Interested in learning more about bike-rider culture in DC

[Brendan von Buckingham]

I get that some want to reject being labeled as a culture in order to look mainstream and normal, but the mainstream for decades has identified us as a separate class, usually an underclass. It’s our label whether we think so or not. No use running away from that. Use the fact that we’re a class that is discriminated against as a group and fight for our group rights. There’s a culture in there somewhere.

[Arlingtonrider]

If there is a culture, it’s an incredibly diverse one held together with the common threads of liking and/or needing to ride bikes and wanting to do so safely. People are waaay too prone to stereotype, which makes me very wary of writings about “bike culture.” There are a lot of different kinds of cyclists who have little in common other than the factors just mentioned.

[Geoff]

@Brendan von Buckingham 90590 wrote:

I get that some want to reject being labeled as a culture in order to look mainstream and normal, but the mainstream for decades has identified us as a separate class, usually an underclass. It’s our label whether we think so or not. No use running away from that. Use the fact that we’re a class that is discriminated against as a group and fight for our group rights. There’s a culture in there somewhere.

Gotta disagree. You might as well talk about football loving culture, barbecue culture, drive-5-miles-to-work vs. drive-25-miles-to-work culture. You could, but it would be silly. The biggest difference between “my culture” now that I commute by bike and when I drove is I spend more time on bike maintenance.

Yes, I’ve been honked at and yelled at on a bike in a way that doesn’t happen when I drive but it doesn’t define my “culture” any more than dealing with rude people in a store defines anything about me.

I’m fine with advocating our interests, like bike lanes, the same as anyone else advocates their interests. We’ll win some and lose some. You can’t have equality if you cling to a sense of victimhood.

[Crickey7]

The randonneurs, road racers and messengers have a something like a culture. There is a culture than is loosely organized around bikes in the Bike Party set, Tweed Rides and similar sets. Long distance commuters might be mistake for having a culture, since their mindsets and approaches to the role of bikes fit into a fairly narrow spectrum. I’d say they are too atomistic to truly be a culture.

[dasgeh]

Family biking! Family biking! Family biking! We have 2 Kidical Mass rides this weekend — DC on Saturday and Arlington & the newly formed Alexandria on Sunday! We’re definitely more photogenic than some other riders

Ashley – I’m going to send you an email now…

[dkel]

Everything people do to interact with each other and create community with one another is governed by culture, and culture is always learned through participation in a group, rather than by learning discrete rules. Consider queuing: in western countries it’s very important to wait in line and not cut in line, and if someone transgresses that system it’s offensive. This is not true in much of Asia, for example: people there expect to jockey their way through a cluster to get at what they want. Yet it’s not written and posted that you’re supposed to line up to get on a bus or into a theater; we just do it because we’ve learned to do it together. Cyclists do have a culture, and it’s very evident on the trail and in the street who are the people in the culture and who is outside the culture. Think of the terms we use to describe interactions within our culture, like “shoaling” and “leap-frogging,” neither of which describe breaking a written rule (interestingly, breaking rules is always more tolerable than transgressing cultural norms, because rules are extrinsic and culture is intrinsic). This is why non-cyclists perceive cyclists as “other,” because non-cyclists are outside cycling culture. So cycling culture is a real thing, whether we like it or not, and it’s unavoidable because culture is what people naturally generate in society.

[Arlingtonrider]

That is true of the biking group we normally interact with, but I know there are many others who bike who have never heard of those terms or even thought about some of those things. There are people who bike to jobs washing dishes, people who bike because they are no longer able to drive, people who can’t afford cars, etc. They’re all part of the biking community too.

[dkel]

The terms were just an example; it’s not the terms themselves that are important, but the kinds of interactions that people who cycle in common spaces have with each other. If you are a dishwasher riding to your job, you may not know what a “shoaler” is by name, but you still may get irritated when a slower trail user comes around from behind you while you’re waiting at an intersection. The culture comes about through the interactions we have with each other; the fact that you can have an emotional response to perfect strangers around you, simply based on their actions, indicates cultural associations.

It occurred to me on my ride home (after I wrote my other post about culture) that likely none of what I said is the type of “culture” that Ashley was interested in anyway. I was force-fed all this anthropological culture stuff in a doctoral colloquium, so feel free to disregard it.

[hozn]

I think the significant thing is how/whether people identify as a group with shared values, traditions, etc. More than just the common employ of a two-wheeled transport mechanism. There are definitely cycling cultures, just ask the roadies shaving their legs or hipsters rolling up their (DS) skinny jeans. Really The Rules are the articulation of one of those cycling cultures. But as Arlingtonrider points out, this does not apply to huge swaths of people that ride bicycles. People that ride their bicycles may have interests or concerns in common, but that isn’t enough to make it a culture. People who shop at Giant also have common interests (groceries) and concerns (the spill on aisle 3), but it would be quite a stretch to claim that is a culture — and more significantly that suggestion would likely not resonate with any of the Giant shoppers. Indeed when I started riding bike as an adult, I rode a hybrid recreationally and would have resoundingly rejected the notion that I was part of a cycling culture. My coworker mentioned the other day that he cannot fathom why people would get dressed up to go cycling; I suspect he falls in the same I-just-ride-my-bike—what camp.

[dkel]

You could take any microcosm of daily life and claim there’s no inherent culture therein, but I would argue that those microcosms are informed by broader cultural values that then apply locally, and they also inevitably have aspects that are unique and situational, even creating their own subcultures. Take Giant shopping: there are broad cultural practices like queuing, as well as situations (like that spill on aisle 3, or perhaps a better Giant example would be those handheld scanning things you pick up when you start shopping that never seem to work right) that create opportunities for those people that are present to interact based on the situation. When you were out recreationally on your hybrid, you probably had limited interaction with the cyclist group, and therefore weren’t inculturated into that group, hence your reluctance to identify with them. As you persisted in riding that hybrid, though, your experience with the group increased, as did your understanding of how that group functions, and the next thing you know, you’re Hozn, Venerated Senior Member. Not everyone gets that deep into the culture, of course, and if all your rides were in complete isolation none of the culture would matter, but people, being social organisms, recognize patterns of interaction, and that’s how culture is generated, regardless of self-identifying with a group. As such, you could make a distinction between a social organization (participated in by choice) and a culture (which can be shared by people who don’t even know each other or ever have the chance to meet), or at least gear your analysis to those standards. As a social group, the “cyclists” stereotype falls apart, which is what prompted all this discussion to start with, I believe; as a culture, there is a great deal of common experience and common concern among people of all stripes due to “the common employ of a two-wheeled transport mechanism.”

If Ashley is even still checking in on this thread after all of this claptrap, I’d be amazed.

[hozn]

Sure, if you define culture like this then you end up with a situation where every microcosm of activity makes a subculture — as Geoff suggested above. This may be an academically correct definition, but I would argue it is not what people mean when they talk about cycling culture(s). I would suggest that what people mean by that term does in fact resemble social group participation, and that the group self-identification is important here. And you need The Rules (or unwritten ones) that enumerate those shared values and customs. I maintain that to have any meaning, “cycling culture” has to be more than the shared values of a quiet drivetrain and shared customs of moving the feet in a pedaling motion and calling “on your left” when passing.

[n18]

From page 1:

@ashleyedokpayi 90578 wrote:

I think bicyclist “experience” is a better term to use as I begin to speak with more riders instead of bike “culture”…thank you everyone for the feedback!

[dkel]

Right. Definitely.

[Dickie]

[QUOTE=dkel

If Ashley is even still checking in on this thread after all of this claptrap, I’d be amazed.

I wrote Ashley a personal email offering my assistance and never heard back… it would appear our typical minutia has struck again.

[Dickie]

@dkel 90631 wrote:

If Ashley is even still checking in on this thread after all of this claptrap, I’d be amazed.

I wrote Ashley a personal email offering my assistance and never heard back… it would appear our typical minutia has struck again.

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