Dear Automobile magazine

I suppose I should appreciate inexplicably being entered in your subscriber database since the May 2010 issue.

I suppose I should appreciate being sent glossy pages full of pictures of beautiful new cars. I do enjoy slick cars, after all (although to be honest, I’d take a classic car any day over something new). (Still, I much prefer to see the physical versions over mere pictures.)

But that doesn’t change the fact that I am perhaps the least likely person to ever succumb to the temptations posed most directly by the cars in your pages, or the accessories of all sorts advertised amongst them. I am a complete losing proposition for you: I don’t pay for your magazine, and I won’t pay your advertisers for it, either.

Maybe you think, because I’m in the 18-24 male demographic, the products in your pages will entice me. I think you will find few people so anomalous as me in that population. I don’t own a car (I bike), I rarely need a car (and on those occasions, borrowing or renting is significantly cheaper), and I don’t plan to own a car in the foreseeable future. And, for as long as I live in the Bay Area, that’s very unlikely to change.

I do appreciate your willingness to send me something for nothing. My office appreciates this, too. (Or at least it appreciates it no less than I do.)

But a friendly suggestion: if you really want to give someone a free subscription to your magazine, give it to someone who might actually read it.

(And in the unlikely event that someone decided to give me a subscription [presumably despite knowing just how little I care about cars] and I somehow missed the new-gift-subscription notice, I’m really sorry, but this magazine just isn’t for me: it’s complete deadweight loss. How about in the future we go do something fun together, mutually agreed upon, instead?)

Close Encounters of the Pavement (and Not-Perpendicularly-Crossed-Enough Railroad Tracks) Kind

~$40 well spent, as always. The person who rides a bike without a helmet just because he’s lazy is a fool.

“Bike to Work Day”?

Isn’t Bike to Work Day every day?

In passing I note that since the start of November when I started working after a post-graduation vacation I’ve poured exactly $0 in gasoline into the tank of my car. (Readers who suspect that this statement, in addition to being true, is vacuously true may be on to something!) How much did you spend doing the same over that time? Hmm, hmm? Also worth noting: my bike has a smaller carbon footprint than your hybrid.

One other note: this post was prerecorded because I’m currently attending Trail Days; I’ll be gone through May 19. Consequently, I probably won’t moderate any responding snarks or other comments made by non-repeat commenters until then.