There was a time, about ten or fifteen years ago, when it seemed that every other urban and suburban bicycle shop was trying to be a "bicycle boutique". There are still shops like that, though, it seems, not as many as there were in those days: I guess folks who can afford such places don't have the time to go to them, so they shop online.
The "boutiques" did everything they could not to seem like bike shops. If anything, some of them tried to look and feel like the sorts of gyms young people with lots of disposable income frequent in order to meet other young people with lots of disposable income. Or they tried to look like the sorts of coffee bars that try to be like Starbucks without being Starbucks.
There's a certain kind of atmosphere, though, that simply can't be achieved merely with track lighting and espresso machines. Those things simply can't match a great entrance:
Some things, you can only find in Italy--Florence, to be specific.
After my trip to Italy and writing about bike lane controversies in Brooklyn, I got to thinking about my sense of space, as a cyclist.
It took a couple of days of riding in Rome to acclimate myself to the ways drivers behave around cyclists. I can say the same for Paris and France, but I had an even more acute sense of how drivers' and cyclists' sense of shared space is different while in the land of Michelangelo and Caravaggio.
You can ride through one of those traffic circles, or any other intersection, and a motorist might be a gear-cable's breadth from you. Yet you would be in less danger than if you'd had a wider berth--or even riding in a "protected" bike lane--in most US cities.
Italian--particularly Roman--drivers are often called "crazy". Yet they not only are more aware of two-wheeled vehicles (including Vespas and motorcycles, as well as bicycles) than their American counterparts, they are more accustomed to driving in--and sharing--really tight spaces.
I was reminded of this when looking, again, at this street in Florence, between the Ponte Vecchio and Uffizi Gallery.
It's about half as wide as most sidewalks in New York! Yet I actually saw a car and bike pass through it at the same time. And the driver didn't honk his/her horn!
I also couldn't help but to notice the condition of the bicycles parked next to it. If they'd been locked to a New York City parking meter or sign post, this could have been their fate:
I am going to make yet another confession. This one may shock, surprise or even appall those of you who know anything about me.
You see...I once took a Gender Studies course. Now that might seem like a confession in and of itself. The real "dim dark secret", though, is that I didn't complete it.
The instructor wasn't the problem: She was actually very good. For me, it was this: The readings seemed very trite. That is, once I translated them. No, I wasn't reading French or German theorists. Rather, I was rendering them from the abstruse, abstract terminology and the tortured sentence structure in which they were written--only to find that the authors were saying things I already knew or that were opinions masquerading as principles. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, "There was no there there."
So why was I thinking about that today, as I wound my way through the rooms of the Uffizi Gallery? Well, one Michelangelo Buonarroti (yes, that Michelangelo) could have taught that class a good part of what they need to know about gender with this painting
The Holy Family with the Infant St. John The Baptist, also known as the Doni Tondo, is Michelangelo's only known panel painting. Forget about all the little nude boys in the background: Il Maestro definitely knew a thing or two about women
You guys all know, deep down, that no matter how strong or fast you are, nothing you do compares with the strength women exhibit in giving birth, raising children or doing any number of other things. I find it humbling, to say the least: Today, I cannot match the feats of strength or endurance, on my bicycle or otherwise, I could muster in my younger years. Moreover, I have not given, and cannot give, birth.
So this is a country where a woman can have an arm muscle like Popeye's, after he's eaten his spinach.
That, in a country where real men once wore skirts:
