Cycling To School

Yesterday I wrote about a sight I saw on my way to school.  To work, actually, but since I was teaching, I guess I could say I was going to school on my bike.

Which is kind of ironic, in a way.  You see, when I was going to school--at least, in the way most people think of it--I didn't ride my bike there.  

From Department of Transport  (UK)

All through my years in elementary school, and into junior high, I lived in Brooklyn.  I was never more than four blocks, or about a third of a kilometer, from any school I attended.  The same was true for just about every one of my peers.  So, nearly all of us walked; a few--believe it or not--were driven.  There weren't any bike racks or other storage facilities where I learned (well, where someone tried to teach me, anyway) reading, writing, 'ritmetic and religion.  

In those days, one almost never saw bikes parked on the street:  When any of us rode, we brought our wheels into the park or into our homes (actually, the basements of our houses or apartment buildings). If we went into a candy store, we propped our bikes by the store; I don't recall anyone's bike being stolen.  (Yes, that was in Brooklyn!)

Even after we moved to New Jersey, we never had to travel far to sit in classes in which I daydreamed about being a girl while my male classmates were thinking about girls.  Maybe a few other kids rode bikes; you knew they were freshmen or sophomores because when they became juniors, they got their drivers' permits and didn't touch their bikes again.

So, I grew up thinking that all of the kids who rode their bikes to school were fresh-scrubbed, blue-eyed Midwesterners  (or, perhaps, Southerners) with blonde pigtails or crewcuts.  Of course, they all rode Schwinns that they got for their birthdays or Christmas and, even when after their bikes were passed on to younger siblings, they looked like they just came out of the showroom.

I didn't pedal to class until I was in college.   Even if I had a driver's license, I couldn't have driven:  Underclassmen weren't allowed to bring cars on campus.  That didn't matter, really, because if I took a class on the other side of town, or the river, I could get there faster than the students who took the campus buses.  And, most of the other things I needed were within easy walking or cycling distance.

The Dawn Of A New Semester

The college semester has begun.  I'm teaching a couple of early morning classes.  This morning, I went in about an hour early to post some materials I'm using in one class.  

There are a number of ways I can ride to work.  This morning, I decided to wend my way through an industrial area of Long Island City.

Now that I think of it, using "wend" and "industrial" in the same sentence seems almost contradictory.  But at the time I rode--about 6:30--there's almost no traffic.  It seems almost bucolic, in a weird sort of way.

And the light is not to be missed:

I wish I'd brought my camera:  I caught this image, such as it is, on my cell phone.  At least there's a glimmering of what I saw.

The Streets Are Their Stage

My mother is wonderful.  She has to be--after all, she raised me! ;-)  Anyone with the patience and fortitude to do that deserves nothing but affection and respect.

Still, if I were to become a mom--which, of course, is impossible unless I adopt or some major advancement in medicine comes along--I want to be like her:

Being a mom like her would mean having a kid like this one:

Both of them have such style:

 Their rear tire needs air. But we can forgive them that, right?

Of course, they are Keri Russell and her son River.  In these photos, they were coursing through Greenwich Village last October.
 

Giving My Regards To Old Broadway

I admit:  Yesterday's post wasn't the most cheerful I've written.  But if I'm going to say anything about the history of the bicycle industry, I have to be honest:  There have been scoundrels in it--though, some might say, fewer than in some other industries.

Now I'll give you a more cheerful picture--literally--from cycling's past.

These folks proudly pedaled along Western Boulevard, a road that extended from Grand Circle (now known as Columbus Circle) to Riverside Drive.  Later, the road would become part of Broadway, the great north-south thoroughfare that cuts, curves, zigs, zags, ascends and descends and even loops over 55 km (about 33 miles) from Battery Park at the lower tip of Manhattan to Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County.

You really have to admire those riders' style.  I do, anyway!  

You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Black Beauty

Today is Labor Day.

Over the past 130 years or so, bicycles have done much to improve the mobility of--and bring pleasure to--countless working people. 

There are, however, dark chapters in the history of the cycling industry.  Now, no bicycle company has ever exerted the same degree of control over the American economy as, say, General Motors once did, or as petrol and financial services companies now lord over much of the world's economy.  Still, some titans of the two-wheel trade have been, in their own ways, as anti-worker and just plain ruthless as the captains of other industries.

One such example was Ignaz Schwinn.  A mechanical engineer by training, he emigrated from Germany to Chicago in 1890 and, with Adolph Arnold, started the company that would bear both of their names until 1967. 

When America's first bike boom--which roughly spanned the last decade of the 19th Century and the first of the 20th--went bust, Schwinn and Arnold acquired several smaller bicycle manufacturers as well as two early motorcycle makers--  Excelsior and Henderson --to create what would become the third-largest motorcycle manufacturer in the United States, trailing only Indian and Harley-Davidson. 

As is too often the case, the company's prosperity was not passed on to its workers. So, on 9 September--a week and a day after Labor Day--in 1919,  the metal polishers, buffers and platers of Schwinn and Excelsior-Henderson went on strike. 

What did those workers want?  A 44-hour workweek and wages of 85 cents an hour.

Unions representing other laborers, in sympathy, boycotted not only Schwinn and Excelsior-Henderson, but also other brands (such as Black Beauty and Harvard)  under which those bicycles and motorcycles were sold.  Herren Schwinn and Arnold soon felt the pinch because, even though the first American Bike Boom was a decade past, many workers were still riding bicycles to work and, sometimes, for recreation.


So what did the august leaders of the company do?  They hired lawyers and got injunctions against the unions whose members were cancelling, or not placing, orders.  They also had striking workers arrested on trumped-up charges of being strike-breakers, employed ex-cons to beat them up or to persuade them to become scabs and even had foremen shoot at the strikers.

Every labor journal of the day mentioned the strike and exhorted readers to support the strikers in any way they could, whether by standing with them physically or participating in the boycott.  From the accounts I have read, it seems that Schwinn had singularly bad relations with its workers; more than one journal said it was OK for Schwinn workers to buy other companies' bicycles and motorcycles.

Hmm...Had I known about this, would I have so badly wanted that Continental I bought when I was fourteen years old?

N.B.:  Schwinn workers also struck in the fall of 1980.  Some blame this work stoppage for the closure of the company's Chicago manufacturing facilities--which, truthfully, were no match for its foreign competitors-- a few of whom, by that time,  were making bikes sold under the Schwinn brand.