They Need A Few Good Bikes. The Women, Too.

A counselor at my second job is a volunteer with Neighbors Link, an organization that helps recent immigrants. He is asking people to donate bicycles and sturdy clothing and footwear (such as jeans, overalls, T-shirts and work boots) to that organization, which will give them to recent immigrants.


The idea intrigued me for several reasons.  For one, I notice that more and more immigrants--mainly from Latin America and Asia, and mainly men--are using bicycles for transportation. I'm not talking only about the guys who make deliveries for various restaurants, cafes and diners.  Others are riding their bikes to work at construction sites, warehouses and other places where native-born degree-holders fear to tread.  Some, I suspect, are also riding to classes at the community colleges, language institutes, trade schools and GED centers in the area.  


As you can imagine, they're not always riding the best of bikes.  Sometimes they're on cheap department-store bikes, most of which are not assembled properly (in addition to being of poor quality).  Others are used bikes of just about every genre.  These days mountain bikes from the early and mid-90's seem to be the most common pre-owned bikes to find their way into the immigrant communities, and there are large numbers of "vintage" ten- and twelve-speed bikes, in addition to some English (or English-style) three-speeds.  (Do you know what makes me feel old? Knowing that I rode "vintage" bikes when they weren't vintage!)  All of these bikes, even the best of them, are in various states of disrepair.  

Image from "The Urban Country"

I think the counselor who's coordinating the collections is doing a great thing. If you're in the NYC area and have anything to donate, I can refer you to him, and he will arrange a pick-up.


But now that I've undergone changes, I've become a radical feminist.  (Ha, ha!) So I notice that these immigrant bike riders are invariably male.  That is not a stereotype or sweeping generalization; I can't recall the last time I saw a Latina or female Asian immigrant riding a bike for any reason.  Every female cyclist I've met here has been native- or European-born.  


So now I'm thinking about why that is.  It seems to me that bicycling, like education, can make such women less dependent on men and less isolated.  I have had many female immigrant students, some of whom were single mothers and others who were married to abusive men.  Even those who seemed to be in happy marriages and families were living in a kind of isolation I can just barely imagine.  I mean, I've lived in a culture different from my own, and I've traveled to others. But I realize now that, when I was living abroad, and in my travels until recently, I had a great deal of freedom simply from being a single American, and from living as a guy named Nick.  But even when I went to Turkey five years ago--as Justine, but still three years before my surgery--I was able to move about in ways that I never could had I been a Turkish woman.

Oh, and I didn't see a single woman on a bike when I was there.  And I wasn't riding, either.


Anyway...Let me know if you want to make, or know anyone who wants to make, a donation to the program I described.  I'm also interested in hearing any thoughts you might have about the situation of immigrant women I've just described.

The Birth Of A Sophisticated Cycler

Back in the dot-com boom, the young, hip and on-the-make talked about "getting in on the ground."  That meant investing in a company or trend as it was about to become popular and highly profitable.   Everyone, it seemed, spoke of wanting to be in on "the next new big thing."  


Of course, some of those "next new big things" have become mainstays of today's world: Think of Google,as an example.  On the other hand, some were comets that flared brightly and briefly before crashing.  Do you remember Pet.com?


Well, I don't think very many of us are going to get rich, even for a moment (as so many of those former dot-com millionaires were), by finding the next hot new blog as it's starting its run.  I missed the start of "Lovely Bicycle!" by about five months and "Bike Snob NYC," "DFW Point-to-Point," "Girls and Bicycles," "Urban Adventure League," "1410 OakWooD" and a few other great blogs by a couple of years.   (Sorry to all of the ones I haven't mentioned:  Simply listing them would be a post unto itself!)


However, I think I might have witnessed the birth (well, OK, I caught it on its second day) of an interesting new cycling blog.  I'm talking about The Sophisticated Cycler.

In it, TSC is documenting the building--or, rather, making--of a bike that suits his particular needs and tastes.  It's fascinating to follow his process, from his research and decision about what type of bike to buy to the ways he's customizing it.


He's only on his fourth post, so you can still be there for the "birth," as it were.  

Scapes and Escapes

Today's ride was pleasure without revelations, or epiphanies--at least regarding bicycling or The Meaning of Life, anyway.  And those are all you really care about if you're reading this blog, right?


All right...My ride, which took me up by Throgs Neck, led me through an industrial area of the South Bronx.  I've mentioned it before:  I enjoy cycling there on weekends because there's absolutely no traffic.  But sometimes I see things, too, that I hadn't been expecting.


From a block away, I thought I saw the kind of sand-art-in-a-bottle that was so popular in the 1970's, rendered in the entropic colors of dystopia:  just what someone might see if he or she were to watch Miami Vice while coming down from an acid trip.  

Then I could swear I saw someone--trying to escape? or simply "losing it?"  

I couldn't help but to think of the woman in the pattern of the yellow wallpaper of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story, which I've read and assigned to my students more times than I'll admit!


The "prisoner" or "captain" or whomever you see in the second photo was actually in the window of a factory.  The other photo is of another window on that same building.  As best as I could tell, some sheet or something that was used to black out the windows was falling off or wearing away.


I guess I could rescue him (or her) by climbing on this:

I'm pretty sure that both are still used by trains; it's been a couple of years, at least, since I've seen a train pass over either of those trestles. Then again, that's about how long it's been since I've seen those trestles on a weekday, and I suspect that those trains run when the factories are open.


But if they aren't in use, I'd love to see them become the next High Line or Viaduct des Arts--except, of course, that bicycles would be allowed on it.