It looks like I'll be taking a trip to the Museum of the City New York soon.
If you read this blog regularly, you know I'm not the sort of person who has to be dragged into a museum. But even if you are that sort of person, and you happen to be in New York, you might want to take a trip to the MCNY.
There, "Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History" will include photographs and other objects intended to "trace the bike's transformation of urban transportation and leisure" and reveal "the complex, creative and often contentious (No, really?--ed.) relationship between New York and the bicycle." This exhibition has been organized by Evan Friss, the author of On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City and Donald Albrecht, one of the museum's curators.
At least one of the topics covered by the exhibit is something I've discussed in at least a few of my posts: the bicycle's role in liberating women. The way we dress today owes everything to the shorter and split skirts, and "bloomers" developed for female riders, as well as those female riders tossing off their hoopskirts, petticoats and whalebone corsets.
This photograph, taken by renowned photographer Alice Austen, shows her friend Violet Ward on the right with Daisy Elliott. Ms. Ward, who lived on Staten Island, started one of the first bike clubs for women and wrote Bicycling for Ladies, a 200-page book advising women on how to become serious cyclists.
Another interesting topic the exhibit highlights is the ways in which bicycles and bicycling helped different ethnic and racial groups, some of whom had only recently arrived in the city, to assert their American identity as well as to promote solidarity. German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican and Mongolian created their own riding groups. So did Caribbean immigrants, as well as African-Americans, most of whom came from the South. Black cyclists started the Alpha Wheelmen to challenge the notion that cycling was only for privileged white men (We sure can use that now!) and a certain black man rode with the South Brooklyn Wheelmen into worldwide fame as the second black athlete to win a title in any sport. (Canadian boxer George Dixon was the first.) He was none other than Marshall, a.k.a. Major, Taylor.
Now, being a white cyclist, I'm not aware of current New York City-based bike clubs organized around the ethnic or racial identities, though their existence wouldn't surprise me: I often see groups of black or Latino men (and, less frequently, women) riding together, sometimes dressed in the same colors. They might be actual clubs, or less formal organizations. And there is at least one women's cycling group that I know about: WE Bicycle.
And, about the "contentious" part of the museum's introduction: The exhibit shows that conflict between cyclists and the police or segments of the public are not new. One reason why we had to fight to get Prospect and Central Parks closed to traffic is that bicycles had actually been banned from those parks, and others, during the first "bike boom" because of confrontations between cyclists and pedestrians as well as horseback riders. Now, how anyone thought that vehicular traffic was less of a hazard than bicycles is beyond me. Then again, I don't claim to have one of the great minds of this, or any other, era.
OK, I'll turn off the sarcasm meter and repeat that I intend to see the exhibit.
If you read this blog regularly, you know I'm not the sort of person who has to be dragged into a museum. But even if you are that sort of person, and you happen to be in New York, you might want to take a trip to the MCNY.
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| Bicyclists in Central Park in 1941 |
There, "Cycling in the City: A 200-Year History" will include photographs and other objects intended to "trace the bike's transformation of urban transportation and leisure" and reveal "the complex, creative and often contentious (No, really?--ed.) relationship between New York and the bicycle." This exhibition has been organized by Evan Friss, the author of On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City and Donald Albrecht, one of the museum's curators.
At least one of the topics covered by the exhibit is something I've discussed in at least a few of my posts: the bicycle's role in liberating women. The way we dress today owes everything to the shorter and split skirts, and "bloomers" developed for female riders, as well as those female riders tossing off their hoopskirts, petticoats and whalebone corsets.
This photograph, taken by renowned photographer Alice Austen, shows her friend Violet Ward on the right with Daisy Elliott. Ms. Ward, who lived on Staten Island, started one of the first bike clubs for women and wrote Bicycling for Ladies, a 200-page book advising women on how to become serious cyclists.
Another interesting topic the exhibit highlights is the ways in which bicycles and bicycling helped different ethnic and racial groups, some of whom had only recently arrived in the city, to assert their American identity as well as to promote solidarity. German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican and Mongolian created their own riding groups. So did Caribbean immigrants, as well as African-Americans, most of whom came from the South. Black cyclists started the Alpha Wheelmen to challenge the notion that cycling was only for privileged white men (We sure can use that now!) and a certain black man rode with the South Brooklyn Wheelmen into worldwide fame as the second black athlete to win a title in any sport. (Canadian boxer George Dixon was the first.) He was none other than Marshall, a.k.a. Major, Taylor.
 |
| A bicycle club member in the Bronx, 2007. Photo Carlos Alvarez Montero |
Now, being a white cyclist, I'm not aware of current New York City-based bike clubs organized around the ethnic or racial identities, though their existence wouldn't surprise me: I often see groups of black or Latino men (and, less frequently, women) riding together, sometimes dressed in the same colors. They might be actual clubs, or less formal organizations. And there is at least one women's cycling group that I know about: WE Bicycle.
 |
| Steve Athineos, center, leads NYC bike messengers in protest against midtown bike lane closure, 1987 |
And, about the "contentious" part of the museum's introduction: The exhibit shows that conflict between cyclists and the police or segments of the public are not new. One reason why we had to fight to get Prospect and Central Parks closed to traffic is that bicycles had actually been banned from those parks, and others, during the first "bike boom" because of confrontations between cyclists and pedestrians as well as horseback riders. Now, how anyone thought that vehicular traffic was less of a hazard than bicycles is beyond me. Then again, I don't claim to have one of the great minds of this, or any other, era.
OK, I'll turn off the sarcasm meter and repeat that I intend to see the exhibit.
