Clever Cycles

A couple recent items found on New York’s “Streetsblog” have catapulted it into our blogroll:

OK that’s all good fun but is it ethical? What is an appropriate response to endangerment? Do we need perhaps to consult a professional ethicist? Such as Mr. Randy Cohen:

Another site we’ve been enjoying lately is Cycleliciousness, particularly for entries like 18 Ways to Know that You Have Bicycle Culture. Well, by such measures, we here in Portland don’t have it. We have far more diversity than that. Part of that diversity is the “stylish daily urban mobility” model that Clever Cycles caters to especially. This model is a ubiquitous monoculture in Copenhagen and Amsterdam. Way #13 is telling: “you don’t even know that you live in a ‘bike culture.’” A bicyclist in Copenhagen isn’t an “ist” at all, unless a dentist or flutist, but just another drop in the sea. A bicyclist in Portland, whether a Zoobomber or a Chunker, racer real or pretend, spandex commuter, bakfiets-pumping mama/papa, or uncategorized other, knows that he or she is part of a wave of change, making a statement however quiet, as part of a community and culture distinct from the norm. Someday over the next decades the wave will break and resolve into the mainstream, and we will no longer have this identity. I will miss the clever feeling.