20 July 2015

The Naked Truth About The Hipster Infantry

They have silly facial hair and ride single-speed bikes.  Who are they?

I wouldn't be surprised if you said "hipsters".  That's probably the answer I would give, too.

Miep von Sydow has another answer:

Those guys had silly mustaches and single speed bikes before the word hipster even existed.

Perhaps not surprisingly, von Sydow is a Swedish-American military historian.  This photo, on her blog, shows a World War I German bicycle infantry unit on the Western Front in 1914.


Now, I don't think it ever would have occurred to them, or hipsters, to beat swords into plowshares--or paintbrushes or handlebars or anything else. If it had, the result might look something like this:

naked bike riding

At least the silly facial hair isn't as noticeable on the Philadelphia Naked Bike Ride!



2 comments:

  1. Is Miep female? Not that sex-definitions these days are as defined, mind you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glomerol--Indeed she is. I have corrected the post. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete