Happy Friday! So here’s a question for you:
As a cyclist I’ve long resented the fact that people make all sorts of assumptions about me just because I ride a bike. Like, I’m automatically some sort of urbanite “woosie” with a liberal arts degree who maintains a gluten-free diet and who has never even fired a gun? I mean, sure, all those things are completely true, but you could at least take the trouble to get to know me first!
So why is it then, that we’ve been “automatically conscripted into the woke army,” as she puts it?
It’s a very good question, though a funny one coming from a Guardian columnist. In a way, the answer’s right there at the bottom of the article:
It’s the media who conscripts people for the “culture wars,” and if you’re on the “woke” side of it like the Guardian is then what better draftees than the sorts of namby pambies who ride bikes?
Though as you can see, the article is over 14 years old, and there’s no way they’d use a culturally insensitive word like “tribe” today:
See that? Already we’ve found yet another answer to the “Who conscripted cyclists into the woke army?” question, so if you’re keeping track it’s: 1) “The media;” and 2) “The bike industry:”
Well, good for them, it sounds like they had a powwow and decided to take their marketing in a different direction–though it still doesn’t address the problematic name “Yeti,” which they appropriated from Tibetan culture and Sherpa folklore:
Quick! Somebody start a petition!
Incidentally, I do feel like I have to address that Guardian photo, which was the first and maybe only time in my life I’ve been the subject of a full-on Zoolander-type photo shoot:
I felt pretty silly hoisting that Scattante over my head, but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t get a great big ego boost out of having a new book out and being photographed by a big-shot photographer, who I recall being a genuine and interesting guy, and who I’m only now learning died back in 2019:
I’m a little late, but I am going to do all those things in his memory, though I hope he won’t mind that the poem may be more of a dirty limerick, because that’s the only sort of verse I’m capable of composing.
Of course there’s another far more important factor in the whole “cyclists versus drivers” thing, and it long predates the culture war–or at least the current version of the culture war, which I guess you’d summarize as “woke” vs. “based” or something like that–which is that drivers kill cyclists, and they started doing it almost immediately:
Yes, as the Guardian columnist points out, most cyclists also drive and all that stuff, but there’s no getting around the fact that drivers kill cyclists and not the other way around, and if you ride a bike it’s something you confront as soon as you experience that first close pass. Not every cyclist is radicalized because of this, though some certainly are, and I’m surprised the columnist says “I’ve never actually met a cyclist who wants to be part of this battle,” when there are hundreds of them at any given group ride or advocacy meeting. As for the rest of us, most of us do manage to successfully reconcile (or at least rationalize) our own car use with the many problems the sheer pervasiveness of motor vehicles has caused. Some of us drive reluctantly, some of us drive without hesitation, and some of us even love cars just as much as we love bikes. But I’d wager even those of us in that last group have a perspective on motordom that many people who don’t ride bikes lack, and it’s equal parts respect for the power and danger and awesomeness of the machine, and contempt for and resentment of the many, many clueless and irresponsible people who lack that same respect. So absolutely, the idea that there’s a war between cars and bikes and you’ve got to pick a side is mostly ridiculous. At the same time, if you do ride a bike (or a motorcycle for that matter) odds are you’ve got a certain amount of skepticism and cynicism where cars are concerned, even if you drive one yourself.
Certainly if it were up to me people wouldn’t automatically associate people who ride bikes with “wokism” or climate zealotry or herding people into 15-minute cities and making them eat bugs or any other agenda whether real or imagined. It’s important to remember that not everybody fits neatly into well-defined categories. I recently stumbled on the social media feed of someone I used to know in college; it was post after post of “We need climate justice for trans people in Gaza!” or whatever the latest progressive rallying cry is, interspersed with the odd screed about how the DOT needs to stop destroying New York City with bike lanes because STREETS ARE FOR CARS, two sentiments you really don’t expect to see together. Some people do like their ideology laid out for them completely, like you do with a toddler’s clothes, but she’s more like the kid trying to dress himself for the first time who emerges from his bedroom wearing one of those swimming shirts with a pair of pajama bottoms and a pair of Spider-Man underpants on the outside. He may look ridiculous, and none of what he’s wearing seems to work together, but at least he’s trying.
For me, cycling’s about freedom and balance. Some think the vehicular embodiment of freedom is a Harley-Davidson or an F-150, but what’s more free than a vehicle that requires no insurance, no registration, no license, and nothing from the energy grid in order to operate (the bicycle industry’s efforts to change that last part notwithstanding)? And who knows better than the cyclist that you can’t be all uptight and rigid, and that sometimes you need to lean left, or lean right, but if you lean too far left or too far right you fall over? An intrinsic understanding of the importance of self-sufficiency and balance is that is all I’d assume about anybody who rides a bike. The rest is just projecting.