Merry Winter Holiday of Your Choice!

Happy cycling!



Iowa City in the Snow, 1940. Via Shorpy

The guru of Cycle Chic, as you may know, is a guy named Mikael Colville-Andersen. He's the brains behind the smarmy hottie-on-bicycle-ogling blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic and its less-popular, less-leering cousin, Copenhagenize. This guy annoys me for any number of reasons. But today I want to talk about how he annoys me because he refuses to acknowledge that the whole world is not Copenhagen.

Today, Mikael Colville-Andersen has taken it upon himself to lecture us about the difference between bike commuting and bike culture. The basic difference is that bike commuters are bad, while bike culture is good. The substance of the difference is a little less clear to me. Bike commuting, which characterizes bike riders in North America, focuses on riding your bike to work. Bike commuters also advocate for showers that bike riders can use once they get to work, and they wear special clothes when it's cold. In bike cultures, people ride their bikes everywhere, not just to work. They ride their bikes to shops and restaurants and nightclubs. They also don't care about showers and don't wear special cycling gear in bad weather. Cycle culture is what we should all aim for, while cycle commuting makes bike riders a small, specialized, embattled subculture.

I will freely admit that I'm a bike commuter. I occasionally stop at a restaurant, bar, coffee place or shop after work, but fundamentally I ride my bike to my job. Further, in the summer I take a shower when I arrive at work. Finally, I wear special cold-weather cycle gear in the winter. I wear long underwear, high-tech hiking socks, ultra-warm boots, a warm sweater over my normal sweater, and two pairs of mittens that I bought at the hunting/ farm supply store. Truly, I am a bike commuter and hence represent everything that is wrong with American bike riders.

Mikael C-A would say that the difference between me and him is cultural. The reason that I only ride my bike to work, value showers in the summer, and wear long underwear is that I'm a victim of bad American culture, whereas he is blessed to be a beneficiary of awesome Danish culture. The only reason that Iowa City is different from Copenhagen is that people in Copenhagen are just kind of personally superior.

And the thing is, that's bullshit. When I left for work this morning, it was about about 5°F (-15°C). [Note: I started this post a couple of days ago. But this morning, it was even colder than that.] That, it turns out, is colder than *it has ever been in Copenhagen in the month of December.*. No really: today was just a random, slightly-cold day, and it was significantly colder than the record minimum for Copenhagen in December. In January, the average low in Copenhagen is -2°C, and the average low in Iowa City is -11°C. It's really considerably colder here than in Copenhagen. And that's why I wear long underwear in the winter: not because of culture, but because of climate. In the winter, I bike to work in the bitter cold, and long underwear and extra socks mean that biking in the bitter cold doesn't hurt.

Similarly, I value showers because it's really hot and humid here in the summer. In July, the average high here is 31°C (87°F). The average July high in Copenhagen is 22°C or 71°F. I don't need showers when it's 71°F, either. Again, the issue is climate, not culture.

And finally, there's the issue of commuting versus riding your bike to do all your daily business. For some reason, Mikael C-A seems to associate commuting with long distances and fast riding, which is weird. That's not the way it works for me. My job is located downtown, which is two miles from my home. The reason that I commute is that it's actually not a very long ride. There are some other places downtown to which I ride my bike. I stop fairly frequently at the yarn store, the bookstore, or the coffee and gelato hut. But like a lot of American cities and towns, my city does not have an entirely thriving downtown. There is no grocery store downtown. There's no place downtown to buy socks or underwear. Most of the businesses downtown are bars, restaurants, and luxury stores, and I don't actually do that much business in bars, restaurants or expensive boutiques. None of my friends live downtown. I do most of my shopping and socializing much farther away from my house, and it's a lot more convenient to drive than to ride a bike.

My city is engaged in a bit of a debate about how to revitalize downtown, which for a while now has been given over to bars that catered to underage drinkers. The city recently voted to ban underage people from bars, and a lot of those establishments are closing down. A lot of us really hope that new businesses will open up there and that they'll fill more diverse needs and serve a more diverse clientele. I hope that happens. It would go pretty far to transform me from a bike commuter to a participant in bike culture. But that's not something that I can accomplish on my own, overnight. Again, the problem is that Mikael C-A expects us all to behave like we live in Copenhagen, even when we demonstrably don't.

Mikael C-A has this weird notion that culture is an independent variable, which has nothing to do with the specifics of the place in which it's found. There are superior cultures, and all that inferior people need to do is improve their virtue and emulate their betters. He flatly refuses to believe that different bike cultures might make sense in different places, depending on factors like climate, terrain, or density. It's bizarre and frankly a little frustrating.

Update: Today Mikael C-A has informed us that we really don't need studded tires since nobody in Copenhagen uses them. This is illustrated with videos of people riding on absolutely flat streets. I'm wondering if he'd feel differently if he had to ride down the steep, not-well-plowed hill in front of my building every morning!

Some Unsolicited Advice for My Employer

Officially, my employer is hugely supportive of bike commuting. I work for a university, and the official line is that the university thinks that bike commuting is just swell. There are two big reasons that the university officially would like people to bike to work and class. The first is that we have a pretty major parking shortage, and it's in the university's best interest to encourage people not to drive. The second is that the university is trying to hold the line on health insurance costs, and they're encouraging people to exercise because it's seen to promote long-term good health. Officially supporting bike commuting is only one of a whole slew of programs designed to encourage healthy habits and alternative transportation choices.

The problem is that, for all the official pronouncements of support for bicycles, my employer doesn't actually do much to encourage people to bike to work or to support those of us who already do commute by bicycle. They do provide outdoor bike racks, and they have a link on their webpage to the city office that allows you to register your bike, so it can be identified if it gets stolen. They have a couple of events for Bike to Work Week. And that's it.

So anyway, I had some thoughts about things my employer could do that would really support bike commuting.

1. Change the bike website
   On their website, my university has a handy page for bike commuters. Unfortunately, it's basically useless, and the tone is overly negative. Essentially, it treats bike riders as pests who need to be educated about how not to bother other people. There is a list of bicycle regulations (example:"Reckless operation of a bicycle is not permitted."), and a list of fines and other consequences for cyclists who fail to adhere to these regulations. There are some insipid safety tips (examples: "Share the roadway and walkways" and "slow down when riding near pedestrians.") The websites for car and bus commuters don't take this scolding tone, and they provide useful information. Bike commuters should be provided with concrete, accurate tips about how to ride safely, information that acknowledges that we are as likely to be the victims of traffic violations as the perpetrators. Lecturing us about "sharing the roads and walkways" is not nearly as helpful as pointing out that it's almost always a bad idea to ride a bike on a "walkway" and that you're more visible to turning trucks if you ride in the middle of the lane, rather than trying to "share the road" by hugging the curb.
   
   
2. Allow bike commuters to register with the Parking and Transportation Office
   
   The university offers benefits for people who participate in their bus and carpooling programs, something which is possible because the Parking and Transportation Office knows who those people are. Carpoolers are permitted to register, and bus riders sign up for discount bus passes through the office. Bike commuters should have the same opportunity to make ourselves known to the transit people so we can get some benefits, too.
   
   
3. Extend the emergency ride program to bike commuters
   
   The university has a program that offers emergency cab rides to bus riders and carpoolers who need to get someplace quickly. If you take the bus to work and your kid gets sick and needs to be picked up from daycare, you can get a free cab ride to the daycare center and then home. The idea is that people drive to work because they worry that they otherwise won't have flexibility in the event of an emergency, and free cab rides take care of that problem. Bike riders aren't eligible for this program. We should be. It's true that a bike is more flexible than a bus, but bike riders could still find themselves needing to go a long distance or pick someone up.
   
   
4. Showers
   
   In my perfect world, bike commuters would have free access to showers. That's probably not going to happen. The only showers are in the gym, and the gym recently started charging people to use their facilities. I suppose that maybe they could make an exception for registered bike commuters, but given that there's been a lot of controversy around the decision to charge for the gym, I think they probably wouldn't. What they could do would be to make some adjustments in the program that provides low-price gym memberships to faculty and staff. Right now, you can only get a cut-rate gym membership if you sign up for an entire year. Since many bike commuters only need showers in the summer, it would be helpful to offer cheap gym memberships on a monthly, not annual basis. They could also offer us a discount on locker rentals.
   
   
5. Bus passes
   
   Ideally, it would be awesome if bike commuters were allowed a few free bus rides every month, which we could use in case of bad weather. That's probably not going to happen, so I'd settle for a change to the reduced-price program for bus commuters, which gives users unlimited free bus rides for $10 a month. At the moment, you have to opt in for a full year. I don't use my bus pass at all in the summer, spring and early fall, but I get a lot more use out of it in the winter. It would be great if bike commuters could buy the $10 monthly bus passes on a monthly, rather than annual basis, so we weren't paying for months when we don't need to take the bus.
   

More on the Politics of Representation

Thanks to my bike-commuting co-worker, I recently discovered a new bike magazine, Bicycle Times. I bought issue #8 to read on the plane to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. And before I launch into this rant, I should note that I just subscribed to the magazine and am, in general, a big fan. It's aimed at casual and commuter cyclists, and it's a lot more relevant to me than most of the macho, racing-or-trail-oriented bike mags. They review products that I might actually buy. They have articles on subjects that interest me. They don't treat women like afterthoughts, and they don't assume that women riders are primarily interested in fashion. Really: it's a good magazine. You should check it out.


But I've got to say that the magazine made me think a little bit about the racial politics of the current bike resurgence in America. Put bluntly, in this issue of Bicycle Times, bike riding is very white. And I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with that.

This first occurred to me because there are two "international" stories in the current issue. One, which I found really compelling and informative, is about cycling in the Netherlands. You can read it in blog-post form here. The author accompanied a bunch of public officials from Northern California on a week-long trip to the Netherlands to learn about Dutch biking culture. Dutch people are treated as agents: they have a point of view, opinions, and practices that are worthy of emulation. The article has lots of good points about Dutch bike culture and how it might or might not be transferable to US cities.

The second story, "Storming the Dominican: my ride in the rain", can be found in blog-post form here. (Interestingly, it seems that a fair amount of Bicycle Times's content is culled from blogs.) This is a travel feature about a bike trip in the Dominican Republic. Like most travel journalism, this article ignores the perspectives of local people, except to note that the nameless local guide is "filled with admiration and apprehension" at the bike tourists' decision to ride in a downpour. Dominican people exist here only in very limited roles: they provide the bike tourists with authentic and traditional local foods, they give the bike tourists an opportunity to reflect on their good fortune to live in a wealthy country, and some local small children "r[u]n along next to us like we were riding in the Tour de France." Do people in the Dominican Republic ride bikes for fun or transportation? Is there anything that we can learn from Dominican bike culture? Who knows? There's no discussion of cycling in the Dominican Republic, because the article treats that country as a place for wealthy Americans to go on vacation, not as a place that has a cycling culture of its own.

And I actually think this is part of a pattern. Increasingly, American cyclists associate functional bike-riding with Europe and focus exclusively on cycling culture there. We utterly ignore cycling cultures in developing countries, except when we discuss developing countries as destinations for adventure travel. You can see the results of that in this comment in response to a post about opposition to bike lanes that appeared on the feminist blog Feministe:

Anyway, I would be interested to know how many of the people who want bike lanes are native NYCers vs non-NYC natives. Or even among people who come from countries where bikes aren’t affordable or available.

I kinda feel that my love for biking is a reflection of my privilege–my privilege of being able to grow up in a town where it was safe for a kid to learn how to ride a bike and ride it wherever to her heart’s content.

This person assumes that riding a bike is a privilege and that people in New York who favor cars over bikes may be immigrants from "countries where bikes aren't affordable or available." This is fairly bizarre: in every country in the world, bikes are cheaper than cars. In many developing countries, bikes are a major mode of transportation for poor people who can't dream of owning a car. In China, where members of the middle-class are increasingly abandoning bicycles in favor of automobiles, working-class people are more likely to embrace electric bikes, which are cheap and efficient and allow people to use the extensive system of bike lanes to bypass car traffic.


And yet when people in the US extol the virtues of cargo bikes, we're a whole lot more likely to illustrate it with a picture of a bike rider in the Netherlands than with a picture of a Chinese cyclist.

When they exclusively emphasize European cycle culture, publications like Bicycle Times contribute to a picture of cycle culture that is very, very white. In fact, if this issue of the magazine is anything to go by, it's almost exclusively white. There's one person of color in a picture that illustrates the story on the Dominican Republic, and I think there may be a few people of color in the background of the Dutch story. A reader sent in a picture of his daughter, whose race isn't readily apparent from the photo. There's one Asian person in an advertisement for handmade bike clothes. And other than that, every single person in every editorial and advertising photo in the entire magazine appears to be white. What kind of message does that send? Is that really how we want to represent bike culture in the US?

It seems to me that this depiction of bike culture, both in the US and globally, is kind of exclusionary. As the Feministe comment shows, it can also contribute to bike riding's unfortunate reputation as an elite activity, which doesn't serve us well in debates about whether governments should devote scarce resources to bike infrastructure. I think it's worth giving some thought to how to represent both global and domestic bike culture more inclusively.

I may not be chic, but I am trendy!

Between 2008 and 2009, Johnson County, Iowa saw a 118% increase in the number of female bicycle commuters. And one of them was me!

Shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather...

When I first started commuting by bike, I came up with a sure-fire strategy for dealing with the rain: I took the bus. I ride to work in my office clothes, and I couldn't figure out any way to avoid getting soaked. Copenhagen Cycle Chic claims that you can cycle while holding an umbrella, but I tried that once when I got caught in a rainstorm half-way to work, and I am here to say that it doesn't work. It's hard to steer with one arm, and I constantly felt that I was about to catch the wind and be set aloft, like Mary Poppins.

This summer, my job offered me an awesome new perk: an extremely cut-price membership in a shiny new gym. For $25 a month, I now have access to a shower and my very own locker in which I can store all my showering stuff. This revolutionized my strategy for riding in the rain. I could throw my work clothes in a waterproof bag, ride to the gym in running shorts and a t-shirt, and then shower and change into my work clothes there.

The thing is, it's fun to get soaked when it's 75 degrees out. I don't think it's going to be fun in November, when the temperature is hovering right above freezing. I'm going to try to make a real commitment to commuting in all weather next year, so I've been trying to think of an alternative to getting wet and changing. Last weekend I went to Target and purchased this hideous poncho:











At the same time, I procured these slightly-less-hideous, but still pretty ugly, rain pants:



















I don't know if they'll be enough to commute to work in my work clothes and keep dry, but we'll see. I may have to combine the hideous rain gear with stopping at the gym to change.

The real challenge, I think, is going to be ice, not rain. I'm thinking about putting studded tires on my old bike and making it into a snow-day-only beater bike. Hopefully I should have a month or two before I need to think about that too seriously.

Anyone have any good tips for bad-weather commuting?

Invisible Cyclists and the Politics of Representation

Via Streetsblog I found this post about so-called "invisible bikers" in Los Angeles. Invisible cyclists are working-class people, many of them immigrants and people of color, who ride bikes because they don't have access to cars or reliable public transit. They're "invisible" because mainstream discussions of cycling pretty much ignore them and instead focus on fixie-riding hipsters, lycra-clad speed demons, and other middle-class cycling archetypes. The post points out that "invisible cyclists" face a whole slew of challenges, such as lack of bike parking, lack of access to well-made bikes, lack of access to health insurance, and particularly dangerous routes on which they must travel. These folks are generally not involved in cycle advocacy, and cycling advocacy groups don't court them or pay attention to their particular issues.

One of the central claims of the whole Cycle Chic movement is that representation really matters. Part of the reason that people don't cycle is that they associate cycling with negative things: hideous lycra clothes, dorky bike helmets, and testosterone-fueled assholes, for instance. One way to get people cycling is to change the perception of bike riders by broadcasting more appealing images of bicyclists. If people are taught to associate bikes with hip young women, rather than jerky guys in spandex, then they will be more inclined to ride bikes and to support improvements in cycle infrastructure.

I think this is problematic in part because it's a little naive about how ordinary folks perceive urban hipsters. This may be lost on certain bloggers, but a lot of people think of hip young urbanites as slightly obnoxious folks who follow silly trends and aren't particularly practical or sensible. But that's actually not what I want to talk about here. I want to talk about where "invisible cyclists" fit in this model of the politics of representation.

In a lot of ways, "invisible cyclists" behave in the way that the Cycle Chic people think bike riders should act. They cycle for convenience and transportation, not for sport or for environmental, political and fitness reasons. They often don't wear helmets. They usually do wear street clothes. Mikael Colville-Andersen, the guru of Cycle Chic, says that our bikes should be like our vacuum cleaners: a tool that people use, but not something that defines the person who rides the bike. We shouldn't think about ourselves as "cyclists," anymore than we think about ourselves as "vaccumists" because we clean the floors once a week. I think that most "invisible cyclists" think about their bikes that way. It's a way to get from point A to point B.

And yet "invisible cyclists" are a bit of a problem for Cycle Chic types. If it's crucial to represent cycling as hip and awesome, then it's a bit embarrassing that one of the major cycling populations in America consists of poor people. "Invisible cyclists" belong to highly stigmatized populations: they are often poor, they are often immigrants, they are often people of color. Politicians in several states are getting a lot of mileage out of policies designed to harass people like them. If we render "invisible cyclists" visible, then we risk associating cycling not with the fabulous lifestyles of hot young (usually white) women, but with hardship and social stigma.

There are two ways to deal with this problem. The first is to continue to marginalize and ignore "invisible cyclists" and to hope that improvements in infrastructure will trickle down to them. I suspect that won't work. I live in a neighborhood populated by a fair number of working-class Latino bike riders, and for the most part my city doesn't pay much attention to the infrastructure needs of our area. We don't have bike lanes, sharrows or bike racks, the way that more prosperous areas have. Hell, we don't even have sidewalks. The photo to the left shows the road leading up to my building: note that there are no bike lanes, no sidewalks, and very poor lighting. My city has pretty good bike and pedestrian infrastructure, but there's not a lot of evidence of trickling down.

And the other strategy is to embrace a different kind of politics of representation, one that recognizes all cyclists. We can change the image of cycling not by emphasizing that cyclists are fashionable and fabulous, but by pointing out that cyclists are as diverse as our communities. Cyclists encompass rich people and poor people; people who cycle for fun and fitness and people who cycle for transportation; people who choose to bike over other modes of transit and people who ride bikes because they don't have a lot of other options. If representation is political, then I'd like an inclusive politics of representation, one that aims to make cycling natural-seeming, comfortable and safe for all cyclists, not just the most glamorous ones.

Iowa Bicyclist TV

Via the Iowa Bike Blog

I'm kind of bummed not to see myself in that first segment, on sidewalk cycling in college towns. It was all shot in my neck of the woods.

And for the rest of us...

Lately, I have found myself ranting a lot about Cycle Chic. If you're reading this blog, chances are that you're familiar with the Cycle Chic phenomenon. Pioneered by Mikael Colville-Andersen and his blog Copenhagen Cycle Chic, it's a "movement" devoted to celebrating and documenting stylish young women riding bikes. Colville-Andersen's blog has spawned a whole slew of copycats, and now fashion companies have got in on the trend.



"So what's wrong with that?" you ask. And the answer is that there's nothing wrong with that. I am 100% all for young, fashionable women riding bikes. I think it's swell. I read Cycle Chic blogs. I wanna buy cute stuff from Adeline Adeline.



And yet I am finding myself increasingly annoyed with Cycle Chic. It's not the chic itself. It's that I'm seeing Cycle Chic discussed as if it's synonymous with the phenomenon of female cycle commuters. It's also seen as a way to promote cycling among women and to make cycling a more popular form of transportation in places like the US and Britain, where cycling is seen more as a macho hobby than a way of getting around. For instance, here's Talking Head and cycling evangelist David Byrne, in a book review he wrote for the New York Times last year:

As Mapes points out, when more women begin riding, that will signal a big change in attitude, which will prompt further changes in the direction of safety and elegance. I can ride till my legs are sore and it won’t make riding any cooler, but when attractive women are seen sitting upright going about their city business on bikes day and night, the crowds will surely follow.

Mikael from Copenhagen Cycle Chic is even more emphatic. In a Copenhagenize post entitled "If you want cycle transport, make cycle transport sexy," he makes big claims for his Cycle Chic website:

Changing the status of cycling is really the foundation of what I try to do. It is the cornerstone of the Cycle Chic concept, of which Copenhagenize is an extension. Why has Cycle Chic rolled out around the world over the past three and a half years? It presents images, not only from Copenhagen but around the world, of cycling in a different light. Of cycling how it used to be. The world was ready for this, apparently. The first photo I took was recently called The Photo That Launched a Million Bicycles, which is a wild, humbling tagline, but the status of cycling has changed and continues to change. All over the world.

He then lays out who he thinks is going to be responsible for this revolution:

Changing the social status of cycling - of ANYTHING - cannot possibly begin in areas outside of large, urban centres. It's a fact of life that First Movers live in Big Cities and that the ideas they adopt, if successful, filter down to the rest of society.

Well, that's me told. I'm not sexy. I'm not particularly fashionable. I'm a woman in my 30s, and I live in a town of 70,000 people. I'm never going to be a First Mover in any revolution. My role in the development of American cycle culture is to be a follower, not a leader. Maybe it'll trickle down to me.

And that's kind of bullshit.


My town has a pretty vibrant cycle culture. There are eight bike racks in front of the building where I work, and it's not always easy to find a place to put my bike. Every day, I pass other cycle commuters as I ride to work at 6:45 in the morning, and I pass more cycle commuters as I ride home at 5:00 in the evening. There are four bike stores in our small downtown area. There's a non-profit that fixes up used bikes and sells them for cheap. We have enough bike advocacy organizations that there's a new umbrella group that was just founded to coordinate all of their efforts.



The cycle commuters I see are a diverse bunch. Some of them are young, and some of them are not. Some of them are slim and athletic looking. Some of them are not. Some of them are super fashionable, and some of them wear fancy cycle clothing. Most of them, though, dress like the typical person around here does: a little casual, a little sporty, not in a way that suggests that they pay much attention to what's in Vogue or The Sartorialist. The cycle commuters in my city are not a chic subset of the population. They mirror the rest of the population. They are everyone.


I was not a cycle commuter when I moved here. Before last year, I hadn't been on a bicycle in twelve years. And what inspired me to become a cycle commuter was not any model or a bunch of photos of beautiful young women. I'm not necessarily attracted to things associated with hot young women: I'm neither hot nor young, and I worry that I'm going to look faintly ridiculous if I try to follow trends associated with the young and fabulous.

What inspired me to try cycling was that I knew other cyclists. My brother spent his junior year of college riding a bike around Harbin, China, and he commuted by scooter when he lived in Tokyo. When he returned to the US, he became a cycle commuter, in part because he'd lived in cycle cultures and saw cycling as a natural way of getting around. My friend Lisa, a sporty Californian, rode her bike around our Chicago neighborhood when we were in grad school. Both of them made me more confident that cycle commuting was a reasonable thing to do. And I was inspired by seeing the cycle culture in my current town, which convinced me that you don't have to be brave, macho, athletic or fashionable to get around on a bike.

So I thought I'd start a bike blog for the rest of us. This blog is for early adopters to cycling culture who are not necessarily cute, chic, or hip. It's great if you do live in a big city, but this blog is for people who live in suburbs and smaller places, too. It's ok if you wear a helmet. It's ok if you wear lycra and change into your work clothes when you get to your job. If you get around on a bike, and if you'd like to promote getting around on bikes, this blog is for you.