We Can Bridge These Generations. But Can We Bring Along The Next?

In earlier posts, I’ve described riding along Hipster Hook and other areas where parked bikes now frame cafes, bars, restaurant and shops of one kind and another but where, thirty or twenty or even fifteen years ago, I would encounter no other cyclists.  Back then, those neighborhoods—including Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Long Island City and Astoria (where I now live) in Queens—were mainly low-to-middle income blue-collar enclaves populated mainly by first- and second-generation immigrants with smatterings of families that had been in this city—and sometimes in the very same houses or apartments—for three or more generations.

“Back in the Day”, as us oldsters (the antithesis of hipsters?) would say, the few cyclists I encountered anywhere in the city or its environs were, interestingly enough, born-and-bred New Yorkers.  Most of us did not have relatives or friends who cycled; you might say we were renegades, a cult, or just geeks of a sort.  It seemed that, in those days, transplants to this city didn’t ride.  I am not sure of whether they didn’t ride before they came here or gave up their two-wheeled vehicles once they got here.  I guess some didn’t plan on remaining for more than a couple of years—many didn’t—and were focused on starting a career or some other particular goal.  Lots of people did nothing but work during the time they lived in this city.

Such conditions prevailed as recently as the mid-to-late 1990’s, when I was a member of the New York Cycle Club.  I occasionally rode with them but, truthfully, I joined for the discounts I could get in bike shops and other establishments.  In any event, most of the cyclists I met on those rides were natives of the Big Apple.  Interestingly enough, most social classes were represented:  I saw construction workers, seamstresses and firefighters as well as teachers, professors, lawyers and bankers.  Admittedly, it wasn’t the most ethnically diverse group, though I was more likely to see faces darker than mine than I would have seen in most health clubs or on most tennis and squash courts.  The demographics I’ve described also applied to the rides and other activities of the local American Youth Hostels chapter, which employed me for a time after I moved back to New York.

Then, as now, I did most of my riding alone or with one or two friends.  They were, as often as not, people who grew up in circumstances similar to my own.  That is probably the reason why many of our conversations, over coffee or beer or whatever, centered on the city’s streets, intersections, bridges and neighborhoods:  Which ones were “best” for cycling?  Which were the most dangerous?  Was anybody or anything worse than a cab driver?  And, unfortunately, more than a few of us related stories of having our bikes stolen.  In fact, I recall several fellow cyclists who were held up or assaulted for their machines as they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge:  Twenty to thirty years ago, the neighborhoods on each side of the bridge were poor and crime-ridden.

Today the majority of cyclists I see in New York are young and have come here from some place else.  Hipster Hook is full of such riders.  Some ride only to commute or shop; others are as committed to riding and training as we were in my day.  I am glad they ride; I am glad to see anyone riding.  But their attitude about cycling, and about themselves, seems very different from ours. I don’t mean that as a criticism; no one should expect “the younger generation” to do as those who came before them.  But, from my admittedly-limited contact with hipster cyclists, I have the impression that their conversations—to the extent that they have them—have less to do with cycling, or even bikes, or the places to ride or not ride.  I guess the latter can be explained by the fact that they are not the minority we were, and they feel less need to pay attention to the “good” and “bad” bike routes because the bike lanes that line their neighborhoods give them a feeling of security.  They have bike-oriented cafes, which no one had even conceived in my youth.

From Filles + Garcons

 But I think one of the biggest differences between us and them is that we were more readily identifiable as cyclists.  Part of that has simply to do with the fact that we were more of a minority.  More to the point, we used equipment and wore garments and accessories—helmets, shorts, jerseys and half-fingered gloves, not to mention cleated shoes—that few others even tried on.  On the other hand, the young hipster riders dress and generally look like many other young people you might find here in New York.  Some—particularly young female pedalers—favor retro threads in fabrics, designs and patterns that were popular, well, in our day—or even earlier.  Or they wear facsimiles or imitations of such clothing.  Others adorn themselves with the severe sartorial straits of knife-blade black pants or tights and leather jackets:  interestingly, not unlike what I wore off-bike for a time in my youth.

It will be interesting to see what the next generation of cyclists will be like—or, indeed, how many of them there will be.  These days, I see more adult cyclists—young as well as, ahem, those of us of a certain age—but I seem to encounter fewer adolescents and children on bikes.  At one time, I’d see few kids on bikes in low-income neighborhoods, in part because of their parents’ or guardians’ fear of crime and in part because some families simply couldn’t afford bikes for their kids.  But these days, I seem to be encountering fewer child and teen riders in the middle- and upper-income neighborhoods of this city and the nearby suburbs.  

What’s disturbing—to me, anyway—about that is that a lot of those kids haven’t learned how to ride.  Nearly everyone who rides as an adult started in childhood:  Even if they abandoned their bikes when they got their drivers’ licenses, they didn’t forget how to ride a bike and could take it up again as an adult. On the other hand, those who don’t learn how to ride as kids rarely learn how to do so as adults.  So they won’t have the opportunity to become the kinds of cyclists we were and are---or hipsters—or whatever the next generation of cyclists in this city will be.