A Messenger For Equality

March is Women's History Month.  As I've mentioned in other posts, the bicycle--as Susan B. Anthony herself said--has played an important role in liberating women. It led to a revolution in the way we dress--freeing women from corsets, hoopskirts and bustles--which, in turn, gave us more independence and mobility, not only into the physical places where we could go, but also in what we could do for paid work (or whether or not we could do paid work at all!) as well as in our free time.

It also took us on our path toward something that, in the US, only men were allowed to do from 1776 until 1920--and a right given only to white men until 1865. I am talking, of course, about voting.  Almost nobody would dispute that when women were able to partake of the other liberties I've described, it made it possible for even the most conservative men to realize that we have the powers of discernment derived from life experience that give us at least the same ability to decide what is best for our selves, families, communities and nation as the other 49 percent of the population.  

What can't be overlooked, however, are the mundane tasks women performed as part of the project of achieving the right to vote.  Here is a bike messenger--in bloomers, one of the sartorial innovations wrought by women on bicycles--at work for the National Women's Party headquarters:

From the National Women's History Museum

Okay, I'll admit that today's post is, at least in part, an excuse to post that image!  She looks about as happy as anyone I've seen in doing her work.  And well she should have been.

Sunday funnies, funny bicycle images, folding bicycles

 I have ridden several folding bikes but have owned two. One was  a Dahon Vitesse 5 on which I commuted for about a year and a half. The other was a 1970s Chiorda I found in the trash on a Jackson Heights curbside. I rode the bike a couple of times before I gave it to a local mechanic who gave it to his girlfriend.

Neither of those bikes bore any resemblance to this one:

The Future of Bike Parking in Your Neighborhood?

 

In October, I wrote about a bicycle parking locker the Brooklyn startup Oonee installed by Grand Central Station.

Now, the company’s founder, Shabazz Stuart (cool name, isn’t it?) is taking his idea “on tour,” if you will.  Yesterday, the parking pod was brought to Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where it will remain for a month.  Following that, it will go across town to the Lower East Side and Union Square before crossing the bridge in June to Stuart’s home borough of Brooklyn, where it will spend a 29-day “residency” on Vanderbilt Avenue—near Barclays Centre, Atlantic Terminal and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Finally, it will trek up to my home borough—Queens—and my neighborhood, Astoria. At each location, the city’s Department of Transportation will grant access to a spot on the curb for 29 days.

The mini pod is free to use but requires an Oonee membership, which allows access by a key fob or mobile app.  

Although its scale, at the moment, is small, Stuart calls it “ powerful step forward.” He notes that this pilot marks “the first time any big city in the United States has had a secure bicycle parking facility on the curb.” He plans to expand his idea to other parts of the city and to cross the Hudson to Jersey City and other parts of the Garden State.