“War on the car” rhetoric has been common in Toronto over the past few years. Such a phrase comes from the deployment of a particular form of rhetorical combat which positioning the car as the battered victim of mean-spirited bullies who call for alternatives to the one-driver-one-car commuter model simply because they hate the freedom that cars represent. The kind of hyperbole represented by terms like “war on the car” presumes that the car is the de-facto centerpiece of urban living and any encroachment, no matter how minor, on its dominance of the city streets, is an abhorrent assault on decency and the traditional lifeways of post-industrial mankind. Thus calls for bike lanes in Toronto and critical recognition of how much noise and pollution and stress and congestion is added to the city by the flow of car traffic is ‘the war on the car.’
Zack Furness’ book, One Less Car(borrowing his title from the popular pro-bike sticker seen on frames and racks)
investigates the dominant discourse surrounding cycling, particularly in the context of American cities wherein cycling is primarily a form of recreation. Zack Furness is an assistant professor of cultural studies at Columbia College in Chicago. He has gauged ears and tattoos, by the way, and after seeing his photo it occurred to me to check on whether or not he appears in a new (2012) Autonomedia book titled Punkademics, about punk university professors (including a contribution from my Trent University comrade, Alan O’Connor), and as it turns out, Furness edited that particular volume.
One Less Car presents a dual approach to an investigation of contemporary cycling and politics. The first is to look critically at the history of representations of the bicycle in popular culture and interrogate the discourse on the subject. So, for example, according to Furness, the bicycle has been portrayed as a children’s toy with a primary function of preparing the young to become drivers. Connected to that then, is the representation of adult cyclists in specific forms of American popular culture as stunted in maturity (Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and The 40 Year Old Virgin).
Otherwise, cycling is for the impoverished or for people who shirk a social responsibility to purchase a car. These kinds of images produce a normative understanding of cycling as fodder for humour, but an absurd choice of transportation for a real-life American adult.
The second phase of critiquing the popular discourse is for Furness to cite all of the pundits who denounce urban cycling for whatever reason. So many of the arguments Furness quotes are basically by people simply appalled that the road they use as auto-drivers should have to be shared with anyone else. The arguments are typically of a “know your place” variety that presumes that an existing order of privilege is also fundamentally correct, and that the vulnerable who are threatening to put a minor strain on that privilege are, in essence, selfish. For example, Furness cites one pundit who claims that a hypothetical (child) cyclist crushed under the wheels of an SUV is a threat to the driver’s safety and not the other way around. This sort of argument emerges in a cultural environment where driving is always presumed as safe and cycling always presumed as dangerous, even though the invention and popularization of the automobile has unleashed a holocaust of death and injury, and the one major threat to the safety of cyclists is the exact same thing that threatens that of drivers - that is other reckless and inconsiderate motorists. The other side to the analysis of the dominant discourse is the culture of radical cyclists: critical mass participants, bike co-ops, and things like that. Modes of bike usage that revel in the ‘other’ status of the urban cyclist. Much of Furness’ book is about explaining critical mass and he quotes frequently from Critical Mass inventor and chief theorist, Chris Carlsson, as well as other cycling intellectuals such as Microcosm Publishing founder/Bipedal, By Pedal zinester Joe Biel. The section on critical mass subjects the monthly ride to the same rigorous critique as other aspects of the broader cycling discourse, although Furness is clearly sympathetic to the event and its underlying sentiments.
Bipedal, By Pedal: Experiences and Thoughts Around the Critical Mass Bicycle Movement! Joe Biel et. al. Microcosm Publishing
2007 43 pages
Critical Mass is a monthly bicycle oriented event that occurs in most major North American and European cities, as well as in many mid-sized cities and at other locales around the world. The event originated in mid-1990s San Francisco (although it has its origins in earlier events held in Mexico City, plus it takes some of its inspiration from cycling practices observed in urban China) by Chris Carlsson (editor of Processed World magazine, and more recently author of the book Nowtopia) and a group of cyclist friends. The basic concept for the event is that cyclists congregate at an agreed-upon time and place to embark upon a meandering ride through the city streets, preferably during the evening peak traffic period. The basic intention of the event is to assert that the bicycle has a place in a contemporary urban environment that has been designed (rather inefficiently) for the automobile. Participants are free to bring whatever motivations they have to the ride, as it is leaderless, and no one is authorized to impose onto riders an adherence to a particular ideology or will. Many riders participate in the mass because it has the potential to provide an opportunity to unbind aggressions, many riders participate because its a relatively fun and safe way to bike through the city.
Critical Mass is inevitably a contentious event, as many individuals presume that the urban road is strictly for motor vehicles. Therefore plenty of drivers think that cyclists have no business occupying part of it if it leads to their minor inconvenience. Naturally, such an event, which most likely appears to be spontaneous to drivers, where cyclists ride en mass through the streets without a unifying goal or purpose, is incomprehensible and utterly transgressive. Furthermore, the average critical mass is full of normal people who simply like cycling but the mass is essentially represented by its sloganeers who shout things like “we’re not blocking traffic, we are traffic,” thus giving the event the sheen of political protest.
Critical mass is NOT strictly a political protest organized around radical bicycle advocacy, (although it is that, among other things) but it does call up linkages to a number of interesting theories developed by radical thinkers. Such theories include Hakim Bey’s concept of a temporary autonomous zone, a term which refers to a limited opening in space and time within which greater levels of freedom are enjoyed by its inhabitants. The critical mass also touches upon the Situationist concept of psychogeography, under which individuals are cognisiant of the effects of different forms of the city upon the mind. Furthermore, this CTheory article, Urban Meanderthals and the City of "Desire Lines" by Matthew Tiessen discusses the roving object (the author refers to an individual but his idea also works with a cycling horde) that slowly moves through the urban space forces others to take up alternate routes to reach destinations and therefore find new ways to engage with the city.
Joe Biel’sBipedal, By Pedalis essentially a primer of the critical mass rides for people who are potential participants, or simply interested in what can be said abut the events. Bipedal is a zine offered by the author as a companion to Chris Carlsson’s 2002 book Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration, which is probably the essential informational resource on the subject. Carlesson’s book is a collection of reports, news items, and musings on the monthly bike ride, from a variety of sources. Biel’s 43 page zine does not venture too far, conceptually, from Carlsson’s text, although Bipedal is mostly told from Biel’s own perspective, with additional writings from some of his zinester friends. Like their motorized counterparts, bicycles are the technological centre for a number of interesting cultural forms, and the genre of bike zines is among them.
The structure of this zine is similar to Biel's, and collaborator Bill Brent’s, instructional text, Make a Zine!, in that Biel’s own thoughts are buttressed by some brief textual pieces written by friends. As the founder of Microcosm Publishing, Biel is plugged into an underground of interesting writers and artists who can provide complementary texts to his own honest writings. There are many bike/critical mass related graphics and illustrations, some of which (including the cover, I think) are by Matt Gauck and other friends, and some images are appropriated, also appearing in Carlsson’s book.
Unfortunately, Critical Mass is not an event that can adequately be explained primarily from a single perspective. The mass of each city has its own character, and that character can shift from month to month. Issues that Biel discusses from the rides he’s been present on in Portland and San Francisco are not necessarily present at the rides in Toronto and Ottawa (where I have riden) and its likely that other cities critical mass rides may have their own issues that are altogether absent in the four cities already mentioned. This is not to say that Biel’s thoughts are irrelevant but a reader should consider that his perspective is connected to places and times. Overall Biel understands Critical Mass, as he expresses his understanding that the ride has no central goal even though he’s frustrated when people come to the event motivated to ride with a purpose different from his own. I’m sure that, because of the ideologically divergent nature of the event, most riders have felt (and overcome) such frustration to some extent.
Bipedal, By Pedal! (which won an award for Best English Language zine at the 2007 Expozine event) covers the basics of the critical mass ride, and serves as an informative introduction to the monthly event. Biel addresses issues that anyone should know are routine aspects of the ride, including aggressive participants and conflicts with authorities and municipal politicians. Furthermore, while Biel provides an overview of the event, his writer friends supply opinions that demonstrate the variety of attitudes and motivations people may bring to it, with documentary filmmaker (and CM co-founder) Ted White advocating for the ride to be a spectacular celebration of urban cycling, while Scott Larkin (author of the zine, Go By Bicycle) laments the event’s lack of political force. The zine conveys, in textual form, the short-lived tensions and community of the rides that come into being for a few hours at the end of every month.
