Urban Bicycling – Or, Another Bicycling Tribe?

Right after I did my post about bicycling cultures, the LA times came out with an article about urban bicycling and designing clothes for it. Trying to use a bicycle for transportation! Imagine that! Well, in the early ‘70s, when I taught myself to ride a bicycle, that is exactly what we were doing. We didn’t know we were doing “urban bicycling.” Then again, we didn’t know that the telephones we were using were “land lines,” that the music we were playing was “vinyl,” or that the computers we were using were “mainframes,” or that we were “retro.” What an ignorant generation! Would anyone today recognize those huge things, which we connected to with keyboards with no screens, in things called Fortran and Basic, via punch cards which said “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate” – what did “spindle” mean anyhow? – as computers?

Related: “Urban cycling spawns its own peddlers” by Cyndia Zwahlen at LATimes.com

More Posts