San Francisco Bicycle Culture II

More thoughts.

San Francisco, all 7 X 7 miles of it, is a complex mix of bicycle sub-cultures.

It has probably been talked to death elsewhere, but the urban bicycle sub-culture here is kind of fascinating. These are the single speed/fixed gear kids -- tight jeans, no helmets, ignoring the traffic laws, doing alley cat racing, disrupting Friday night traffic every month with their Critical Mass events.

Next are the fitness road cyclists. These are the guys with the overpriced roadbikes. I probably fall more into that category, even though I'm pretty cheap when it comes to bicycle equipment -- craigslist all the way.

Then there are the mountain bikers. Often they are yuppies, and they are definitely athletes. But they are made of much rawer and tougher stuff than most roadies.

Going to local bike shops and talking to the mechanics, the mechanics seem to fall into these schools. When they start talking about their own equipment, swapping war stories, you can tell who is a part-time/aspiring road racer, who is a hipster who loves fixed gears, and who shreds up the firetrails on the weekends.

I could never be a fixed gear/urban cyclist. But I will say one thing -- they are the reason so many beautiful old bikes are still on the streets of SF, in decent condition most of the time, having a second life as either a fixed gear or a commuter machine.

I used to wince when I saw people converting beautiful 1980's Italian steel racing frames into fixed gear machines. Now, not so much. Guys/gals who still ride these beasts understand and appreciate them for their capabilities and their classic beauty. When I've gone out on my early 1990's specialized Allez I've been able to keep up and in some cases smoke guys using much newer bikes. The fixed gear guys probably realize that those old steel frames can still fly like a bat out of hell.

Can't wait to take my baby shit blue 1987 Cannondale road bike, flat bar the sucker, and turn it into a commuter beast.

They ought to do a show here in SF, call it Pimp My Bike.

Music & Identity

A colleague of mine was telling me a few weeks back how her favorite music was country music. But she added that she didn't consider herself a country music fan because she wasn't "part of the culture."

I suspected at that time she was meant she wasn't of the racial & regional background of a stereotypical country music fan. She being an Asian chick who grew up an Oakland -- as opposed to a White guy/girl from Texas, or even Fresno.

My knee jerk reply to her was that I listened to Gangsta Rap, but I'm hardly a gangsta.

Thinking back about that discussion, it reminded me of how in high school & college we would all listen to music and wear certain types of clothes to blend into a particular clique. Or to flip it around, we'd start listening to certain types of music or wearing certain types of clothing, and the clique would find us.

Even as adults, we never completely escape those cultural identities shaped by our preferences in random things. It also made me think back to some of the stuff I had read on, and read about the Stuff that White People Like blog;

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

It's a funny blog, and all too accurate in its descriptions of a lot of people I come across living here in the Bay Area and parts of the Northeast.

But both that blog, and the brief discussion with my colleague, made me think about the way in which we unconsciously categorize people based on trivial things. What we see people eat, drink, wear, or like to do, might tell us something about the crew they run with.

But does it really tell us how they will treat us?

And isn't that the most important thing?

Maybe I'm just naive.