Wanting Season
I keep looking at this Raekwon bike. Wu-Tang collab with Affinity Cycles, the Ride4NY edition. Nothing I need, but I can’t stop circling back to it.
I had a bike like that as a kid. Nothing expensive—just black steel with the grip tape worn smooth. I took it everywhere. It wasn’t really a possession. It was more like a tool, or a hand.
Seeing this object now, sitting at the intersection of a rap legend and a bike brand and a New York charity, does something to you. You can’t buy your way back to being young. But you can look at the object and feel something old and tender moving inside you.
That’s what the holidays do. You see products and start thinking about time and wanting. A MEDICOM TOY x Nike sneaker. A Brooklyn Internets shirt with a joke only four people will get. A Mickey Mouse watch with a gold face. You’re older now and these things still move you, and that fact means something you can’t quite name.
My mom used to call every week wondering why I didn’t own winter shoes like a normal person. Now I want to spend money on a Bearbrick collaboration that makes zero sense. The logic never improved; I just stopped defending it.
Here’s what gets me though: most of this stuff feels like gifts I’d want to receive, not things I’d actually give away. And right now I don’t really have anyone to buy for anyway. The original post ended with a joke about that—if you’re single, go find a girlfriend at the Christmas market. As if the answer to wanting things is meeting someone and redirecting all that wanting toward them instead. Maybe that’s exactly how it works. Maybe I’m just looking at it wrong.