damn, if cycling is elite why did I get called a poorboy all those years for biking everywhere? ripoff
I was yelled "buy a bike you cheap fuck!" by a coworker cuz I used to walk 8 km from work to home
Cause it shifted.
Cycling activism had a resurgence in the past few years what with the looming apocalypse and all. And as the eco movement grew stronger you really noticed the transient property that shifted bicyclist from trash poors who deserve to be spat for not having enough money for a car to privileged elites
this is such a common misconception that there's a term for the lower class cyclists: "invisible cyclists"
they are so easily ignored by most folks, they are non-existent in the perception of a lot of folks, but they exist if you actually look for them
old article about this: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20049826/how-low-income-cyclists-go-unnoticed/
this quote lays it out pretty clearly:
a lot of cities are focusing their efforts on building bicycle infrastructure to attract new cyclists (aka the “creative class”) rather build it for low income folks who already bike. This promotion of the creative class cycling is definitely linked to gentrification. In this way, cities are basically saying that “invisible” cyclists do not belong within their rebranded vision of a city for and by the so-called “creative” class.
from a discussion here: https://bikeleague.org/rethinking-term-invisible-cyclist/
Totally.
The first people I met that were vegan, trans, queer and used pronouns and also were internationalist intersectionalist (yes all of that at the same time) were punks in squats, who were poor, not seldomly drop outs (from school or in general) and most did not have rich or even economical okay parents. That was in the 90s-early 2000s.
But it is too hard for our Dr. Engineering to use words like they, fuck off.
Ya, this exchange from the 2nd link really gets into some of the depths of the issue:
Wasn’t there also a sense of how these cyclists “want” to be invisible? to hide from the police persecution Do mentioned, and to in general stay “under the radar”. Not to say the term should still be used. Specifically I know some people who bike prefer not to have lights, because they don’t want to be seen. Not to say that all low income men of color who bike think that.
– Juana in Minneapolis
Do’s response: This is a really good point that indicates the nuanced complexity and diversity of how people can experience cycling in the street. If certain cyclists are being profiled and targeted for over policing and surveillance, then a person could be motivated to become less visible (e.g. no lights) at the cost of decreased safety – and this might be a trade off a few might be willing to take if the consequences of policing are dire enough (e.g. documentation status, paying hefty tickets/fines, or even being arrested). This attempt to make themselves less visible does still point a problem where “invisible” cyclists are visible, but in bad ways. At least in NYC, many so-called “invisible” cyclists have been made to be more visible through a city council ordinance that requires delivery cyclists to wear bright reflector vests with identification of their employer (and they have to take safety classes too). As far as we can tell, this ordinance has primarily targeted and been enforced with food delivery cyclists, who are often Latino and Chinese immigrants, but not other delivery cyclists (like bike messengers). The intention of this ordinance was to crack down on the “bad” cycling of delivery cyclists and make them more visible to pedestrians and drivers, but I would argue that it also makes these delivery cyclists, mostly immigrants, highly visible for surveillance and policing. And it marks these delivery people as cyclists who need to be controlled and disciplined and hence they are different from other, more privileged cyclists. A report by Levine and Siegel (2014) that was highlighted in a recent Streetsblog article found that the NYPD were issuing high volumes of summonses for biking on sidewalks in neighborhoods of majority Black and Latino populations as compared to other neighborhoods with majority white and other populations.
I think for me, one big issue here is that the so-called “invisible” cyclists have not claimed the name for themselves as representative of their lived experience, but rather it describes how others with more privileged perspectives and power have chosen to ignore these cyclists for distributing bicycling benefits and to overlook abusive policing.
I'd prefer a better term to describe this phenomenon as well.
I work retail and biked and skated everywhere for 30 years. Also I wish we got chairs as cashiers in the US.
Lazy cashiers getting to sit all dayNow, let me go to my office job where I get to sit all dayYeah it's bullshit, IDK if it's because of cheaping out on chairs or because of sheer spiteful "sitting is basically slacking"
There is no way thats true.
What do people get to the checkout, see if the cashier is sitting or standing, and them either go buy more stuff or put stuff back depending on what the cashier is doing.
It's a real phenomenon caused by irrational assumptions that a sitting cashier will be slower. Mostly a US thing but there is a rationale behind it if a flawed one.
Aldi has them and nobody cares. In fact Aldi cashiers are legendarily fast. Probably some control freak shit from the C suite.
Homeless guys bicycling to the scrap yard to sell deposit cans and scrap metal are the elite
why the hell would you need a licence to be a rag-and-bone man
I'm far from elite. I just really like my bike over a car. In my city a car is slower unless you're going really far since a bike won't be stopped in traffic. Plus my bike is an MTB so i can ride over anything I want. Can't do that in a car without getting in trouble.
I pay money for one of those bike rentals from Lyft
Still much cheaper than just parking or constantly getting my bike stolen lmao
this has nothing to do with anything except a critique of the characterization of physical labor jobs and cardio.... i used to be a seasonal farmworker. not like tractor riding, either. like straight up vegetable picker without any fancy automation. i was young and did a lot of stretching before and after work, so in some ways i was in incredible shape after many months of this. very flexible, strong back, strong hands, seemingly preternatural stamina for just constantly doing shit all day in the heat and humidity. and a remorseless eating machine. a lot of dudes i worked with didn't stretch and while they were tough as balls and could do major work, but had a lot of posture problems from pulls and sprains and shit. if there were any kind of equity in this world, farm workers would get unlimited massage therapy and all that body work stuff that is gatekept behind $$$ for people who like sit in an ergonomic chair and make six figures.
my cardio was dogshit though lmao. like i could walk anyone else into the ground, but anything quicker or longer than a little jog would have me feeling like i was dying.
I used to bike everywhere because my job didn't pay enough to save up for a car and its associated upkeep, and the busses were just slower than biking. I really hate carbrains.
Brought to you buy the people that think roads just inherently deterioate in like 2 years tops
Cyclists run the gamut but cycling infrastructure favors the wealthy. This favor is explicit (where agencies choose to create infrastructure, systematically) and implicit (land use follows "the market", pushing the poor away from infrastructure).
This would not be the case if we fixed the latter by overthrowing the capitalist class - or at leasr scaring the shit out if them.
ok so you don't mean the existence of cycling infrastructure favours the wealthy you mean the lack of it disadvantages the poor
People choose to make capital investments to create cycling infrastructure. The active decision and investment and work is on the side of that coin that favors the wealthy.
Land use and the emphasis on car-centric streets do as well, and is normally what cycling infrastructure is bolted onto. So the "default" lack of infrastructure was also intentionally created that way to favor the wealthy - the people who could afford cars early on. Streets were a commons that got restricted to private vehicles.
cycling infrastructure favors the wealthy. This favor is explicit (where agencies choose to create infrastructure, systematically) and implicit (land use follows "the market", pushing the poor away from infrastructure).
"Walking? Exercise!??! WhAt ArE wE a BuNcH oF AsIaNs!?!?!"Whenever you hear something like that, you know an idea is good.
Although this is sadly kind of true. In major metro areas commuting distances if you want an affordable apartment are often way too high for cycling. Although cycling to a commuter bus/train isn't out of the question!
Wait I misread the tweet. It's silly to think of office drones as the elite anyway. Where I live you'd need at least a second paycheck for a decent lifestyle with a lot of office jobs. I remember being surprised that most of the office workers had 40+ min train commutes when I had my first "real" job in 00s and the city and surroundings has only gotten less affordable.
While there is some percentage of people so desperate they literally don't have any choice about where they can live, that doesn't describe most workers at least in developed countries. For a given rent, most workers have a choice to have more space at the expense of living in the suburbs and having a long commute, or less space and living closer to/within the urban core, such that you can get around on a bike if you want.
The latter aren't elite, they just make different choices.
There's also the phenomenon of disregarding car costs in choice of location due to lack of imagination about not needing one car per person
I know quite a few non poor people who moved to the suburbs or exurbs because they "couldn't" afford a single family home in cycling distance, then pretty much immediatly spend 60k on new cars because they need them to be reliable and then burn through like 300€ / month in operating cost for the commute alone at which point they would've had enough budget to level out the price difference.
They're mostly cool people, but a few of them definitely turned into carbrained I am the disadvantaged working class, those damn 2br apartment elite city slickers people
This is the type of post you make when you have direct experience in a major european city, but have fuck all in the way of tools to analyse this situtation, and have also given the subject zero extra thought beyond your gut reaction. I know this, because I had the exact same type of thinking when I was 19 and had just started university.
Also just a quick story time: When I had a job in central Copenhagen, there was definitely an element of class to the choices in transportation, as me and the other young grads had to take the train to work, as both of us lived some 20 odd kilometers from the office we worked in, while my boss and most of the upper management were all congratulating themselves on being eco-conscious and biking to work.
This is something that gets repeated on these very boards - in this very thread!
I just dont like rich people using my congested busy roads in my poverty city as a bike training course.
Like our lives suck already why cant you go be annoying somewhere else, i want to go home without accidentally murdering one of you.
The most
take on Hexbear lmao get a grip bike lanes are for everybody and allows for completely decommodified transportation imagine finding a way to make them about a secret agenda for the rich.You're not entitled to the road because you drive a car. Fuck. Cars.
Yes if bike infrastructure was something that was actual possible in hellworld, cool great but please the people who own literal million dollar homes stop using my shitty ass town as your make shift tour de france. Im talkong about something very specific, not encouraging cars as a good thing
well if it's your town and your roads why don't you just ban them from it
Killing all rich people is not something im actually allowed to do unfortunately.
Again, im not talking about guy who rides bike to work, im talking about rich people using infrastructure thats not meant for them and generally being annoying
Cmon man we're all leftists, you need to have two solutions for every problem. One is in FALGSOC, one is in hellworld. They tend to be different.
The point I'm getting at is the only feasible way to get rid of your annoyance is more bicycle infrastructure.
Yeah i dont disagree though, in the meanwhile i would like a meteor to hit the rich suburbs by my hometown
