In earlier posts, I’ve described riding along
Hipster Hook and other areas where parked bikes now frame cafes, bars,
restaurant and shops of one kind and another but where, thirty or twenty or
even fifteen years ago, I would encounter no other cyclists. Back then, those neighborhoods—including
Williamsburg and Greenpoint in Brooklyn and Long Island City and Astoria (where
I now live) in Queens—were mainly low-to-middle income blue-collar enclaves
populated mainly by first- and second-generation immigrants with smatterings of
families that had been in this city—and sometimes in the very same houses or
apartments—for three or more generations.
“Back in the Day”, as us oldsters (the antithesis
of hipsters?) would say, the few cyclists I encountered anywhere in the city or
its environs were, interestingly enough, born-and-bred New Yorkers. Most of us did not have relatives or friends
who cycled; you might say we were renegades, a cult, or just geeks of a sort. It seemed that, in those days, transplants to
this city didn’t ride. I am not sure of
whether they didn’t ride before they came here or gave up their two-wheeled
vehicles once they got here. I guess
some didn’t plan on remaining for more than a couple of years—many didn’t—and
were focused on starting a career or some other particular goal. Lots of people did nothing but work during
the time they lived in this city.
Such conditions prevailed as recently as the
mid-to-late 1990’s, when I was a member of the New York Cycle Club. I occasionally rode with them but,
truthfully, I joined for the discounts I could get in bike shops and other
establishments. In any event, most of
the cyclists I met on those rides were natives of the Big Apple. Interestingly enough, most social classes
were represented: I saw construction
workers, seamstresses and firefighters as well as teachers, professors, lawyers
and bankers. Admittedly, it wasn’t the
most ethnically diverse group, though I was more likely to see faces darker
than mine than I would have seen in most health clubs or on most tennis and
squash courts. The demographics I’ve
described also applied to the rides and other activities of the local American
Youth Hostels chapter, which employed me for a time after I moved back to New
York.
Then, as now, I did most of my riding alone or
with one or two friends. They were, as
often as not, people who grew up in circumstances similar to my own. That is probably the reason why many of our
conversations, over coffee or beer or whatever, centered on the city’s streets,
intersections, bridges and neighborhoods:
Which ones were “best” for cycling?
Which were the most dangerous?
Was anybody or anything worse than a cab driver? And, unfortunately, more than a few of us
related stories of having our bikes stolen.
In fact, I recall several fellow cyclists who were held up or assaulted
for their machines as they crossed the Williamsburg Bridge: Twenty to thirty years ago, the neighborhoods
on each side of the bridge were poor and crime-ridden.
Today the majority of cyclists I see in New York
are young and have come here from some place else. Hipster Hook is full of such riders. Some ride only to commute or shop; others are
as committed to riding and training as we were in my day. I am glad they ride; I am glad to see anyone
riding. But their attitude about
cycling, and about themselves, seems very different from ours. I don’t mean
that as a criticism; no one should expect “the younger generation” to do as
those who came before them. But, from my
admittedly-limited contact with hipster cyclists, I have the impression that
their conversations—to the extent that they have them—have less to do with
cycling, or even bikes, or the places to ride or not ride. I guess the latter can be explained by the
fact that they are not the minority we were, and they feel less need to pay
attention to the “good” and “bad” bike routes because the bike lanes that line
their neighborhoods give them a feeling of security. They have bike-oriented cafes, which no one
had even conceived in my youth.
But I think one of the biggest differences between
us and them is that we were more readily identifiable as cyclists. Part of that has simply to do with the fact
that we were more of a minority. More to
the point, we used equipment and wore garments and accessories—helmets, shorts,
jerseys and half-fingered gloves, not to mention cleated shoes—that few others
even tried on. On the other hand, the
young hipster riders dress and generally look like many other young people you
might find here in New York.
Some—particularly young female pedalers—favor retro threads in fabrics,
designs and patterns that were popular, well, in our day—or even earlier. Or they wear facsimiles or imitations of such
clothing. Others adorn themselves with
the severe sartorial straits of knife-blade black pants or tights and leather
jackets: interestingly, not unlike what
I wore off-bike for a time in my youth.
It will be interesting to see what the next
generation of cyclists will be like—or, indeed, how many of them there will
be. These days, I see more adult
cyclists—young as well as, ahem, those of us of a certain age—but I seem to
encounter fewer adolescents and children on bikes. At one time, I’d see few kids on bikes in
low-income neighborhoods, in part because of their parents’ or guardians’ fear
of crime and in part because some families simply couldn’t afford bikes for
their kids. But these days, I seem to be
encountering fewer child and teen riders in the middle- and upper-income
neighborhoods of this city and the nearby suburbs.
What’s disturbing—to me, anyway—about that is that
a lot of those kids haven’t learned how to ride. Nearly everyone who rides as an adult started
in childhood: Even if they abandoned
their bikes when they got their drivers’ licenses, they didn’t forget how to
ride a bike and could take it up again as an adult. On the other hand, those
who don’t learn how to ride as kids rarely learn how to do so as adults. So they won’t have the opportunity to become
the kinds of cyclists we were and are---or hipsters—or whatever the next
generation of cyclists in this city will be.
