn’t disagree with the Spinergy decisions actually. Those wheels sucked in my opinion – loud as shit. Bunselmeyer, a local legendary racer raced on them and you could always hear his predictable attacks before he launched them – whoop, whoop, creak, creak, rumble, huff, huff, up up – and there he went.
Lately, Spinergy Shaolin has emerged as a jackass-style party game.