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How a Summer Bike Ride Makes Serious Joy


August 23, 2010



Read More: http://thefastertimes.com/greenecono...s-serious-joy/

I learned over the past year that granting public space to bicyclists is a piece of policy. And as policy goes, it’s a ton of fun. A year ago, I grumbled about seeing grim faces and rampant headphones while I ran up Lafayette Street during Summer Streets, the thrice-annual city-sponsored shutdown of car traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge two big Manhattan avenues. If this was a celebration of car-free living, I carped, why did everyone look so solitary? Why did I see so few smiles?

- The fact of people sharing an urban artery on pollution-free contraptions is celebration in itself: people can see each other, hear each other, notice details of the built environment and appreciate changes in speed. They don’t need to be dancing or prancing, though they did plenty of that: just living without horns and carbon monoxide elevates us to a sharper awareness.

- The lesson I learned is that urban biking is not an escape but a confrontation. A friend and I rode, with our daughters riding on child seats and telling each other silly poems, and talked about our cycling history. He had joined Critical Mass, the monthly civil-disobedience ride, in San Francisco where he said it had neutralized car traffic on Friday afternoons.

- And I, a recent convert to bike commuting, had found police officers snarling at me about “blocking the street” and found passersby calling me a criminal and worse, and found myself more alert to the infuriating harassment that rains every day in the city on people who were born poorer than I, or with darker skin. We kept riding, often quiet, with the sense that we were in a more civilized and negotiable space because there were no cars to prowl behind us or bump us.