Stupid Bikes: Mechanical Graffiti or Hermenutical Key?

In my quest to understand Toronto's cycling ethos, I study the bicycles I see shackled about the core.  The variety initially seems endless, but the human tendency to conformity eventually prevails and trends become apparent.  As cycling becomes increasingly popular one's modal choice of transportation fails to differentiate oneself from the herd, necessitating the aesthetic mitosis of bicycle design to various alt.cultures.

While some find solace by huddling together with like-minded and like-aesthetic-ed individuals [*insert predictable hipsters on fixies jab here*], others, having failed to distinguish themselves intellectually, financially, or socially, attempt to distinguish themselves visually by distorting their bicycle to absurdist heights as seen in this epic comfort bike on Spadina Ave:

Having your front V-Brake undone is the bicycle equivalent to having your fly open.

 And (unfortunately) yet again on Adelaide St:

The above owner even eschews basic social standards like using the correct quill stem clamp diameter or fastener type:

The owner proudly pointed out the weight savings achieved by drilling it out.

Reared on Martha Stewart and various other sundry kraftwerks, some attempt to differentiate themselves through conspicuous appliqués of DIYism.  Labouring under the strictures of penury, some DIYers attempt to convert their vintage department store cruisers into the luscious Batavus they covet through the method of found-object curation, as is seen on the colour co-ordinated oven rack skirt-guard seen here on Spadina Ave:

Still others attempt to recreate the suppleness and comfort of the Brooks saddle through the careful appliqué of vintage fabrics, as seen on this abomination on Queen St W:

The Cotton Ass Hammock's advanced textiles wick ass moisture.

While some may label these aberrations of good taste and good design as further aberrations from cycling culture in Toronto, I would disagree.  These bikes are normal.  Aesthetics aside, these bicycles are fundamentally akin to almost every other bike in Toronto: disposable, poorly maintained, rarely used, and likely ridden with the same asshat carelessness that characterizes most cyclists in Toronto.  Carelessness is the grand unifying theme, and it's rooted ultimately in Toronto's perception of cycling as a trivial and insignificant pursuit.

Torontonians, having being suckled on department store boneshakers that were to be ridden on sidewalks, understand bicycles according to two sacred truths:

Bicycles should be cheap.  Anyone who has worked in a bicycle shop knows that, dandies and the delusional aside, most customers are vice-fisted racoons who "don't want to spend too much" to fix the bike that happened to (wonder of wonders!) spontaneously combust while they were "just riding along."  They don't want to spend too much because their bicycles are just inexpensive trifles and, as such, should not to be taken too seriously (read 'maintained').

Biking is like walking ...but different.  The bothersome inconveniences of social consideration, traffic planning, and self-preservation compel otherwise sensible individuals to take the path of most resistance  ...mainly because it appears shorter.  For many Torontonians, riding a bicycle is only a subtle variation of walking and the straightest line is the ideal trajectory; hence the rich similarities in strategy between the average Toronto pedestrian (read 'self-absorbed jaywalking imbecile')  and average Toronto cyclist.  Unfortunately, the tendency of the average Toronto cyclist to not die during their hastening from A to B only reinforces the behaviour.

In Toronto, taking cycling seriously is abnormal behaviour.  Pundits routinely divide Toronto cyclists into (a) serious/avid/compulsive-obsessive cyclists and (b) people who ride a bike.  The former are a minority.  The latter represent the dominant attitude in Toronto.  Here, driving a car is normal.  Backing over your CCM Medalist with your car and then walking it into a bike shop and telling the bike mechanic with a straight face that "It doesn't shift right" is normal.  Riding a crappy off-road bike with full-spring suspension along the sidewalk in an urban setting and failing to realize how retarded the whole picture is ...is normal.

In Toronto spending money on your bike and actually riding it, on the road, to a  destination more than five kilometres a way is strange.  Don't believe me?  Try it sometime and then mention your behaviour to some fellow and watch their reaction.

We're the weird ones.

Bike Art: I See White People

Like any groomed and well-read university graduate, I find farting hilarious.

Naturally then when I glanced the Toronto Sun headline "Artsy Fartsy" my curiosity was piqued.  It took some time to find the article (mainly because, like any groomed and well-read university graduate, I read the Toronto Sun from back to front), but when I finally managed to review Joe Warmington's article I too sat broken-hearted, having paid my dime, but no wiser than I started.

Warmington's article decried the attempt by some Toronto councilors to convert the Salvation Army's Bethany House at 420 Pape Ave into an artists' residence.  Warmington tries to cover his clear discomfort with the topic of art by raging against government subsidies for the Arts as a waste of taxpayers' money.

"Just what the east end needs," he huffs, "a hippie style commune for poor, starving artists."

Warmington likely meant this as sarcasm.  Amusingly, however, this is very likely what Warmington reader's do want.  A local artist hippie commune is a means to the end that Warmington's suburban landowning readership loves the most: rising property values.  White people, as Christian Lander has sagaciously observed multiple times, eat that kind of shit up.  More verbosely, it's called gentrification.

NYC's Greenwich Village is the most cited case-study for artist-induced gentrification but any Torontonian is familiar with the beatnik mood of Queen St W, 401 Richmond, St Lawrence Market, the Distillery District, and Kensington Market.

Bribing artists to squat and act weird in your neighborhood isn't squandering taxpayer money.  It's shrewd investing by scheming social architects who want to capitalize on the enduring fundamental truth that a yuppie and his money are soon parted.  Or as well-meaning but oblivious white people like to describe it: "Investing in our community," even though it's not theirs just yet.

Rob Ford, predictably, vowed "to open up and rip up" such "deals" if he becomes mayor ...and presumably not recycle the paper either.

I initially suspected Joe Warmington, Rob Ford & Co. revile this kind of fiscal policy because they just don't get the concept of Return On Investment.  Then I thought they're trying to cloak their naked philistinism with the mantel of fiscal prudence.  More likely though, they're using penny-pinching politics to mask their primary aim of maintaining the current social architecture of drivable suburbia.

You see, artists do evil Communist things like walk and ride bicycles to ad a veneer of wistful romanticism, mindfulness, and profundity to their existence.  It's also because they're poor.  And that makes them cool.  Unless they're stopped, artists and their eco-loving yuppie attendants will inundate council with requests for baby-killing Communist inventions like bike lanes and pedestrian festivals in the east end.  This can already by seen in the west-end at Art Spin events where a gaggle of White plaid-laden 20-through-40somethings toddles around the downtown on rattling cruisers, taking in visual stimulus and sucking on croissants.

Sometimes a croissant is just a croissant.

I can hear the Rob Ford campaign ad already:

"City councillors want to increase the artistic presence in the east end.  

Artists on bicycles.  In our city.  We're not making this up."

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A NOTE FROM THE CLOG: If you didn't get the croissant sucker image, then be blest; you are truly pure of heart.