BikemanforU LIVE - Montauk to Manhattan - Get Real

        

The BikemanforU dream scape opens today with a live feed from the family bike shop filled with beachgoers, cyclists, and the urgency of serving the immediate wants of customers.

For all practical and wonderful purposes, this is a life feed. Food for the spirit, a celebration of the human condition. Ya gotta love it.

There's YouTube's how-to guru of bicycle repair running the show, supported by 16-year-old SonofA in the director's seat, wife Toni Basket, a local politician running for village trustee on the Beach Party ticket, tween-age daughter Baby G, aka Ally, aka Alexandra, who steps in wherever and whenever needed, plus the zen master himself, Mr. Pump, father of the BikemanforU and co-founder with his late wife, Louise, of the family business where this dream was born.

Sebastian, BikemanforU's couldn't-do-without roustabout, assistant bike mechanic BMX Boy, and myself round out the bike shop crew. 

The show uses four surveillance cameras to stream the feed through a switch and DVR into an older Mac desktop, where it's uploaded as a google + hangout and on the BikemanforU YouTube channel. My task is to embed the live feed into the website, an online sales channel for the bike parts, tires, tools, and cycling accessories shown in the BikemanforU video tutorials.

Even though I know and work with everyone, I feel like a voyeur staring into my computer, watching the unrehearsed, spontaneous interactions of a family and strangers, learning about parenting, customer service, communication skills and the hoots of getting real with sound tests, who's got a microphone and who doesn't.

"I do believe we're live. I do believe we're live," says BMFU, and he reminds me of Bert Lahr's over the top portrayal of you-know-who in the Wizard of Oz.

The feed, which lasts for hours, is becoming addictive. There's chit-chat on the YouTube channel and who knows how many viewers on the hangout. Who can keep up?  

You get a full stream of consciousness, not just from the four cameras, but from the dialogue between the cameraman, the shopkeepers, the customers, cyclists passing by and all the emotions that make up the river of life.

Peer into the world of the BikemanforU family in the Bike 'n' Kite shop on Potunk Lane in the tiny shoreline hamlet of Westhampton Beach on eastern Long Island, NY. I don't gotta, I do love it!

-- Pam-a-lou