The End of Car (Dominated) Culture? This NY Times article gives reason to hope that we are in the midst of a shift in paradigm away from car culture.  Not to be cynical but it will take decades to undo the damage that has been caused by the overemphasis on the automobile in our culture.  That emphasis has had such far reaching health and environmental effects on our society through poor urban planning lack of consideration of quality of life and what that means it is disturbing that it has taken so long to realize the problems that stem from a car centric society.

Excerpt:

“What most intrigues me is that rates of car ownership per household and per person started to come down two to three years before the downturn,” said Michael Sivak, who studies the trend and who is a research professor at the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. “I think that means something more fundamental is going on.”

If the pattern persists — and many sociologists believe it will — it will have beneficial implications for carbon emissions and the environment, since transportation is the second largest source of America’s emissions, just behind power plants. But it could have negative implications for the car industry. Indeed, companies like Ford and Mercedes are already rebranding themselves “mobility” companies with a broader product range beyond the personal vehicle.

“Different things are converging which suggest that we are witnessing a long-term cultural shift,” said Mimi Sheller, a sociology professor at Drexel University and director of its Mobilities Research and Policy Center. She cites various factors: the Internet makes telecommuting possible and allows people to feel more connected without driving to meet friends. The renewal of center cities has made the suburbs less appealing and has drawn empty nesters back in. Likewise the rise in cellphones and car-pooling apps has facilitated more flexible commuting arrangements, including the evolution of shared van services for getting to work.

With all these changes, people who stopped car commuting as a result of the recession may find less reason to resume the habit.

On top of that, city, state and federal policies that for more than half a century encouraged suburbanization and car use — from mortgage lending to road building — are gradually being diluted or reversed. “They created what I call a culture of ‘automobility,’ and arguably in the last 5 to 10 years that is dying out,” Ms. Sheller said.

New York’s new bike-sharing program and its skyrocketing bridge and tunnel tolls reflect those new priorities, as do a proliferation of car-sharing programs across the nation.

Demographic shifts in the driving population suggest that the trend may accelerate. There has been a large drop in the percentage of 16- to 39-year-olds getting a license, while older people are likely to retain their licenses as they age, Mr. Sivak’s research has found.

He and I have similar observations about our children. Mine (19 and 21) have not bothered to get a driver’s license, even though they both live in places where one could come in handy. They are interested, but it’s not a priority. They organize their summer jobs and social life around where they can walk or take public transportation or car-pool with friends.

Mr. Sivak’s son lives in San Francisco and has a car but takes Bay Area Rapid Transit, when he can, even though that often takes longer than driving. “When I was in my 20s and 30s,” Mr. Sivak said, “I was curious about what kind of car people drove, but young people don’t really care. A car is just a means of getting from A to B when BART doesn’t work.”

A study last year found that driving by young people decreased 23 percent between 2001 and 2009. The millennials don’t value cars and car ownership, they value technology — they care about what kinds of devices you own, Ms. Sheller said. The percentage of young drivers is inversely related to the availability of the Internet, Mr. Sivak’s research has found. Why spend an hour driving to work when you could take the bus or train and be online?

From 2007 to 2011, the age group most likely to buy a car shifted from the 35 to 44 group to the 55 to 64 group, he found.

Whether members of the millennial generation will start buying more cars once they have kids to take to soccer practice and school plays remains an open question. But such projections have important business implications, even if car buyers are merely older or buying fewer cars in a lifetime rather than rejecting car culture outright.

This is a fascinating article on urban design, the "grid," and what it might mean regarding our values as a society.  Ok, the "values" part is mostly me projecting.  But it does talk about the basic grid, and our move away from it, and I think that says as much if not more about our evolution as a society away from valuing humans vs. humans driving cars.

I recently taught the Ray Bradbury short story, The Pedestrian, which in typical Bradbury fashion subtly criticizes the human willingness to supplant actual experience, with virtual experience.  The "Pedestrian" in the story is the only one who goes for walks in 2053, instead of watching his "viewing screen" and by the end is arrested for being "regressive."

In the past I've my students to consider their own neighborhoods and go for a walk and make some judgements about what house and neighborhood designs say about our cultural values.   But if you look at virtually any house built pre 1950 there are some pretty obvious but implicit statements about cultural values you can make.


Anyway, below is an excerpt of the article:

Cities often celebrate the anniversaries of major pieces of transformative infrastructure, like bridges or buildings or dams. It's much more rare to celebrate the birthday of a design template. The bicentennial of Manhattan's street grid, which fell in 2011, was an exception. There was an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York to mark the milestone. Countless articles from planners, architecture critics, and urbanists lauded the foresight of the city's street commissioners, who in 1811 laid down the plan that defines the island's development to this day.

On the occasion, the New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, wrote this about the "oddly beautiful" grid:

It's true that Manhattan lacks the elegant squares, axial boulevards and civic monuments around which other cities designed their public spaces. But it has evolved a public realm of streets and sidewalks that creates urban theater on the grandest level. No two blocks are ever precisely the same because the grid indulges variety, building to building, street to street.

New York, of course, is not the only city built on a grid. Similar schemes could be found as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. But Manhattan's design was the exemplar for what became the default pattern of American cities.

Still, not all grids are created equal. Some shape a walking-friendly streetscape. Others, not so much. Over at the Strong Towns blog, Andrew Price, a software developer by day who blogs about urbanism, has been writing about the math of the grid and what it reveals about a city's economic productivity and walkability.

The New Rivendell Configuration and the Grant Petersen Effect A few months after Bridgestone Japan closed the San Leandro office that Petersen shared with 15 or so other kindred souls, Rivendell Bicycle Works was established in Petersen’s family room and garage. Waterford Precision Cycles, led by Richard Schwinn and Marc Muller, were contracted to build Rivendell framesets, with lugs and fork crown designed by Richard Sachs and cast by Long Shen, sparking a movement that snowballed with Don Walker’s North American Handmade Bicycle Show, and the public’s appreciation for gravel riding, leather saddles, and steel frames.

Rivendell AllRounder - Jack of All Trades...Master of Most
I originally bought my Allrounder out of regret for not buying the legendary Bridgestone XO-1 and because of my deep respect for the vision of Grant Petersen as he was in the first few years of his new bicycle company, Rivendell Bicycle Works.  He seemed like one of the few voices of sanity in the bike industry in the mid-90s when design seemed to be about making things as complicated as possible.  Technological advancements can be super cool but sometimes it's just seems like bike wankery and you wonder if it doesn't get in the way of the actual enjoyment of riding.

Over the years my Allrounder has lived up to its name and here is a battery of photos from the various types of riding I've done on the bike and different configurations (tires, bars, etc.) along the way.  I've had tires as skinny as 1.25 inch slicks all the way up to 2.3 inches knobbies.  Bars have been rando, moustache, and noodle bars.  Fully loaded touring, quick(ish) road rides, commutes, offroad adventure riding, and trips to the coffee house...it's done it all.

Skinny tires on the trail

My first build

Bike Tour Across Nevada

Pre NV Trip

Some serious speed...fully loaded down a mountain near Ely, Nevada

Monster Cross

Oregon Cascades Tour with Front and Back Load

The Commute

More Stability with the Front Load Before the Oregon Tour

The Commute in the Winter Snow

I remember a comedian making a joke about his mom always bringing up how she was in labor with him for 36 hours.  "Thirty-Six hours," he exclaimed! "I don't even want to do something I like for 36 hours!"

That's kind of how I feel about these types of long-distance events.  I'm kind of inspired by the physical fortitude, but like RAAM, if you are literally falling asleep on the bike because you are 400 miles into the ride with a few hundred still to go, that doesn't seem like much fun.  That beings said, some of the bikes especially made for this type of road riding in comfort (or as comfortable as you can be for that long on a bike) are spectacularly beautiful.  And the notion of to and from from and to Paris is pretty appealing.  Maybe I need to rethink this and start a Randonneuring event or club around these parts.  As it is, the new film "Brevet" seems to capture the joy and agony of the ride.  Perhaps starting there is a better strategy.

Maybe one day I'll get that bug...as for now a 50 or 60 mile ride seems to be about my top end if only because I have so many other things I want to do with my time.

Brevet from CURLYPICTURES on Vimeo.

Every four years cyclists from all over the world come to France for the legendary Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle marathon. They have to ride 1230 km in under 90 hours. A grueling fight against hills, cold and exhaustion. BREVET is the movie about this fight.

Album Cover Pose

Just the usual favorite ride from recent months.  Head south from downtown and wind around past windy hill, get to geiger grade and head to pleasant valley and do the Andrew lane loop.  Head back via Damonte Ranch and up and over Rattlesnake mountain and past my school.  About 40 miles and a good way to spend a few hours with some nice scenery and various terrain.

Lugged Steel road bike on Dirt Roads...my favorite.

Celebrating Della Santa!

Every once in awhile I break out of the bicycle oriented posts to talk about some other things of interest to me such as education, music, or in this case, film.  I wrote an overview of my favorite films from the first decade of the new century a few years back and it still stands as a solid list for me.  I might adjust a few things with hindsight but overall I stand by my picks.  Now that I'm teaching a film class at my high school I just wish I could show more of these but alas many of them are rated R.

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I usually reserve my year end lists to music but being as it's the end of a decade I can't resist compiling a list of my favorite cinema.  It would be nice to suggest that these are truly the greatest films of the decade but there are so many films I didn't see in the theater it's impossible to be comprehensive so below is a list of some of my favorite film experiences of the last 10 years.  I don't know how critics decide what is a #3 vs. a #8 on a list like this so these are in no particular order.



Zodiac - David Fincher always creates something interesting but this film is a masterpiece of tense procedural serial killer mayhem.   Robert Downey Jr. has reestablished himself in the minds of most cinema goers over the last couple of years but this is my favorite performance of his and Jake Gyllenhaal holds his own surrounded by one the great supporting casts of all time.  Special kudos to the strong cinematography, a hallmark of any Fincher film.

In Bruges - Surprising comes to mind with this madcap gangster, buddy, thriller.  Especially with Colin Farell giving one of his best performances.

Layer Cake - Daniel Craig can be given credit for making James Bond relevant again (even if Quantum of Solace was a disappointment).  But it was Layer Cake that upped the ante for British Crime Dramas.   Michael Gambon gives one of the great villainous speeches at the end of the film.  

Bourne Identity - I'm settling on the first in this series even though I loved all of them.  These movies redefined modern action an somehow gave it a paranoid cerebral feel.  After Good Will Hunting the smart money was on Ben Affleck to become the next big movie star.  All these years later Matt Damon has turned out to be one of the best and savviest film actors working.   

Lord of the Rings - It's fashionable to bag on this sprawling film series now but there is no getting around how monumental of a task it was to translate the books into an enjoyable cinematic experience for readers and a modern film audience that had no knowledge of the books.  That it turned out to be a transcendent trip is all the more surprising.  I don't know that there has been a better job done of casting the principle actors in recent memory.  Particularly Viggo Mortenson and Sean Astin who seem to me to be the heart of this film.

Amelie/A Very Long Engagement - While Amelie is considered syrupy by some a little lightness about the random kindness of a strange girl from Paris was just what was needed in the early 2000s.  Engagement, also by Jeunet, is a complex tale of love and sacrifice set during the Great War.  It's also a great introduction to Marion Cotillard as a prostitute assassin to die for.

Michael Clayton - On paper this film shouldn’t have been as good as it was.  But with knockout performances from Tom Wilkinson, George Clooney, and Tilda Swinton, it was the corporate thriller of the decade.

Children of Men - The look of this film had me from the first frame.  it doesn’t hurt that the cast is great and the ending perfect.


Almost Famous - Ensemble acting at its finest in this piece about 70s rock and roll culture and coming of age.  There are great actors here (Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup, and Philip Seymour Hoffman) and average actors who upped their game (Jimmy Fallon!) .   Everything Kate Hudson has done since this has been pretty much shit but she’ll always have a special place in my heart as Penny Lane.  


The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
One of those films that you know is a masterpiece while watching it and spend the last half hoping it doesn’t blow it.  It doesn’t.  Great performances and gorgeous to look at.  Proves once again that Brad Pitt is underrated as an actor.  Also one of those great films that I can only watch every once in a while. 

Lost in Translation - Middle-aged ennui meets youthful potential in a striking film from Sofia Coppola.  And it has one of the best endings ever.

Wonder Boys - A gem of a film about the tortured lives of writers that toys with the cliche and then shatters it.  It also made Michael Douglas watchable which is a great feat.  Great supporting actor work from Tobey Macguire, Frances McDormand, and Robert Downey Jr.

Wes Anderson...I’m torn.  Anderson belongs of the best of list for his singular cinematic vision.  But it’s hard to decide whether the flawed masterpiece, The Life Aquatic should be here or the earlier Royal Tannenbaums.  Or, should it be the Fantastic Mr. Fox?  I’m holding off on including any late 2009 film on a list of the best of the decade because it feels too soon to make that judgement.  So, Life Aquatic it is.  But I reserve the right to change my mind.

Honorable Mentions:
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Unlike anything else I've seen  
The Incredibles - The best of the Pixar creations followed closely by Up 
Brokeback Mountain - Heartbreaking
The 40 Year-Old Virgin - Man-Child raunchiness with a sweet spot

And because we are in the age of great cinema created for the small screen I feel it necessary to mention a few of my favorite television shows which were as good if not better than much of what was playing down at the cineplex:  Deadwood, State of Play, Bleak House, Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, 30 Rock, and The Office (both Brit and U.S. versions).

I've been sitting on this article for awhile thinking about the reasons drivers do get so hostile towards cyclists.  I get the argument that is being made here in terms of cyclists being perceived as cheaters, breaking the "rules of the road."  But of course it is more complex than that.  I've always maintained that for some drivers there is also a nagging bit of guilt, perhaps subconsciously, because cyclists tend to be happier and healthier in general, plus they are not really part of the problem when it comes to creating traffic.  Sort of underscoring the old adage about drivers complaining about traffic when "they are traffic."

Anyway, I'm clipping a big swatch of this article because it's worth examining the psychology about driver hate:

Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word "cyclist" on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: "Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car." This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethnic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people's minds, when directed against cyclists. Why all the rage?

I've got a theory, of course. It's not because cyclists are annoying. It isn't even because we have a selective memory for that one stand-out annoying cyclist over the hundreds of boring, non-annoying ones (although that probably is a factor). No, my theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order.

Driving is a very moral activity – there are rules of the road, both legal and informal, and there are good and bad drivers. The whole intricate dance of the rush-hour junction only works because people know the rules and by-and-large follow them: keeping in lane; indicating properly; first her turn, now mine, now yours. Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.

You could argue that driving is like so much of social life, it’s a game of coordination where we have to rely on each other to do the right thing. And like all games, there's an incentive to cheat. If everyone else is taking their turn, you can jump the queue. If everyone else is paying their taxes you can dodge them, and you'll still get all the benefits of roads and police.

In economics and evolution this is known as the "free rider problem"; if you create a common benefit – like taxes or orderly roads – what's to stop some people reaping the benefit without paying their dues? The free rider problem creates a paradox for those who study evolution, because in a world of selfish genes it appears to make cooperation unlikely. Even if a bunch of selfish individuals (or genes) recognise the benefit of coming together to co-operate with each other, once the collective good has been created it is rational, in a sense, for everyone to start trying to freeload off the collective. This makes any cooperation prone to collapse. In small societies you can rely on cooperating with your friends, or kin, but as a society grows the problem of free-riding looms larger and larger.

Social collapse

Humans seem to have evolved one way of enforcing order onto potentially chaotic social arrangements. This is known as "altruistic punishment", a term used by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gachter in a landmark paper published in 2002. An altruistic punishment is a punishment that costs you as an individual, but doesn't bring any direct benefit. As an example, imagine I'm at a football match and I see someone climb in without buying a ticket. I could sit and enjoy the game (at no cost to myself), or I could try to find security to have the guy thrown out (at the cost of missing some of the game). That would be altruistic punishment.

Altruistic punishment, Fehr and Gachter reasoned, might just be the spark that makes groups of unrelated strangers co-operate. To test this they created a co-operation game played by constantly shifting groups of volunteers, who never meet – they played the game from a computer in a private booth. The volunteers played for real money, which they knew they would take away at the end of the experiment. On each round of the game each player received 20 credits, and could choose to contribute up to this amount to a group project. After everyone had chipped in (or not), everybody (regardless of investment) got 40% of the collective pot.

Under the rules of the game, the best collective outcome would be if everyone put in all their credits, and then each player would get back more than they put in. But the best outcome for each individual was to free ride – to keep their original 20 credits, and also get the 40% of what everybody else put in. Of course, if everybody did this then that would be 40% of nothing.

In this scenario what happened looked like a textbook case of the kind of social collapse the free rider problem warns of. On each successive turn of the game, the average amount contributed by players went down and down. Everybody realised that they could get the benefit of the collective pot without the cost of contributing. Even those who started out contributing a large proportion of their credits soon found out that not everybody else was doing the same. And once you see this it's easy to stop chipping in yourself – nobody wants to be the sucker.

Rage against the machine

A simple addition to the rules reversed this collapse of co-operation, and that was the introduction of altruistic punishment. Fehr and Gachter allowed players to fine other players credits, at a cost to themselves. This is true altruistic punishment because the groups change after each round, and the players are anonymous. There may have been no direct benefit to fining other players, but players fined often and they fined hard – and, as you'd expect, they chose to fine other players who hadn't chipped in on that round. The effect on cooperation was electric. With altruistic punishment, the average amount each player contributed rose and rose, instead of declining. The fine system allowed cooperation between groups of strangers who wouldn't meet again, overcoming the challenge of the free rider problem.

How does this relate to why motorists hate cyclists? The key is in a detail from that classic 2002 paper. Did the players in this game sit there calmly calculating the odds, running game theory scenarios in their heads and reasoning about cost/benefit ratios? No, that wasn't the immediate reason people fined players. They dished out fines because they were mad as hell. Fehr and Gachter, like the good behavioural experimenters they are, made sure to measure exactly how mad that was, by asking players to rate their anger on a scale of one to seven in reaction to various scenarios. When players were confronted with a free-rider, almost everyone put themselves at the upper end of the anger scale. Fehr and Gachter describe these emotions as a “proximate mechanism”. This means that evolution has built into the human mind a hatred of free-riders and cheaters, which activates anger when we confront people acting like this – and it is this anger which prompts altruistic punishment. In this way, the emotion is evolution's way of getting us to overcome our short-term self-interest and encourage collective social life.

So now we can see why there is an evolutionary pressure pushing motorists towards hatred of cyclists. Deep within the human psyche, fostered there because it helps us co-ordinate with strangers and so build the global society that is a hallmark of our species, is an anger at people who break the rules, who take the benefits without contributing to the cost. And cyclists trigger this anger when they use the roads but don't follow the same rules as cars.

Now, cyclists reading this might think "but the rules aren't made for us – we're more vulnerable, discriminated against, we shouldn't have to follow the rules." Perhaps true, but irrelevant when other road-users perceive you as breaking rules they have to keep. Maybe the solution is to educate drivers that cyclists are playing an important role in a wider game of reducing traffic and pollution. Or maybe we should just all take it out on a more important class of free-riders, the tax-dodgers.

A fun Sunday ride north of town with a climb up Matterhorn road with a couple of gents made for a great day.  Proving once again what a great choice it was to get a Della Santa with all of its wonderful road racing qualities with the space for a 35mm tire to more easily handle a bit of dirt and gravel surfaces that you are likely to find on the outskirts of Reno.  Great day, great ride, great company.

One of these days I'll clean the nooks and crannies

In digging through my archive of bicycling memorabilia (in a former career I actually was an archivist) I found this great cover.  It's easy to see why I would keep this issue of Mountain Bike Magazine.  This issue was during the heyday of mountain biking in the 1990s when road bikes seemed passe and a war of worlds was happening between what was then considered the two main disciplines of the cycling industry.  Basically, Pre-Lance Armstrong taking over the world and reigniting so much interest in road cycling.

Who knew that there would now be niche within subniche of styles of riding to navigate.  How else do you explain the handwringing so many cyclists do over whether to buy the SOMA Wolverine or the Black Mountain Cross or the VO...whatever.  I obsess and lust over those bikes as well.

That said, there is a point to be taken from this cover besides seeing Bob Roll get muddy during Paris-Roubaix.   Road bikes can do an awful lot of amazing things beyond just smooth as glass pavement rides.

Mark Knopfler, Objects of Beauty, and N+1
I was struck in this interview for Salon how Knopfler nailed the N+1 idea that so many cyclists talk about with their collections and then he goes and starts talking about buying a Colnago.  Yeah, I'm sure he gets it.  It's no surprise that guitarists have the same issue of always desiring one more guitar.  Who else would appreciate the beauty as well as someone who plays?

Excerpt from full article here:

"The Girl Who Has A Bicycle Does Not Need Wings" - Wheel Talk
I picked up this antique copy of the publication Wheel Talk recently.  Apparently it was published out of the Chicago area during the late 1890s hey day of cycling.  Lots of tips and witticisms are included in this brief periodical about enjoying your "wheel" and how to dress, eat, and fully appreciate it.  I adore this era of printed material, event more so when it is about cycling.  The typefaces, verbiage, and elegant style make these kinds of publications a treat.  Sometimes less is more when it comes to graphic design.  Actually less is usually more when it comes to graphic design.  Something that I try to convey to my students when they are designing things in my classes.

Here are a few screen shots of the pages of this slight but fun publication.  Some of the advice given in the page below is quite amusing.

This is one of the earliest posts I ever wrote and I still get annoyed emails from diehard burners.  That was not really my intent.  Mostly, I just wanted to point out that as much as I think the Black Rock Desert is a captivating place, the idea of hanging out there with 50+ thousand people pretty much ruins it.  Add to that the sort of pseudo-counter culture mantra that surrounds the event...well, you get my point.  I'm glad so many people love it and add tons of money to our local economy.  And particularly glad that it funds great organizations like the Reno Bike Project.  I just don't particularly care to hear about it.  I've noticed in the last ten years since I wrote this a decidedly more pronounced anti-burner mentality surrounding the event.

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There's a reason that I'm drawn to the purity of Buddhist thought and right livelihood.  Simple truths can resonate more deeply than all others and this little story, which I've shared before, does feel like it taps into something pure and important.  An oldie but a goodie:

A Zen teacher saw five of his students returning from the market, riding their bicycles. When they arrived at the monastery and had dismounted, the teacher asked the students, “Why are you riding your bicycles?”
The first student replied, “The bicycle is carrying the sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!” The teacher praised the first student, “You are a smart boy! When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over like I do.”
The second student replied, “I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path!” The teacher commended the second student, “Your eyes are open, and you see the world.”
The third student replied, “When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant nam myoho renge kyo.” The teacher gave praise to the third student, “Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel.”
The fourth student replied, “Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all sentient beings.” The teacher was pleased, and said to the fourth student, “You are riding on the golden path of non-harming.”
The fifth student replied, “I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle.” The teacher sat at the feet of the fifth student and said, “I am your student!”
Shawn Gosieski, New Cyclist, Fall 1988