The Pathetic Bicyclist

Have you ever noticed how the bicycle is used as a signifier of male weakness, childishness, impotency and/or geekiness and nerdiness? I notice this all the time in movies, ads and other channels of pop culture. If I happen to be with my wife when I spot an example, I'll point it out to her, and she'll roll her eyes and make a joke to the effect that my sensitivity to this kind of stereotyping is itself evidence of geekiness and nerdiness (if not all the other mentioned attributes).

I'm just making an observation here, not protesting the stereotype. It's reflective of a popular cultural bias and an angry blog post could only serve to make it worse. I notice that most of the examples I spot are from the US and I know the grounds from which they spring. Among my cohorts, the bicycle was a popular way to get around from age 5 to early teens, and during this time, it was even be used as an emblem of masculinity. There was a lot of one-upmanship involved in doing jumps, wheelies and other stunts.

But by the time we boys approached 15 (old enough for a "learner's" driving permit in many states), cars had long usurped bicycles as a gauge of masculinity. The louder and faster the car, the bigger the man, seemed to be the consensus. When I think back to my old high school, I can't even remember there being a single bike rack outside -- although the size of the parking lot more than equaled the size of the school itself.

It's understandable why a boy of 15 would look at a car as a token of manliness. After all, it takes a mature, responsible person to drive a motor vehicle so getting a car and a license constituted a right of passage. It's less understandable, though, that many men, years after getting their licenses, continue to put such stock in cars as symbols of male virility. Or why they would look down their noses at a vehicle that could actually promote this attribute.

I say I notice these instances of cyclist stereotyping all the time but when I finally got around to doing a post on them, I could only remember a few of them. But you have to trust me: they're everywhere.

Ok, this first one is from the movie 40-Year-Old Virgin. It's a great example because the bicycle is used in the movie's opening credits as a major character-establishing device. It says, "I'm unassertive, socially awkward and lame with women."



The next one's from the Will Farrell movie Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. It's the story of an American race car driver who has a stretch of bad luck and has to confront some demons in order to get back into the champion's circle. When the character hits rock bottom, he loses his driving license and resorts to riding a bike and -- in a double whammy against sustainable transport -- taking a public bus!




Here's a non-American entry -- from the comedic, musical duo Flight of the Conchords of New Zealand. In this one, the two singers are doing a send up of the bad-boy trappings of gangsta rap. The target of their white boy rap is a litany of middle-class irritants such as hidden banking fees. As a visual complement, the singers ride not in the usual low-rider Chevy Impalas and Ford Fairlanes but on bicycles. Nothing like a bicycle to mark you as a wimp.




Here's one from last year's Coen Brothers' movie Burn After Reading. Brad Pitt plays a clueless fitness instructor who gets in over his head when he discovers some misplaced government security documents and tries his hand at major league extortion. When he rides a bicycle to the appointed rendezvous, it serves to underscore his inexperience and ineptitude.



Finally, here's an example that I discovered while working on this post. It's a pastiche of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the Terminator and the '80s comic character Pee Wee Herman. Perhaps this served as the original archetype for the emasculated bicyclist.

Bikes in Bloom -- recap

Here's a pictorial follow-up to last weekend's Borulj virágba (Burst into Flower) event at Hunyadi tér. I would have posted it sooner but I was marooned in a cloud of volcano dust in Scandinavia (I'm working on a post about it).

Although I wasn't at the Hunyadi do, my wife, Kristin Faurest, was. She was there in part to collect photographs for a book she's written about some of the lesser-known public squares of Budapest. She was working with the talented Budapest photographer, Attila Glázer, who took some choice snaps.

The highlight of the afternoon was a bike-decorating contest involving flowers -- a nice nexus between the horticultural and transportational aspects of spring. The subject of the top photo is Sofie (Zsofi) Jackson. Below she's with her dad, Bob. Apparently, this one's been selected for Kristin's book.

There was also this one.


And this one.

You notice how vivid the colours are? And the drama in the subjects' faces? These are two of the many qualities that are generally missing from my photos. In my work, I make publications about environmental projects, and because of this, I spend lots of time sifting through amateur photos taken by project staff in search of ones that are suitable for publication. In this era of flickr.com and digital cameras, the art of photography, in my opinion, is overly democratised. Looking over these shots by Attila, I feel vindicated in my view that photography for publications is best left to the pros.

Directions on Critical Mass

Critical Mass happens tonight, but under different conditions than the CMs of recent years. The Critical Mass site lays out detailed directions, in Hungarian, of course.

For those with Magyar Deficiency Syndrome, here are the very basics: There will be a bike lifting at Hôsök tér at 6:30 p.m. and another one at Moszkva tér at 8p.m. You're invited to either one or both, at your pleasure. There's no designated, closed route from Hôsök to Moszkva -- participants can choose their own route, but are asked to obey traffic rules as they go. Conveniently, Andrásssy is closed to motor traffic for Car-Free Day, so this will be the favoured way to begin the journey for most participants. From Octogon, the procession will likely split up. Some will go down the körút toward Margit híd and, from there, on up to Moszkva. Others will follow Andrássy to its terminus and then continue down Atilla út, across the Lanc híd, north down the Buda embankment and perhaps up the bike trail or the körút to the end point.

There will be traffic police and Critical Mass organisers at the largest intersections, so this would be a point in favour of riding on main roads with the main flow of bicycles. Whatever you do, however, organisers ask that you:

• stop at red lights
• don't hold up public transit
• don't ride on the 4-6 tram tracks
• keep in mind that crosswalks and sidewalks/pavements are for pedestrians
• go on sidestreets rather than sidewalks/pavements if you're averse to busy streets
• turn the other cheek when it comes to shouting motorists
• mind organisers' directions
• help each other out
• bring your bike lamps (it'll get dark around 8)

These are the basics from the Critical Mass site. Will see you all tonight.

Protest highlights hot controversy over segregated paths

I'm not sure how much was accomplished at Wednesday's hastily organised demonstration down on the Buda korzó. The aim of the event, dubbed "BringaLance" (Bike Chain), was to create a chain of bikes (and bicyclists) from Batthyányi tér to the Chain Bridge along the shared-use path on the Buda embankment, and in so doing, protest the common practice of putting bike paths on footpaths.

The idea for the demonstration came up just a week prior to the event, so with the short notice and crappy weather, it wasn't surprising that the chain was missing quite a few links. An organiser walked from one end to the other, counting 200 participants. I snapped this badly focussed picture about midway along the chain.

I had an interesting chat with Virág Bence-Kovács, a staff engineer with the organising group, the Hungarian Cycling Club (Magyar Kérékparosklub -- MK). At present, MK is assisting City Hall in the drafting of a five-year work programme for bicycle-route development in Budapest. Discussion amongst traffic engineers has foundered on basic disagreement over what's most suitable for Budapest -- facilities that segregate cyclists from motor traffic or lanes that integrate them with traffic.

I am solidly in favour of the latter, as I've said in this blog before. In downtown Bp, segregated facilities mean, in almost every instance, sharedüuse facilities like the Buda korzó -- tedious, maddening and even dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians alike. To me, this is the past -- it may have been appropriate when there were only a few cyclists in the city, but now that they're becoming a more significant part of urban traffic, they have to be mainstreamed onto the streets, where, due to their speed, they more properly belong. Check out the city's first and best integrated lanes on Alkotmány utca, a new project that could serve as a model for future path development througout the city.

If you agree with me on this, you should consider making your voice heard at this pivitol time, perhaps by joining, or just contacting, a lobbying group like MK. This group has been working closely with the city in transport decision making, trying to ensure that cyclists' interests are considered in the city's transport development. Those who are content in the sidewalk ghetto of Budapest's current segregated bike paths don't need to bother. But if you'd like to see cycling here develop along the lines of the best European examples (Amsterdam, Copenhaggen, etc.), then make yourselves heard.

Bucharest launches city-bike scheme

Cicloteque is the name of Europe's latest municipal city-bike scheme, launched the first part of August in Bucharest. With just 100 bikes, it's much more modest in scale than the widely publicised schemes of cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Lyon -- yet it's encouraging to see a progressive step taken in a fellow new member state of the EU.

I wrote an earlier post on the possibility of Budapest getting a similar scheme rolling. http://cyclingsolution.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-bikes-in-budapest.html

The service is marketed as a means of transport, providing an alternative to cars and public transportation. It was created by the NGO Mai Mult Verde http://www.maimultverde.ro (director Dragos Bucurenci pictured left at Cicloteque's launch event) and UniCredit Tiriac bank. The first batch of 100 bikes was installed at the campus of the University of Bucharest. To use the bikes, you have to first pay an annual registration fee of 100 Lei (EUR 30) and an hourly 2 Lei (EUR 0.50) or daily 20 Lei (EUR 5) usage fee.

Mai Mult Verde's stated purpose was to improve urban mobility in the congested capital and to protect the environment. Bucharest has 1.2 private cars, which emit an estimated 125 tonnes of lead every year.

Just as Paris's Velib is financially backed by a commercial partner (JC Decaux advertising firm) Cicloteque got its money from a commercial partner who saw the venture as a good publicity tool. The local branch of Unicredit bank put up 100% of the initial investment of EUR 150,000, which covered the purchase of 100 bikes, the cost of the launch event, as well as the installation of 20 bike racks throughout Bucharest (The racks are just for short stops -- so far, the only place you can pick up and drop off bikes is at Cicloteque's single depot on the university campus.)

Just three weeks after the system's launch, there are 200 subscribers, according to Miruna Cugler, communications manager at Mai Mult Verde. Plans for the future include more bikes and more depots around the city.

In addition, Mai Mult Verde plans to lobby for more bike paths and routes around the city. At present, Bucharest has just a few bike paths, most of which are swarming with pedestrians and other users. The poor quality and quantity of paths mean that urban bike users have to jostle with motor traffic to get anywhere, a situation familiar to cyclists in Budapest.