The Indignity of Commuting by Bicycle: Art, Affluence, Acidophilus, and Ascots

Commuting by bicycle puts you in touch with your surroundings like no other mode of transport can. Unfortunately, being in touch isn't always a good thing, and sometimes you just want to turn the phone off and pretend it isn't happening. (Especially when it's really hot out.) Notheless, I decided to take the call this morning on my commute by firing up the old Instamatic. Here's what the city had to say for itself:


As I rode along the approach to the Manhattan Bridge bike path, I was moved by this little bit of found art: a lone, wayward derailleur pulley juxtaposed with a painted yellow line tarred with the skidmarks of a thousand errant fixies. To me, this expressed beautifully the feeling of isolation and despair that only the geared urban rider knows as the new generation of fixed-gear rider passes him by on a yellow brick road to nowhere. I stopped briefly to capture this stirring image, then picked up the pulley and put it in my non-collabo, non-messenger bag. So if you lost a derailleur pulley on the Brooklyn side of the Manhattan bridge and you want it back just let me know. Otherwise I'm going to run a shifter cable through it and wear it around my neck, both as a testament to the versaitility of geared drivetrains and as a whimsical little bauble to complement my bangles.

As I crossed the span of the bridge, this serendipitous bit of art still fresh in my mind, I came upon some "real" art in the form of the New York City Waterfalls. If you're not familiar with them, they're basically scaffoldings that spew water, they're the work of some Danish artist named Olafur Eliasson, and there's a bunch of them in the East River now. This one happens to not be working at the moment, but I assure you they're no more impressive when they are. They look like something you'd use to wash your boat. (In fact, some kayakers were dumb enough to try, which leads me to believe that kayakers may be the fixed-gear riders of the seas.) Anyway, thanks for nothing, Olafur.

With summer comes a decrease in clothing, and with a decrease in clothing comes unwitting underwear exposure. I will never understand why cyclists cannot get it together to keep their posteriors covered. Either it's some guy on a road bike in the park with translucent shorts worn to cheesecloth, or it's some triathlete in a full aero tuck wearing go-go bikini bottoms, or it's some fixed-gear rider whose decorative belt does little to keep his pants above his waistline. This morning I was confronted with the latter. The picture is blurred so as not to unduly shame him, but in the few minutes I spent riding behind him I learned more than I wanted to know--mainly that he wears pink underpants, and that these pink underpants are separating from their elastic waistband and are in dire need of replacement. (Also, they do not match his aero rims. If you're going to ride around with your underwear out, at least color-coordinate.) So please, let's all of us as cyclists make a concerted effort to pay as much attention to what's behind us as we do to what's in front of us.

I'd only just recovered from the fixed-gear rider's decaying pink underthings when my progress was obstructed by a Town Car in the bike lane. I thought to myself, "Well, there must be an incredibly important personage in that car if the driver needed to stop in the middle of the bike lane in order to disgorge that personage." Sure enough, the passenger was incredibly important: she was a wealthy middle-aged woman who, judging from her bag, had been shopping at Gracious Home and was no doubt about to further stimulate the economy by distributing some more of her wealth throughout SoHo. Certainly in these dire economic times we should be happy to surrender our bike lanes to people like these, as we should do nothing to impede their spending. After all, aren't bike lanes just train platforms for the rich?

Brimming with goodwill for the wealthy, I rode around the car for a look at the driver, who it would seem had not read that Globe and Mail article about "awkward bunching" in the "crotch area." Furthermore, I had an uneasy feeling that he might be Fofonov behind the wheel. This revelation put a whole new spin on his passenger's presumed endeavors, and also explained her easy and carefree gait, her apparent solvency, and the way she shook her sensible haircut.

Just as I had resigned myself to a future in which bike lanes are simply places for rich shoppers, foffing off, and illicit sexual liaisons, I came upon what appeared to be justice being served. Clearly, the taxi had been idling in the bike lane, and the police were giving him a ticket. In fact, the driver appeared to be getting his license and registration in order.

As I passed, though, I realized I had been mistaken. The cab driver was simply pulling the foil top off a container of cool, delicious yogurt. Which leads me to believe that in addition to everything else that's happening in bike lanes, they're now also places for cab drivers to have breakfast with police protection. They really should change those painted stencils of cyclists in the bike lane to cabbies shoving mouthfuls of yogurt into their faces. It would be much less confusing for us cyclists.

As joyful as riding a bicycle in New York City can be, is it any wonder that clothing stores like Brooklyn Industries would try to sell the concept of it to people? I've got to hand it to them, though, they've really nailed it here. Nothing says "cycling in 90 degree weather" like jeans and a scarf. Looking into this window was like looking into a mirror. I doffed my felt fedora to my inanimate counterpart, adjusted my scarf, pulled down my pants to expose my lime green underpants, straddled my ironic orange julius bike, and moved on, confident in the knowledge that my lifestyle had been validated.