Men On Mixtes--And Women's Bikes--In Mosul

I bought Vera, my green Miss Mercian mixte, from a guy who had it built for himself after a hip injury and surgery.  

Now, I know some guys wouldn't be caught dead on a women's or mixte bike.  I was one of them, but not because of my insecurity about my gender identity, ample as that was.  You see, I wanted to ride only "performance-oriented" bikes and believed that mixte and women's frames weren't as stiff or strong as diamond "men's" frames.  The "stiff" part may well be true, but I haven't had much opportunity to compare diamond-framed bike models with their corresponding women's or mixte counterparts.  One reason is that many--particularly high-end--models come only as one or the other.

One difference I can find between the two types of frames in general is that diamond frames are generally more stable than those without a horizontal top tube.  I've especially noticed this when I've tried riding women's or mixte frames with fixed gears.  

Of course, another difference between the two types of frames is that the women's/mixte varieties are easier to mount.  That was, I think, the original rationale for such designs.  Sexism might have been a motive:  Perhaps bike designers and builders believed that we needed easier-to-mount bikes because we're the "fairer" (translation:  "weaker") sex.  Another reason for the designs was, of course, that at one time women almost always wore skirts or dresses, which make it more difficult (especially if the skirt is not flared or falls below the knee) to sling a leg over a top bar.

There are men, though, who ride women's or mixte frames.  I often see them here in New York.  Some of those guys are probably riding a bike they inherited for someone or got very cheaply.  Others, I suspect, are riding them for the same reason men in Mosul are on them.

That reason has only a little bit to do with the fact that women simply don't ride bicycles there.  Even before the Islamic State (ISIS) captured the city nearly three years ago, it wasn't done, though what I've read suggests that women not riding bicycles was more of a custom rather than the reult of an outright prohibition.  

Rather, men say they ride women's bicycles because they're easier to handle in the city's potholed,rubble-strewn streets, especially when cyclists are transporting food, medical supplies and other items.  The shop Mohammed Sabah Yehia recently opened on the east side of town, in fact, stocks and sells nothing but women's bicycles.

Mohammed Sabah Yehia in his East Mosul shop.

The way he entered the velocipedic trade is emblematic of what has turned Mosul, which is bisected by the Tigris River, into a city of bicycles.  He used to sell motorcycles on the city's west (of the river) side, where there was a flourishing bicycle trade, until his shop was destroyed during the ISIS offensive.  Then motorized vehicles were banned because of gas shortages.  

A campaign to take back the city started in October has resulted in the liberation of the east side of the city.  Since then, traffic has returned.  But police have been stopping and confiscating motorcycles because ISIS members have been using them. As a result, many men are weaving their bicycles through the throngs of cars to find stores, pharmacies and other establishments that are open.

On the west side, on the other hand, cyclists ride on traffic-free streets.  But that is not a result of city authorities trying to make their community more "bike friendly". Iraqi and ISIS forces are still fighting, and the former have barred cars--which the latter use as suicide vehicles--and motorcycles. 

Some cyclists from the east side--like Yehia--don't want to venture onto the west side "until it's secure".  They also avoid riding at night, out of fear of remaining militant "sleeper cells".   Still, for the time being, it seems that for all of the hazards, cycling will be the best way to transport people and supplies in Mosul.  And men will be riding women's bikes. 

Coming To My Town?

I am not surprised.

Over the past few weeks, I've written about "Uber for Bicycles"--or, if you like, Citibike (or Velib or Bixi or whatever bike share program you care to name) without the docks or ports.

Such services have become very popular in a few Chinese cities where, apparently, people are getting back to bikes.  The success of such services has caused their operators--Mobike and Ofo, mainly--to eye overseas expansion.  

Turns out, Mobike as well as a few other "rogue" companies are planning to "dump thousands of bicycles on Big Apple streets," as the New York Post exclaimed with the sort of hyperbolic vitriol, or vitriolic hyperbole, on which the Post seems to have a patent.

Mobikes in Shanghai. Photo by Johannes Eisele, from Getty Images.

Those companies are setting their sights on parts of the city not currently served by Citibike--mainly, Manhattan north of 110th Street and Staten Island.  The latter could be particularly fertile territory for a bike-share service, as the city's subway system doesn't run there and there are fewer bus lines and other mass transportation options than exist in the other boroughs.  Bike shares could be particularly useful for commuters and others who ride the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan.

And, I must say, that I like the idea of a port- or dock-free share service.  At the same time, I share the concern expressed by Post editors and others who worry that bikes will be "strewn" all over city sidewalks and streets, as they are in Chinese cities. Those problems, however, could be avoided with sensible regulation.  With such regulation, I think it would be easier to pre-empt such bike-blocked streets and sidewalks because as narrow as some streets in this town are, I would guess they're still wider than those in China, particularly in the old central areas of that country's cities.

(As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I've never been to China.  But I know that New York streets are wider than those in Europe which are, from what I'm told, wider than some of their counterparts in Chinese cities.)

Anyway, I think "Uber for Bikes" is indeed coming to my hometown.  We just need to learn from the experiences of those cities that already have it and develop the right policies for it.

Thinking About The Bicycle

Go to any residential college or university--or even to some commuter schools--and you will see racks full of bikes.  Where racks are lacking, bikes will be locked to lamp posts, fences and any other stationary object.

It's likely that the majority of those bikes belong to students.  Administrators don't seem to ride much, but more than a few faculty members (including yours truly) pedal from their homes to their campuses. 

Given how many bikes and riders are on American post-secondary campuses, it's astounding that so little academic attention is paid to them.  I don't recall any course about any aspect of bicycles or bicycling--or even any class that mentions them in any way--offered in any of the schools in which I've studied or taught.

Among that rare breed of academic offerings is something with an unlikely title.  At least, the first part is unlikely--for a college class, anyway:  Cars Are Coffins:  Ideologies of Transportation, offered at Adrian College in Michigan.

The emphasis is, of course, on the second part of the title.  The course in question "draws attention to how decisions we make concerning mobility and the design of our public environments have profound implications for how we understand community and identity," according to Scott Elliot, one of the course's instructors.  A study of such matters is important, he says, because it provides an "opportunity to discuss matters of justice, ethics and quality of life."

What makes that course unique (to my knowledge, anyway) is that it includes work in a bicycle shop.  The students dismantle, repair and reassemble bicycles, in part to make them intimately familiar (if they aren't already) with the mode of transportation they're studying.  Another reason for this work is that it brings students into contact with people and communities they might not otherwise encounter.  You see, the shop in which they work isn't selling carbon fiber machines with five-figure price tags to investment bankers.  Rather, it's ReBicycle, located in the same town as the college.

Adrian College senior Scott Campbell works on a donated bicycle under the guidance of  Scott Dedenbach, a professional mechanic who volunteers at ReBicycle.  Photo by Mark Haney of the Daily Telegram.

Like similar shops in other locales (such as Recycle-A-Bicycle, which I've mentioned in this blog), ReBicycle refurbishes used bikes donated to them.  Some of those bikes are sold; others are earned by people--including some students--who take their classes and volunteer in the shop.  Places like ReBicycle and RAB, as a result of such work, serve a wider cross-section of a community--from people who see bikes strictly as a form of transportation to those who cycle for fun, and a few as a religion--than bike boutiques.  

Elliott and fellow Adrian professor Tony Coumondourous taught a smaller but similar course for two years.  That effort helped to bring about Bruiser's Cruisers, the campus bike sharing program.  The increasing demand for the service and what the class was teaching were among the factors that motivated Elliott to continue and expand the course this year.

Another thing that spurred him on was an experience he had last July: "I was nearly killed when I was hit by a drunk driver while riding my bicycle".  If such an experience doesn't highlight how auto-centric transportation planning and infrastructure are (at least here in the US), I don't know what does.  

Interestingly, neither Elliott nor Coumondouros has any formal education or training in urban planning or engineering.  They are both professors of Philosophy and Religion:  Elliott is a Bible scholar and literary theorist, while Coumondouros is a specialist in ancient and political philosophy, the history of philosophy--and ethics.  So, not surprisingly, students in the bicycle course come from a wide variety of majors and backgrounds.

Talk to any scholar and educator, and he or she will probably tell you the purpose of research and education is not to "know stuff".  Rather, it is helping people to learn ways of thinking about a number of topics, including some students may not have previously considered.  From what I can see, Coumondouros and Elliott are doing that for their students, precisely because they had to do it for themselves.

A Beast Of Burden

For one more day, one more post, I am going to keep up the silly "theme association" I started the other day.

My post on Monday mentioned, in passing, Jean Paul Sartre.  Tuesday's post featured a photo of him on Le Petit Bi, a French folding bicycle developed just as Europe was going to war.  Yesterday, I wrote about another folding bicycle (actually a sort-of folding bike), the Donkey Bike.

So now I'm going to show a bicycle--or its rider, depending on your point of view--serving as a donkey:

From Top At World

Perhaps he is employed by a certain Presidential candidate.  If that's the case, he might not get paid.  Worse, he might need to build a wall around himself if he presses said candidate for what's due, or anything else!

When I was a messenger, I might've built such a wall, or protected myself in some other way, when I went to some of the locales I serviced--especially when I knew what was in some of those packages I carried.  Let's just say that the contents of some of those packets were, um, plant-based and others were chemical.

In other words, although we were employed by a legitimate courier service, my fellow and messengers and I became, at times, offspring of donkeys and horses, if you know what I mean.  I don't think most of us signed on for that.  I know I hadn't.

How Are Bike Share Programs Used?

Bike-share programs, as we know them, have been around for a decade.  That seems to be enough time to notice some patterns in, and draw conclusions about, them.

A Rice University study has done just that, at least in regards to the share programs in four US cities.  It notes two very interesting trends.



From Wikipedia Commons


The first is that in Sun Belt cities, bike share programs are increasingly used for recreational cycling.  That makes sense, given the longer cycling seasons in such places.  Also, it makes sense when you realize that many retirees live in and around those cities, and that in some, "snowbirds" spend at least part of the year.  Moreover, some residents of colder climes take vacations in those places, and their cycling is, almost by definition, recreational.

The study notes another trend that I have witnessed here in New York:  More and more share bikes are used for transportation.  If someone is living, say, on the Upper West or East Sides and working in Midtown or the Financial District, riding a bike to work is almost as fast, even for a slow cyclist, as taking the subway.  Also, since many office buildings and some residential buildings have Citibike ports in front of, or within 50 meters, of them, it can be more convenient than having to walk several blocks to or from a subway station.

If a commuter is fortunate enough to have a Citibike port near his or her residence or workplace, there is another convenience:  The bike can simply be taken from, or wheeled into, the port.  The cyclist does not have to look for a free parking meter, telephone pole or other spot where he or she can lock up a bike in relative safety.

The study also makes another interesting observation about transportation uses of bike share programs:  Workers use them to run lunchtime errands or simply to get lunch if they don't want to use their cars or mass transit but the distance is too great to walk.  This could be a very important fact to consider when starting new bike-share programs or expanding those that already exist in lower-density cities like Houston and Denver, which are more highway-oriented and car-centric than cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco.

Even though a city might be lower in population density, it can still experience problems with traffic congestion--and, in the case of Denver or Los Angeles, air pollution.  The Rice study seems to show that expanding bike share programs in those cities, and starting new ones in other cities like them, can help to unsnarl traffic tie-ups and improve air quality--which, of course, can only improve overall public health and safety.

Taking It All With You

Writing my post on Monday got me to thinking about the ways bikes can be made into utility vehicles.  I'm not talking only about riding from place to place.  I mean using bikes as real, viable forms of transport.

That, of course, means carrying things while riding.  There are many ways.  I've tried just about all of them.  I still use just about all of them at one time or another.   My method depends on what I'm carrying, how far (or how long) I have to carry it and which bike I ride when carrying it.

Laura Lukitsch's video shows a few of those methods.  Best of all, she shows urban riders who are not racers, hipsters or messengers using their bikes as the versatile urban transport vehicles they are, and can be:

Space Saver

Say "Munster" to most Americans and they'll think of that tangy semi-soft cheese with an orange rind.  They may have had it with their eggs this morning or on a turkey, chicken or ham sandwich for lunch.

That cheese is named for a city in the Alsace region of Eastern France, in a valley of the Vosges mountains.  The city and mountains are quite lovely, especially in the autumn.  And they can be a bit melancholy in their beauty,
in almost a New England-ish sort of way. 

There's also another city with the same name (but an umlat over the "u") in the Westphalia region of Germany--actually, not very far from the Vosgean ville.  It was in this German city that the Treaty of Westphalia, which ceded the Alsace and Lorraine regions--which, ironically, include the now-French Munster-- to France for the next two centuries, was signed.  

(France lost those territories in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 but regained them with the Versailles Treaty after World War !.)

Anyway, Munster, like many other cities in Europe, has been trying to get people to forsake their cars for bicycles.  While many ride to work or for recreation, many (sometimes the same people) depend on their motor vehicles for shopping and transport.

One reason for the campaign is that Munster, like many older European cities, has narrow streets.  So, city officials realize that they can't (or don't want to) squeeze any more automobiles into the ancient lanes.

So, to spread the message, the city planning office distributed this poster (which is translated):

 

 

A Peddler Pedals--Or A Pedaler Peddles

Most flea market vendors cart their wares in beat-up vans, pickup trucks or station wagons.  A few high-volume sellers, or those merchants who sell large items, might transport their goods in a semi.

Even with the increasing popularity of cycling,it's unusual to see itinerant entrepreneurs pedaling with the stuff they peddle.

That is what Marco does with the books, vinyl records and other items he sells in markets all over the city:

He was returning the bike to Hudson Urban Cycles, from whom he rents it. Such a bike is pretty difficult to store in a typical NYC apartment!