Bike Essay

Part of the reason why this zine is being created was inspiration from a class I took last semester called 'Cultural Studies of Nature'. I wrote an essay about bikes and spaces (below) and realized there IS MUCH MORE to write about and think about and many more angles to explore than what I could have possibly put into the essay. Anyway, while there are many contestable points within it that upon further reflection I may or may not agree with, I thought I would post it here. Mayhaps it will spawn some sort of inner knowing that you can write anything about bikes. And perhaps the resources at teh very end will lead to good readings!
Anyway, peace and bike grease!!
Happy writing!!
-E

Who’s streets? OUR STREETS!

A look at cycling taking back and reshaping cultural and natural spaces

“Think of bicycles as rideable art that can just about save the world”. ~Grant Petersen

“When I go biking, I repeat a mantra of the day's sensations: bright sun, blue sky, warm breeze, blue jays call, ice melting and so on. This helps me transcend the traffic, ignore the clamorings of work, leave all the mind theaters behind and focus on nature instead. I still must abide by the rules of the road, of biking, of gravity. But I am mentally far away from civilization. The world is breaking someone else's heart”. ~Diane Ackerman

-From http://www.quotegarden.com/bicycling.html

Many discourses exist historically and presently in urban cycling. The influences of these various discourses on the practice of cycling in relation to urban settings inside and outside those who participate in it are enormous. This essay aims to explore, non-exhaustively due to limited word counts, liminal space in urban cycling and how it not only shapes cycling culture and practice, but how cycling also influences it in more general, dominant cultural ideals that shape urban spaces and can ultimately actively change the dominant culture. To do this, I will be looking at the art of the bicycle messenger, environmental activists, and general cycling in urban settings to provide different examples of ways in which this applies. I will also be looking at the presence of liminal spaces in concepts of gender and modernity, within the context of cycling in urban spaces through the symbolism of the activist, messenger and general cyclist.

To place some understanding of how I perceive this, I will first explain that I am looking to urban spaces as ‘natural’, or rather, how they can be seen as wilderness, my point being that the concepts placed as distinctly prescriptive and descriptive of what our culture views as ‘not nature’ can provide the same meanings as what we go into nature to find. By ‘not nature’ I mean, that which is modern, human created space (not necessarily idea of space, but literal space). Specifically, I am looking at urban as being the perceived unnatural and how the use of cycling within this setting can take common meanings found in ‘natural’ spaces we create outside of what’s urban, and find them without even having to leave the physical space of urban environments. To this end, William Cronon expresses what I mean best, and kind of describes my discourse and purpose to what I am discussing:

“If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world—not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both.”(Cronon, 20)

In our current cultural consumerist setting, the majority of people do not know life without a concept of urbanism. As of 2007, over 50 percent of people in the world live in urban settings (Jim, 372) which make the urban space ‘natural’ to a huge amount of the world’s population. This means that there is a lot of meaning for us to find and what we already have, inside of urban spaces. Urban cycling can makes use of this very powerfully.

Cycling built car culture. Rather, the bicycle did. In this, it therefore contributed largely to consumer culture and one could argue that the nature of cycling is then imperialist. However, that devalues the use of it for social change. The bicycle was originally used by the leisure class as a way to escape the urban and go into nature on the weekends. This not only asserted masculinity and the concept of the frontier, but it precluded the invention of the car and the destructive expansion of urban spaces via roads leading out of the city. Another aspect of it, which is more positive, was as it became more popular and began to get mass produced, the bicycle started getting used by marginal classes, including women. Simultaneously, the mass production of the bicycle which entirely transformed past cultural experiences and continue to impact present cultural experiences, made the bicycle accessible to not only poorer classes, but was an essential tool for expression of women’s empowerment. Not only did it force a new style of dress which was a lot less conservative, but it enabled women to be out and about without a chaperone or male counterpart, which drastically redefined relationships. It gave them a new freedom that they had never before had (Marks, 175). It challenged the perspective of the nature of bodies to the extent that no other sport had before: through mass production, it quickly became inexpensive and available to almost everyone (Marks, 184). “The Woman who travelled on her own wheels… became a citizen of the world”(Marks, 203). It is clear here that the bicycle became not just a site of leisure, but a way to redefine one’s own life. Some, however, argued that it masculinized women and in turn feminized men (Kimmel, 120; Marks, 193). In this case, historically cycling also contributed to the desire for men to reassert their masculinity and precluded such things as Roosevelt’s last frontier adventure.

In relation to today, cycling counters this. Rather than furthering the expansion of urban areas, with the implementation of bicycle lanes on space that is already urban, they aid in the preservation of trees and “wilderness” (as Cronon put it, noted earlier) within the spaces: in many Chinese cities, bike lanes help save trees from further destruction because they do not need to be reshaped to create space for the height of vehicles (Jim, 376). This will be discussed in more detail later with reference to environmentalism. With this, there is less desire within urban cycling to expand the city to find ‘new’ spaces. A clear example of this is found in the activities of bike messengers.

First, however, it must be noted that urban cyclists exist in liminal spaces. Laws say that people on bikes cannot ride on the sidewalks. In most urban areas that are built around cars, and therefore have few bike lanes and little support from cars on the street, cyclists must create their own in between spaces (Kidder, 351). This applies to all urban cyclists, however it is embodied best by the bicycle messenger who attempts daily to travel as quickly as possible from point to point delivering things. To do this, one maneuvers back allies, spaces between cars, sidewalks-any space a bike can fit. Not only does this highlight liminal space, but it also correlates with concepts of adventure travel and the myth of the last frontier. While the last frontier deals with the idea of going into untouched space which we know is a falsity (Braun, 134), the use of the in between spaces in the city, the spots that exist but are not normally considered to be the places of the city that one goes (background spaces where commodity isn’t necessarily at the forefront of time spent there), presents the same thing. Commonly, bicycle messengers not only use these spaces for work, but they also use them for leisure in things like alley cat races where they compete against each other (Kidder, 352).

Some messengers embrace the liminal space they are confined to, fiercely embodying the work of a messenger in their everyday lives and refusing to campaign for more bike space because of their existence in the liminal. Those who live the life of a messenger not just in work, certainly are even that much more a part of liminal space by convoluting work and leisure, again making leisure occur in the city, as opposed to somewhere else and allowing themselves to be marginalized/placeless, turning their position (once wrought with fear and loathing historically) into one of embrace, making full use of their place (Kidder, 351).

On the other hand, some urban cyclists like modern day activists who embody the modern day position of the historically marginalized, fight endlessly to reform the streets to have more bike lanes and to have a space again. Critical mass, a once a month bike ride that happens in cities all across North America, arguably puts their desire into action with all sorts of urban cyclists who gather together and have a type of bicycle parade where they literally take over the streets on their bikes. It is an opportunity to make the spaces bikes exist in more noticed. Other ways they make this happen is through bike collectives, bike media and simply being seen riding bikes (Furness 402).

It is here, in the act of being seen, that the spaces urban cycling is transformed by and transforms is not quite the virginal example of liminal space. Aforementioned, the bicycle did create the necessary conditions for the car, the embodiment of consumer culture, of which many urban cyclists denounce. Out of this, some argue some cyclists bike out of guilt (Horton, 52). Bayers (137) would argue that guilt perpetuates imperialist destruction that cities embody. By biking, one is seen biking and this creates ‘green capital’, or, ‘conspicuous consumption’ (Veblen, 28). While it is a form of activism, it also perpetuates the show and tell so common to competition present in late capitalism. Not only is cycling seen as an act of guilt, it is an act of mourning: one feels guilty for destroying something, indicating a loss of some kind. Urban cycling embodies this when urban space is seen as a natural environment. This mourning, understood by Braun’s ‘Landscapes of Loss and Mourning’, and related to liminal spaces, puts bikes in a position of being a side effect of modernization: urban cycling requires the structure cyclists oppose in order to explore and have its places. Activists cannot have a designated space which they bike for without the urban space existing. They escape and fight it by being in it, of it, escaping it by being present in it, participating in it and allowing and making room for a new time space, slowing things down (unlike cars that speed things up) where time is the new frontier to conquer, as opposed to geographical space that was historically there in the American frontier (Kimmel, 137).

Material consumption, which once was the frontier, is the dominant discourse governing modern society. Nothing is more representative of this than the car. The car shapes the urban landscape, redefines nature and is entirely invasive. It is symbolic of individualism, rampant, and industrialisation- essentially, the guiding principles of our current consumer driven society (Wray, 65). Bikes, the forerunners of cars, also represent things like individualism. It is, however, a different sort of individualism that the one felt so present in the car. While bike messengers have the kind of individualism found in such ‘frontier’ expeditions by nature of their jobs, individualism is present simply in the sense that you are on a bike alone. However, as you are going slower and are physically outside of a shelter, urban cycling opens the door to building a face to face community based on the factuality that you cannot avoid hearing or seeing another cyclist or pedestrian (Horton, 49). In this sense, urban cycling acts to restructure society based on going back to slower times, which, since consumer culture has run rampant (that, again, the bicycle contributed to largely), has become much more high paced and individualistic than what it once was. This has been constant force in the relationship between bicycles and their use.

Another way in which consumerism shapes urban cycling is the very essence of the bicycle as a cultural object. For example, common in bike messenger culture are fixed gear bikes. These are very sleek, simple looking bikes that only have one gear and no breaks. They are not very easy to ride and are used to show status and superior skill (Kidder, 357). These are trendy not just with messengers, but with hipsters, who like to commodify everything that looks ‘cool’. They are not messengers, but enjoy the look. While this sounds tragic, as they are only biking for looks, it can be pretty positive from a bicycle activists’ point of view: more bikes are less cars. It is also interesting to note that although initially the mass production of bicycles led to their vast availability (as previously discussed), most people who consider themselves bike activists denounce cheap, mass produced bikes, usually made in poor conditions, and opt for bikes they’ve reclaimed (Furness, 411). Also, it’s important to note on the topic of consumerism, that when women first became empowered through the bicycle, advertisers took this and did not use it as a way to further empower women, but to treat them as consumers and sell what they worked for back to them (Furness, 409).

Environmentalism is full of materiality also, however, it’s full of oppositional materiality which can be mobilized through urban cycling when it is engaged with daily as bicycles are objects of environmentalism (Horton, 4) and most urban cyclists seek to live daily with their bikes. Wray, page 77, expresses that there is a sense building that leading our consumer centered society is not what we need and that in the act of not consuming, we exert power. Urban cycling as a representative of living more simply and consuming less supports Cronon’s vision of shaping the future knowing that by living simply in the space outside of dominant culture yet within the space it supplies, that we cannot “flee into a mythical wilderness to escape history and the obligation to take responsibility for our own actions that history inescapably entails.”(Cronon, 20).

Part of the way in which urban cycling is being recognized is more implementation of bicycle lanes and infrastructure to support bikes. However, the implementation of bike lanes still privileges the power position of the people in the dominant discourses of society who are consuming cars and structuring urban spaces on them. While lanes provide a safe space for cyclists, it is based on the idea and structure that in urban settings bikes still only have a small, marginal space compared to the rest of things in society. It places cyclists at the edge of society by putting them in a ‘space’, which once was predominantly liminal. Cars still have more space.

Some places, however, have more structure for bicycles than not: today in the Netherlands, despite being a country of great consumer culture, 16% of roads are bicycle roads which contributes to 50% of people there riding bicycles daily (Rietveld; Daniel, 535). Cyclists were not vital to this happening, however: “In order to face the oil crisis in 1975, the Dutch Ministry of Transport and Public Works implemented a policy in favour of the use of the bicycle in the form of National Bicycle Tracks Grant Act. It introduced a fund for the construction of urban and rural bicycle facilities” (Rietveld; Daniel, 537). While much of the present day infrastructure there was built on bicycle foundations, this does not undermine the efforts of cyclists to reshape space in other urban areas because the context in which massive urbanization has formed is very different.

Urban cycling exists and relies on modernity without denying that it is modern. It is one of the very few activities that starts as leisure, but becomes more important outside of that narrow definition. It is also one of the very few activities that brings something positive, tangibly, to nature outside of the urban, without even leaving it. It takes the phrase ‘the place we are is the place nature is not’ and obliterates it; nature is with us when we are on our bicycles (Cronon, 11) a new wilderness is experienced with the liminal space explored in the very act of urban cycling. It shapes and is shaped by the spaces it engages in. The bike is an embodiment of environmentalism, but it is not just a product of guilt. Cycling is something that can operate guilt free because it is better to reclaim imperial spaces for positive cultural aims. It may historically have led to damaging cultural trends (like car culture), but as it is not perceived any longer as a modern object, it is now an essential tool to calm the beast and create a space that is between destruction and denial.

Works Cited

Bayers, P. “John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air: Postmodern adventure, masculinity, and imperialism”

Imperial ascent: Mountaineering, masculinity and empire. (127-141).

Braun, B. “Landscapes of Loss and Mourning” The Intemperate Rainforest. (109-155).

Cronon, W. “The Problem with Wilderness; or, Going Back to the Wrong Nature.” Uncommon Ground.(69-90)

Furness, Z. “Biketivism and Technology: Historical Reflections and Appropriations.” Social Epistemology. 19:4 2005:.(401-417).

Horton, Dave. “Environmentalism and the Bicycle”, Environmental Politics. 15(1). (2006): 41-58.

Jim, C.Y. “Outstanding remnants of nature in compact cities: patterns and preservation of

heritage trees in Guangzhou city (China.)” Geoforum . 36 .(2005): 371–385

Kidder, Jeff L.“Decoding Bike Messenger Symbols”Journal of Contemporaary Ethnography.

34.2 (2005):344-367.

Kimmel, M. “Playing for Keeps:Masculinity as recreation and the re-creation of Masculinity”

Manhood in America. (2005): 117-141.

Marks, Patricia. Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press.174-203. Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

Rietveld, P; Vanessa Daniel. “Determinants of bicycle use: do municipal policies matter?”

Elsevier. (2004): 531-550.

Veblen, T. “Conspicuous Leisure” The Theory of the Leisure Class. (2003): 25-46.

Wray, J. Harry. Pedal Power: The Quiet Rise of the Bicycle in American Public Life. Boulder,Colorado: Paradigm Publishers, 2008.