PROLOGUE VOYAGE TO THE MOON
1. “been brought to such perfection”: “A Revolution in Locomotion,” New York Times, August 22, 1867.
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2. A cartoon from the same period: Artist unknown, Voyage à la lune, publisher unknown (France, c. 1865–1870). Hand-colored lithograph. A copy of the print is in the collection of the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. It can be viewed online at loc.gov/item/2002722394/.
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3. “a beautiful golden road”: John Kendrick Bangs, Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy (New York: Riggs, 1902), 35–37.
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4. “A miner’s bike would have looked odd in the streets of Stockholm”: Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones (New York: Ballantine, 1952), 68–69.
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5. Trans-Galactic Bike Ride, published in 2020: Lydia Rogue, ed., Trans-Galactic Bike Ride (Portland, Ore.: Elly Blue, 2020).
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6. “The art of flight will be the practical outcome”: Benjamin Ward Richardson, “Cycling as an Intellectual Pursuit,” Longman’s Magazine 2, no. 12 (May–October 1883): 593–607.
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7. A NASA photograph documents a test run: For more on NASA’s flirtation with “lunar cycling,” see, e.g., Amy Teitel, “How NASA Didn’t Drive on the Moon,” April 6, 2012, AmericaSpace, americaspace.com/2012/04/06/how-nasa-didnt-drive-on-the-moon/.
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8. The bicycles Wilson proposed…were semi-recumbent: For a comprehensive description of Wilson’s proposed moon vehicles and other details of his vision for transport in space, see “Human-Powered Space Transportation,” Galileo no. 11–12 (June 1979): 21–26.
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9. “the freedom conferred with having no wind resistance”: Ibid., 24.
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10. “The ‘cruising’ speed for an astronaut”: Ibid., 22.
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11. “a space colony established on an artificial satellite”: Ibid., 25.
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12. “The picture I have tried to portray of human-powered transportation”: Ibid., 26.
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13. John Boyd Dunlop was a forty-seven-year-old Belfast-based veterinarian: For Dunlop’s account of his invention of the pneumatic tire, see John Boyd Dunlop, The Invention of the Pneumatic Tyre (Dublin: A. Thom & Company, 1925). Also see Jim Cooke, John Boyd Dunlop (Tankardstown, Garristown, County Meath, Ireland: Dreolín Specialist Publications, 2000).
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14. “an abiding interest in the problems of road, rail and sea transport”: Jim Cooke, “John Boyd Dunlop 1840–1921, Inventor,” Dublin Historical Record 49, no. 1 (Dublin: Old Dublin Society, 1996), 16–31.
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15. “It occurred to me,” he wrote years later: Dunlop, Invention of the Pneumatic Tyre, 9.
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16. “eager to have a speed trial of his new machine”: Ibid., 15.
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17. Robert William Thomson, had made the same imaginative leap: See Charles Barlow, Esq., ed., The Patent Journal and Inventors’ Magazine, vol. 1 (London: Patent Journal Office, 1846): 61. Thomson, incidentally, was also the inventor of the fountain pen.
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18. “intercepted vibration from the road”: Cooke, John Boyd Dunlop, 16.
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19. The name Thomson gave to his creation had a poetic ring: T. R. Nicholson, The Birth of the British Motor Car, 1769–1897, vol. 2, Revival and Defeat, 1842–93 (London: Macmillan, 1982), 241.
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INTRODUCTION BICYCLE PLANET
1. “Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia”: H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905), 47.
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2. “Mankind has invested more than four million years”: This vivid passage appears in P. J. O’Rourke’s “A Cool and Logical Analysis of the Bicycle Menace,” originally published in Car and Driver Magazine in 1984. Like most of O’Rourke’s stuff, it was satirical but also not—an exaggerated expression of earnestly held views. (O’Rourke published another anti-bicycle broadside, “Dear Urban Cyclists: Go Play in Traffic,” on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page, April 2, 2011.) “A Cool and Logical Analysis of the Bicycle Menace” is anthologized in P. J. O’Rourke, Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P. J. O’Rourke (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987), 122–27.
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3. “You are traveling”: “The Winged Wheel,” New York Times, December 28, 1878.
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4. “Bicycling…has done more to emancipate women”: “Champion of Her Sex,” World (New York), February 2, 1896.
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5. “It would not be at all strange”: See “Mark of the Century,” Detroit Tribune, May 10, 1896.
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6. “Perhaps an interface between East and West is the bicycle”: James C. McCullagh, ed., Pedal Power in Work, Leisure, and Transportation (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 1977), x.
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7. “the noblest invention”: Lance Armstrong, ed., The Noblest Invention: An Illustrated History of the Bicycle (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 2003).
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8. “the most benevolent machine”: Sharon A. Babaian, The Most Benevolent Machine: A Historical Assessment of Cycles in Canada (Ottawa, Ont.: National Museum of Science and Technology, 1998).
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9. “rideable art that can just about save the world”: This aphorism, attributed to the American bicycle designer and author Grant Peterson, is widely quoted in “inspirational” bicycle literature and internet memes. See, e.g., Chris Naylor, Bike Porn (Chichester, West Sussex, Eng.: Summersdale, 2013).
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10. There are twice as many bikes: See, e.g., Michael Kolomatsky, “The Best Cities for Cyclists,” New York Times, June 24, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/06/24/realestate/the-best-cities-for-cyclists.html; Leszek J. Sibiliski, “Why We Need to Encourage Cycling Everywhere,” World Economic Forum, February 5, 2015, weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/why-we-need-to-encourage-cycling-everywhere/.
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11. the linear course of technological advancement: See David Edgerton, The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
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12. “Get a bicycle,” wrote Mark Twain: From Mark Twain, “Taming the Bicycle” (1886). Anthologized in Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1852–1890 (New York: Library of America, 1992), 892–99.
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13. “The cyclist is a suicide apprentice”: Julio Torri, “La bicicleta,” in Julio Torri: Textos (Saltillo, Coahuila, Mex.: Universidad Autónoma de Coahuila, 2002), 109. Translation from the Spanish by Jody Rosen.
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14. by migrants navigating the no-man’s-land: For an account of the role played by bicycles in migration at the U.S.-Mexican border and in border policing, see Kimball Taylor, The Coyote’s Bicycle: The Untold Story of Seven Thousand Bicycles and the Rise of a Borderland Empire (Portland, Ore.: Tin House Books, 2016).
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15. “A curious two-wheeled vehicle called the Velocipede”: Evening Post (New York), June 11, 1819.
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16. An American newspaper editorial urged citizens to “destroy” velocipedes: Columbian Register (New Haven), July 10, 1819.
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17. “kyphosis bicyclistarum”: “A Terrible Disease,” Neenah Daily Times (Neenah, Wisc.), July 17, 1893.
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18. “[The] bicycle runs for Satan”: “Reformers in a New Field,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1896.
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19. A 2019 Australian study explored the negative view of cyclists: Alexa Delbosc, Farhana Naznin, Nick Haslam, and Narelle Haworth, “Dehumanization of Cyclists Predicts Self-Reported Aggressive Behaviour Toward Them: A Pilot Study,” Transportation Research, Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour 62 (April 2019): 681–89.
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20. analysts predict that the market will hit $80 billion by 2027: “Bicycles—Global Market Trajectory & Analytics,” Research and Markets, January 2021, researchandmarkets.com/reports/338773/bicycles_global_market_trajectory_and_analytics.
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21. A manifesto issued by the Provo: Joseph Lelyveld, “Dadaists in Politics,” New York Times, October 2, 1966. Cf. Alan Smart, “Provos in New Babylon,” Urbânia 4, August 31, 2011, urbania4.org/2011/08/31/provos-in-new-babylon/.
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22. One of Adolf Hitler’s first acts upon assuming power: See Iain Boal’s 2010 lecture at the Museum of Copenhagen, accessible online in five videos posted on Vimeo, especially “The Green Machine—Lecture by Iain Boal, Bicycle Historian. Part 3 of 5,” Vimeo, 2010, vimeo.com/11264396.
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23. German soldiers…confiscated bicycles: See, e.g., Mikkel Andreas Beck, “How Hitler Decided to Launch the Largest Bike Theft in Denmark’s History,” ScienceNordic, October 23, 2016, sciencenordic.com/denmark-history-second-world-war/how-hitler-decided-to-launch-the-largest-bike-theft-in-denmarks-history/1438738.
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24. “Women are riding to suffrage on a bicycle”: “Riding to Suffrage on a Bicycle,” Fall River Daily Herald (Fall River, Mass.), June 8, 1895.
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25. Authoritarian governments in Asia and the Middle East have periodically imposed bans: See, e.g., Daniel Defraia, “North Korea Bans Women from Riding Bicycles…Again,” CNBC, Jan 17, 2013, cnbc.com/id/100386298; “Saudi Arabia Eases Ban on Women Riding Bikes,” Al Jazeera, April 2, 2013, aljazeera.com/news/2013/4/2/saudi-arabia-eases-ban-on-women-riding-bikes.
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26. In 2016, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, proclaimed a fatwa: Andree Massiah, “Women in Iran Defy Fatwa by Riding Bikes in Public,” BBC, September 21, 2016, bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-37430493.
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27. “attracts the attention of male strangers and exposes society to corruption”: Hannah Ross, Revolutions: How Women Changed the World on Two Wheels (New York: Plume, 2020), 99. See also: “Khamenei Says Use of Bicycles for Women Should Be Limited,” Radio Farda, November 27, 2017, en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-women-bicycles-rstricted-khamenei-fatwa/28882216.html.
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28. “Do not be sexually tempted”: “Women Banned from Riding Bikes in Iran Province Run by Ultra-Conservative Cleric,” Radio Farda, August 5, 2020, en.radiofarda.com/a/women-banned-from-riding-bikes-in-iran-province-run-by-ultra-conservative-cleric/30767110.html.
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29. “Islamic punishment”: Ross, Revolutions, 99. Also: “Iran’s Regime Bans Women from Riding Bicycles in Isfahan,” National Council of Resistance of Iran, May 15, 2019, ncr-iran.org/en/news/women/iran-s-regime-bans-women-from-riding-bicycles-in-isfahan/.
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30. reported physical attacks and sexual assaults: “Iranian Cyclists Endure Physical, Sexual Abuse and Bans,” Kodoom, July 30, 2020, features.kodoom.com/en/iran-sports/iranian-cyclists-endure-physical-sexual-abuse-and-bans/v/7164/.
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31. scholars have begun unearthing a less hagiographic history: Of particular note is the groundbreaking work of Zack Furness, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010); Paul Smethurst, The Bicycle: Towards a Global History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Steven A. Alford and Suzanne Ferriss, An Alternative History of Bicycles and Motorcycles: Two-Wheeled Transportation and Material Culture (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2016); and Iain Boal, “The World of the Bicycle,” in Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration, ed. Chris Carlsson (Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2002), 167–74.
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32. the Quadricycle: See Paul Ingrassia, Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 5–6; “1896 Ford Quadricycle Runabout, First Car Built by Henry Ford,” The Henry Ford, thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/252049/#slide=gs-212191.
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33. “macadamization”: See Peter J. Hugill, “Good Roads and the Automobile in the United States 1880–1929,” Geographical Review 72, no. 3 (July 1982): 327–49; Charles Freeman Johnson, “The Good Roads Movement and the California Bureau of Highways,” Overland Monthly 28, no. 2 (July–December 1896): 442–55.
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34. “bicycle bloc”: Michael Taylor, “The Bicycle Boom and the Bicycle Bloc: Cycling and Politics in the 1890s,” Indiana Magazine of History 104 (September 2008): 213–40.
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35. “It is the task of critical historians of the bicycle”: Iain A. Boal, “The World of the Bicycle,” in Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration, ed. Chris Carlsson (Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2002), 171.
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36. “maps of gentrification”: Elizabeth Flanagan, Ugo Lachapelle, and Ahmed El-Geneidy, “Riding Tandem: Does Cycling Infrastructure Investment Mirror Gentrification and Privilege in Portland, OR and Chicago, IL?,” Research in Transportation Economics 60 (December 2017): 14–24.
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37. The term “invisible riders” has gained currency: See, e.g., Melody L. Hoffmann, Bike Lanes and White Lanes: Bicycle Advocacy and Urban Planning (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016); Adonia E. Lugo, Bicycle/Race: Transportation, Culture, & Resistance (Portland, Ore.: Microcosm, 2018); Aaron Golub, Melody L. Hoffmann, Adonia E. Lugo, and Gerardo F. Sandoval, eds., Bicycle Justice and Urban Transformation: Biking for All? (New York: Routledge, 2016); Tiina Männistö-Funk and Timo Myllyntaus, Invisible Bicycle: Parallel Histories and Different Timelines (Leiden, Neth.: Brill, 2019); and Glen Norcliffe, Critical Geographies of Cycling (New York: Routledge, 2015).
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38. Mikael Colville-Andersen has popularized “Copenhagenize”: See Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2018). Colville-Andersen’s book, spun off from his popular website, bills itself as The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism, yet Asian, African, and Latin American cities barely warrant a mention.
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39. “cycle chic”: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Cycle Chic (London: Thames & Hudson, 2012).
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40. Researchers say that motor vehicles are the largest net contributor: Emily Atkin, “The Modern Automobile Must Die,” New Republic, August 20, 2018, newrepublic.com/article/150689/modern-automobile-must-die.
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41. tire wear and other non-tailpipe pollutants account for a large percentage: “Tyres Not Tailpipe,” Emissions Analytics, January 29, 2020, emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-tailpipe.
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42. Globally, some 1.25 million people die in car crashes each year: World Bank, “The High Toll of Traffic Injuries: Unacceptable and Preventable,” Open Knowledge Repository, 2017, openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29129.
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43. “The bicycle is the most civilized transport known to man”: Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green (New York: Viking, 1965), 29.
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44. “Two wheels good, four wheels bad”: The phrase riffs on the maxim “Four legs good, two legs bad,” from Orwell’s Animal Farm.
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45. “The bicycle is the perfect transducer”: Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 60.
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46. “a bicycle for our minds”: This was one of Steve Jobs’s favorite riffs. See, e.g., the excerpt of Jobs talking about bicycles and computers in the 1990 film Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress. Available online at “Steve Jobs, ‘Computers Are Like a Bicycle for Our Minds’—Michael Lawrence Films,” YouTube, youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c.
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1 THE BICYCLE WINDOW
1. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”: See Thomas Gray, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” poets.org/poem/elegy-written-country-churchyard.
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2. “The Passion Considered as an Uphill Bicycle Race”: Alfred Jarry, La passion considérée comme course de côte—et autres speculations (1903; repr., Montélimar, France: Voix d’Encre, 2008). An English translation is available online at Bike Reader: A Rider’s Digest, notanothercyclingforum.net/bikereader/contributors/misc/passion.html.
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3. “Bicycles appear in the bas reliefs”: Walter Sullivan, “Leonardo Legend Grows as Long-Lost Notes Are Published,” New York Times, September 30, 1974.
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4. A raft of evidence has since confirmed: For a comprehensive (and entertaining) debunking of “Leonardo’s bicycle,” see Hans-Erhard Lessing’s “The Evidence Against ‘Leonardo’s Bicycle,’ ” presented at the Eighth International Conference on Cycling History, Glasgow School of Art, August 1997. Available online from Cycle Publishing, cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycle.html.
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5. “The Italian cultural bureaucracy…still upholds: Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 501.
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6. “In Italy, the bicycle belongs to the national art heritage”: Curzio Malaparte, “Les deux visages de l’Italie: Coppi et Bartali,” Sport-Digest (Paris) no. 6 (1949): 105–09. The translation appears in Lessing, “The Evidence Against ‘Leonardo’s Bicycle.’ ”
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7. “As soon as individuals—and by extension nations—are credited”: Paul Smethurst, The Bicycle: Towards a Global History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 53.
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8. Efim Artamonov, a Russian serf who invented a high-wheeled bicycle: The Artamonov hoax is detailed in Derek Roberts, Cycling History: Myths and Queries (Birmingham: John Pinkerton, 1991), 27–28; Slava Gerovitch, “Perestroika of the History of Technology and Science in the USSR: Changes in the Discourse,” Technology and Culture 37, no. 1 (January 1996): 102–34; “Artamonov’s Bike,” Clever Geek Handbook, clever-geek.imtqy.com/articles/1619221/index.html; “The Story of a Hoax,” historyntagil.ru/,historyntagil.ru/people/6_82.htm; “Artamonov’s Bike: Legends and Documents,” historyntagil.ru/,historyntagil.ru/history/2_19_28.htm. See also a 1989 scholarly article, transcribed and posted on the website of the State Public Scientific and Technical Library of Russia: B. C. Virginsky, S. A. Klat, T. V. Komshilova, and G. N. Liszt, “How Myths Are Created in the History of Technology: On the History of the Question of ‘Artamonov’s Bicycle,’ ” State Public Scientific and Technical Library of Russia, gpntb.ru/win/mentsin/mentsin2b5c1.html.
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9. “Artamonov, who with his invention anticipated the modern bicycle”: Roberts, Cycling History, 28.
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10. Histoire générale de la vélocipédie: L. Baudry de Saunier, Histoire générale de la vélocipédie (Paris: Paul Ollendorff, 1891).
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11. “M. de Sivrac’s invention was but a poor little naked seed!”: Ibid, 7. Translation from the French by Jody Rosen.
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12. “Could a brain from the other side of the Rhine”: Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, 494.
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13. “The Badenian was merely a thief of ideas”: Ibid., 494.
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14. The basic facts of the story: For my account of Drais’s life and his invention of the Laufmaschine, I have relied in particular on the indispensable work of Hans-Erhard Lessing. See Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, 8–21; Hans-Erhard Lessing, Automobilität—Karl Drais und die unglaublichen Anfänge (Leipzig: Maxime-Verlag, 2003); Hans-Erhard Lessing, “Les deux-roues de Karl von Drais: Ce qu’on en sait,” Proceedings of the International Cycling History Conference 1 (1990): 4–22; Hans-Erhard Lessing, “The Bicycle and Science—from Drais Until Today,” Proceedings of the International Cycling History Conference 3 (1992): 70–86; Hans-Erhard Lessing, “What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle?,” Proceedings of the International Cycling History Conference 11 (2000): 28–36; Hans-Erhard Lessing, “The Two-Wheeled Velocipede: A Solution to the Tambora Freeze of 1816,” Proceedings of the International Cycling History Conference 22 (2011): 180–88. Other helpful sources include David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), and the website Karl Drais: All About the Beginnings of Individual Mobility, karldrais.de/. I also drew on the short Drais biography available online at mannheim.de/sites/default/files/page/490/en_biography.pdf.
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15. “The instrument and the traveller are kept in equilibrio”: For an English translation of Drais’s “account…of [the Laufmaschine’s] nature and properties,” see “The Velocipede or Draisena,” Analectic Magazine (Philadelphia) 13 (1819).
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16. “turned a man into a horse”: Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 24.
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17. “When roads are dry and firm”: Ibid.
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18. “the year without a summer”: William K. Klingaman and Nichols P. Klingaman, The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2013).
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19. “environmentalist revisionism”: Smethurst, The Bicycle, 56.
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20. medieval land-surveying tool known as a waywiser: Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, 495–96.
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21. “The church window cyclist of 1642”: Harry Hewitt Griffin, Cycles and Cycling (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1890), 3.
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22. “clue to the student who is desirous of tracing manual locomotion”: Ibid., 2.
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23. “Every visitor to Stoke Poges visits Gray’s tomb”: Charles G. Harper, Cycle Rides Round London (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd., 1902), 208.
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2 DANDY CHARGERS
1. The story is recorded in a pamphlet: See Roger Street, The Pedestrian Hobby-Horse at the Dawn of Cycling (Christchurch, Dorset, Eng.: Artesius, 1998), 102–03.
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2. Then there is the kicker to the story: The final sentence of Fairburn’s account of the “Dandy-Race,” in which he reports that it was impossible to determine the winner of the contest, contains a final punning joke. Fairburn writes: “It is hard to tell which of these two nobles merited first to arrive at Tyburn and win by the neck, but as both did their best, their claims to be exalted might be considered as equal.” (The underlinings are present in Fairburn’s original text.) As Roger Street points out, the sentence appears to make satirical reference to “the use of the old gallows at Tyburn which apparently stood near the North East corner of Hyde Park.” See ibid., 103.
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3. a patent for “a Pedestrian Curricle or Velocipede”: The Modern Velocipede: Its History and Construction (London: George Maddick, 1869), 3.
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4. Johnson’s machine incorporated modifications: For an excellent technical and historical discussion of Denis Johnson’s velocipedes, see Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 22–25.
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5. a woman was killed when her horse, startled by a passing velocipede: Star (London), June 8, 1819.
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6. Denis Johnson, hoping to drum up sales, went on tour: Street, The Pedestrian Hobby-Horse at the Dawn of Cycling, 53–55.
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7. There were velocipede races: For example, on May 8, 1819, The Suffolk Chronicle (Ipswich, Suffolk, England) reported on a “grand velocipede match between four amateurs,” covering a course of fifty miles, for a “sweepstakes of 25 guineas.” In another race in Ipswich that same year, velocipede riders clad in “jockey dresses” competed for a subscription purse. A race in York “pitted a dandy charger against an opponent mounted on a jackass.” In Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, velocipede races were run at the city’s horse track.
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8. “In the New Road [velocipedes] might be seen in great numbers”: Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, 505. One of the “rooms for practice” was a velocipede riding school operated by Denis Johnson, not far from his workshop in Long Acre, where he filled orders for new machines.
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9. “To-day, nothing is spoken of but the Persian Ambassador”: Morning Advertiser (London), May 6, 1819.
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10. On the variety stage, skits: In March 1819, a velocipede-themed comedy, The Accelerators; or, The Modern Hobby-Horses, debuted at the Strand Theatre. See advertisement, “Miss E. BROADHURST’s Night; STRAND THEATRE, the Sans Pareil,” in The Times (London), March 27, 1819. The popular songs that cast a skeptical eye on the new invention included: “London Fashions, Follies, Dandies, and Hobby Horses” and “Riding on a Real Jackass, the Velocipedes, Alias Hobby Horses.”
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11. “The nothing of the day is a machine called the velocipede”: John Gilmer Speed, ed., The Letters of John Keats (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1883), 67.
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12. the regent’s birthday celebration at Windsor Castle: Morning Post (London), August 16, 1819.
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13. “It is now become quite common”: “Miscellaneous Articles,” The Westmorland Gazette and Kendal Advertiser (Kendal, Cumbria, Eng.), June 26, 1819.
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14. “all the wagon-train pomp of a peaceful military parade”: Street, The Pedestrian Hobby-Horse at the Dawn of Cycling, 103–4.
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15. “In Hyde Park, all fashionable men cross its saddle”: Morning Advertiser (London), March 25, 1819.
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16. “If we are literally to shoot the folly as it flies”: Quoted in Street, The Pedestrian Hobby-Horse at the Dawn of Cycling, 67.
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17. Pray have you not seen: “Ode on the Dandy-Horses,” Monthly Magazine; or, British Register (London), 48, part 2 (December 1, 1819): 433.
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18. “disgrace and odium of Dandyism”: “Lewes,” Sussex Advertiser (Lewes, Sussex, Eng.), May 31, 1819.
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19. “What are these lay-lords”: Gorgon: A Weekly Political Publication (London), March 27, 1819.
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20. “the bloodiest political event of the nineteenth century on English soil”: Robert Poole, Peterloo: The English Uprising (New York: Oxford, 2019), 1.
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21. “all those with the slightest pretension to fashion or taste”: Venetia Murray, An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England (New York: Viking, 1999), 9.
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22. “hanker[ing] after Paris as their spiritual home”: Ibid., 9.
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23. a comedian appeared onstage at London’s Covent Garden Theatre: “Lines Spoken by Mr. Liston, Riding on a Velocipede on Tuesday Night, Star (London), June 17, 1819.
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24. The most vivid satire was the work of caricaturists: Roger Street, Before the Bicycle: The Regency Hobby-Horse Prints (Christchurch, Dorset, Eng.: Artesius, 2014), includes eighty full-color reproductions of velocipede-themed prints from the period.
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25. “contributes to the amusement of passengers in the streets”: Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser (London), May 19, 1819.
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26. One print, thought to be the work of the famous illustrator George Cruikshank: Artist possibly George Cruikshank, R***l Hobby’s!!!, published by J. L. Marks, London, c. April 1819. Hand-colored etching, 9 x 13½″. A copy of the print is in the collection of the British Museum and can be viewed online at britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-8435.
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27. “The crowded state of the metropolis does not admit”: Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser (London), March 19, 1819.
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28. “indulged themselves in the Sunday use of this vehicle”: “Important Caution,” Windsor and Eton Express (Windsor, Berkshire, Eng.), August 1, 1819. The article reported that “the fatal efficacy of the Velocipede, in producing ruptures, [had] been formally announced by the London Surgeons.”
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29. When quietly disposed people saw a velocipede: Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History, 508–09.
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30. In Hyde Park, gangs of youths swarmed riders: David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 34.
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31. “the hobbies ultimately became objects of attack and were demolished”: Morning Advertiser (London), April 13, 1819.
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32. In 1819, a ban on velocipede riding was decreed in London: “[The velocipede] has been put down by the Magistrates,” Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser (London), March 19, 1819.
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33. “seize, break, destroy, or convert to their own use”: Columbian Register (New Haven, Conn.), July 10, 1819.
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34. “It would seem that the Dandies of Calcutta”: The Sun (London), May 17, 1820.
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35. “Great expectations were at one time formed of those things called Velocipedes”: “Land Conveyance by Machinery,” Morning Post (London), July 22, 1820.
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36. “All the catalogue of dandy chargers hitherto invented”: “Steam-Boats,” Caledonian Mercury (Edinburgh, Scotland), June 26, 1819.
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37. “A more contemptible, cowardly, selfish, unfeeling dog”: Charles C. F. Greville, The Greville Memoirs: A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, ed. Henry Reeve, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton, 1886), 131.
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38. “as ephemeral as a Brummel or a Velocipede”: “Extracts,” Perthsire Courier (Perth, Perthshire, Scotland), April 16, 1822.
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39. an 1829 letter: The Mechanics’ Magazine (London) 12 (1830), 237.
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40. Thomas Stephens Davies delivered a speech: Thomas Stephens Davies’s speech is included in an appendix to Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History, 503–17.
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3 ART VÉLO
1. “so lissome, so slender”: Quoted in Jeremy Withers and Daniel P. Shea, eds., Culture on Two Wheels: The Bicycle in Literature and Film (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 143.
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2. “To see that wheel turning was very soothing, very comforting”: Excerpt from MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2019) for Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, Museum of Modern Art website, moma.org/collection/works/81631.
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3. “as beautiful as a bicycle”: Joseph Masheck, Adolf Loos: The Art of Architecture (New York, I. B. Tauris, 2013), 26.
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4. “petro-fetishism”: See Sheena Wilson, Adam Carlson, and Imre Szeman, eds., Petrocultures: Oil, Politics, Culture (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2017).
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5. “comes to us…naked”: Roderick Watson and Martin Gray, The Penguin Book of the Bicycle (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 97.
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6. “In every art there are forms so implicit in the process”: Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1970), 444.
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7. The writer Robert Penn has made the amusing observation: Robert Penn, It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), 112.
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8. The bike wheel has a combination of strength and lightness: The canonical study of the bicycle wheel, which I draw on extensively in this chapter, is Jobst Brandt, The Bicycle Wheel, 3rd ed. (Palo Alto, Calif.: Avocet, 1993).
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9. capable of supporting approximately four hundred times its own weight: Max Glaskin, Cycling Science (London: Ivy, 2019), 112.
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10. A young Frank Zappa appeared on The Steve Allen Show in 1963: Zappa’s performance can be viewed on YouTube: “Frank Zappa Teaches Steve Allen to play the Bicycle (1963),” youtube.com/watch?v=QF0PYQ8IOL4.
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11. “Cycling with regular pedals and cranks”: Penn, It’s All About the Bike, 89.
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12. “It is unlikely that the diamond frame will ever be surpassed”: Sheldon Brown, “Sheldon Brown’s Bicycle Glossary,” sheldonbrown.com/gloss_da-o.html.
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13. The raw materials in…a road bike: See, e.g., “Bicycle Life Cycle: Dissecting the Raw Materials, Embodied Energy, and Waste of Roadbikes,” Design Life-Cycle, designlife-cycle.com/bicycle; Margarida Coelho, “Cycling Mobility—A Life Cycle Assessment Based Approach,” Transportation Research Procedia 10 (December 2015), 443–51; Papon Roy, Md. Danesh Miah, Md. Tasneem Zafar, “Environmental Impacts of Bicycle Production in Bangladesh: a Cradle-to-Grave Life Cycle Assessment Approach,” SN Applied Sciences 1, link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s42452-019-0721-z.pdf; Kat Austen, “Examining the Lifecycle of a Bike—and Its Green Credentials,” Guardian (London), March 15, 2012,theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2012/mar/15/lifecycle-carbon-footprint-bike-blog.
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14. the exploitation of child bike factory workers: See Zacharias Zacharakis, “Under the Wheels,” Zeit Online, December 4, 2019, zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-12/cambodia-bicycles-worker-exploited-production-working-conditions-english?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F; “Global Bike Manufacturers Guilty of Using Child Labour, Claims Green Mag,” bikebiz, October 3, 2003, bikebiz.com/global-bike-manufacturers-guilty-of-using-child-labour-claims-green-mag/.
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15. In Brazil, one person perished…in Congo: “The Past Is Now: Birmingham and the British Empire,” Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, birminghammuseums.org.uk/system/resources/W1siZiIsIjIwMTgvMTIvMDcvMXVocndzcjBkcV9UaGVfUGFzdF9pc19Ob3dfTGFyZ2VfUHJpbnRfTGFiZWxzLnBkZiJdXQ/The%20Past%20is%20Now%20Labels.
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16. “If you were one of the millions”: Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World (New York: Penguin Books, 2017), 208.
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17. asphalt: See, e.g., Kenneth O’Reilly, Asphalt: A History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 60–62, 206–7.
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18. “atom of the Machine Age”: Lance Armstrong, ed., The Noblest Invention: An Illustrated History of the Bicycle (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 2003), 142.
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19. The record is muddled by the usual disputes about provenance: For a thorough and even-handed hashing through of the bicycle’s technical development and the competing narratives thereof, see Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014).
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20. “There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle”: Jerome K. Jerome, “Three Men on a Boat” and “Three Men on the Bummel” (New York: Penguin, 1999), 205.
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21. “When we finally get a full-rigged bicycle”: Norfolk Journal (Norfolk, Neb.), February 18, 1886.
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22. The bicycle first arrived in Vietnam: David Arnold and Erich DeWald, “Cycles of Empowerment? The Bicycle and Everyday Technology in Colonial India and Vietnam,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, no. 4, (October 2011), 971–96.
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23. “Sometimes the bicycle itself is the instrument of death”: “A Study: Viet Cong Use of Terror,” United States Mission in Vietnam (May 1966), pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnadx570.pdf. It has been suggested that the earliest waves of bicycle bombing in Saigon, in the 1950s, were perpetrated by the U.S.-backed Vietnamese nationalist Trinh Minh Thé, with the knowledge and support of American intelligence operatives. According to the theory, the goal was to sew opposition to the Communist cause by perpetrating terrorist atrocities and blaming them on Ho Chi Minh. This is the scenario depicted in Graham Greene’s famous Vietnam roman à clef, The Quiet American. See, e.g., Sergei Blagov, Honest Mistakes: The Life and Death of Trinh Minh Thé (Hauppauge, New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2001), and Mike Davis, Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (New York: Verso, 2007).
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24. The origins of the modern mountain bicycle: For the history of the mountain bike’s origins in the 1970s, see Charles Kelly, Fat Tire Flyer: Repack and the Birth of Mountain Biking (Boulder, Colo.: VeloPress, 2014), and Frank J. Berto, The Birth of Dirt: Origins of Mountain Biking, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Van der Plas / Cycle Publishing, 2014). See also John Howard, Dirt! The Philosophy, Technique, and Practice of Mountain Biking (New York: Lyons, 1997); Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, 433–45 and 139–55; Margaret Guroff, The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 139–55; and Paul Smethurst, The Bicycle: Towards a Global History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 61–65.
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25. The “freak bike” or “mutant bike” movement: See Zack Furness’s superb analysis of “DIY bike culture”: Zack Furness, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), 153–58.
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26. “To consider the endless perfection of the chain”: Hugh Kenner, Samuel Beckett: A Critical Study (New York: Grove, 1961), 123.
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27. “a new animal /…Half wheel and half brain”: Théodore Faullain de Banville, Nouvelles odes funambulesques (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1869), 130.
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28. “people in these parts who nearly are half people and half bicycles”: Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman (Funks Grove, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 1999), 85.
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4 SILENT STEED
1. “The hoofs of the horses!”: Will H. Ogilvie, “The Hoofs of the Horses,” Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes 87 (1907): 465.
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2. “All who dwell in the land will wail”: Jeremiah 47:3, New International Version (2011 translation), accessed at biblia.com/books/niv2011/Je47.3.
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3. “There is something weird, almost uncanny”: Charles B. Warring, “What Keeps the Bicycler Upright?,” Popular Science Monthly (New York) 38 (April 1891): 766.
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4. eliminate the “harsh rattle and clatter”: Sylvester Baxter, “Economic and Social Influences of the Bicycle,” Arena (Boston) 6 (1892): 581.
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5. in Flanders, the bicycle was a vlosse-peerd: David Perry, Bike Cult: The Ultimate Guide to Human-Powered Vehicles (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1995), 98.
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6. the Schwetzinger Relaishaus: Robert Penn, It’s All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels (New York: Bloomsbury, 2010), 49.
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7. the arrival of the steam locomotive: For a revelatory cultural history of the railroad, see Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s classic study. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).
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8. “a single horse that obeyed only one master”: David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004), 24.
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9. “The shadow of my silent steed”: Paul Pastnor, “The Wheelman’s Joy,” Wheelman (Boston) 3, no. 2 (November 1883): 143.
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10. “[The velocipede] is light, and little, and leans lovingly against you for support”: J. T. Goddard, The Velocipede: Its History, Varieties, and Practice (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1869), 20.
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11. “It quivers like an animal under its thick skin of nickel and enamel”: The quotation is taken from L. Baudry de Saunier, the French historian and fabulist behind the célérifère myth. Quoted in Christopher S. Thompson, The Tour de France: A Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 144.
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12. “It runs, it leaps, it rears and writhes, and shies and kicks”: Charles E. Pratt, The American Bicycler: A Manual for the Observer, the Learner, and the Expert (Boston: Houghton, Osgood, 1879), 30.
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13. “will try all the lowest dodges to get rid of their riders”: Jerome K. Jerome, “A Lesson in Bicycling,” To-Day: A Weekly Magazine Journal (London), December 16, 1893, 28.
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14. Mark Twain recounted his struggle: Mark Twain, “Taming the Bicycle” (1886). Anthologized in Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays: 1852–1890 (New York: Library of America, 1992), 892–99.
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15. A satirical etching from 1819: Charles Williams, Anti-Dandy Infantry Triumphant or the Velocipede Cavalry Unhobby’d, published by Thomas Tegg, London, 1819. Hand-colored etching. 9½ x 13½″. A copy of the print is in the collection of the British Museum and can be viewed online at britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1895-0408-22.
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16. “What an expense would be saved in feeding, littering, farriering, and doctoring!”: Inverness Journal and Northern Advertiser (Inverness, Inverness-Shire, Scotland), May 28, 1819.
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17. “We think the bicycle an animal, which will, in a great measure, supersede the horse”: Goddard, The Velocipede, 20.
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18. “We may imagine the race courses devoted to contests of this description”: “The Velocipede Mania,” New York Clipper, September 26, 1868.
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19. A French cartoonist went further: The caricature, published in Le journal amusant (Paris), October 29, 1868, is reproduced in Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 99.
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20. In 1869, a tournament hosted by the Liverpool Velocipede Club: “Liverpool Velocipede Club: Bicycle Tournament and Assault at Arms, in the Gymnasium, Saturday Afternoon Next” (advertisement), Albion (Liverpool), April 19, 1869. Cf. “A Bicycle Tournament,” Illustrated London News, May 1, 1869.
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21. “A new race of servants has come into being—the bicycle groom”: Arsène Alexandre, “All Paris A-Wheel,” Scribner’s Magazine (New York), August 1895.
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22. “no steed but trusty Wheel”: Basil Webb, “A Ballade of This Age,” Wheelman (Boston) 3, no. 2 (November 1883): 100.
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23. “five hundred mailed and belted knights on bicycles”: Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1889), 365.
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24. “When the horse is badly injured he becomes an encumbrance”: Charles H. Muir, “Notes on the Preparation of the Infantry Soldier,” Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 19 (1896): 237.
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25. “Trust the English to invent a way of traveling while sitting down”: Martin Caidin and Jay Barbree, Bicycles in War (New York: Hawthorn, 1974), 66.
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26. “crack horseman”: Frederik Rompel, Heroes of the Boer War (London: Review of Reviews Office, 1903), 155.
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27. “the hardest thorn in the flesh of the British advance”: Siegfried Mortkowitz, “Bicycles at War,” We Love Cycling, October 14, 2019, welovecycling.com/wide/2019/10/14/bicycles-at-war/.
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28. “an inferno of lyddite and shrapnel”: Pieter Gerhardus Cloete, The Anglo-Boer War: A Chronology (Pretoria: J. P. van der Walt, 2000), 186.
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29. “I think Jesus might ride a wheel if He were in our place”: “The Man on the Wheel,” The Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality (London), August 30, 1899.
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30. “One of the most interesting things in life”: North-Eastern Daily Gazette (Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, Eng.), July 1, 1895.
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31. “What is the one symbol that used to mark the rich man”: “Safety in the Safety,” Morning Journal-Courier (New Haven, Conn.), June 5, 1899.
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32. In American cities, ordinances banning bicycles: For a superb account of the bicycle battles in late-nineteenth-century American cities, see Evan Friss, The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Cf. Friss’s On Bicycles: A 200-Year History of Cycling in New York City (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).
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33. “a teamster’s horse [had] knocked it over”: “Wheel Gossip,” Wheel and Cycling Trade Review (New York), October 30, 1891.
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34. “who appear to take delight in annoying those who ride the wheel”: “Cyclers’ Street Rights,” New York Times, July 24, 1895.
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35. “Delight in the dangerous pastime of driving skittish”: Karl Kron, Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle (New York: Karl Kron, 1887), 3.
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36. “Her mighty limbs sent the bicycle spinning round the track”: “Horse Against Bicycle,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), April 15, 1884.
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37. Samuel Franklin Cody, a Buffalo Bill imitator from Iowa: See Garry Jenkins, Colonel Cody and the Flying Cathedral: The Adventures of the Cowboy Who Conquered the Sky (New York: Picador USA, 1999).
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38. Le tombeur de vélocipédistes: Jenkins, Colonel Cody and the Flying Cathedral, 59.
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39. the League of American Wheelmen: For primers on the LAW and the Good Roads Movement, see Michael Taylor, “The Bicycle Boom and the Bicycle Bloc: Cycling and Politics in the 1890s,” Indiana Magazine of History 104, no. 3 (September 2008): 213–40; Carlton Reid, Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads and Became the Pioneers of Motoring (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2015); James Longhurst, Bike Battles: A History of Sharing the American Road (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015); Martin T. Olliff, Getting Out of the Mud: The Alabama Good Roads Movement and Highway Administration, 1898–1928 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017); Friss, The Cycling City; and Lorenz J. Finison, Boston’s Cycling Craze, 1880–1900: A Story of Race, Sport, and Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).
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40. “great bicycle parade”: “Novelties of a Great Bicycle Parade,” The Postal Record Monthly 10, nos. 10–11 (October–December 1897): 233.
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41. minstrel show performances were staples: The depth and breadth of this phenomenon is revealed by even a cursory survey of newspaper coverage of LAW events and turn-of-the-century bicycle club gatherings. It’s a subject that merits further study. Start by searching under “blackface,” “minstrel show,” and “wheelmen” in a decent newspaper archive, e.g., newspapers.com or the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America: Historic American Newspaper (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov) site. See also, e.g., Jesse J. Gant and Nicholas J. Hoffman, Wheel Fever: How Wisconsin Became a Great Bicycling State (Madison: Wisconsin State Historical Society Press, 2013), 86.
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42. “sand, gravel, mud, stones and muck holes”: Quoted in Sister Caitriona Quinn, The League of American Wheelmen and the Good Roads Movement, 1880–1912 (academic thesis), August 1968. Available online at john-s-allen.com/LAW_1939-1955/history/quinn-good-roads.pdf.
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43. “No nation can advance in civilization”: Albert A. Pope, A Memorial to Congress on the Subject of a Road Department (Boston: Samuel A. Green, 1893), 4.
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44. “the bicycle, which has to a great extent superseded the use of horses”: “Hay and Oats,” Sun (New York), January 22, 1897.
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45. “The saddle- and harness-makers are…turning their attention”: J. B. Bishop, “The Social and Economic Influence of the Bicycle,” Forum (New York), August 1896.
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46. “The bicycle has come to stay and the reign of the horse is over”: “The Steel Horse—the Wonder of the Nineteenth Century,” Menorah Magazine 19 (1895): 382–83.
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47. In this period, the horse assumed a new character: See Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), 259–65. Cf. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
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48. The following year, just 160,000 bikes were sold: Hank Chapot, “The Great Bicycle Protest of 1896,” in Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration, ed. Chris Carlsson (Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2002), 182.
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49. “infernal noise”: Mikael Colville-Andersen, Copenhagenize: The Definitive Guide to Global Bicycle Urbanism (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2018), 231.
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50. “stress-related illnesses”: “Driving Kills—Health Warnings,” Copenhagenize, July 27, 2009, copenhagenize.com/2009/07/driving-kills-health-warnings.html.
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51. the horse reemerged as a marketing angle: Robert J. Turpin, First Taste of Freedom: A Cultural History of Bicycle Manufacturing in the United States (Syracuse, N.Y.: University of Syracuse Press, 2018), 169–70.
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52. “Stallion Black” and “Palomino Tan”: The digital scan of a 1951 print advertisement for the Gene Autry Western Bike can be viewed online: onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/1951-Monark-Gene-Autry-14.jpg.
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53. Gene Autry Western Bike: Ibid.
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54. “the leading bike-horse hybridiser in the world”: You can see—and hear—the Trotify on YouTube: “Trotify in the Wild” (2012), youtube.com/watch?v=cfyC6NJqt2o.
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5 BICYCLE MANIA: 1890s
1. Chris Heller has filed a petition: “Bicycle Craze,” Akron Daily Democrat (Akron, Ohio), August 29, 1899.
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2. The bicycle has appeared in a new role: “Bicycle Disrupts a Home: Suit for Divorce the Outgrowth of a Woman’s Passion for Wheeling,” Wichita Daily Eagle (Wichita, Kansas), October 31, 1896.
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3. Henry Cleating and his wife once lived happily: “No New Woman for Him: Mr. Cleating Got Tired of Washing Dishes and Chopped Up His Wife’s Bicycle,” The World (New York, New York), July 21, 1896.
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4. Philip Pearce, alias Spurgeon: “A Youth Ruined by a Bicycle Mania,” The Essex Standard (Colchester, Essex, Eng.), August 29, 1891.
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5. They arrived at Glen Island [N.Y.] on Thursday, July 11: “Gay Girls in Bloomers: Father Objects to New Woman Tendencies and Takes Them Home,” The Journal and Tribune (Knoxville, Tennessee), July 21, 1895.
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6. Sunday the police developed a case of extreme cruelty: The Des Moines Register (Des Moines, Iowa), September 2, 1896.
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7. A dispatch from Unadilla, N.Y.: “Wedded as They Scorched: A Pair of Amorous Bicyclists Married While They Flew Along on Wheels,” The Allentown Leader (Allentown, Pennsylvania), September 9, 1895.
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8. As a revolutionary force in the social world: “Bicycle Problems and Benefits,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (New York, New York), July 1895.
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9. In every civilized land, the bicycle has become a familiar object: “The World Awheel: The Wheel Abroad: Royalty on Wheels,” Munsey’s Magazine (New York, New York), May 1896.
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10. American bicycles have made their appearance in Arabia: The Muncie Evening Press (Muncie, Indiana), February 17, 1897.
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11. In all the wonder story of commerce and money dealings: “The Almighty Bicycle,” The Journal (New York, New York), June 7, 1896.
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12. The economic effects of this new force in human affairs: “Social and Economic Influence of the Bicycle,” The Forum (New York, New York), August 1896.
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13. The Rev. Thomas B. Gregory of Chicago: The Anaconda Standard (Anaconda, Montana), July 5, 1897.
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14. Whenever a healthful amusement becomes a mania: “Abuse of the Wheel,” The Oshkosh Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin), August 23, 1895.
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15. Doctors seem to agree: “A Bicycle Malady,” Buffalo Courier (Buffalo, New York), September 3, 1893.
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16. The wheel is often the primary or exciting cause: “Bicycle-riding,” The Medical Age (Detroit, Michigan), March 25, 1896.
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17. Of all the deformities produced by biking: “Bike Deformities: Some of the Effects of Too Close Devotion to the Wheel,” The Daily Sentinel (Grand Junction, Colorado), May 7, 1896.
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18. The wry-faced, hunchbacked, human monkey: “Want the Scorcher Suppressed,” Chattanooga Daily Times (Chattanooga, Tennessee), July 25, 1898.
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19. The bicycle maniac should be shot on sight: Toronto Saturday Night (Toronto, Canada), October 17, 1896.
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20. Doctors of France are puzzled by a new mania: “Bicycle Makes Women Cruel,” The Saint Paul Globe (Saint Paul, Minnesota), June 14, 1897.
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21. The question, it seems to me: “Is It the New Woman?,” The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois), October 7, 1894.
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22. Miss Charlotte Smith: “Miss Smith’s Smithereen,” The Nebraska State Journal (Lincoln, Nebraska), July 12, 1896.
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23. A very grave objection: “Sexual Excitement,” The American Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children (New York, New York), January 1895.
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24. To my brethren I feel I must speak plainly: “As to the Bicycle,” The Medical World (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), November 1895.
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25. A word in regard to the tandem: “The Bicycle and Its Riders,” The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic (Cincinnati, Ohio), September 1897.
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26. Among the bicyclists of the Boulevard: “Woman Scorcher Nabbed,” The Sun (New York, New York), May 2, 1896.
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27. An extraordinary incident: “Her First Bloomers Created a Scene,” Cheltenham Chronicle (Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, U.K.), April 18, 1896.
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28. Cambridge University today: “Press Dispatch, Cambridge, England, May 21,” Public Opinion (New York, New York), May 27, 1897.
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29. The bicycle fever will not have spent its fury: “The Horseless Vehicle the Next Craze,” The Glencoe Transcript (Glencoe, Ontario, Canada), June 18, 1896.
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30. Are the days of the bicycle numbered: “To Take the Place of the Bicycle,” The Philadelphia Times (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), November 22, 1896.
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31. There are some who claim the automobile: Comfort (Augusta, Maine), September 1899.
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32. Those people who affect to believe: Fort Scott Daily Monitor (Fort Scott, Kansas), July 8, 1896.
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6 BALANCING ACT
1. Angus MacAskill was one of the biggest men: For a brisk account of Angus MacAskill’s life, see James Donald Gillis, The Cape Breton Giant: A Truthful Memoir (Montreal: John Lovell & Son, 1899). Despite its subtitle, Gillis’s book inclines toward legend and overstatement throughout—which, given its Barnumian subject matter, feels appropriate.
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2. “were always literally great features in my establishment”: P. T. Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs; or, Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum (Buffalo, N.Y.: Courier Company, 1882), 161.
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3. The following year, MacAskill’s youngest child, four-year-old Danny: Unless otherwise noted, all the biographical information about, and quotations from, Danny MacAskill come from interviews with him conducted by the author. See also his autobiography: Danny MacAskill, At the Edge: Riding for My Life (London: Penguin, 2017).
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4. a Norse word meaning “isle of cloud”: David R. Ross, On the Trail of Scotland’s History (Edinburgh: Luath, 2007), 10.
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5. can be viewed as a mighty bird: Terry Marsh, Walking the Isle of Skye: Walks and Scrambles Throughout Skye, Including the Cuillin, Fourth Edition (Cicerone: Kendal, Cumbria, Eng.), 15.
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6. Skye is the setting for many legends: Otta Swire, Skye: The Island and Its Legends (Edinburgh: Berlinn, 2017).
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7. a 1997 film called Chainspotting: Chainspotting—Full Movie—1997—UK Mountain Bike Movie,youtube.com/watch?v=L_A2exFmvn0.
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8. they called the video Inspired Bicycles: Inspired Bicycles—Danny MacAskill April 2009,youtube.com/watch?v=Z19zFlPah-o.
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9. Bicycle Trick Riding No. 2 (1899) and The Trick Cyclist (1901): Both videos can be viewed, back to back, at: First Bike Trick EVER. Edison All, youtube.com/watch?v=aZjd9pBmLoU.
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10. the Cycling Elliotts: See Viona Elliott Lane, Randall Merris, and Chris Algar, “Tommy Elliott and the Musical Elliotts,” Papers of the International Concertina Association 5 (2008): 16–49. See also Margaret Guroff, The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 111–14.
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11. a cycling version of a Parisian quadrille: “The Elliotts: A Family of Trick Cyclists,” Travalanche, December 7, 2012, travsd.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/the-elliotts-a-family-of-trick-cyclists/.
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12. a poem published in The Sporting and Theatrical Journal: The poem is titled “To the Elliotts,” and is credited to a “Mrs. Anne E. Capron.” A subtitle adds: “Written by a lady who was infatuated with the Elliott children bicycle act at Barnum’s Circus.” I have an electronic version of the newspaper clipping in my possession; unfortunately, I have no information regarding its provenance or publication. If you are a researcher—or just a fancier of odes to youth trick cycling troupes—and wish to see the clipping, feel free to email me, and I will send it along. You can reach me at jody@jody-rosen.com.
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13. the Elliotts came to the attention of the New York Society for the Prevention: See, e.g., “The Child-Performers,” New-York Tribune, March 29, 1883; “Why P. T. Barnum Was Arrested,” New York Times, April 3, 1883; and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 3, 1883.
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14. the Cycling Elliotts gave a special demonstration: “Barnum’s Arrest,” Daily Evening Sentinel (Carlisle, Penn.), April 3, 1883.
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15. “a dozen or more leading doctors”: “Mr. Barnum Not Cruel to the Little Bicycle Riders,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 5, 1883.
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16. the regimen of a trick cyclist was “very beautiful and beneficial”: “Barnum Not Guilty,” New York Times, April 5, 1883.
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17. “if all children took similar exercise, it would be better than doctors or drugs”: “The Elliott Children,” New York Herald, April 5, 1883. Quoted in Guroff, The Mechanical Horse, 113.
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18. “The Revolving Wheel of Fire”: Lane, Merris, and Algar, “Tommy Elliott and the Musical Elliotts,” 42–43.
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19. “He was [a]…small, but beautifully built fellow, supple as a cat”: Berta Ruck, Miss Million’s Maid: A Romance of Love and Fortune (New York: A. L. Burt, 1915), 377.
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20. Kaufmann’s Cycling Beauties: See David Goldblatt, “Sporting Life: Cycling Is Among the Most Flexible of All Sports,” Prospect Magazine, October 19, 2011, prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/sporting-life-9. For a photograph of the troupe in their form-fitting attire, see commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaufmann%27s_Cycling_Beauties.jpg.
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21. Annie Oakley did a bicycle turn: Sarah Russell, “Annie Oakley, Gender, and Guns: The ‘Champion Rifle Shot’ and Gender Performance, 1860–1926” (Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2013), 28; trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1646.
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22. “Hatsley the Boy Wonder”: Wade Gordon James Nelson, “Reading Cycles: The Culture of BMX Freestyle” (PhD thesis, McGill University, August 2006), 63; core.ac.uk/download/pdf/41887323.pdf.
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23. The British cyclist Sid Black did a thrilling variation: “The King of the Wheel,” Sketch: A Journal of Art and Actuality (London), September 7, 1898.
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24. At a performance in Bremen, Germany: “Secrets of Trick Cycling,” Lake Wakatip Mail (Queenstown, Otago, N.Z.), July 24, 1906.
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25. The Villions, a family troupe: William G. Fitzgerald, “Side-Shows,” Strand Magazine (London) 14, no. 80 (August 1897): 156–57.
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26. The signature stunt of vaudevillian Joe Jackson: Frank Cullen with Florence Hackman and Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2004), 558–59.
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27. “A Bear and a Monkey Race on Bicycles”: The video can be viewed on YouTube: “A Bear and a Monkey Race on Bicycles, Then Bear Eats Monkey,” youtube.com/watch?v=cteBe4gCUKo.
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28. One lavishly illustrated instructional manual: Isabel Marks, Fancy Cycling: Trick Riding for Amateurs (London: Sands & Company, 1901), 5–6.
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29. The chief instructor at a popular New York cycling school: “Fancy Bicycle Riding,” Indianapolis News, April 10, 1896.
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30. Sixty years ago the belles and beaux: I have in my possession an electronic version of this newspaper clipping, a fifty-five-word report on the vogue for “gymkhana tricks” and “swagger cycle schools” among London’s swanky set. The newspaper clipping makes clear that the item is an excerpt of a piece that appeared first in Hearth and Home, a London-based women’s magazine. Unfortunately, I cannot determine what newspaper the clipping is taken from, or when exactly it was published, nor can I locate the issue of Hearth and Home in which the item originally appeared. The electronic footprint for this intriguing tidbit appears to have been covered up by the sands of time, or the digital equivalent thereof. If you are a researcher or other interested party, I would be happy to email you the clipping. I can be reached via email: jody@jody-rosen.com.
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31. The teenage Prince Albert: “Prince Albert as Trick Cyclist,” Yorkshire Evening Post, June 18, 1912.
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32. the Code of Ordinances for Memphis, Tennessee: See “Code of Ordinances, City of Memphis, Tennessee,” specifically “Sec. 12-84-19.—Instruction in operating automobiles, and other vehicles and trick riding prohibited”; available online at library.municode.com/tn/memphis/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TIT11VETR_CH11-24BI.
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33. Broadway Weekly complained that trick cyclists:“The Way to Make a Hit in Vaudeville,” Broadway Weekly (New York), September 21, 1904.
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34. In 1907, an audience at the Belfast Hippodrome: “Fatal Accident to a Lady Trick Cyclist,” Stonehaven Journal (Stonehaven, Kincardineshire, Scotland), June 20, 1907.
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35. “He fell into a dry moat”: “Trick Cyclist Killed in Paris,” Nottingham Evening Post (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Eng.), March 19, 1903.
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36. Charles Kabrich, a self-styled “bike-chute-aeronaut”: “Chas. H. Kabrich, the Only Bike-Chute Aeronaut: Novel and Thrilling Bicycle Parachute Act in Mid-air” (publicity poster), Library of Congress, loc.gov/resource/var.0525/.
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37. “The Terrible Trip to the Moon”…“An Awful Holding of Life as a Pawn”: See the publicity poster, available online at Alamy, alamy.com/stock-photo-the-great-adam-forepaugh-and-sells-bros-americas-enormous-shows-united-83150063.html.
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38. “It is a terrible leap, such as pinches the heart”: “Most Daring Performance,” Morning Press (Santa Barbara, Calif.), September 13, 1906.
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39. Ray Sinatra: See “Ray Sinatra and His Cycling Orchestra—Picture #1,” Dave’s Vintage Bicycles: A Classic Bicycle Photo Archive, nostalgic.net/bicycle287/picture1093.
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40. the most prominent forms of stunt riding: Stunt riding is not just sport or showbiz, of course. It’s also a folk art that serves surprising social functions. In a 1977 study of the role played by bicycles in the life of Umuaro, a “village cluster” in southeastern Nigeria, the social psychologists Rex Uzo Ugorji and Nnennaya Achinivu reported on the tradition of “magic cyclists…men who ride bicycles with juju”: troupes of trick cyclists who traveled to the rural region from the city of Aba to stage performances on festive occasions. See Rex Uzo Ugorji and Nnennaya Achinivu, “The Significance of Bicycles in a Nigerian Village,” The Journal of Social Psychology 102, no. 2 (1977), 241–46.
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41. The Ridge (2014): Danny Macaskill: The Ridge, youtube.com/watch?v=xQ_IQS3VKjA.
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42. Imaginate: Danny MacAskill’s Imaginate, youtube.com/watch?v=Sv3xVOs7_No.
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43. Danny Daycare: Danny MacAskill: Danny Daycare, youtube.com/watch?v=jj0CmnxuTaQ.
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44. Back on Track: Martyn Ashton—Back on Track, youtube.com/watch?v=kX_hn3Xf90g.
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45. “The management of our aeroplane, like that of the bicycle”: “Have Long Sought Mastery of Air,” Clinton Republican (Wilmington, Ohio), June 6, 1908.
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46. “The aviator of the present day”: Reprinted in Waldemar Kaempffert, The New Art of Flying (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1911), 233.
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7 PUT SOME FUN BETWEEN YOUR LEGS
1. “I want to fuck a bicycle”: Vi Khi Nao, Fish in Exile (Minneapolis: Coffee House, 2016), 131.
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2. “moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex”: “Man Admits to Sex with Bike,” UPI, October 27, 2007, upi.com/Odd_News/2007/10/27/Man-admits-to-sex-with-bike/10221193507754/; “Bike Sex Case Sparks Legal Debate,” BBC News, November 16, 2007, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7098116.stm; “ ‘Cycle-Sexualist’ Gets Probation,” UPI, November 15, 2007, upi.com/Odd_News/2007/11/15/Cycle-sexualist-gets-probation/26451195142086/.
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3. “a coalition of the horny”: Bike Smut, bikesmut.com.
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4. Fuck Bike #001: Andrew H. Shirley, Fuck Bike #001 (2011), vimeo.com/20439817.
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5. project Bikesexual aims to “challenge body norms”: Bikesexual, bikesexual.blogsport.eu/beispiel-seite/.
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6. “combines principles of DIY, vegan, ecological, and bicycle culture”: Ibid.
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7. “bring about constant friction over the clitoris and labia”: “Bicycling for Women from the Standpoint of the Gynecologist,” Transactions of the New York Obstetrical Society from October 20, 1894 to October 1, 1895, published by The American Journal of Obstetrics (New York: William Wood, 1895), 86–87.
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8. “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)”: Harry Dacre, “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)” (New York: T. B. Harms, 1892).
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9. James Joyce writes of a young “prostituta in herba”: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (Ware, Hertfordshire, Eng.: Wordsworth Editions, 2012), 115.
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10. “We had abandoned the real world”: Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye by Lord Auch, trans. Joachim Neugroschel (San Francisco: City Lights, 1978), 32–34.
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11. “a long ‘spin’ in the country”: C. C. Mapes, “A Review of the Dangers and Evils of Bicycling,” The Medical Age (Detroit), November 10, 1897.
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12. “The road rose and fell over gentle slopes”: Maurice Leblanc, Voici des ailes! (Paris: Ink Book, 2019), 49–51, e-book. Translation from the French by Jody Rosen.
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13. “The concept of riding a bike naked”: Steve Hunt, “Naked Protest and Radical Cycling: A History of the Journey to the World Naked Bike Ride,” Academia.edu, academia.edu/35589138/Naked_Protest_and_Radical_Cycling_A_History_of_the_Journey_to_the_World_Naked_Bike_Ride, 4.
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14. Philip Carr-Gomm has written: Philip Carr-Gomm, A Brief History of Nakedness (London: Reaktion, 2010), 12.
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15. “By cycling naked we declare our confidence in the beauty”: World Naked Bike Ride, Portland, Oregon, “Why,” pdxwnbr.org/why/.
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16. “It’s impossible to feel like a grown-up when you’re on a bicycle”: P. J. O’Rourke, “Dear Urban Cyclists: Go Play in Traffic,” Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2011.
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17. Social scientists have reported: Cf. Dag Balkmar, “Violent Mobilities: Men, Masculinities and Road Conflicts in Sweden,” Mobilities 13, no. 5 (2018): 717–32.
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18. “double-tall bike adorned with a giant papier-mâché vulva”: Adriane “Lil’ Mama Bone Crusher” Ackerman, “The Cuntraption,” in Our Bodies, Our Bikes, ed. Elly Blue and April Streeter (Portland, Ore.: Elly Blue Publishing / Microcosm, 2015), 75–76.
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19. “phallic powers of penetration and thrust”: Zoë Sofoulis, “Slime in the Matrix: Post-phallic Formations in Women’s Art in New Media,” in Jane Gallop Seminar Papers, ed. Jill Julius Matthews (Canberra: Australian National University, Humanities Research Centre, 1993), 97.
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20. “In northern Europe we save our private bodies for the indoors”: Jet McDonald, “Girls on Bikes,” Jet McDonald,jetmcdonald.com/2016/12/08/girls-on-bikes/.
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21. the memoir My Bike and Other Friends: See Henry Miller, Henry Miller’s Book of Friends: A Trilogy (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, 1978), 223.
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8 WINTER
1. Now, on April 27, 1827, she was setting out: For an account of the journey by the Hecla’s captain, see William Edward Parry, Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, in Boats Fitted for the Purpose, and Attached to His Majesty’s Ship Hecla, in the Year MDCCCXXVII (London: John Murray, 1828).
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2. “When Peruvians first saw a Spaniard on horseback”: Morning Advertiser (London), February 1, 1827.
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3. “dilettante who sends his bicycle to winter quarters directly”: R. T. Lang, “Winter Bicycling,” Badminton Magazine of Sports & Pastimes 14 (January–June 1902): 180.
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4. “When…the snow [is] whirling and twisting and twirling”: Ibid., 189.
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5. wintertime biking: For a peppy overview of winter cycling, see Tom Babin, Frostbike: The Joy, Pain and Numbness of Winter Cycling (Toronto: Rocky Mountain Books, 2014).
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6. There is a 1948 photograph of Joe Steinlauf: The photograph can be viewed online at “Early Ice Bike,” Cyclelicious,cyclelicio.us/2010/early-ice-bike/. Check it out, it’s worth the clicks.
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7. “Ice velocipedes are the latest novelty on the Hudson”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 12, 1869.
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8. a new wave of winterized bicycle designs: See, e.g., “The Cyclist in a Winter Paradise,” Sunday Morning Call (Lincoln, Neb.), January 24, 1897. Cf. Bicycle: The Definitive Visual History (London: DK, 2016), 62–63.
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9. “any style or make of modern safety bicycle”: “Ice-Bicycle Attachments,” Hardware: Devoted to the American Hardware Trade, November 25, 1895.
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10. “swifter than summer speed”: “Chicago Ice Bicycle Apparatus…” (advertisement), Gazette (Montreal), November 23, 1895, 6.
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11. The company boasted: “Ice-Bicycle Attachments,” Hardware: Devoted to the American Hardware Trade, November 25, 1895.
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12. “Klondike Bicycle”: “Klondike Bicycle Freight Line,” Boston Globe, August 2, 1897.
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13. the Klondike Bicycle could serve as both a passenger and a cargo vehicle: “To Klondyke by Bicycle,” Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), July 30, 1897.
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14. “tenderfoot prospectors who have taken bicycles” to the Yukon: A. C. Harris, Alaska and the Klondike Gold Fields: Practical Instructions for Fortune Seekers (Cincinnati: W. H. Ferguson, 1897), 77.
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15. Proponents of bicycles…“had overlooked the one thing necessary”: Ibid., pp. 442–43. In 1897, a Newark, New Jersey, entrepreneur, Charles H. Brinkerhoff, announced a plan to alleviate the problem of poor road conditions by building “a bicycle track to the Klondike…lightly constructed of steel, clamped to the sides of the mountains.” The roadway, Brinkerhoff said, would be engineered such that “the mountain climbing will be done almost without the bicyclist being aware of any uphill work.” Brinkerhoff’s plan called for cozy pit stops: “Every twenty-five miles of the journey there will be a station, lighted and heated by electricity and provided with seats and tables and a restaurant so that pilgrims to the gold district can rest and refresh themselves.” Needless to say, the track was never built. See “A Bicycle Route to the Klondike,” Buffalo Courier-Record, November 28, 1897.
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16. “The heartbreak and suffering which so many have undergone”: Jennifer Marx, The Magic of Gold (New York: Doubleday, 1978), 410.
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17. the Skagway Daily Alaskan estimated that 250 cyclists were heading: Terrence Cole, ed., Wheels on Ice: Bicycling in Alaska, 1898–1908 (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Publishing, 1985), 6.
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18. “A red short haired dog frozen hard as stone”: Ibid., 14.
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19. “took about 25 headers into the snow”: Ibid., 10.
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20. “I split a nice straight grained piece of spruce”: Ibid., 14–15.
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21. Max Hirschberg: Hirschberg’s vivid first-person account of his Klondike journey, written at the request of his wife in the 1950s, is anthologized in Cole, ed., Wheels on Ice, 21–23.
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22. “A thrill shot through me as I caught sight of Old Glory waving”: Ibid., 22.
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23. Robert McDonald, an Anglican priest and missionary: Patrick Moore, “Archdeacon Robert McDonald and Gwich’in Literacy,” Anthropological Linguistics 49, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 27–53.
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24. “Without my chain I could not control the speed of my bicycle”: Cole, ed., Wheels on Ice, 23.
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25. There is a video of the historic ride on the internet: “(OFFICIAL) Eric Barone—227,720 km/h (141.499 mph)—Mountain Bike World Speed Record—2017,” youtube.com/watch?v=7gBqbNUtr3c.
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26. “hold his body together in a crash.”: Patty Hodapp, “How a Mountain Biker Clocked 138 MPH Riding Downhill,” Vice, April 16, 2015, vice.com/en/article/yp77jj/how-a-mountain-biker-clocked-138-mph-riding-downhill.
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9 UPHILL
1. “guiding directive for development”: See Michael S. Givel, “Gross National Happiness in Bhutan: Political Institutions and Implementation,” Asian Affairs 46, no. 1 (2015), 108.
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2. According to one story, it was a Raleigh racing bike: “Cycling in Bhutan,” Inside Himalayas, April 11, 2015, insidehimalayas.com/cycling-in-bhutan/.
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3. “along mud trails at perilous speed”: Karma Ura, Leadership of the Wise: Kings of Bhutan (Thimphu, Bhutan: Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2010), 108.
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4. The average elevation in Bhutan is 10,760 feet: “Countries with the Highest Average Elevations,” World Atlas,worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-highest-average-elevations.html.
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5. According to one study: Devi Maya Adhikari, Karma Wangchuk, and A. Jabeena, “Preliminary Study on Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast Coverage Design in the Mountainous Terrain of Bhutan,” in Advances in Automation, Signal Processing, Instrumentation, and Control, ed. Venkata Lakshmi Narayana Komanapalli, N. Sivakumaran, and Santoshkumar Hampannavar (Singapore: Springer, 2021), 873.
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6. “to make Bhutan a bicycling culture”: Madhu Suri Prakash, “Why the Kings of Bhutan Ride Bicycles,” Yes! Magazine (Bainbridge Island, Wash.), January 15, 2011, yesmagazine.org/issue/happy-families-know/2011/01/15/why-the-kings-of-bhutan-ride-bicycles.
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7. “There is a reason we in Bhutan like to cycle”: Author interview with Tshering Tobgay. Unless otherwise noted, all direct quotations in this chapter come from interviews conducted by the author in Bhutan.
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8. The national anthem, “The Thunder Dragon Kingdom”: The translation of the anthem’s lyrics can be found in Dorji Penjore and Sonam Kinga, The Origin and Description of the National Flag and National Anthem of the Kingdom of Bhutan (Thimphu, Bhutan: Centre for Bhutan Studies, 2002), 16.
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9. Bhutan’s success in combating the Covid-19 pandemic: See, e.g., “Bhutan, the Vaccination Nation: A UN Resident Coordinator Blog,” UN News, May 23, 2021, news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/109242; Madeline Drexler, “The Unlikeliest Pandemic Success Story,” The Atlantic, February 10, 2021, theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/coronavirus-pandemic-bhutan/617976/.
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10. Bhutan’s constitution mandates: See the .pdf posted on the website of the National Assembly of Bhutan: The Constitution of the Kingdom of Bhutan, National Assembly of Bhutan website, nab.gov.bt/assets/templates/images/constitution-of-bhutan-2008.pdf.
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11. a carbon sink: Mark Tutton and Katy Scott, “What Tiny Bhutan Can Teach the World About Being Carbon Negative,” CNN, October 11, 2018, cnn.com/2018/10/11/asia/bhutan-carbon-negative/index.html; “Bhutan Is the World’s Only Carbon Negative Country, So How Did They Do It?,” Climate Council, April 2, 2017, climatecouncil.org.au/bhutan-is-the-world-s-only-carbon-negative-country-so-how-did-they-do-it/.
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12. “the real Shangri-La”: Jeffrey Gettleman, “A New, Flourishing Literary Scene in the Real Shangri-La,” New York Times, August 19, 2018.
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13. the scholar Lauchlan T. Munro has argued: Lauchlan T. Munro, “Where Did Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Come From? The Origins of an Invented Tradition,” Asian Affairs 47, no. 1 (2016): 71–92.
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14. “One Nation, One People”: See, e.g., Rajesh S. Karat, “The Ethnic Crisis in Bhutan: Its Implications,” India Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2001), 39–50; Vidhyapati Mishra, “Bhutan Is No Shangri-La,” New York Times, June 28, 2013, nytimes.com/2013/06/29/opinion/bhutan-is-no-shangri-la.html; Kai Bird, “The Enigma of Bhutan,” The Nation, March 7, 2012, thenation.com/article/archive/enigma-bhutan/.
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15. “ethnic cleansing”: Bill Frelick, “Bhutan’s Ethnic Cleansing,” Human Rights Watch, February 1, 2008, hrw.org/news/2008/02/01/bhutans-ethnic-cleansing.
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16. “world’s biggest creator of refugees by per capita”: Maximillian Mørch, “Bhutan’s Dark Secret: The Lhotshampa Expulsion,” The Diplomat, September 21, 2016, thediplomat.com/2016/09/bhutans-dark-secret-the-lhotshampa-expulsion/.
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17. “the image of a small, landlocked, plucky country”: Munro, “Where Did Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Come From?,” 86.
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18. “I was scorched by the sun, stifled by the dust, drenched by the rain”: Elizabeth Robins Pennell, Over the Alps on a Bicycle (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898), 105.
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19. “I wanted to see if I could cross the Alps on a bicycle”: Ibid.
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20. “I did not think I was very original”: Ibid., 11.
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10 NOWHERE FAST
1. “electric camel”: Seán O’Driscoll, “Electric Camels and Cigars: Life on the Titanic,” Times (London), April 21, 2017, thetimes.co.uk/article/electric-camels-and-cigars-life-on-the-titanic-8kznbpcnw.
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2. a large dial whose red and blue arrows marked the rider’s progress: Walter Lord, A Night to Remember (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1955), 40.
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3. There is a famous photograph: See Lawrence Beesley, The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912), 12–13.
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4. the Gymnasticon, a machine patented in 1796: See “Specification of the Patent Granted to Mr. Francis Lowndes, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, Medical Electrician; for a new-invented Machine for exercising the Joints and Muscles of the Human Body,” in The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture, vol. 6 (London: printed for the proprietors, 1797), 88–92.
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5. roller-bike contests in vaudeville theaters: See Marlene Targ Brill, Marshall “Major” Taylor: World Champion Bicyclist, 1899-1901 (Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books, 2008), 70.
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6. “The use of a home trainer gives the best sort of indoor exercise”: Luther Henry Porter, Cycling for Health and Pleasure: An Indispensable Guide to the Successful Use of the Wheel (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895), 138.
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7. “We may expect to find some idiot advertising”: The piece, originally published, apparently, in the London magazine Pall Mall, is quoted in an item in an American hardware trade journal: “Trade Chat from Gotham,” Stoves and Hardware Reporter (St. Louis and Chicago), August 1, 1895, 22.
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8. an ambitious home cyclist: The story of this enterprising stationary cyclist was published in an 1897 issue of the London-based periodical The Rambler (Tagline: “A Penny Magazine Devoted to Out-door Life”) under the title “The Cycle in the House: Curious Domestic Uses of the Bicycle.” A clipping of the piece can be viewed online at upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Home_cycling_trainer_1897.jpg/640px-Home_cycling_trainer_1897.jpg.
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9. Aaron Puzey: “Meet the Man Cycling the UK Using Virtual Reality,” BBC News, August 16, 2016, bbc.com/news/av/uk-37099807.
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10. in 1899, a research team led by Professor W. O. Atwater: “The Human Machine at the Head,” Mind and Body: A Monthly Journal Devoted to Physical Education (Milwaukee, Wisc.) 12 (March 1905–February 1906), 54–55; “Experiments on a Man in a Cage,” New York Journal, June 18, 1899; and Jane A. Stewart, “Prof. Atwater’s Alcohol Experiment,” School Journal (New York) 59 (July 1, 1899–December 31, 1899), 589–90. Also: W. O. Atwater and F. G. Benedict, “The Respiration Calorimeter,” Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture: 1904 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), 205–20. Available online at naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43645383/PDF.
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11. These ideas were elaborated in one of the more fascinating artifacts: James C. McCullagh, ed., Pedal Power in Work, Leisure, and Transportation (Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 1977).
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12. “this age of lasers and deep space probes”: Ibid., ix.
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13. “climate of bikology”: Ibid., 58.
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14. “full human potential inherent in the use of bicycles for work”: Ibid., x.
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15. “Researchers report that when working with cherries”: Ibid., 62–64.
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16. “As the bicycle in a sense ‘liberated’ people at the turn of the century”: Ibid., 144.
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17. the global stationary cycle market is valued at nearly $600 million: “Exercise Bike Market: Global Industry Trends, Share, Size, Growth, Opportunity and Forecast 2021–2026,” Imarc Group, available online at imarcgroup.com/exercise-bike-market.
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18. “The stationary bike, potentially the most boring piece of equipment”: For this quotation and all the other quotations from Goldberg’s book, see Andrea Cagan and Johnny G, Romancing the Bicycle: The Five Spokes of Balance (Los Angeles: Johnny G Publishing, 2000), 77.
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19. a “cardio party”: “Who We Are,” SoulCycle, soul-cycle.com/our-story/.
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20. SoulCycle has endured financial setbacks: Abby Ellin, “SoulCycle and the Wild Ride,” Town and Country, April 21, 2021, townandcountrymag.com/leisure/sporting/a36175871/soul-cycle-spin-class-scandals/.
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21. a record twenty-three thousand Peloton members: Eric Newcomer, “Peloton Attracts a Record 23,000 People to Single Workout Class,” Bloomberg, April 24, 2020, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-24/peloton-attracts-a-record-23-000-people-to-single-workout-class.
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22. Cycle Ergometer with Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System, or CEVIS: “Cycling on the International Space Station with Astronaut Doug Wheelock,” youtube.com/watch?v=bG3hG3iB5S4.
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23. “Lance Armstrong, eat your heart out!”: “Ed Lu’s Journal: Entry #7: Working Out,” SpaceRef, July 29, 2003, spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=9881.
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11 CROSS COUNTRY
1. “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two)”: Harry Dacre, “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two),” (New York: T. B. Harms, 1892).
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2. The Old Pali Highway: Kristen Pedersen, “The Pali Highway: From Rough Trail to Daily Commute,” Historic Hawaiʻi Foundation, August 22, 2016, historichawaii.org/2016/08/22/thepalihighway/.
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3. When Barb Brushe was a young woman: Unless otherwise noted, the stories told in this chapter about Barb Samsoe (née Brushe) and Bill Samsoe come from the author’s interviews with the Samsoes.
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4. “It’s called Bikecentennial”: See Michael McCoy and Greg Siple, America’s Bicycle Route: The Story of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail (Virginia Beach, Va.: Donning , 2016); and Dan D’Ambrosio, “Bikecentennial: Summer of 1976,” Adventure Cycling Association, February 15, 2019, adventurecycling.org/blog/bikecentennial-summer-of-1976/.
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5. John Denver’s “Sweet Surrender”: John Denver, “Sweet Surrender,” from the album Back Home Again (RCA Records, 1974).
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6. grasshopper swarm: See John L. Capinera, ed., Encyclopedia of Entomology, 2nd edition (Springer: Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2008), 141–44.
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7. “great grasshopper plagues” of the 1870s: See Thomas C. Cox, Everything but the Fenceposts: The Great Plains Grasshopper Plague of 1874–1877 (Los Angeles: Figueroa Press, 2010); and Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Locust: The Devastating Rise and Mysterious Disappearance of the Insect that Shaped the American Frontier (New York: Basic Books, 2015).
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8. a man named Greg Siple: Unless otherwise noted, the accounts of Greg Siple’s life, travels, and planning of the Bikecentennial with his wife, June Siple, and friends Dan and Lys Burden come from the author’s interviews and correspondence with Greg and June Siple.
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9. “My original thought was to send out ads”: D’Ambrosio, “Bikecentennial: Summer of 1976.”
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10. “combine the best features of the TOSRV and Hemistour”: McCoy and Siple, America’s Bicycle Route, 25.
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11. “BONETINGLING, Kaleidoscopic, Multitudinous”: June J. Siple, “The Chocolate Connection: Remembering Bikecentennial’s Beginnings,” Adventure Cyclist, June 2016, 27.
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12. Around the World on a Bicycle (1887): Thomas Stevens, Around the World on a Bicycle (1887; repr. Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 2000).
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13. “In summery locales like Florida and Southern California”: Margaret Guroff, The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016), 128.
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14. An ad for the AMF Roadmaster: Ibid., 128.
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15. A 1972 federal government report: Ibid., 135.
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16. bicycles outsold cars: Ibid., 135.
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17. “Survival Faire”: “Remembering the Survival Faire, Earth Day’s Predecessor,” Bay Nature, March 24, 2020, baynature.org/article/remembering-the-survival-faire-earth-days-predecesor/.
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18. “As the local citizenry looked on”: Sam Whiting, “San Jose Car Burial Put Ecological Era in Gear,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 20, 2010, sfgate.com/green/article/San-Jose-car-burial-put-ecological-era-in-gear-3266993.php.
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19. “Pollution Solution”: Guroff, The Mechanical Horse, 133.
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20. “poetic velo-rutionary tendency”: Peter Walker, “People Power: the Secret to Montreal’s Success as a Bike-Friendly City,” Guardian, June 17, 2015, theguardian.com/cities/2015/jun/17/people-power-montreal-north-america-cycle-city.
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21. “the biggest bicycle touring event in world history”: McCoy and Siple, America’s Bicycle Route, 26.
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22. “Let 1976 be the year”: Ibid., 26.
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23. Four-thousand-sixty-five cyclists: Bikecentennial statistics and demographic information was gleaned from Greg Siple, “Bikecentennial 76: America’s Biggest Bicycling Event,” in Cycle History 27: Proceedings of the 27th International Cycling History Conference (Verona, New Jersey: ICHC Publications Committee, 2017), 110–15; and McCoy and Siple, America’s Bicycle Route, 48.
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24. “seeing rural America close-up”: McCoy and Siple, America’s Bicycle Route, 48.
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25. Bridget O’Connell: “Flute-Toting Cyclist Bridget O’Connell Gilchrist Shares Bikecentennial Memories,” Adventure Cycling Association, June 29, 2015, adventurecycling.org/resources/blog/bridget-gilchrist-my-favorite-places-to-sleep-outdoors-were-pine-forests-corn-fields-and-near-a-babbling-brook/.
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26. The audience would boo: “Bikecentennial 76 Shuttle Truck Driver Remembers Cyclists’ Appreciation,” Adventure Cycling Association, September 21, 2015, adventurecycling.org/resources/blog/bikecentennial-76-shuttle-truck-driver-remembers-cyclists-appreciation/.
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27. Wilma Ramsay: “Theresa Whalen Leland: Remembering Bikecentennial 1976,” Adventure Cycling Association, June 1, 2015, adventurecycling.org/resources/blog/theresa-whalen-leland-remembering-bikecentennial-1976/. Theresa Whalen Leland’s lovely Bikecentennial reminiscence was my source for the stories of Wilma Ramsay and her brother Albert Schultz.
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28. a freak blizzard: Siple, “Bikecentennial 76,” 115.
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29. slept among grunting hogs: McCoy and Siple, America’s Bicycle Route, 45.
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30. Lloyd Sumner: Ibid., 46.
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31. slalomed between turtles: “Theresa Whalen Leland: Remembering Bikecentennial 1976.”
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32. They wrote many letters: I am grateful to the Samsoes for sharing copies of their letters with me.
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12 BEAST OF BURDEN
1. Global Liveability Index: See, e.g., “The Global Liveability Index 2021,” Economist Intelligence,eiu.com/n/campaigns/global-liveability-index-2021/.
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2. Each year, four hundred thousand migrants arrive in Dhaka: Md Masud Parves Rana and Irina N. Ilina, “Climate Change and Migration Impacts on Cities: Lessons from Bangladesh,” Environmental Challenges 5 (December 2021), available online at sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667010021002213?via%3Dihub; and Poppy McPherson, “Dhaka: The City Where Climate Refugees Are Already a Reality,” Guardian (London), December 1, 2015, theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/01/dhaka-city-climate-refugees-reality.
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3. authoritarianism and extremism: See K. Anis Ahmed, “Bangladesh’s Choice: Authoritarianism or Extremism,” New York Times, December 27, 2018, nytimes.com/2018/12/27/opinion/bangladesh-election-awami-bnp-authoritarian-extreme.html.
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4. A 2021 study: Cascade Tuholske, Kelly Caylor, Chris Funk, Andrew Verdin, Stuart Sweeney, Kathryn Grace, Pete Peterson, and Tom Evans, “Global Urban Population Exposure to Extreme Heat,” PNAS 118, no. 41 (2021), pnas.org/content/pnas/118/41/e2024792118.full.pdf.
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5. “5 Things to Do While Stuck in Traffic”: Naziba Basher, “5 Things to Do While Stuck in Traffic,” Daily Star (Dhaka), August 28, 2015.
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6. “Juts and jags to fill up any bubble of navigable space”: K. Anis Ahmed, Good Night, Mr. Kissinger: And Other Stories (Los Angeles: Unnamed Press, 2014), 27.
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7. Studies have determined: See, for example, “Dhaka’s Noise Pollution Three Times More Than Tolerable Level: Environment Minister,” Daily Star (Dhaka), April 28, 2021, thedailystar.net/environment/news/dhakas-noise-pollution-three-times-more-tolerable-level-environment-minister-2085309; “Noise Pollution Exceeds Permissible Limit in Dhaka,” New Age (Dhaka), January 11, 2020, newagebd.net/print/article/96222.
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8. There are about eighty thousand licensed rickshaws in Dhaka: Rezaul Karim and Khandoker Abdus Salam, “Organising the Informal Economy Workers: A Study of Rickshaw Pullers in Dhaka City,” Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies-BILS, March 2019, bilsbd.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/A-Study-of-Rickshaw-Pullers-in-Dhaka-City.pdf, 21.
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9. an estimate of 1.1 million: Ibid., 12.
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10. The Rickshaws of Bangladesh: Rob Gallagher, The Rickshaws of Bangladesh (Dhaka: University Press, 1992), 1–2.
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11. three million citizens of Dhaka: Karim and Salam, “Organising the Informal Economy Workers,” 25.
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12. “nearly double the output of London’s underground railway”: Gallagher, The Rickshaws of Bangladesh, 6.
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13. a rear-mounted “luggage board” and fittings for panniers: Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 14.
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14. The same is true of nearly every bicycle: For a historical survey of bicycle racks, carriers, and other “luggage,” see ibid., 351–84.
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15. Salisbury’s testimony startled the committee: Harrison E. Salisbury’s Trip to North Vietnam: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Ninetieth Congress, First Session with Harrison E. Salisbury, Assistant Managing Editor of the New York Times (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967). Available online at govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-90shrg74687/pdf/CHRG-90shrg74687.pdf.
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16. “I literally believe that without bikes”: Ibid., 11.
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17. “Why don’t we concentrate on bicycles?”: Ibid., 16.
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18. “The corps of bicycle newspaper carriers in London”: “The Trick Cyclist on the Road,” Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer (Leeds, Yorkshire, Eng.), August 4, 1905.
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19. “riders raced cargo tricycles loaded with up to 40 kg of ballast”: Peter Cox and Randy Rzewnicki, “Cargo Bikes: Distributing Consumer Goods,” in Cycling Cultures, ed. Peter Cox (Chester, Cheshire, Eng.: University of Chester Press, 2015), 137.
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20. The cult of Dutch and Danish-style “cargo cruisers”: See, e.g., filmmaker Liz Canning’s 2019 film MOTHERLOAD, “an award-winning documentary that uses the cargo bike as the vehicle for exploring parenthood in this digital age of climate change,” motherloadmovie.com/welcome.
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21. It is also an indelible image of human toil: A remarkable document of this phenomenon is French photographer Alain Delorme’s Totems (2010), a series of photos, shot in Shanghai, of cargo tricyclists carting gargantuan loads. See alaindelorme.com/serie/totems.
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22. “between 40–60 million working tricycles”: Glen Norcliffe, Critical Geographies of Cycling (New York: Routledge, 2015), 221.
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23. “The passenger-carrying cycle—in its various passenger rickshaw forms: Cox and Rzewnicki, “Cargo Bikes: Distributing Consumer Goods,” 133.
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24. The rickshaw was invented in Japan: For the historical background on the rickshaw, especially in the East Asian and Chinese contexts, see David Strand, Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). For an overview of the rickshaw in South Asia, see M. William Steele, “Rickshaws in South Asia,” Transfers 3, no. 3 (2013), 56–61. See also: Tony Wheeler and Richard l’Anson, Chasing Rickshaws (Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet Publications, 1998).
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25. In Dhaka, the rickshaw’s history: For background on the rickshaw’s history in Dhaka see Gallagher, The Rickshaws of Bangladesh; and Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs, ed. Niaz Zaman (Dhaka: University Press, 2008).
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26. proposals to ban rickshaws in Dhaka: See Musleh Uddin Hasan and Julio D. Davila, “The Politics of (Im)Mobility: Rickshaw Bans in Dhaka, Bangladesh,” Journal of Transport Geography 70 (2018), 246–55; Mahabubul Bari and Debra Efroymson, “Rickshaw Bans in Dhaka City: An Overview of the Arguments For and Against,” published by Work for a Better Bangladesh Trust and Roads for People, 2005, wbbtrust.org/view/research_publication/33; Mohammad Al-Masum Molla, “Ban on Rickshaw: How Logical Is It?,” Daily Star (Dhaka), July 7, 2019, thedailystar.net/opinion/politics/news/ban-rickshaw-how-logical-it-1767535.
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27. Shahnaz Huq-Hussain and Umme Habiba make a populist and feminist case: Shahnaz Huq-Hussain and Umme Habiba, “Gendered Experiences of Mobility: Travel Behavior of Middle-Class Women in Dhaka City,” Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies 3, no. 3 (2013).
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28. The workforce is exclusively male: For sociological and economic analysis of the lives and working conditions of Dhaka’s rickshawallahs, see, e.g., M. Maksudur Rahman and Md. Assadekjaman, “Rickshaw Pullers and the Cycle of Unsustainability in Dhaka City,” 99–118; Syed Naimul Wadood and Mostofa Tehsum, “Examining Vulnerabilities: The Cycle Rickshaw Pullers of Dhaka City,” Munich Personal RePEc Archive, 2018, core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214004362.pdf; Meheri Tamanna, “Rickshaw Cycle Drivers in Dhaka: Assessing Working Conditions and Livelihoods”(Master’s Thesis, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, Netherlands), 2012, semanticscholar.org/paper/Rickshaw-Cycle-Drivers-in-Dhaka%3A-Assessing-Working-Poor/4708d8065f3ee07c02dd39e6e939a4e57e10e050; Sharifa Begum and Binayak Sen, “Pulling Rickshaws in the City of Dhaka: A Way Out of Poverty?,” Environment & Urbanization 17, no. 2 (2005), journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/095624780501700202.
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29. Their health is often poor: Hafiz Ehsanul Hoque, Masako Ono-Kihara, Saman Zamani, Shahrzad Mortazavi Ravari, Masahiro Kihara, “HIV-Related Risk Behaviours and the Correlates Among Rickshaw Pullers of Kamrangirchar, Dhaka, Bangladesh: a Cross-Sectional Study Using Probability Sampling,” BMC Public Health 9, no. 80 (2009), pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19284569/.
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30. The Covid pandemic: Joynal Abedin Shishir, “Income Lost to Covid, Many Take to Pulling Rickshaws in Dhaka,” The Business Standard, August 31, 2021, tbsnews.net/economy/income-lost-covid-many-take-pulling-rickshaws-dhaka-295444.
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31. “Hafiz and Abdul Hafiz”: Mahbub Talukdar, “Hafiz and Abdul Hafiz,” trans. Israt Jahan Baki, in Zaman, ed., Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs, 57.
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32. Mohammed Abul Badshah: Unless otherwise noted, all the biographical information about and quotations from Mohammed Abul Badshah come from interviews with him conducted by the author. These conversations were translated by Rifat Islam Esha.
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33. 85 percent of Dhaka’s roads: Khaled Mahmud, Khonika Gope, Syed Mustafizur, Syed Chowdhury, “Possible Causes & Solutions of Traffic Jam and Their Impact on the Economy of Dhaka City,” Journal of Management and Sustainability 2, no. 2 (2012), 112–35.
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34. battery-powered “easy bikes”: See “Government to Ban Battery-Run Rickshaws, Vans,” Dhaka Tribune, June 20, 2021, dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2021/06/20/govt-to-ban-battery-run-rickshaws-vans; Rafiul Islam, “Battery-Run Rickshaws on DSCC Roads: Defying Ban, They Keep on Running,” Daily Star (Dhaka), January 30, 2021, thedailystar.net/city/news/defying-ban-they-keep-running-2036221.
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35. “We eke out our living in this country”: Dilip Sarkar, “The Rickshawallah’s Song,” trans. M. Mizannur Rahman, in Zaman, ed., Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs, 31.
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36. Badshah lives in Kamrangirchar: Md. Abul Hasam, Shahida Arafin, Saima Naznin, Md. Mushahid, Mosharraf Hossain, “Informality, Poverty and Politics in Urban Bangladesh: An Empirical Study of Dhaka City,” Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development 8, no.14 (2017), 158–82; “Slum Conditions in Bangladesh Pose Health Hazards, and Malnutrition Is a Sign of Other Illnesses,” Médecins Sans Frontières, October 13, 2010, msf.org/slum-conditions-bangladesh-pose-health-hazards-and-malnutrition-sign-other-illnesses.
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37. “one of the most polluted places on the planet”: Hal Hodson, “Slumdog Mapmakers Fill in the Urban Blanks,” New Scientist, October 23, 2014, newscientist.com/article/mg22429924-100-slumdog-mapmakers-fill-in-the-urban-blanks/.
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38. dozens of leather tanneries: “Toxic Tanneries: The Health Repercussions of Bangladesh’s Hazaribagh Leather,” Human Rights Watch, October 8, 2012,hrw.org/report/2012/10/08/toxic-tanneries/health-repercussions-bangladeshs-hazaribagh-leather; Sarah Boseley, “Child Labourers Exposed to Toxic Chemicals Dying Before 50, WHO Says,” Guardian, March 21, 2017, theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/21/plight-of-child-workers-facing-cocktail-of-toxic-chemicals-exposed-by-report-bangladesh-tanneries.
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39. hundreds of small-scale factories: See “Poor Bangladesh Kids Work to Eat, Help Families,” Jakarta Post, June 14, 2016, thejakartapost.com/multimedia/2016/06/14/poor-bangladesh-kids-work-to-eat-help-families.html; Jason Beaubien, “Study: Child Laborers In Bangladesh Are Working 64 Hours a Week,” NPR, December 7, 2016, npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/12/07/504681046/study-child-laborers-in-bangladesh-are-working-64-hours-a-week; Terragraphics International Foundation, “Hazaribagh & Kamrangirchar, Bangladesh,” terragraphicsinternational.org/bangladesh.
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40. toxic e-waste: Mahbub Alam and Khalid Md. Bahauddin, “Electronic Waste in Bangladesh: Evaluating the Situation, Legislation and Policy and Way Forward with Strategy and Approach,” PESD 9, no. 1 (2015), 81–101; Mohammad Nazrul Islam, “E-waste Management of Bangladesh,” International Journal of Innovative Human Ecology & Nature Studies 4, no. 2 (April–June, 2016), 1–12.
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41. “moving museums”: Sonya Soheli, “Canvas of Rickshaw Art,” Daily Star (Dhaka), Mar. 31, 2015, thedailystar.net/lifestyle/ls-pick/canvas-rickshaw-art-74449.
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42. Avijit Roy: “Bangladesh Court Sentences Five to Death for Killing American Blogger,” New York Times, February 16, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/02/16/world/asia/bangladesh-sentence-avijit-roy.html.
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43. “Nowhere else do people talk as much”: Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from Syed Manzoorul Islam come from the author’s interviews with Islam.
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44. “form of life threatened by the chaos and alienation”: Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs, 91.
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45. Islam has published studies of rickshaw painting: See, e.g., “Rickshaw Art of Bangladesh,” in Of Rickshaws and Rickshawallahs, 83–92.
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13 PERSONAL HISTORY
1. a greater understanding of the processes that guide our mastery of bike riding: Boris Suchan, “Why Don’t We Forget How to Ride a Bike?,” Scientific American, November 15, 2018, scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-forget-how-to-ride-a-bike/.
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2. “One morning I no longer heard the sound of someone running”: Paul Fournel, Need for the Bike, trans. Allan Stoekl (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 26.
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3. “so pervasive was the idea that bicycles and children belonged”: Robert J. Turpin, First Taste of Freedom: A Cultural History of Bicycle Manufacturing in the United States (Syracuse, N.Y.: University of Syracuse Press, 2018), 1.
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4. “Nothing equals the bicycle as a developer of sturdy bodies”: Quoted in ibid., 85.
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5. Bike Riding Lesson (1954): The image can be viewed online here: saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/bike_riding_lesson_george_hughes.jpg.
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6. Ghost bikes are painted entirely white: Ghost bike memorials are a familiar New York sight, but they are a global phenomenon, found in cities across the world. As art objects, ghost bikes have a stark power. They resonate with history, too, calling to mind the white bicycles of the Dutch Provo’s guerrilla bike sharing effort. The Provo chose to paint their bikes white to evoke the “simplicity and cleanliness” of the bicycle in contrast to the “vanity and foulness of the authoritarian car.” See Robert Graham, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas. Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939–1977) (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2009), 287.
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7. “Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists?”: Daniel Duane, “Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclists?,” New York Times, November 9, 2013, nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to-kill-cyclists.html.
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8. “Cars make you stupid”: Eula Biss, Having and Being Had (New York: Riverhead Books, 2020), 248.
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9. “Dogs become dogs again and snap at your raincoat”: Bill Emerson, “On Bicycling,” Saturday Evening Post, July 29, 1967.
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10. “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country”: Ernest Hemingway, By-Line Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades (New York: Touchstone, 1998), 364.
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11. “[The cycleur] has discovered cycling to be an occupation”: Valeria Luiselli, “Manifesto à Velo,” in Sidewalks, trans. Christina MacSweeney (Minneapolis: Coffee House, 2014), 36.
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12. “slow cycling”: See e.g., Ian Cleverly, “The Slow Cycling Movement,” Rouleur, June 15, 2021, rouleur.cc/blogs/the-rouleur-journal/the-slow-cycling-movement.
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13. “as if through the lens of a movie camera”: Luiselli, Sidewalks, 37.
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14. “allows the rider to sail past pedestrian eyes:” Ibid., 34.
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15. “A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs”: H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1896), 79.
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16. a woman in rural Chile named Elena Galvez: “Cerrillos’ 90-Year-Old Cyclist Shows No Signs of Slowing Down,” Reuters, September 9, 2016, reuters.com/article/us-chile-elderly-idCAKCN11F2HK.
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14 GRAVEYARDS
1. When the canal was emptied in 2016: Marine Benoit, “Les improbables trouvailles au fond du canal Saint-Martin,” L’Express, January 5, 2016, lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/environnement/en-images-les-improbables-du-trouvailles-au-fond-du-canal-saint-martin_1750737.html; Mélanie Faure, “Vidé, le canal Saint-Martin révèle ses surprises,” Le Figaro, January 20, 2016, lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2016/01/20/01016-20160120ARTFIG00416-vide-le-canal-saint-martin-revele-ses-surprises.php; and Henry Samuel, “Pistol Found in Paris’ Canal St-Martin as ‘Big Cleanup’ Commences,” Telegraph, January 5, 2016, telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/12082794/Pistol-found-in-Paris-Canal-St-Martin-as-big-clean-up-commences.html.
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2. Her body, still manacled to the bike, was found a week later: Douglass Dowty, “DA: DeWitt Woman Handcuffed Herself to Bike, Rode into Green Lake in Suicide,” Syracuse.com, March 22, 2019; originally published on October 17, 2016, syracuse.com/crime/2016/10/fitzpatrick_woman_committed_suicide_at_green_lakes.html.
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3. stirs deep urges in certain vandals: Something along these lines was suggested by the author of an unsigned article in the London Times in 1940. The writer diagnosed a “demon of destructiveness” lurking “within each one of us” and described the “fierce joy” to be found in “hurling away saucepans and bedsteads, in uprooting railings, in dismembering bicycles.” The Times (London), July 20, 1940. Quoted in Peter Thorsheim, “Salvage and Destruction: The Recycling of Books and Manuscripts in Great Britain During the Second World War,” Contemporary European History 22, no. 3, “Special Issue: Recycling and Reuse in the Twentieth Century” (2013), 431–52.
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4. In one clip, a teenage boy faces the camera: “Throwing My Friends [sic] Bike into a Lake,” youtube.com/watch?v=OcysvVwDFK8.
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5. “a boat snagged on…an underwater mountain of bicycles”: Mike Buchanan, Two Men in a Car (a Businessman, a Chauffeur, and Their Holidays in France) (Bedford, Bedfordshire, Eng.: LPS), 2017, 34.
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6. devotes several pages to bicycle drowning: Pete Jordan, In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist (New York: Harper Perennial, 2013). See chapter 18, “A Typical Amsterdam Characteristic: The Bike Fisherman,” 327–42.
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7. “those traditional garbage cans where we take our visitors”: Ibid., 332.
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8. “Dockless Bikes Keep Ending Up Underwater”: Steve Annear, “Dockless Bikes Keep Ending Up Underwater,” Boston Globe, July 13, 2018.
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9. In Britain: See, e.g., “What Lurks Beneath the Waterline?,” Canal & River Trust, March 24, 2016, canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/what-lurks-beneath-the-waterline; “Bikes, Baths and Bullets Among Items Found in Country’s Waterways,” Guardian (London), March 24, 2016; and Isobel Frodsham, “Fly-tippers Dump Hundreds of Bikes, a Blow Up Doll and a GUN in Britain’s Canals and Rivers to Avoid a Crackdown on the Streets,” Daily Mail (London), April 16, 2017, dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4415872/Fly-tippers-dump-GUN-Britain-s-canals.html.
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10. The Canal & River Trust: “What Lurks Beneath?,” Canal & River Trust video, youtube.com/watch?v=NkTuGmigJZM.
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11. “Based on the oysters on the handlebar”: Jen Chung, “Barnacle Bike Was Likely in the Hudson River Since Last Summer,” Gothamist, February 26, 2019, gothamist.com/news/barnacle-bike-was-likely-in-the-hudson-river-since-last-summer.
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12. One widely circulated video: “Footage Shows Man Throwing Shared Bikes into River, Claim They Disclose Privacy Information,” youtube.com/watch?v=EsidHmfEpKg.
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13. “It is common to hear people describe bike-sharing”: Javier C. Hernández, “As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners, China Asks, What’s Wrong with Us?,” New York Times, September 2, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/09/02/world/asia/china-beijing-dockless-bike-share.html.
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14. “The chips in Mobikes are unsafe”: See YouTube video caption for “Footage Shows Man Throwing Shared Bikes into River.”
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15. more than seventy dockless bike-share start-ups: Hernández, “As Bike-Sharing Brings Out Bad Manners.”
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16. but in overhead photos and videos captured by drone: “Drone Footage Shows Thousands of Bicycles Abandoned in China as Bike Sharing Reaches Saturation,” South China Morning Post YouTube channel, youtube.com/watch?v=Xlms-8zEcCg. See also Alan Taylor, “The Bike-Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles,” Atlantic, March 22, 2018.
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17. the scrapyard was fined $85,000: Reuven Blau, “Two Scrap Metal Recyclers Busted for Dumping Waste into Gowanus Canal; One Slapped with $85K Fine,” Daily News (New York), December 4, 2012.
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18. “Broken Bicycles”: Tom Waits, “Broken Bicycles,” from the album One from the Heart (CBS Records, 1982).
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15 MASS MOVEMENT
1. dozens of bicycles…left behind in a heap: Fred Strebeigh, “The Wheels of Freedom: Bicycles in China” originally published in Bicycling, April 1991, available at strebeigh.com/china-bikes.html.
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2. “took a bicycle and a loudspeaker to organize the chaotic crowd”: “Voices from Tiananmen,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), June 3, 2014.
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3. “needed to propose something to the government”: Louisa Lim, “Student Leaders Reflect, 20 Years After Tiananmen,” NPR, June 3, 2009, npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104821771.
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4. “I wrote down seven requests”: Ibid.
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5. “a well-planned plot”: Liang Zhang (Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, eds.), The Tiananmen Papers: The Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People—In Their Own Words (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 76.
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6. One observer compared the procession to a fleet of tall ships: Strebeigh, “The Wheels of Freedom.”
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7. “The mad dash across Tiananmen Square”: Philip J. Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, Inc., 2009), 50.
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8. One evening in October 1992, a few dozen people: The accounts of that evening at Fixed Gear in San Francisco and of Ted White and George Bliss’s 1991 trip to China are based on the author’s interviews with Ted White. See also Ted White, “Reels on Wheels,” in Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration, ed. Chris Carlsson (Oakland, Calif.: AK Press, 2002), 145–52.
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9. Return of the Scorcher: Ted White, Return of the Scorcher (1992, USA, 28 minutes). The film can be viewed online, with a director’s commentary: “Return of the Scorcher 1992 Bicycle Documentary: A Cycling Renaissance,” youtube.com/watch?v=K1DUaWJ6KGc.
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10. “Kingdom of the Bicycle”: For the history of the bicycle in China see, e.g., Qiuning Wang, A Shrinking Path for Bicycles: A Historical Review of Bicycle Use in Beijing, Master’s Thesis, University of British Columbia, May 2012; Xu Tao, “Making a Living: Bicycle-related Professions in Shanghai, 1897–1949,” Transfers 3, no. 3 (2013), 6–26; Xu Tao, “The popularization of bicycles and modern Shanghai,” Shilin史林 (Historical Review) 1 (2007): 103–13; Neil Thomas, “The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Kingdom of Bicycles,” Macro Polo, October 24, 2018, macropolo.org/analysis/the-rise-fall-and-restoration-of-the-kingdom-of-bicycles/; Hua Zhang, Susan A. Shaheen, and Xingpeng Chen, “Bicycle Evolution in China: From the 1900s to the Present,” International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 8, no. 5 (2014): 317–35; and Anne Lusk, “A History of Bicycle Environments in China: Comparisons with the U.S. and the Netherlands,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 14, no. 4 (2012): 16–27. Paul Smethurst, The Bicycle: Towards a Global History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 105–20.
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11. “On the avenues people ride on a vehicle with only two wheels”: Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2014), 38.
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12. ordered the removal of the doorway thresholds: Henry Pu Yi (Paul Kramer, ed.), The Last Manchu: The Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010), 16.
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13. 500,000 bicycles in use across the country: Wang, A Shrinking Path for Bicycles, 1.
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14. 230,000 in the city of Shanghai: Gijs Mom, Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980 (New York: Berghahn, 2020), 81.
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15. “an egalitarian social system that promised little comfort: Kevin Desmond, Electric Motorcycles and Bicycles: A History Including Scooters, Tricycles, Segways, and Monocycles (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2019), 142.
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16. “three rounds and a sound”: Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 56.
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17. “Ford and GM of China”: Stephen L. Koss, China, Heart and Soul: Four Years of Living, Learning, Teaching, and Becoming Half-Chinese in Suzhou, China (Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2009), 167.
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18. “a Flying Pigeon in every household”: Hilda Rømer Christensen, “Is the Kingdom of Bicycles Rising Again?: Cycling, Gender, and Class in Postsocialist China,” Transfers 7, no. 2 (2017): 2.
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19. Flying Pigeon produced four million bicycles per year: Thomas, “The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Kingdom of Bicycles.”
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20. By the end of the decade: Ibid.
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21. The bicycle, writes Paul Smethurst, “was so absorbed into the state-sponsored culture”: Smethurst, The Bicycle, 107.
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22. “Aren’t you sick & tired of having to fight for your life on city streets?”: A scan of the flyer is online here: FoundSF (“Shaping San Francisco’s digital archive”), foundsf.org/index.php?title=File:First-ever-flyer.jpg.
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23. Critical Comments on the Critical Mass: A scan of Carlsson’s pamphlet is online here: FoundSF (“Shaping San Francisco’s digital archive”), foundsf.org/index.php?title=File:Critical-Comments-on-the-Critical-Mass-nov-92.jpg.
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24. around 2028, experts estimate: Larry Elliott, “China to Overtake US as World’s Biggest Economy by 2028, Report Predicts,” Guardian (London), December 25, 2020, theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/china-to-overtake-us-as-worlds-biggest-economy-by-2028-report-predicts.
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25. China’s GDP per capita was $310: See “GDP per Capita (Current US$)—China,” The World Bank, data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=CN.
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26. the per capita GDP had reached $10,216: Ibid.
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27. 1.6 billion cellphone subscriptions: “Number of Mobile Cell Phone Subscriptions in China from August 2020 to August 2021,” Statista, statista.com/statistics/278204/china-mobile-users-by-month/.
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28. a reported 1 billion Chinese have internet access: Evelyn Cheng, “China Says It Now Has Nearly 1 Billion Internet Users,” CNBC, February 4, 2021, cnbc.com/2021/02/04/china-says-it-now-has-nearly-1-billion-internet-users.html.
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29. more than 200 million: “China has over 200 million private cars,” Xinhua, January 7, 2020, xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/07/c_138685873.htm.
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30. only 1 in 74,000: Marcia D. Lowe, “The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small Planet,” Worldwatch Paper 90 (Washington, D.C.: Worldwatch Institute, 1989), 8.
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31. In 2009, the year China surpassed the United States: “China Car Sales ‘Overtook the US’ in 2009,” BBC News, January 11, 2010, bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8451887.stm.
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32. the most passenger cars sold: Hilde Hartmann Holsten, “How Cars Have Transformed China,” University of Oslo, September 28, 2016, partner.sciencenorway.no/cars-and-traffic-forskningno-norway/how-cars-have-transformed-china/1437901.
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33. “So many past events and recollections that were once clearly inscribed”: Li Zhang, “Contesting Spatial Modernity in Late-Socialist China,” Current Anthropology 47, no. 3 (June 2006): 469. Available online at jstor.org/stable/10.1086/503063.
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34. “most of the old neighborhoods of Boston, New York”: Beth E. Notar, “Car Crazy: The Rise of Car Culture in China,” in Cars, Automobility and Development in Asia, ed. Arve Hansen and Kenneth Nielsen (London: Routledge, 2017), 158.
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35. an all-time high of 523 million: Thomas, “The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Kingdom of Bicycles.”
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36. a 40 percent reduction in bicycle commuting by the year 2013: Zhang, Shaheen, and Chen, “Bicycle Evolution in China,” 318.
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37. by 2003, bicycle usage in the city had decreased: Wang, A Shrinking Path for Bicycles, 3.
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38. “non-bicycle city”: Zhang, Shaheen, and Chen, “Bicycle Evolution in China,” 318.
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39. an estimated nine million bicycles in the capital: Wang, A Shrinking Path for Bicycles, 10.
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40. 2.5 bikes per household: Ibid., 3.
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41. nearly two-thirds of all trips: Ibid., 3.
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42. Within fifteen years: Ibid., 3.
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43. “abandoned by the thousands”: Glen Norcliffe and Boyang Gao, “Hurry-Slow: Automobility in Beijing, or a Resurrection of the Kingdom of Bicycles?,” in Architectures of Hurry:—Mobilities, Cities and Modernity, ed. Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Richard Dennis, and Deryck W. Holdsworth (Oxon: Routledge, 2018), 88.
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44. “for losers”: Debra Bruno, “The De-Bikification of Beijing,” April 9, 2012, Bloomberg CityLab,bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-09/the-de-bikification-of-beijing.
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45. “for the poor”: Anne Renzenbrink and Laura Zhou, “Coming Full Cycle in China: Beijing Pedallers Try to Restore ‘Kingdom of Bicycles’ amid Traffic, Pollution Woes,” South China Morning Post, July 26, 2015, scmp.com/news/china/money-wealth/article/1843877/coming-full-cycle-china-beijing-pedallers-try-restore.
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46. “choosing skirts instead of pants”: Philip P. Pan, “Bicycle No Longer King of the Road in China,” Washington Post, March 12, 2001, washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/03/12/bicycle-no-longer-king-of-the-road-in-china/f9c66880-fcab-40ff-b86d-f3db13aa1859/.
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47. “I’d rather cry in a BMW”: Osnos, Age of Ambition, 56.
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48. Each year, millions of cars: Norihiko Shirouzu, Yilei Sun, “As One of China’s ‘Detroits’ Reopens, World’s Automakers Worry About Disruptions,” Reuters, March 8, 2020, reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-autos-parts/as-one-of-chinas-detroits-reopens-worlds-automakers-worry-about-disruptions-idUSKBN20V14J.
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49. “What do bikes and toilet paper have in common?”: Emily Davies, “What Do Bikes and Toilet Paper Have in Common? Both Are Flying Out of Stores amid the Coronavirus Pandemic,” Washington Post, June 15, 2020, washingtonpost.com/local/what-do-bikes-and-toilet-paper-have-in-common-both-are-flying-out-of-stores-amid-the-coronavirus-pandemic/2020/05/14/c58d44f6-9554-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html.
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50. year-over-year bicycle sales rose nearly 60 percent nationally: Felix Richter, “Pandemic-Fueled Bicycle Boom Coasts Into 2021,” Statista, June 16, 2021, statista.com/chart/25088/us-consumer-spending-on-bicycles/.
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51. “sleep with it next to you”: Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura, “Bike Thefts Are Up 27% in Pandemic N.Y.C.: ‘Sleep with It Next to You,’ ” New York Times, October 14, 2020.
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52. one in ten American adults: Adrienne Bernhard, “The Great Bicycle Boom of 2020,” BBC, December 10, 2020, bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/the-great-bicycle-boom-of-2020.html.
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53. “transit upheaval”: Natalie Zhang, “Covid Has Spurred a Bike Boom, but Most U.S. Cities Aren’t Ready for It,” CNBC, December 8, 2020, cnbc.com/2020/12/08/covid-bike-boom-us-cities-cycling.html.
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54. “Great Covid-19 Bicycle Boom”: John Mazerolle, “Great COVID-19 Bicycle Boom Expected to Keep Bike Industry on Its Toes for Years to Come,” CBC News, March 21, 2021, cbc.ca/news/business/bicycle-boom-industry-turmoil-covid-19-1.5956400.
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55. “Corona cycleways”: Liz Alderman, “ ‘Corona Cycleways’ Become the New Post-Confinement Commute,” New York Times, June 12, 2020, nytimes.com/2020/06/12/business/paris-bicycles-commute-coronavirus.html.
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56. In the Philippines: Regine Cabato and Martin San Diego, “Filipinos Are Cycling Their Way Through the Pandemic,” Washington Post, March 31, 2021, washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/climate-manila-biking/.
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57. “cycling revolution”: “ ‘India Cycles4Change’ Challenge Gains Momentum,” Press Release, Indian Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs, June 2, 2021, pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=1723860.
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58. “havens for cycling”: Nivedha Selvam, “Can City Become More Bikeable? Corporation Wants to Know,” Times of India, August 15, 2020, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/coimbatore/can-city-become-more-bikeable-corporation-wants-to-know/articleshow/77554660.cms.
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59. A study published in the spring of 2021: Sebastian Kraus and Nicolas Koch, “Provisional COVID-19 Infrastructure Induces Large, Rapid Increases in Cycling,” PNAS 118, no. 15 (2021), https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/15/e2024399118.full.pdf.
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60. “the joy of…cities as they could be”: Quoted in Bernhard, “The Great Bicycle Boom of 2020.”
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61. New York was the global epicenter of the pandemic: For New York City COVID statistics, see “New York City Coronavirus Map and Case Count,” New York Times, nytimes.com/interactive/2020/nyregion/new-york-city-coronavirus-cases.html.
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62. “the equivalent of an ongoing 9/11”: Alistair Bunkall, “Coronavirus: New York Could Temporarily Bury Bodies in Park Because Morgues Nearly Full,” April 6, 2020, Sky News, news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-new-york-could-temporarily-bury-bodies-in-park-because-morgues-nearly-full-11969522.
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63. “focus on the bicyclists”: Tweet, Catherina Gioino (@CatGioino), posted to Twitter, June 5, 2020, 1:35 a.m.: twitter.com/catgioino/status/1268778355169669122?lang=en.
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64. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s executive order: “Emergency Executive Order No. 119,” City of New York, Office of the Mayor, June 2, 2020. Available online at www1.nyc.gov/assets/home/downloads/pdf/executive-orders/2020/eeo-119.pdf.
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65. an NYPD officer body-slammed a Critical Mass rider: Jen Chung, “10 Years Ago, a Cop Bodyslammed a Cyclist During Critical Mass Ride,” Gothamist, July 27, 2018, gothamist.com/news/10-years-ago-a-cop-bodyslammed-a-cyclist-during-critical-mass-ride.
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66. “ticket blitzes”: Jillian Jorgensen, “De Blasio Defends Ticket Blitz of Bicyclists Following Deadly Crashes,” New York Daily News, February 19, 2019, nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-pol-deblasio-nypd-bicycle-tickets-20190219-story.html.
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67. “war on e-bikes”: Christopher Robbins, “De Blasio’s 2018 War On E-Bikes Targeted Riders, Not Businesses,” Gothamist, January 18, 2019, gothamist.com/news/de-blasios-2018-war-on-e-bikes-targeted-riders-not-businesses.
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68. ”that we did not intend or design them to be used”: Jonny Long, “Fuji Bikes Suspend Sale of American Police Bikes Used in ‘Violent Tactics’ During Protests as Trek Faces Criticism,” Cycling Weekly, June 6, 2020, cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/fuji-bikes-suspend-sale-of-american-police-bikes-used-in-violent-tactics-as-trek-faces-criticism-457378.
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69. the NYPD’s own “elite” unit: Larry Celona and Natalie O’Neill, “NYPD Bike Cops Break Out ‘Turtle Uniforms’ Amid George Floyd Protests,” New York Post, June 4, 2020, nypost.com/2020/06/04/nypd-bike-cops-break-out-turtle-uniforms-amid-riots/.
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70. “planned assault” and “police brutality”: “ ‘Kettling’ Protesters in the Bronx: Systemic Police Brutality and Its Costs in the United States,” Human Rights Watch, September 30, 2020, hrw.org/report/2020/09/30/kettling-protesters-bronx/systemic-police-brutality-and-its-costs-united-states.
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71. The SRG Bike Squad’s “Instructor Guide”: “SRG Bicycle Management Instructor’s Guide,” documentcloud.org/documents/20584525-srg_bike_squad_modules.
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72. 30 percent and 23 percent: League of American Bicyclists and The Sierra Club, The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity, 2013, bikeleague.org/sites/default/files/equity_report.pdf.
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73. Studies also confirm: Dan Roe, “Black Cyclists Are Stopped More Often than Whites, Police Data Shows,” Bicycling, July 27, 2020, bicycling.com/culture/a33383540/cycling-while-black-police/.
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74. A survey in Oakland: “Biking While Black: Racial Bias in Oakland Policing,” Bike Lab, May 20, 2019, bike-lab.org/2019/05/20/biking-while-black-racial-bias-in-oakland-policing/.
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75. in Chicago: Adam Mahoney, “In Chicago, Cyclists in Black Neighborhoods Are Over-Policed and Under-Protected,” Grist, October 21, 2021, grist.org/cities/black-chicago-biking-disparities-infrastructure/.
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76. and Tampa: Kameel Stanley, “How Riding Your Bike Can Land You in Trouble With the Cops—If You’re Black,” Tampa Bay Times, April 18, 2015, tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/how-riding-your-bike-can-land-you-in-trouble-with-the-cops---if-youre-black/2225966/.
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77. In New York, 86 percent: Julianne Cuba, “NYPD Targets Black and Brown Cyclists for Biking on the Sidewalk,” June 22, 2020, nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/06/22/nypd-targets-black-and-brown-cyclists-for-biking-on-the-sidewalk/.
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78. A Los Angeles Times investigation: Alene Tchekmedyian, Ben Poston, and Julia Barajas, “L.A. Sheriff’s Deputies Use Minor Stops to Search Bicyclists, with Latinos Hit Hardest,” Los Angeles Times, November 4, 2021, latimes.com/projects/la-county-sheriff-bike-stops-analysis/.
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79. “riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the road”: Jessica Myers, “Family of Dijon Kizzee, a Black Man Killed by LA Sheriff’s Deputies, Files $35 Million Claim,” CNN, February 12, 2021, cnn.com/2021/02/11/us/dijon-kizzee-los-angeles-claim/index.html. See also: Leila Miller, “Dijon Kizzee Was ‘Trying to Find His Way’ Before Being Killed by L.A. Deputies, Relatives Say,” Los Angeles Times, September 4, 2020, latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-04/dijon-kizzee-was-trying-to-find-his-way-relatives-say.
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80. Deliveristas staged demonstrations: Claudia Irizarry Aponte and Josefa Velasquez, “NYC Food Delivery Workers Band to Demand Better Treatment. Will New York Listen to Los Deliveristas Unidos?,” The City, December 6, 2020, thecity.nyc/work/2020/12/6/22157730/nyc-food-delivery-workers-demand-better-treatment. For a brilliant and moving chronicle of the plight of New York’s deliveristas see Josh Dzieza, “Revolt of the Delivery Workers,” Curbed, September 13, 2021, curbed.com/article/nyc-delivery-workers.html. See also Jody Rosen, “Edvin Quic, Food Deliveryman, 31, Brooklyn” in “Exposed. Afraid. Determined.,” New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2020, nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/01/magazine/coronavirus-workers.html#quic, and Jody Rosen, “Will We Keep Ordering Takeout?” in “Workers on the Edge,” New York Times Magazine, February 17, 2021, nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/17/magazine/remote-work-return-to-office.html.
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81. Darnell Meyers: See Rachel Bachman, “The BMX Bikes Getting Teens Back on Two Wheels—or One,” Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2017, wsj.com/articles/the-bike-getting-teens-back-on-two-wheelsor-one-1493817829.
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82. posting online videos: DBlocks’s Instagram feed can be viewed at instagram.com/rrdblocks/.
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83. the policing of “Bicycle Ride Outs”: “SRG Bicycle Management Instructor’s Guide,” 8.
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84. In a concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch: Heather Kerrigan, ed., Historic Documents of 2020 (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: CQ Press, 2021), 694–95.
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85. Buttigieg made sensible statements: See Carlton Reid, “Design for Human Beings Not Cars, New U.S. Transport Secretary Says,” Forbes, March 22, 2021, forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2021/03/22/design-for-human-beings-not-cars-new-us-transport-secretary-says/?sh=156033907d86.
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86. bills that grant immunity to drivers who strike protesters with their cars: Reid J. Epstein and Patricia Mazzei, “G.O.P. Bills Target Protesters (and Absolve Motorists Who Hit Them),” New York Times, April 21, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/04/21/us/politics/republican-anti-protest-laws.html.
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87. A viral Twitter post showed video of a Grubhub worker: Tweet, Unequal Scenes (@UnequalScenes), posted to Twitter, September 1, 2021, 10:16 p.m.: twitter.com/UnequalScenes/status/1433252530713243648.
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88. “severe weather incentives”: Lauren Kaori Gurley and Joseph Cox, “Gig Workers Were Incentivized to Deliver Food During NYC’s Deadly Flood,” Vice, September 2, 2021, vice.com/en/article/5db8zx/gig-workers-were-incentivized-to-deliver-food-during-nycs-deadly-flood; Ashley Wong, “After Delivery Workers Braved the Storm, Advocates Call for Better Conditions,” New York Times, September 3, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/09/03/nyregion/ida-delivery-workers-safety.html; and Alex Woodward, “ ‘We Deserve Better’: New York’s ‘Deliveristas’ Working Through Deadly Floods Demand Workplace Protections,” Independent, September 3, 2020, independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/new-york-flood-delivery-bike-b1914084.html.
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89. Forever Bicycles: See “Ai Weiwei’s Bicycles Come to London,” Phaidon, August 25, 2015, phaidon.com/agenda/art/articles/2015/august/25/ai-weiwei-s-bicycles-come-to-london/.
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90. bicycle expressways in Beijing and the coastal city of Xiamen: Don Giolzetti, “It’s Complicated: China’s Relationship With the Bicycle, Then and Now,” SupChina, January 8, 2020, supchina.com/2020/01/08/its-complicated-chinas-relationship-with-the-bicycle/; Leanna Garfield, “China’s Dizzying ‘Bicycle Skyway’ Can Handle over 2,000 Bikes at a Time—Take a Look,” Business Insider, July 21, 2017, businessinsider.com/china-elevated-cycleway-xiamen-2017-7; Du Juan, “Xiamen Residents Love Cycling the Most in China,” China Daily, July 17, 2017, chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-07/17/content_30140705.htm.
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91. a global market share of $70 billion by 2027: “The Global E-Bike Market Size Is Projected to Grow to USD 70.0 Billion by 2027 from USD 41.1 Billion in 2020, at a CAGR of 7.9%,” Globe Newswire, December 8, 2020, globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/12/08/2141352/0/en/The-global-e-bike-market-size-is-projected-to-grow-to-USD-70-0-billion-by-2027-from-USD-41-1-billion-in-2020-at-a-CAGR-of-7-9.html.
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92. “freewheeling”: See “The Green Machine—Lecture by Iain Boal, Bicycle Historian. Part 3 of 5” (2010), vimeo.com/11264396.