Rebel Metropolis | Tag Archives: Bike Riot

Melbourne Rides Against Anti-Cycling Helmet Laws

This weekend a mass of bicyclists took to the streets of Melbourne to protest Australia’s regressive bike helmet mandate. They were, of course, riding helmet-free. The fine for doing so is an absurd $200.00 AU.

Organized by the group Freestyle Cyclists, the protest ride drew immediate media local media attention, which was then magnified across the globe.

As many bike commuters know, Australia is one of only three nations in the world that require bicycle helmets. And as most also understand, mandating helmets means less people will ride, period.

The reasons for this are many, but chief among them is the inconvenience, the fear of penalty, and the increased perception of cycling as an inherently dangerous activity that forcing helmet use creates.

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Bikes In the Battle of Baltimore

Last week saw much civil and not so civil unrest across the nation as May Day 2015 served the duel role of being an International Workers Holiday and mass protest against the lethal police brutality that prompted Baltimore to riot just days prior.

Contrary to corporate news narratives, America has a history rich in riots, uprisings, strikes, occupations, rebellions, and resistance. Note that virtually all the targets of property destruction in Baltimore were police cars, or soul-deadening chain stores that pay their workers poverty wages across the nation. These targets mirrored similar ones last summer in Ferguson.

For about 48 hours social media was chock full of images like this.

And this.Annnnd this. Continue reading →

A Collection of Creative Cycling Graphic Art

The earliest culture expression of the human race we know of was two-dimensional artwork. Painted or etched in stone, the daily realities of ancient mankind tells a great deal about who we were and where we came from tens of thousands of years before written language evolved.

Seeing representations of ourselves affirms who we are, and why we do what we do. This is no different for those who commute and build community via bikes. I’m slightly biased, but the bicycle makes for pretty rad subject material, art-wise.

In trying to reflect the world of cycling, the collection of images below is about the most representative that can be found on Tumblr within a couple hours.

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A New Way to Measure Cycling’s Success

While bikes are on the rise in many cities across the US and Europe, there’s a bit of alarming news lately. Thought of as the most bike-loving city in the country, Portland, OR has stagnated at only a 6% mode share for years. Even worse, a new quasi-scientific poll found that students at Portland State University, the city’s largest academic institution, were actually ditching their bikes in favor of driving more.

Such news typically sends the educated cycling masses into fits of over-analysis and explanation: either the data is inaccurate, the change is temporary, the numbers will improve once projects XYZ are finished, or they simply accept the cause is lost due to lack of political will or failure to frame the cause sufficiently. It’s a little like watching the 5 stages of accepting death, but all at the same time.

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The Fascist Automobile vs. Bicycle Rebellion

For months I haven’t had a hostile altercation with a motorist while riding my 12-speed. It’s uncanny. In the war between bikes and cars, this cycling soldier hasn’t seen much action. Nor have I heard many tales of defying death from my bicycling comrades of late.

Granted, winter has just ended. Warm weather means more bikes in the street thereby making riders more visible, but a rising heat index can also elevate stress levels and increase incidents of road rage.

There’s a wealth of words written on this. Tom Vanderbilt has written at length about the empathy-diminishing confines of the automobile, expounding on how this phenomenon effects drivers more than passengers by orders of magnitude. It would seem operating an automobile tends to bring out the worst in us all – makes us start seeing one another less as human beings and more like mere obstacles in the way of motorists trying to drive fast.

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Bike Photography as Anecdotal Advocacy

Often it feels like talking about why bikes are good and why people should ride them more is either choiring to the preacher or having an argument with a fictional cycle-hater that lives in the back of your head. You know they’re there. We’re all evangelicals knocking on doors asking if our neighbors have found our Lord and Savior, Bicycle Christ. We’ve amassed an arsenal of talking points designed to work on each other that confound and infuriate real life bike haters when fired on social media. Failing there, we retreat, scratching our heads wondering how to better tweek our language to convert the unfaithful, or worse – we ponder whether to stop using the word ‘bicycle’ at all.

If bikes are a social movement, and they are, there’s going to be infighting, difference of opinions, diversity of tactics. That’s fine. That’s normal. That’s necessary. As it’s often been said, strength lies in this diversity. Beyond talking points and facts and charts and diagrams, we need true visual evidence. Charts don’t mean zip to most. People can’t emotionally bond with a chart. They crave stirring, anecdotal evidence. They need to see somebody who looks like them riding a bike that looks fun while wearing clothes that look comfortable. The technology of photography fulfills this craving.

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Cycling In A Violent World

Words matter. Nowhere is that more evident than in the trench warfare currently being waged over the term ‘accident’ in reference to motorists killing and maiming people walking and riding their bikes. Most law enforcement agencies have begun to appreciate why this term is unacceptable, how it perpetuates a lack of accountability and a culture of victim-blaming. Unfortunately, major media outlets like the New York Times still cling to this intellectually dishonest word, continuing to use us it in the face of transit advocate backlash. It is encouraging, though, that a far more correct term is coming into common speak: ‘traffic violence’.

It’s been said that cycling advocates should adopt the branding methods of the auto industry: Never talk about the dangers of your product. Never harm the positive imagery you’re painting to sell the bike experience. With so many potential riders afraid to put foot to pedal – it’s important not to perpetuate the myth of these harms. Truthfully, the harm is not in cycling, it is in driving, the harm drivers impose on human beings around them. We tend to overstate these risks in our discourse due the vast imbalance of danger between one mode over the other. While promoting cycling on the merits of fun and not scaring away the novices, it’s important to be honest in our dialog – motorists do kill thousands of people every year in lethal acts of violence.

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