Channeling Hinault? LeMond? Mondrian?

 What made it so popular?

It probably didn’t hurt that two cyclists who won, between them, eight Tours de France and a bunch of other races, wore it.

Nor did its design:  With its echoes of Mondrian, it still looks good nearly four decades later. A company that pioneered the kinds of pedals and helped to popularize the kinds of frames nearly all racers—and many wannabes—ride today used a similar design in its logo.

That company is Look.  The jersey in question is that of the La Vie Claire team.  I rode the jersey—and the pedals—in my youth.

I’m not surprised that the jersey is reproduced to this day.  Nor does it provoke consternation in me that an illustrator would be inspired by it:

It Folds. But It Won’t Come Tumbling Down.

 Last week, I wondered whether the folks at the World Meteorological Association were joking when they named a storm that dumped eight inches (20cm) in a day after a Shakespeare character who drowns.

Today I am going to question another naming choice.  Specifically, I have to ask why someone would name a folding bike after a structure whose walls came tumbling down.

No, I am not talking about Jericho.  And its designer isn’t named Joshua.  Nor is he named Donatien-Alphonse-François.

That last name, however, leads to a clue about the designer’s identity. D-T-F was the Comte de Sade, better known as the Marquis.  One of the world’s longest-running urban legends has it that he was in the confines of those walls when an angry mob stormed them.This myth has persisted even though he was transferred to another facility ten days before the revolt, probably because his most (in)famous work was later found in the rubble.

That facility is, of course, the Bastille prison. The bike in question is one that I might want to try:  It folds but, unlike Dahon, Brompton and other portables, the Bastille velo has full-size (27.5 inches, a.k.a 29ers). It would thus avoid one of the problems with smaller-wheeled bikes that caused me to sell my Dahon a year after I bought it:  getting caught in potholes.

To be fair, designer Gilles Henry—who also created the Voyo folding baby stroller—probably was thinking of the Bastille’s seeming indestructability:  It was a fortress before it became a prison.  Or he may realize that to many people, the name evokes the Place and Opera named for it and the fashionable cafés and shops that surround it.

Does He Understand Why People Don’t Cycle to Work?

 

Jalopnik is ostensibly about cars and “transportation.”  Quite a few of its articles, however, seem to be anti-bike rants in the guise of “reporting” about cyclists’ actual and perceived transgressions against motorists.

Then there is Owen Bellwood’s article, published yesterday.  The title—“0f Course People Don’t Want to Bike to Work”—is a clue to the tone, if not the content, of his article.

For a few paragraphs, Bellwood seems to be on the right track.  He cites poor infrastructure—including bike parking (or lack thereof), showers or other facilities for cleaning and changing clothes at workplaces (again, or lack thereof) and bike lanes—as a major reason why people in New York and other American cities won’t bike to work. He also mentions drivers who use bike lanes for passing, parking or picking up or discharging passengers or packages.

Bellwood also correctly identifies the poor design and pure-and-simple muddled thinking behind too many bike lanes.  As he wryly notes, “It’s not good enough to have a bike painted in the road to warn cars that a cyclist might come through.” And he echoes an observation I’ve made in previous posts: “[W]e can definitely do better than a few floppy plastic bollards separating a cyclist from a 4000 pound pickup truck.”

He sums up by saying that “space” is “all that cyclists are asking for.” We need “space on the road and space to park up,” he says.  I agree with him on those points. But he also falls into a common misperception that I once shared:  Educating drivers will help to improve cycling safety.  I know that many unfortunate encounters between drivers and cyclists result from motorists’ lack of awareness of what safe cycling actually entails, which doesn’t always align with motorists’ perceptions. On the other hand, many more cyclists are maimed or killed by road rage or drivers who simply don’t care about anyone but themselves.

That latter category of drivers won’t be changed through “education.” Though not uniquely American, such drivers are more common in the US because of our car-centered and individualistic culture. Bellwood can be forgiven, I believe, for not understanding as much—and that such motorists won’t be “cured” through “education”- because he is an Englishman.  But I also believe that at least his cultural background—and his familiarity with cycling culture in his home nation as well as countries like Denmark—gives him an awareness of how things could be better in my hometown and home country of New York and the USA.