*This is a guest post by bike romantic Maria Majsa, and cross posted from our sister site CAA with thanks*
On Valentine’s Day this year I didn’t get roses, I got a bike. A handsome, shiny black upright. You might think that a bike isn’t a particularly romantic gift, but I disagree.
Exhibit A: If bicyles aren’t romantic, why do they keep turning up in songs?
I could quote four right now, but my favourite has always been Back to the Old House: “When you cycled by, here began all my dreams.” Even as I write that line, an entire scene unfolds in my head: Suburban street. Pretty girl on a bike, hair flying. Shy lad, doomed to watch her pedal by. Will he ever be able to tell her how much he really likes her?
Absolutely not. This is a Smiths’ song, after all. He never talks to her, and her family moves away and all is lost, except the memory of the vision of her sailing past him in the street. There is a world of bunched-up adolescent urst* in that line. Anyone who has ever been a teenager could relate. And although things get a tad morose after that, you get my drift: the vision on a bike lingers. Bikes have their own romance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIMkHnT2BB4
There is something about riding a bike that harks back to simpler times – childhood and adolescence. Maybe it was the first time you felt real freedom. And it was universal – almost everyone had a bike. To be in possession of your own form of transport was liberating and joyful. You could explore, find new places, go further than before.
Of course new experiences don’t necessarily go to plan. That’s the great unknown for you. There’s always the possibility of getting lost, or damaging your bike, or yourself – which segueways nicely into my second and third favourite quotes: “Punctured bicycle on a hillside, desolate” [This Charming Man] and “I crashed down on the crossbar and the pain was enough to make a shy, bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder” [Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before]. Bear with me, I have no idea where I’m going with these, though I’m pretty sure the last one would put paid to any ideas of romance, at least till the bruising had healed.
https://vimeo.com/36670846
Exhibit B: It is possible to fall in love with pretty much anyone on a bike ride.
I used to go for rides with a friend who was a fellow Smiths fan. He had a bad stammer and couldn’t pronounce his Rs, but his politics were sound and his taste in music exemplary. On our first ride he verbally unpacked the lyrics of an obscure B-side single by The Smiths as we explored Chiswick. I fell momentarily in love with him and even now, by association, there is something inextricably romantic to me about stammering and bike riding. Especially when combined.
Fast forward a few decades to Exhibit C: The gift of a bike.
My husband bought himself a bike a few years ago and started leaving his car at home more often. Pretty soon he was cycling more than driving. Not in a clenched, lycra-wearing kind of way – more of a mooching up the road to a café type thing. Now that I have my bike, I can mooch alongside him. And in a low-key, everyday kind of way, that’s really quite romantic.
*unresolved sexual tension
Discography:
Back to the Old House The Smiths
This Charming Man The Smiths
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before The Smiths
and thanks to Bhana Bros for all the flowers
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“We rode our bikes to the nearest park / Sat under the swings, and kissed in the dark” – Arcade Fire, Spawl II.
Biking is definitely the happiest and most exuberant method of transport. Walking is more about reflection and peace, I find, and driving more about angst and endless searching.
Poor public transport does the worst: waiting, and being trapped. You also have the worst tearful farewells when the train pulls away, or your beloved walks down the jetway. At least it’s public transport that will finally bring you back together again.
Stephen – really? Public transport is the worst? And driving is angst? What a different experience I have. Driving is, to me, like most people, time spent alone, and so the body goes on autopilot, driving, while the mind wanders a little. But nothing like public transport, where the mind can wander a long way. All the concerns of the trip are out of your hands – whether bus, train, or plane, someone else is in control and you can read, and day dream, and haven’t a care in the world.
Lovely piece by Maria by the way, extolling the beauty and effortless pleasure of cycling. Even more so in that she wasn’t wearing Lycra or helmet – cycling as pleasure and glamour rather than sweaty macho activity.
To be fair he does say ‘poor PT’. I’d say the corollary is also true; great PT is the best. And we are getting some of that at last in AKL. EMU across Hobson Bay, Bus into the city over the bridge are two of the great rides anywhere, but also proper frequency and quality; especially the new trains and stations. Whenever I meet film crews or other visitors from overseas down at Britomart they always marvel at how clean and new it is. This is the great thing about having to start all over again; we’re getting new high standard kit, when we get it. Now just those services working properly…
> Stephen – really? Public transport is the worst? And driving is angst? What a different experience I have. Driving is, to me, like most people, time spent alone, and so the body goes on autopilot, driving, while the mind wanders a little.
At its worst, public transport is terrible: the waiting, uncertainty, and sense of being trapped aren’t really that great for one’s psyche. At its best, PT is similar to being a passenger in a car: mostly stress-free but boring. Only the active modes really connect you with your environment. Walking more so, and if you’ve got company, it’s easier to talk. On the other hand, cycling makes you feel more happy and alive. Particularly if you don’t wear a Styrofoam hat.
Driving on a two-lane state highway tends to put me in that autopilot mode (although I listen to podcasts, rather than letting my mind wander: that’s what walking’s for!). On the other hand, driving around the city on multi-lane roads and motorways is a stressful ordeal, particularly when you’re going somewhere new and you don’t necessarily know which lane or exit you want, or where you can park. And driving around the suburbs is an exercise in being perpetually lost (although with GPS, becoming less so, and more robotic).
Yes, exactly. Just say no to sweaty lycra and hair-flattening helmets. When I lived in London in the 80s I used to see Vivienne Westwood every day on her big black bike with a basket on the front. She would sail past like a galleon up the Kings Road on the way to her shop ‘The World’s End’. Always immaculately turned out in one of her current season’s finest outfits, including the full pirate rig: tricorn hat, stockings, pumps, 3/4 pants and big billowing shirt.
Bus stop, wet day, she’s there, I say
Please share my umbrella
Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows
Under my umbrella
All that summer we enjoyed it
Wind and rain and shine
That umbrella, we employed it
By August, she was mine
Bus Stop, the Hollies
Excellent PT song. Could in fact do an entire post on PT in songs – not all of them romantic: I’m thinking ‘Down In The Tube Station At Midnight’ by The Jam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxhN7MQ6uYw and ‘Subway Song’ by The Cure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPTGwc7gNqw .
Always amazed by Paul Weller’s talent – to write lines like ‘ the smell of pubs and wormwood scrubs and too many right wing meetings’ when he was probably still a teenager!
Ah Paul Weller – the Woking Wonder. Such a precocious talent. Those snippets of urban life were so spot-on, so acutely English – a bit like The Kinks. I was lucky enough to see The Jam twice before they broke up. For a 3-piece they sure made a speaker-sodomising amount of sound. Weller’s dad always came onstage to introduce them, saying: This is the best fucking band in the world.
Incidentally Win Butler from the Arcade Fire grew up in the Woodlands outside of Houston. The Woodlands provided the inspiration for many of the songs and lyrics in the album “The Suburbs”. There is also a whole chapter in Ed Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City devoted to The Woodlands and it is frequently referenced as an example of the affordable sprawl of Houston.
Isn’t The Woodlands Phil Hayward’s go-to example of how great sprawl is, too? Fitting that someone actually from there won an Grammy for an album about how young people can’t stand the suburbs and flee for the city the first chance they get.
“But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night”
– Rush, Subdivisions
Yes, poor old PT often gets cast as the villain, taking our loved one far away. Reminds me of this track: ‘The Biggest Lie’ by Elliott Smith, which starts: “I’m waiting for the train, subway that only goes one way, the stupid thing that’ll come and tear us apart, and make everybody late”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDKU3QO_Gf4
Very moving. And thanks too for the lovely post.
For dastardly trains breaking people’s hearts, you can hardly go past: practically every Johnny Cash song.
Thanks, very kind. It’s funny, I was always such a slavish Smiths fan, but it wasn’t till I sat down to write that post I realised how often bikes featured in their songs. A little insight to Morrissey’s psyche perhaps – trapped in a twilight zone of perma-teen-angst where everyone is spotty and shy and rides a bike and wants the one they can’t have …
Stephen. Nice.
Among my favourite urban themed lyrics is Interpol’s NYC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goVhT-biNwU
Subway, she is a porno
And the pavements they are a mess
I know you’ve supported me for a long time
Somehow I’m not impressed
It’s up to me now turn on the bright lights
Oh it’s up to me now turn on the bright lights
New York cares
(Got to be some more change in my life)
New York cares
(Got to be some more change in my life)
I’m fond of Keziah Jones’ Lagos vs New York: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Int6nbslF9I
new york’s busy
but lagos is all for show
orisha junctions
in manhattan crossroads
“go-slow” is what you call
a gridlock
…left a bit of your heart in Lagos?
Always.
Although apparently Botswana has Africa’s best metal scene: http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/12/27/the-heavy-metal-subculture-of-botswana-africa/
No sleep til Gabarone!
Nice bike!
Thanks. Yes, she’s a beauty. I named her Black Bess and parked her in the hall. I never was a sporty type, so the whole crouched forward thing with feet in cages and skin-tight-wear just felt alien to me – claustrophobic and wrong. Upright riding is stately and civilised. Here’s to safe cycleways and normal clothing.