Monkey, Longhorn Or Ape Hanger

One of my favorite non-bike blogs is Old Picture of the Day.  Sometimes the images are worth looking at purely for aesthetic reasons; almost all of the others are interesting in some aspect of life, past or present, they reveal.

In each post, a (usually brief) comment accompanies the photo.  Those are worth reading because they convey "PJM"'s deep appreciation--and, sometimes, personal connections--to the photographs he collects and displays.

His post today included this photo, along with a reminisce about his own childhood bike, which was very similar to the one in the picture:

One thing I found interesting about the responses he got to his post is how they described the handlebars.  I have heard to bars like the ones in the photo referred to as "Longhorn" bars (even though I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey!)  and the bars on bikes like the Schwinn Sting Ray and Raleigh Chopper (the ones with "banana seats")as "Ape Hangers".  But one commenter heard them referred to as "monkey" bars".  What's really funny, to me, is that some of the adults I knew during the  '70's "Bike Boom" referred to the those funny-looking dropped handlebars on those newfangled ten-speeds as "monkey bars"--meaning, I presume, that only a monkey could ride them.

 

They Should've Been Riding Bikes

Yesterday I wrote about the Long Island Motor Parkway, which, in its history, has been one of America's first race courses and one of its first automotive expressways--and would become of the last bike lanes to open in New York for nearly half a century.  Now it's a segment of what is supposed to become the Brooklyn-Queens Greenway.

So, perhaps, there was some weird sort of synchronicity, or whatever you want to call it, at work when I found this image on one of my favorite non-bike blogs, Old Picture of the Day:

Doing Their Good Deed Daily?

Previously, I've mentioned that The Bowery Boys is one of my favorite non-bike blogs.  Now I'm going to introduce you to another:  Old Picture of the Day.

Like Bowery Boys and Nikon Sniper (another favorite), OPD is not normally bike-related.  However, today's photo featured two Boy Scouts giving rides to girls.  The question is:  To whom do those bikes belong?

As you've probably noticed, those bikes have girls'/female frames.  Now, we've all seen guys on girls' bikes:  Come on, admit it, all of you guys have ridden your wife's, girlfriend's, sister's or mother's--or some other woman's--bike.  Maybe you didn't know whose bike it was.  That's OK. ;-)  Or, maybe you even owned the bike.  That's OK, too.  At one point of my life, I was commuting on women's bikes because they were completely out of fashion, so they weren't being stolen as much as men's bikes were.

But how likely is it that both of those Boy Scouts owned girls' bikes?

Were they riding men's bikes, I would have guessed that those boys were following the Scout pledge:  Do A Good Deed Daily.  However, if those bikes belonged to the girls, I would have to wonder whether they "picked up" those Boy Scouts.  From what I understand, that would have gone against the gender norms of 1937, when that photo was taken.  

And it looks like the Scouts' troop is standing in the background, off to the left in the photo.  Could it be that those girls went up to that troop and picked the two boys they thought were the cutest?  Now that would be a real breach of gender norms of that time!

Or do you think there's some other story behind the photo?