Ride Lugged

Thoughts on how cycling, need, desire and style collide via marketing,

technology and tradition.

In the world of cycling, traditionalists are often called ‘retro grouches’, ‘Luddites’, ‘backward’, and ‘uninformed’. They used to be called people, because most cyclists were traditionally minded, without even thinking about it. Cycling trends followed a steady, cautious slope. Manufactures and buyers looked at products with foresight and an eye on use-value. Sure there were trends, and regrettable ones too. On the whole though, cycling was at odds with the modern world, and better for it. That’s why people used bikes, at least in part: as a way to escape modernity and proceed at a more reasonable pace. Bicycles long symbolized freedom and liberation as well. Some of the first women’s pants (bloomers) were developed for bike riding. On the other hand, most mainstream women’s fashion was physically and socially restrictive.

Bicycles allowed the working class to escape from the cities: in between 1918 and the Second World War, many (the overwhelming majority) could not afford cars. Touring bikes were within the grasp of many workers, though, and they used them to escape the squalid conditions of industrial cities.

We tend to regard our contemporary times as being especially fast moving. Trends seem to come and go, stars rise and fall, band blow up and disappear like the boogers you wipe behind your couch. I think this conception of speed is multiplied by the over-abundance of media and consumables. However, looking back over 100 years, we see Henry David Thoreau writing about fashion and the speed of change.

Thoreau wrote that he saw fashions changing more than once a year, indeed even more than once a season. Typical of Thoreau, he blasted not only the value of such changes, but also the aesthetic grounds on which they were founded. Thoreau rejected the push of fashion over use value, the movement toward the new rather than actual innovations in clothing. Thoreau’s argument is easily applied to not only contemporary fashion, but also contemporary cycling style, fashion and ‘technology’.

I think Thoreau would have admired the restraint exhibited in cycling from 1930-1980. Cycling came of age in the 30’s, and advanced with only slight tweaks and alterations for the next 50 years.

Why?

All of the major advancements were already present by 1937: aluminum cranks, bars, stems, reliable derailleurs, powerful brakes, high quality lightweight frames, modern geometry, and so on. These basic advances were improved on, not drastically altered, in the half century that followed. The same can be said for riding and racing clothing.

Real advancement comes in spurts, making the job of marketing products a difficult one. Recent trends have focused on lifestyle and attitude. This is a handy new mask for a lack of actual advancement. The past 70 years have seen little in the way of major technological progress. I would rank aluminum parts and slant parallelogram rear derailleurs are the two most important developments in that time span.

Light-weight bikes and accurately shifting derailleurs have probably done more to advance and popularize bikes than any other invention. Remember: multi-purpose bikes reached their peak of popularity, per capita, in post war Europe, not with the (re)invention of indexing, or carbon, or suspension.

Marketing and advertising would have us believe that we live in a time of rapid technology and advancement, providing consumers with historically unparalleled comfort, ease of use, and precision technology; allowing us to go further, faster, easier.

But how do these advancements effect the average rider? I would argue the average rider is worse off today than he was 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Every passing decade has seen the use-value of the average bike decline; replaced by marketing hype and so called technological advances. Consider the townie bike of 1946: lights, a rear rack, fenders, wide sprung high quality leather saddle, pump, steel frame, fat tires, enclosed, no maintainance chain case, flat pedals, ergonomic bars and internally geared rear hub.

As time passed, townie bikes lost their elegant chain cases and full fenders and stretched leather saddles. This was followed by generator lights, ergonomic bars and integrated pumps. By 1990, the average townie bike was still steel, and could still take fat tires, but that was about it. Everything that made the bike practical for everyday use was rejected and lost. Many features could not even be purchased aftermarket, the most notable of which was the full chain-case.

Why?

The finger points in two directions: invented market trends, and increasing production costs. It’s easy to justify less product for more money when there is more ‘new’ ‘technology’ in it. Buyers found themselves unwittingly trading fenders for uniglide and hyperglide shifting, convinced by salesmen that they were too stupid to learn how to friction shift properly, and that fenders were old and dorky. Most consumers never thought to ask: ‘what’s dorkier, a grime and mud free back and an elegant enclosed drivetrain, or a cheap broken gripshifter and pants that look like you lost the race to the bathroom?’

The bike pictured above is a 1990’s steel Specialized Crossroads. Advancements over the Raleigh? Aluminum cranks and rims. I’ve ridden above bike, in fact my parents have two of them. It hurts to ride the saddle for any distance, the cheap plastic and steel drivetrain never stays adjusted, and the gearing is too low for any real distance. New commuter bikes are even more hopeless: suspension forks, hinged stems, disc brakes, a lack of rack, fender and waterbottle mounts and aluminum frames make the more like really crappy mountain bikes than all-purpose every-man bikes. You really can’t do anything useful with them. You can’t go on a picnic, you can’t go to the store, you can’t ride after a recent rain or even through a mud-puddle, you can’t ride after 5 in the winter or after 8 in the summer. You can’t fix a flat easily unless your salesman happens to have the foresight to sell you a frame pump (he/she won’t). It’s not unlike buying something that claims to be a single family house in a nice neighborhood but turns out to be a Kafka-esque apartment in downtown Detroit. What exactly do these bikes offer besides fake glam and fat welds?

Breezer, Jamis, Giant and Specialized offer, to quote Frank Berto “proof the hope springs eternal”. These major marquis offer neo-traditional bikes, bikes that use the 1940-50s English townie as a spring board. They feature such 50 year old ‘innovations’ such as fenders, sometimes lights, racks, and sometimes chain-cases. Unfortunately they still manage to bungle things that would make the bikes lighter, stronger and cheaper. Many of these bikes have hinged stems, suspension seatposts and sometimes forks, and disc brakes.

Again: why? The media, in collusion with the marketers, find this garnish easier to sell and write about than substance and functionality. There’s no arguing that it’s easier to point to something and say, ‘look ‘ new and hip’, rather than ‘that’s old but works great.’ People don’t ask if disc brakes work better than cantilevers for commuting or pedaling around town; they assume they must.

Another gripe: bikes like the Jamis pictured above, trade traditional styling for so-called ‘aggressive, contemporary’ styling. I think they loose their appeal by doing that. I think when you straighten out the forks, and anodize everything black, and don’t use any complementary colors, you make a bike that initially says ‘hip and aggressive’ but quickly becomes what it really is: boring, and all black. We are being mislead by the ‘everything is black cause black is contemporary and silver is old’ manner of selling. Black is a cheaper finish, and so the marketers score a double by making cheap stuff appear cooler than superior finishes. (silver doesn’t wear off, doesn’t fade, ect.)

Bike makers need to admit to themselves and their customers that they aren’t making Porche race cars. They need embrace their inner Plymouth Voyager. Use classic colors, because they never go out of style, ditch the limiting gimmicks like disc brakes (most frames with discs can’t have a rear rack), and put full fenders and lights and good bars and saddles back on.

The English bike company Pashley could well serve as a template for American based makers. Pashley has been making practical bikes for 70 years, and they still do it right.

Why do we shun things that have a proven track record? Why do we forgo tradition in favor of the new? I think the concept of the new holds such a high place in contemporary society that we are hard pressed to ignore its call. This, of course, is perfect for business, which has no doubt aided or even created our lust of the new. Products that are unproven need to be improved on, necessitating new models. Products that work, well, and for a long time are contrary to sales efforts.

There is another phenomenon at work though: style. Style is odd, finicky, and tricky beast. We all know it has nothing to do with practicality. But why would an industry rooted in tradition and natural materials suddenly ditch all that, embrace synthetics, and loose all sense of direction? The answer…when we continue next week, with another installment of…

‘Tan Sidewalls & Bingo Halls’