The Individual Collective of the Bike
Verlyn Klinkenborg writes for the NYTimes that
there is a deeply pleasing randomness about the campus cyclists, as though one morning university officials had assigned a bicycle to every member of the Stanford community, come as you are, without considering for a moment matters of fit – or fitness.
We’ve ridden in Santa Barbara past a campus with thousands of bikes assembled in a bike parking area. That was nearly as much as we saw in Beijing at the attended bike lots. Where Verlyn sees the indivdual on a bike, we notice the bike as a connector in a global community.
Like this commuter in Prague last month
Fixies in London
Or these two dudes in India.
We’ve also learned that our community is divided less by genre than we think. At the most massive Moble Social in Austin during SXSW, cyclists of all types showed up. They did that because we’re riding, hanging out, partying, and talking bikes.
We’re doing it again in 2010, starting with SXSW.