Technology And Propaganda: The Bicycle In World War I

If our only hope of survival is halting climate change, then the only way the human race will truly advance is if we get rid of war.  That's what I believe, anyway.

That said, I also understand that you can't ignore war if you study history. So, because I am interested in history, and the roles the bicycle has played in it, I've written a few posts about how bicycles have been used by the military.

World War I may have been the conflict in which the bicycle played the most pivotal roles.  It raged at exactly the moment when technologies spawned directly and indirectly by the bicycle were starting to take forms we recognize today.  In all of the nations involved, with the exception of the United States, millions of people rode to work and school, and for fun.  Even in the States, many of adults were still riding, as affordable, reliable automobiles (think Model T) were still a decade in the future.

Doran Cart is one person who recognizes the importance of bicycles in the so-called "Great War".  He is the senior curator of the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City.  When the US entered the war in 1917, military leaders "realized bicycles could make a difference in certain situations," according to Cart.

French military folding bicycle

Although they weren't particularly useful in the trenches and weren't particularly safe on open roads, bicycles could reach areas inaccessible to motor vehicles, and were more reliable.  These factors also made the bicycle, in many situations, the quickest way to convey messages. Bikes also were used, interestingly, on airbases.

What might have been as important as the bicycle's utility was its familiarity.  Unlike other technologies deployed during the war, almost everyone was familiar with the bicycle, as most rode them as civilians.  This meant that soldiers didn't have to learn how to use them, as they did with, say, trucks or planes.  Because so many men and women in uniform had been riding bicycles for all or most of their lives, at least some knew how to repair and maintain them.  How many people knew how to fix a plane or tank before the war?

That familiarity, according to Cart, also made bicycles useful in another way:  they were "a humanizing aspect to the war."  Because bicycles "represented something that every person could use" and were (and are) "available to everyone regardless of social class", they turned out to be rather effective propaganda tools.  Countless illustrations from that time depict young soldiers on or with their bicycles.  I mean, if you see this "Avanti Savoia" ("Onward Savoy"), you might think the 26th Bersaglieri Battalion was embarking on a bike tour.

Bike-Outs: Super-Predators Wilding? Oh, The Menace!

They ride bikes together.

Oh, and those bikes are s-s-scary:  They’ve got fat wheels and look like Hell’s Angels motorcycles without the motors.

And the kids who ride them—T-they ride in packs and make a lot of noise.  A-and, you know, they pop wheelies and stuff.

They’re-they’re teenagers.  And they’re...

If you were in New York thirty years ago, you can fill in that last ellipsis.  Let’s just say they’re, um, darker than I am—and use words I didn’t learn in Spanish 101.

It seems that every generation or so, some j-school grads with too much time on their hands find new ways to whip up hysteria about groups of urban teenage boys being, well, groups of urban teenage boys.  The latest, it seems, is something that’s been dubbed the “bike-out.”

A Bike-Out?! Oh, my!

Indignation over boys riding modern versions of “Choppers” or “Stingrays” has been ignited by a 74-year-old man who was out for a stroll when, he says, he was attacked by a group of “lawless” teenagers on bikes.

My purpose is not to doubt the man.  One attack, however, does not a phenomenon make.  I am reminded about the hysteria about “wilding” generated by the Central Park Jogger case.

That assault was indeed brutal.  But a certain entrepreneur took it upon himself to take out full-page ads in which he demanded the death penalty for the alleged attackers:  teenagers whose confessions, as it turned out, were coerced and who were finally released from prison on the cusp of middle age.

I am, of course, referring to Donald Trump.  In his ad, he famously bellowed, "I hate them. I want to hate them."  

One thing you have got to say for El Cheeto Grande:  He knows how to play the media.  Or, at least, he shows what one can do with the media if one has, say, a couple of billion lying around.

The "bike-outs" are as much a phantom phenomenon as "wilding" was, and their perpetrators were just as mythical as Hilary Clinton's "super predators."  Those ghost stories (pun intended) involve urban teenage boys and young men who are black and Latino. The only difference between them, as far as I can tell, is that in one legend, the bogeyman show up on bicycles.

(Thanks to Eben Weiss for writing about the "Bike-Out" hysteria in Outside magazine.)

Dealing With A Transit Strike, The Dutch Way

When there's a transit strike in a US city...

All right, I'm starting off with an iffy proposition.  There aren't many US cities with real transit systems:  New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and a few others. 

OK, so now that we've got that out of the way, let's proceed:  In a US city with a transit system has a transit worker's strike, what happens?

Well, if history (at least here in NYC) is any guide, the city will try to make it easier for cars to enter and park.  A road shoulder or part of a bridge might be designated as an ad hoc bike and pedestrian lane.  And, given the way things are today, the city just might grant more Uber permits.

Now you might think I'm being cranky and cynical. (I am a New Yorker, after all!) But we all know that when it comes to bicycling or transportation, the most forward-thinking American cities might do something the Danes or Dutch did twenty years ago.

Yesterday, transit workers went on strike in the Netherlands.  Yes, in the whole country, not just in Amsterdam or Rotterdam.  That work stoppage involves, not only train and bus operators, but all other workers in those areas, as well as on trams and ferries.

That last item is important because Amsterdam isn't the only part of the country that's laced with canals. Also, the geography of the capital and other Dutch cities means that getting from one part of town or another often involves crossing a body of water.

So what did authorities in Amsterdam do?  They closed the IJ Tunnel--an artery as important to the city as, say, the Brooklyn Battery, Queens-Midtown, Lincoln or Holland (!) tunnels are to New York--to "fast moving" traffic.  They then opened the mile-long tube, which connects the center of the city with its north end--to bicycles.  Pedestrians, though, still aren't allowed.

The way commuters are howling over the prospect of congestion pricing, can you imagine how they'd react if any of those tunnels were opened to cyclists?

4-1/2 Ft.

Probably the most famous objet d'art that has anything to do with cycling is the "bull" Pablo Picasso fashioned from a bicycle saddle and handlebars.  

There are others, of course, including Marcel Duchamp's bicycle wheel.  On the other hand, we don't often hear about performance art based on bicycles or bicycling.

Now an artist and librarian based in Oakland, California plans to help fill that void.

Lisa Conrad plans to cycle across the state of Nebraska from Thursday, 30 May until 15 June.  She will be accompanied by other artists who plan to traverse the state from west to east.  After the Cornhusker State, they plan to ride across Iowa. 



Now, they are not the first cyclists to ride across either state.  What will be different is their route, which will trace abandoned railroad tracks and the gaps between them.  The purpose, she says, is to explore the role of the railroad in the making of the United States, in particular through examining the tension between the romance of the rails and the reality of making them, which was often exploitative, to put it mildly.



While she doesn't mention anything about it, the ride/performance piece--called 4 -1/2 ft, after the standard width of a railroad track--the  coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental railroad. 

This isn't the first such ride for Conrad and the other artist-cyclists.  Previously, they did a similarly-themed ride across Washington State and Northern Idaho, and another through Montana into Wyoming.

You can learn more about 4 -1/2 ft at their website.

Remembering A War’s Legacy

Today, on Memorial Day, I am remembering something I saw last July, while cycling in Cambodia.

Few countries have been more devastated by war.  The land mines that remain, after half a century, continue to bind the nation and its people to the legacy of a war that spread from Vietnam and led to the horrors of the Pol Pot regime.

Aki Ra was conscripted to fight at age 10, he estimates:  He doesn’t know the exact date of his birth. By the time he was old enough to vote in most countries, he had fought in theee different armies.  During that time, he became a specialist in explosives, specifically land mines.

As a civilian, he has devoted himself to finding and defusing land mines, not only in Cambodia, but in other former war zones.  He’s even unearthed World War I - era ordnance in Europe.



This work led to his founding the Landmine Museum and a school for children, many of whom would not otherwise have the opportunity to do so.

The Museum is a testament to a legacy of war—specifically, how it continues to terrorize people who weren’t even born when their land was laced with explosives.

M

Be Safe. Don't Become A Memory Just Yet!

Today is Memorial Day.  

In spite of our current President, I still hope that, one day, people will be able to look at military installations and armaments in much the same way they look at Stonehenge:  as monuments to practices abandoned.  That, to me, is the only way the millions of combat-related deaths and mutilations will have any meaning.  In other words, those wasted lives and bodies will matter if they teach us that we don't have to squander our talent and treasure.

Now, I hope none of this sounds so lugubrious that you won't go for a bike ride.  If you do, be safe.  I don't want this day to be a memorial for you, before your time!

Protecting Yourself--And Your Riding Buddies

If you use fenders, you know that the front and about half of your rear fender help to keep you and your bike clean and dry.

The rearmost part of your back fender--and its mudflap--serve mainly to keep the riders behind you from getting splattered or sprayed.

In other words, a long rear fender and flap is a courtesy to your fellow cyclists.   If that's the case, there may be no more considerate rider than this one:

The Signs In Delaware

You're riding down a street.  You see a swath of green--and white lines and--barricades!?  Really?  There's a bike lane here?

More than a few times, I've had bike paths appear seemingly out of nowhere--and end just as abruptly. Or someone tells me about a lane I somehow missed in an area I ride frequently.

Now, I can only imagine how often someone who's newer to cycling than I am--or who rides less frequently than I do--is totally oblivious to whatever bicycle infrastructure might be available to them.  Or they just don't know what might be a good route to pedal from their homes to work, school, the park or wherever they want or need to go.

The folks at Bike Delaware understand as much.  They were instrumental in getting the state to build bike lanes-- including the Wilmington-New Castle Greenway, a safe, direct, flat and nearly uninterrupted seven-mile motor-free trail linking the Wilmington riverfront with downtown New Castle.

That lane opened last September.  Three years earlier, in July of 2015, Bike Delaware began working with the Delaware Department of Transportation to to secure the necessary regulatory approval for "wayfinding" signage.  Transportation signs are highly regulated by the Federal government--more so than roadways or bike paths, which are mainly state or county projects.  

Best of all, the bike signs have their own unique color, so they can't be confused with other road signs.  

I haven't been to Delaware in a long time. But if I ever find myself there, at least I'll know which way to ride!

Make Sure You Invest In The Right Bicycle!

Not so long ago, nobody would have named a product "Brooklyn".  It was the declasse downmarket cousin of Manhattan.  And, in certain circles, one could be judged (as I was) for having grown up in it.  When I moved to the borough as an adult, I lived in a neighborhood where nobody would admit to being from Brooklyn.  Instead, they told people they lived in Park Slope.  I'll admit, I fell into that guise a few times.

Now, of course, "Brooklyn" is cool. At least, if you moved there from someplace else.  Brooklyn's cachet isn't found in  just any of the borough's neighborhoods:  The one in which I grew up is not the hipster haven that Williamsburg--at least, a section of it--has become, and isn't a maze of young women in $200 yoga pants pushing $1500 strollers along bar- and restaurant-lined avenues, as "The Slope" has become.  When marketers and entrepreneurs name their products or emporia after Brooklyn, they're not thinking about East New York or Brownsville--or even, for that matter, the parts of Williamsburg south of the eponymous bridge and east of Union Avenue, where Hasidim and Hispanics, respectively, live.

Lately, it seems that "bicycle" is starting to gain status, however slowly, in much the same way Brooklyn is.  For as long as I can remember, the only non-bicycle related product named for the two-wheeler has been playing cards.  And they were so named in the days when a bike cost about as much as the average worker made in a year.  

Of course, you aren't going to find breakfast cereals or cosmetics named for anything velocipedic. At least, not now. That could change, however, very soon.  Slowly but surely, our two-wheeled obsession is gaining status--in one industry, anyway.

Interestingly, that area is biotechnology.  Perhaps it's not surprising when you realize that at scientists have likened the motion of at least one kind of molecule to the way pedals rotate around a bottom bracket.  

So now there is a company called Bicycle Therapeutics.  Now pharmaceutical giant Merck (funny, how much that looks like the name of the greatest racer of all time) has announced that it acquired a biotech startup that was ready to announce an Initial Public Offering.  

The name of that company is Peloton Therapeutics.

Nicholas Janski of Barron's wondered whether would-be investors might mistake the biotech company--which actually is applying some of the recently-discovered knowledge about the "bicycle" molecules I've mentioned--for Peloton Interactive, the maker of at-home "spin" bikes.  He cited similar confusion last month, when investors piled money into Zoom Technologies, causing the price of its stock to more than double, after Zoom Video Communications, an entirely unrelated company, announced its IPO.

(Me, when I hear "Zoom," I think of handlebars, stems, seatposts and other bike parts, mainly for mountain bikes!) 

Hmm...I wonder whether Eddie bought stock in any of those companies.  Does he think "Brooklyn" is cool?

200 Years Of Bicycling In New York

It looks like I'll be taking a trip to the Museum of the City New York soon.

If you read this blog regularly, you know I'm not the sort of person who has to be dragged into a museum.  But even if you are that sort of person, and you happen to be in New York, you might want to take a trip to the MCNY.

Bicyclists in Central Park in 1941

There, "Cycling in the City:  A 200-Year History" will include photographs and other objects intended to "trace the bike's transformation of urban transportation and leisure" and reveal "the complex, creative and often contentious (No, really?--ed.) relationship between New York and the bicycle."  This exhibition has been organized by Evan Friss, the author of On Bicycles:  A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City and Donald Albrecht, one of the museum's curators.  

At least one of the topics covered by the exhibit is something I've discussed in at least a few of my posts:  the bicycle's role in liberating women.  The way we dress today owes everything to the shorter and split skirts, and "bloomers" developed for female riders, as well as those female riders tossing off their hoopskirts, petticoats and whalebone corsets. 

This photograph, taken by renowned photographer Alice Austen, shows her friend Violet Ward on the right with Daisy Elliott.  Ms. Ward, who lived on Staten Island, started one of the first bike clubs for women and wrote Bicycling for Ladies, a 200-page book advising women on how to become serious cyclists.

Another interesting topic the exhibit highlights is the ways in which bicycles and bicycling helped different ethnic and racial groups, some of whom had only recently arrived in the city, to assert their American identity as well as to promote solidarity.  German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Mexican and Mongolian created their own riding groups.  So did Caribbean immigrants, as well as African-Americans, most of whom came from the South.  Black cyclists started the Alpha Wheelmen to challenge the notion that cycling was only for privileged white men (We sure can use that now!) and a certain black man rode with the South Brooklyn Wheelmen into worldwide fame as the second black athlete to win a title in any sport. (Canadian boxer George Dixon was the first.)  He was none other than Marshall, a.k.a. Major, Taylor.

A bicycle club member in the Bronx, 2007. Photo Carlos Alvarez Montero

Now, being a white cyclist, I'm not aware of current New York City-based bike clubs organized around the ethnic or racial identities, though their existence wouldn't surprise me:  I often see groups of black or Latino men (and, less frequently, women) riding together, sometimes dressed in the same colors. They might be actual clubs, or less formal organizations. And there is at least one women's cycling group that I know about:  WE Bicycle.

Steve Athineos, center, leads NYC bike messengers in protest against midtown bike lane closure, 1987

And, about the "contentious" part of the museum's introduction:  The exhibit shows that conflict between cyclists and the police or segments of the public are not new.  One reason why we had to fight to get Prospect and Central Parks closed to traffic is that bicycles had actually been banned from those parks, and others, during the first "bike boom" because of confrontations between cyclists and pedestrians as well as horseback riders.  Now, how anyone thought that vehicular traffic was less of a hazard than bicycles is beyond me.  Then again, I don't claim to have one of the great minds of this, or any other, era.

OK, I'll turn off the sarcasm meter and repeat that I intend to see the exhibit.