I have several useless questions for you.
posted by jeremy on August 26, 2002
Go. Going. Gone. I suppose these are the action scenes in the movie of my life. So fuck you, I'm moving thru this blur of traffic, this stumble of pedestrians. Downtown towers about me & I'm afraid but I'm not afraid... I'm fighting my way thru something here...
& so here is America: 3,717,796 square miles of land & water. A population of 281,421,906 human beings at last census, making it the 3rd most populous nation on the planet.
As of 1998 there were 131.8 million registered automobiles using 19.5 million barrels of petroleum per day: 26% of the world's consumption & the estimate of the greenhouse gasses released by America into the atmosphere in that same year? 5676.2 million metric tons. An ultra-yummy stew of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides & non-methane VOCs.
& we can do nothing but ride & swim thru this inescapable inefficient tangle of transportation: America moves & we move with it.
The legacy of the auto should be a dying beast yet with SUVs the super-sized fashion of the day, it lives like never before.
Consider: 1998 was the hottest year on record. 2001 was the second hottest & in 1999, automobile manufacturers spent $1,732,000,000 on advertising.
I step back. I look at this. I look at this exact aspect and the questions arise, seemingly benign, useless, but they weigh heavy on me. I look at America and I look at the way America moves and I have to know....
Everywhere. All around me. I see them. These riders. These cyclist. These geeks. Hips. Beauties. Elders. Cops. Children. Punks. Vagrants. Jocks. Businessmen & women. Ragged. Slick. Pimped-out. Idiots. Wise. However. Whatever. Class-less. Everywhere. Everywhere. I'm watching them all...
Are our simple machines political? Or are they just simple tools? Is the bike more than just transportation? Often it seems to be a form of play, a complex game involving all the visceral complexity of the city... A game involving two ton, three ton, thirty ton opponents. Have you ever seen someone run over? Thrown 50 ft across a 4 lane intersection or maybe stuck beneath the rear wheels as the car squeals to a compound-fracturing halt? I have & this, this is a game of harsh rules...
& so is it a form of rebellion? An obvious yet subtle form of undermining certain norms? Is it a slow revolution? A sign of poverty? Is the bicycle as sexy as I think it is?
Well I know, standing here in my $9,000 a year life with all my $9,000 a year friends, that the bicycle is the first transpo choice of us: The poor....
& do you see things differently? I ask you, is a differential in physical awareness to be found in the very act of riding a bike? Of refusing to drive? Of denying the indentureship That the purchase of a new vehicle entails? Which questions are necessary? Which questions give birth to questions that are no longer useless?
A man in a forest green Ford Continent begins to cut me off as he's turning right into the intersection ahead of me. I yell as loud as I can. A cry that startles pigeons into flight & turns the heads of the pedestrians around me. The man startles too. He slams on his brakes & waves me past with a bewildered expression.
I smile at him & laugh & move...
Is the psyche of the bicycle a culture unto itself? What is it when you find yourself measuring all the movements of your day in terms of biking time? When every pair of pants you own is grease stained on the right pantleg? When cruising is a synonym for joy? when your attachment to your bike borders on something almost obscene? When this is the way its been for years & when you know this is the way it will always be, at least for you & several million others?
This is where a micro-culture touches the edge of the macro that is America. This subtle periphery is where there my interest lies, where I see some future shape arising out the simplest parts of people's lives...
I outpace cars for block after block. These lights, these ridiculous signs hold little meaning for me. I'm careful but free. I run my errands & I decide for a midafternoon beer or three. I head for the Ash St. I lock up my bike & step thru the already dense crowd of customers & order an inexpensive if shitty domestic. I sit & write & watch the people come & go.
All these messengers: These people are in a different echelon than the rest of us. At least in the context of riding a bicycle. A bike courier has one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. I have read that a person being struck by a car travelling at 45 mph has only a one in five chance of survival. So to these workers I tip my sweaty hat....
& I'm thinking to myself about the choice to utilize the economics of ones life in a vastly different manner than our current consumerist norm. About how, in my case, it was not a politicized or even conscious choice... I just didn't have a way of affording the massive investment of capital that is commonly referred to as owning an automobile. Its always simply been the that the distance I must traverse shall be covered by bike or bus or foot. All options far more conductive for one to be immersed in this world, immersed in all its shitty splendor, than afforded by the singular insularity of the car...
I finish my scribbling & my beer & go.... Out into all this chaotic motion & I'm looking for pathways. For an ecstatic if safe journey. I'm looking for lessons, stories, secrets. I'm looking for something worth showing you...
The bike is as it always is: An adventure, a sexy beast, a wonderful goddam death trap....
It's fast. It's slow. It's convenient. It's bulky. It's sleek, so sleek. It's cheap as shit. It's carbon-fiber expensive. It's as noisy as 5 broken spokes and a mal-adjusted derailleur. It's as quiet as the newest Shimano components.
You can move like a god, like fucking Mercury, no shit or you can limp along like a three legged possum in the last stages of leprosy.
You. You are a queen. You are the queen of weasels, slipping thru traffic, punching thru stoplights, moving where-ever you need to move, going however you need to go.... SUVs being left behind you in the sheer massiveness of their antiquity, every kilogram of their idiot dead weight so apparent as you push your simple machine far beyond them...
& you have to work for it . The air. The rain. The smog. The danger is right there with you... potential death, broken bones, lacerations, snapped teeth purring along on yr shoulder like a somehow dangerous & hungry kitten. It is the necessary immediateness of the bicycle & it is what one comes to love.
So... an explanation. My friend Nate & I are putting together a journal for the bike-obsessed. We've decided to call this project ÂShrike'.
A shrike, if you don't know, is a small but ferocious bird.
A raptor-like robin-sized bundle of terror. Its uniqueness is in the way it kills: By impalement. It impales it prey on such objects as barb-wire or thorn trees. A real tool-user. Its mating practices are even more macabre. The male attracts its mate by creating gory sculptures using the bodies of the animals it kills. Decomposing balls of flesh nestled within the limbs of thorn trees: A darker hope for love.
There is something beautiful & apt about this.
The bicycle is a realization of movement. An expression of unfettered transportation. The bureaucracy, the ridiculous world-eating infrastructure of the automobile holds no palaver with the simplicity of the bicycle.
We've decided that this project shall simply be pieces of the mundane... glorious... details of everyday life here in Portland, Oregon as well within the larger context of the atrocity & wonders of our American urban culture.
A bloody sculpture of our own...
I have read that over one-third of the G.D.P. of America is used in maintaining the auto infrastructure. Consider.... realize.... what resources go into our constant upkeep of existing highways and into building new roads, new overpasses, new bridges, ad infinitum. Consider the raw materials, the massive machines, the personnel, the bureaucracy, the waste....
Consider the manufacture of automobiles, the resources invested there, the immense sprawling factories dedicated solely to the continuing production of the automobile.
Consider the insurance companies and the sheer number of dollars devoured & shifted around within that self-interested & nation-swerving business.
Consider the social cost in terms of medical care for however many poor fuckers find themselves suddenly paraplegic, tri-limbed, deuce-limbed or brain-dead in any given year.
Consider that from 1999-2001, nearly 120,000 people perished & rot, as you read this, victims of immediate & massive deacceleration.
& then consider the wars this empire of ours has waged over that infamous three letter word that continues to cause so much suffering, not sin, but oil....
& finally, consider what part the automobile is playing in the ongoing changing of our climate, this warming of our home, this destruction of seasonal certainty...
& I'm cruising thru this clusterfuck of traffic & watching, considering, hoping that we can catch something in the essence of these times, nail it down, show you the very blood of it....
I need no further proof of how I must move, and trust me, I shall move on this. The bicycle is a democratic machine, the most energy efficient machine ever created: I have seen 3-year-olds ride as easily as the oldest of humans and I am not an idealist but a pragmatist.
The bike will... must... outlive the automobile, not...to answer my original question... as a matter of politics but as a matter of efficiency & as an example of the consistent evolution of elegance.
