This New Bike/Sausage-Grill Combo Makes Perfect Sense
- Mathias Hintermann via Atlantic Cities
Not only does it make sense — we already live in a world where bikes can have leather wine racks — it seems like a clear-cut issue of common courtesy. Basic human decency, really! Who hasn’t had a friend warn them ahead of any given social gathering, “Hey dawg, sure, come over, but only if you roll up with some freshly cooked dogs, know what I mean?”
Well, anyway, the one thing that is kind of surprising about the “Backbrat” (great name) is that it is not, in fact, from Brooklyn, but was designed in L.A. of all places, by Swiss product designer Mathias Hintermann.
The idea here is to combine two “trends” — “group cycling” and “grilling at the park,” according to the Backbrat’s website — into one convenient product that targets 20-and-30-something Germans (“Germans love Bratwurst,” the site notes) going on day trips. As an added bonus, there’s an optional add-on (why would you ever opt out of this?) for beer storage. Hence, Hintermann’s pretty convincing slogan, “A brat and a beer. Whenever and wherever you and your bicycle go.”
Wisely, the product’s design incorporates a system that works with charcoal rather than methane, which means, essentially, that there’s no downside to this whatsoever. Hintermann’s design doesn’t seem to account for meat actually being cooked while you ride — it’s more of a park-and-grill design, it seems — but, you know, rules were made to be broken, Americans to needlessly multi-task, and sausages to be cooked in tandem with noxious truck fumes as you ride down Dekalb.
Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.
