Jul. 1st, 2009

walkitout: (Default)
And in true infant/toddler fashion (at least all the ones related to me), kept utterly silent about her attempts to scale them. When I went to investigate the suspiciously silent baby around the corner, she was backing down from the first one -- she'd gotten all the way off the floor.
walkitout: (Default)
I want to be clear here: I'm not asserting that women were riding long distances. I think they were doing <1 mile - 2 miles max trips, often with children on their own bicycles. Sometimes they had a kids seat on their bikes.

Women took good care of their bicycles. They tended not to expect to replace them (ever) and since they were low mileage, they survived a long long time. The bike industry thus never expected to sell very many of them at a time, and the used market for women's bicycles kept prices low.

http://www.jims59.com/vintageschwinns/

Because they were invisible on the road (sticking to their own, quiet, local subdivision, riding exclusively during the work day and primarily in the summer), to the bike industry (buying more bikes for their kids than for themselves), and to cycling enthusiasts (they didn't race or tour), there are few records of this activity. But the bikes exist (enough that the prices are depressed as a result). Who was riding them?

http://bicycling.about.com/od/thebikelife/ig/Stars-on-bikes/Audrey-Hepburn-on-a-bike.-06j.htm

Love the tray Audrey. A lot like the Electra front tray.

ETA: Wow. John Forester is _crazy_:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Qz4kAulpimgC&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=suburban+cycling+1960s&source=bl&ots=uzPWqMnkcN&sig=TkiOqfJo69yy5asuOywPaY0xXn8&hl=en&ei=sMBLSoa1GJCy8AS6w-TyBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6

Sorry about that. It's pages 18 and 19 from _Bicycle Transportation_ on google books. Here's the offensive portion:

"Then the economic boom of the 1950s changed society drastically. People strove f
or cars and avoided the bicycle as a "cheap" item. Even expensive bicycles could
be left around college campuses" (well, duh, anyone at college had a ton of mon
ey at that point)...Cycling was sneered at, not for being lower-class (which it
was not, because blue-collar families owned cars)..."

Blue-collar families owned plural cars? In the 1950s? Really, John?

That statistics don't really support that thesis.
~
walkitout: (Default)
I called R.'s mother and stepfather and got stepfather D. I quizzed him about his first wife's cycling, and got the following. They married shortly after graduating college and they both got jobs almost immediately that were widely separated and thus had to have two cars. She had not had a car prior to their marriage. (This would be around '59 or '60.). His then-wife did have a bicycle, ridden occasionally for recreation and exercise. When they lived in NJ, she worked a couple miles from home and sometimes commuted by bicycle. He recalls virtually every one of their kids (between R. and I in age) having mothers who had bicycles; he saw those mothers riding those bicycles with their kids (destinations unknown) or by themselves, when he was out jogging.

So we now have NJ, MA and WA evidence of 1960s and 1970s cycling suburban housewives being a common and unremarkable sight.
walkitout: (Default)
In order: we have found a Not Very Nice person in Acton! I was saying this is the first, but arguably the woman who stopped her SUV on Prospect St to lecture us about letting T. ride his bike on the sidewalk and inform us that multiple cars had gone over the sidewalk to hit houses on Prospect St during the years she lived in the town wasn't very nice, either. Tough call, there; she probably meant well and was clearly interested in interacting.

Today's not nice person lives on Tuttle. I'd mention the number (I've already collected the names of the people who have the mortgage, the amount they paid for the house in 1997, the names of the people they bought it from, and the amount they refied for in 2003), but I'm allowing for the possibility that (a) it was a rainy day and people might just be grumpy and (b) maybe her puppy just died. I don't think that's what's going on here, but allow me to expand on my subject. She's got at least one kid that looks to be high school age, sullen, with friends who drive and who are similarly somewhat sullen (but who smile when waved at passing us in their cars) and go way too fast for subdivision streets. The lawn is mowed, but not quite as often as is typical in the subdivision, which supports my current theory, which that she is Mean, category Skinflint and Judgmental. Not smiling when we waved wouldn't get me going. No. She passed us twice, both times conspicuously stopping many, many (like a dozen or more) yards away even tho we were pulled over on the opposite side of the road, stopped and waving her on. Like, had to do the wide, geez, you can pass us wave, as opposed to the, yup, we're good, thanks for slowing down wave. Did not smile. Did not wave. Glared the first time. Got out at her house where we passed her again and I waved again and said good morning. No response. Maybe deaf? Came out of the house around the time we passed again, waved and smiled and good morning. This time, _turned to look away_. Got into her car, did her conspicuous stop and impatiently wait for us to do the massively exaggerated geez come on lady wave, and again, turned to look away when I smiled and waved.

I told T. she was mean and never to speak to her.

But hey. Maybe it would have killed her to smile. You never know. In the mean time, I'm going to collect their plates, makes and models and start tracking their visitors and their driving habits. You never know when it might come in handy. I suspect (based on the lawn) that she doesn't have the spare time to cause me any particular trouble.

R., A. and I went down to Belmont Wheelworks to collect my old bike (the Bianchi Milano Cafe Racer), newly kitted out with an internal hub and lights (mit standlicht! it says so on the sticker) an a Moose Rack and Burley Kazoo. That means, a rack on the back that is the base for a surry/trailabike made by Burley, the one designed for little little kids. Haven't got T. on it yet, but he really wanted me to take the Bianchi out for the afternoon ride instead of the Townie, and he looked at that seat a lot trailing behind me. I'm sure with a kid it will be more effort, but it's really no hassle at all without a kid, which is a promising sign. I also got a frame lock (Axa Defender from CleverCycles) and another mount for a Bobike Mini. I'm optimistic that I'll be able to take this out to the grocery store with one (or possibly 2) kids on Some Great Future Day. We'll see.

And it rained. Not that that stopped us. Because we're not made of sugar.
walkitout: (Default)
Here's a blog post:

http://www.howtofixbikes.ca/2007/09/vintage-1950-ccm-ladies-bicycle-mineall.html

A man acquires a bicycle with a step-thru configuration, and is very excited about owning this bike in his collection. Here's a mysterious sentence:

"I always wanted one of those long swooping top tube ladies bike for my collection, to the dismay of my significant other (sorry babe)."

Why does this dismay his SO? Hmmm. I bet it has something to do with the erasure of women from bicycling history and the SO reacting to that, perhaps without knowing precisely why. But rather than speculate on that remark, I'll continue:

"Although built in 1950, the bike is a prime example of late Victorian era bicycle design built for ladies who wanted to go about in those nice big skirts."

Whoa. WTF? Words have in fact failed me, so I'll continue.

"Another feature that was found on those ear;y bikes was a net fixed to the rear frame and fender to prevent the skirt from ending up in the wheel spokes."

So, actually, those skirt guards don't just stop "nice big skirts" from landing in the spokes. They also stop your trench coat from winding up in the spokes. Which is why skirt guards (trench coats have skirts. Sorry, guys!) appear on men's and women's bikes that are properly fitted out for well-dressed folk commuting in cities to offices. Along with fenders and so forth.

And then the next paragraph talks about the bicycle and the emancipation of women in the 19th and 20th century. It turns out of you try to find anything out about the history of women and bicycles, it goes something like this:

Shortly after the introduction of the Safety Bicycle, women started riding bicycles. As a result, dress reform (which had been unsuccessfully bandied about for decades) took off like a rocket. Women! Able to Walk! And Ride! Wow! Big Deal! Suffrage! Yay! Then there's a bit of stuff about bicycling being cheap transport during the Great Depression and WW2, and then after the war, nothing until women's cycling events were added to the Olympics in the 1980s. You can find timelines that eke out some additional news to get to about 1958 or so, and then restart in the early 1970s or so mentioning that bicycle sales took off.

Now, I realize I grew up in a time warp. Really, I do! And I did. But I also do in fact realize that a lot of women did not get cars to drive, nor did they have driver's licenses to drive them during the 1950s and 1960s. And even when they did get the license and/or car, they were fairly hesistant drivers. And I have been doing a whole lot of asserting that those women who weren't (collectively) driving very much were, in fact, riding their bikes (and, as it turns out, using those bikes to take their kids to preschool, according to my friend on fb, W., who put his toe in the spokes. And to commute to work, according to my stepfather in law).

This poor blogger (sorry!) I have picked on as an example of a rampant trend in the blogosphere and online (Ask.com kinda crap). And most if not all of the authors of these essays _bicycled with these women_.

So they _don't_ know something that they experienced. And they _do_ know something that has very little to do with anything.

And from there, it gets worse. The bicycle advocates are uniformly in agreement on the following principles (with the exception of unrepentant enthusiasts who continue to follow the precepts of John "The Great Satan" Forester):

(1) We need to get more people on bikes.
(2) To get more people on bikes, we need short trips. We need safe, easy routes. We need easy to ride bikes.

The bicycling housewives of the 1950s, 60s and early 70s were US bike culture. They are what we should be reproducing (at least in suburbs filled in prior to 1970 or thereabouts). They are our goal. And we are collectively going LA LA LA LA LA I CANNOT REMEMBER YOU. And Mapes is saying we need safe and boring and easy and something we don't think about and telling story after story about heroic bike commuters and Critical Mass and Naked Biking and blah blah bleeping blah.

Not to get all Rumsfeld or anything, but someone should be taking a big ole step back and asking some questions about how we know what we know and what the fuck. And someone needs to go out there with a Flip Mino or something and collect the oral history, because these women are now in their 70s. And I honest to goddess don't want to do it because I hate my mother and her generation irritates me.

But at least I didn't forget about them.

ETA: I wish I could scream online. I know, all caps, but it seems so wrong.

My fb friend, W., speaking about the bike seat reminds me of the real reason for the step-thru configuration. SO YOU DON'T DECAPITATE THE KID DISMOUNTING! It is not all about the clothing.

5 for 5

Jul. 1st, 2009 08:39 pm
walkitout: (Default)
Data point #5: my friend A. says she didn't bicycle. She then proceeded to tell me about the series of bicycles she owned, and details of a cycling history that included attempting to put a child's seat on the bike so she could bicycle with a <2 year old (it didn't work, but most attempts to put a child's car seat on a bike don't work). She could not remember, but didn't think she'd ever seen anyone else put a kid on a bike -- she just thought it was a logical thing to try.

She also went to Germany and came back inspired to try bicycling to run errands here in Mass, but gave it up because it was too uncomfortable in traffic.

I just wish I could find someone else -- anyone else -- who documented this. Because right now it's looking like a black hole for citational purposes. But a survey instrument, a video camera and a few trips to senior-housing would produce a gold mine.
walkitout: (Default)
http://books.google.com/books?id=IsbmwN8-m1cC&pg=PA94&dq=ladies+bicycle&lr=

From Bijker's _Of bicycles, bakelites and bulbs_:

"One summer evening my parents rode ten miles to dine at Six Mile Bottom; their evening clothes were arranged in cases on the handlebars; for of course you couldn't possibly dine without dressing. (Raverat, 1952: 86)"

And on what we would consider to be crappy roads, no doubt.
walkitout: (Default)
From _Cycling and Society_, by three men who I will not bother to name here, page 49:

"Its [the safety bicycle] popularity for women peaked around 1896-7 once the drop-frame design was fitted with pneumatic rather than solid rubber tyres; this peak period of popularity is commonly referred to in the cycling literature as 'the bicycle boom'"

Given what a small percentage of women had bikes at that point, and what a large percentage of women had bikes fifty some odd years later, calling this a peak seems a little odd. If you consider racism and classism odd. Maybe they meant "Society", like, only the uppers need be considered.

Footnote 7 is really precious:

"Much elsewhere has been written about the impact of the bicycle on the position of women in society; to recapitulate here would detract from the focus on racing."

Pretty much captures what I'm complaining about, hunh?

ETA: Lest you think the book is about racing in particular, here's the overview:

"How can the social sciences help us to understand the past, present and potential futures of cycling? This timely international and interdisciplinary collection addresses this question, discussing shifts in cycling practices and attitudes, and opening up important critical spaces for thinking about the prospects for cycling. The book brings together, for the first time, analyses of cycling from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including history, sociology, geography, planning, engineering and technology. The book redresses the past neglect of cycling as a topic for sustained analysis by treating it as a varied and complex practice which matters greatly to contemporary social, cultural and political theory and action. Cycling and Society demonstrates the incredible diversity of contemporary cycling, both within and across cultures. With cycling increasingly promoted as a solution to numerous social problems across a wide range of policy areas in car-dominated societies, this book helps to open up a new field of cycling studies"

Really makes me want to track down Rosen, Cox and Horton and do Very Bad Things.

To be fair, the stuff about safety bicycle and the bike boom was in a section on cycle racing. But that sort of begs the question. _WHY_ bury it there, given the stated scope of the book? I can't tell from the "limited preview" and I don't like these people enough to buy it (I did just buy a couple other books that looked promising, so it's not like I'm opposed to buying these things).
walkitout: (Default)
Evan Wylie's article _Who Says Bikes Are for Kids?_ is an excellent overview of his rediscovery of the joys of cycling as an adult non-enthusiast in the wake of buying a used bike while shopping for his son's tricycle. In some ways, that article could be written today, right down to the push for separate cycle paths to make cycling more accessible and safer, the comment that we all need it for our health, and that Holland is a joy to cycle in. Weird, tho, to note that the Esplanade was not quite in the planning stages at that point. Go read it over at google books.

ETA: And all those devices (the Zigo Leader, etc.) which involve converting a bike into a stroller? They owe the Jan 1950 Popular Science some money.

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