Waiting for the Great Pumpkin: Epherma & Other Epiphanies

As a connoisseur of vintage Hallowe'en dross and other ephemera, I keep a keen watch on pumpkin crop predictions.  However, unlike previous years where I just wait for The Weather Network to run some human interest story to fill in the gaps between the rote repetition of plausible but improbable predictions about the weather, this year I planned an Homeric bicycle tour of local artisan pumpkin nurturers ('organic farming' is so over, the more holistic 'food nurturing' is topping teen trend charts at the moment) to survey their colour, heft, and general orbness personally.

Pumpkin surveying is thankless work.

In preparation for my fantastic voyage, I donned a pair of vintage Rayban Wayfarers, enwrapped myself in a plaid hoodie to brace myself against the frigid elements, and saddled 200lbs of touring supplies on my moderately immoral and sniffly brakeless touring bike (I stop by the sheer power of my will), and then walked it down the sidewalk like a pretentious twat

Walking my moderately immoral and sniffly brakeless touring bike of doom down the sidewalk to the outskirts of town, I realized that I would be missing tomorrow's much vaunted Art Spin finale.  Since traveling trivial distances by bicycle to view trivial visual stimulus is also an important part of my life, I decided to catch The Weather Network's round the clock coverage of this season's pumpkin nurturing on the TV later and turned back to prepare for the Art Spin ride instead.

Wondering about the proposed route for the Art Spin ride, I sat down beneath a tree and pulled out my Toronto Cycling Map to review what route planning the City of Toronto thought fit to send cyclists out upon.  However after staring at the map for sometime in a desperate search for some sensible and meaningful route, my mind gradually began to wander and my eyesight began to blur.  Gradually my sight focused and my mind noticed, not the bike lanes and proposed routes, but the enormous blank spaces between them.

I saw meaningless stubs and yawning chasms and began to feel strangely trapped.  Gripped by this alien sense of entrapment, I wondered when new urban planning would liberate Toronto with more facilitating infrastructure till a kindly hobo interrupted my train of thought and offered me a cupcake and a swig of his bourbon.  We chewed the moist cupcake in thoughtful silence when he suddenly extended a hand and introduced himself: "Estragon."  At that moment, I was suddenly seized by a realization so shocking I nearly added extra cushioning to my riding shorts.

I glanced up at the barren tree leaning over me.  Sitting under a barren tree?  With a hobo named Estragon?  Waiting for something that will never come in my life time?  And then I saw it...

I fell into a dizzy stupour and swooned into the kindly hobo's arms.  Coming to my senses, I stuttered madly like St Michael of Monday, so overflowing was I with prophetic revelation.  The hallmarks were all there: the apparent randomness of our journey; the search for meaning and guidance; the ultimate realization of the aimlessness of it all; the frustration and despair at the emptiness and the sense of insignificance; the attempt to impose a path to meaning and instill a sense of personal significance from within if not from without.

A gap in a bike lane that dead ends a few blocks away anyway?

Yes, I suddenly understood: Toronto's infrastructure isn't real infrastructure at all; it's actually an enormous Absurdist art installation.

Seen in Etobicoke: 'Use other sidewalk'?  What other sidewalk?!

Toronto cyclists aren't participants in an alternate modal scheme; they're the audience of the greatest wool-pulling in human history.  They pick their way across a patchwork of ridiculous routes, encountering disparate and random bits of 'infrastructure' that appear to offer meaningful guidance but ultimately lead no where.  Some search for guidance, but find none and begin to despair.  In the face of such despair, some impose their own routing of their journey and set forth regardless, while others wait for the Godot of Progressive Infrastructure under the wilting tree of city hall.

This realization got me wondering: who needs Art Spin when there's an entire exhibit waiting outside your door?

Ambiguity & Acronyms: Imposing Narratives (Pun Intended?)

In these heady days of media saturation, garnering attention for your cause or institution requires persistence, keen cultural insight, and focused acumen.  However, if you don't have any of those, you can just make an old school hip hop reference and hope for the best:

The COC 'maintains authenticity' by referencing the mix tapes of yesteryear.

Unfortunately, not all institutions are able to sustain relevance through a judicious appliqué of such pregnant cultural references.  Some are forced to remind the world of their existence through more oblique methods, such hosting an extraordinarily 'crunk' pig roast, holding a 'nude-in' in protest of pretty much everything, or, in the case of the Urban Repair Squad (a.k.a. U.R.S.), by picking at a scab.

The U.R.S. recently attempted to address the gap between bike lanes on Harbord St by painting an image so ambiguous that it needed a supplemental heremeneutical key to decode its message:

At a glance the ambiguous stencil could imply an area with a high risk of wheel theft or refer to parking space for art bikes.  From the angle shown it also looks a like a descending invasion of Space Invaders aliens (that'd really trip somebody out as they cycled up to it):

Never mind the alien, here's an ambiguous bicycle stencil!

However, U.R.S. has employed its position of power to impose a narrative of coherence on the installation and proletarians of Art such as my clodish self must submit to their prescribed interpretation that the symbol is to represent confusion over the gapping bike lanes.*

Derp?: Proletarian of Art

I'm a little uncertain why there's so much fuss about connecting bike lanes when cyclists travel so much unmarked pavement without incident throughout the rest of the city.  The same advocates who encourage cyclists to ride defensively and use sound judgment, 'taking the lane' when there's insufficient space for a vehicle to pass and so on, are attempting to characterize this stretch of pavement as a veritable Gauntlet of Doom that will swallow you alive if you go wheeling into its jaws.  The inconsistency confuses me more than the stenciled item splayed out on the pavement in front of me.

I also question why U.R.S. couldn't be a little more productive and just go ahead installing the sharrows that would offer a bit more guidance than their ambiguous stencil series (A.S.S.?).  Such a gesture would put Rob Ford in a bind because they'd be cutting costs by installing infrastructure themselves while using a medium that Ford would consider vandalism.  It would be so rich in irony that flocks of hipsters would migrate down Harbord St from Sam James Coffee Bar to gather in their vicinity and smoke poutingly while complaining that "the old pavement was better."

Tooth Paste for Dinner

However, I'm glad to see that U.R.S., like typical white people, having raised awareness are now sitting back and leaving the real work of urban renewal up to the City of Toronto because, frankly, the city is in dire need of practice.  The city's fledgling foray into installing sharrows on College St was a farce (sure, they're visible when there isn't a car parked over them), but their Lansdowne Ave attempt showed some promise.  I'm sure they'll improve.

Here's hoping that in the interim U.R.S. will refrain from installing more bike lane infrastructure for getting from here to there (B.L.I.G.H.T.?) on the assumption that Toronto's cyclists are too stupid to travel a few blocks without being coddled by a few white lines.  They've made it this far, and I have some faith in them.

In the interim, I'd rather U.R.S. focus their acumen at those riding along the sidewalk even though a bike lane has been provided for their convenience.  Now that's a farce.


* A note from THE CLOG: If your mind didn't wander at the word 'gapping', then be blest; you are truly pure of heart.

Fools on Parade: You're Just Imagining Things

I want to be this person's kid.

While washing and tuning my bicycle in preparation for my daily "fantastic voyage" to the corner artisan stand for a cupcake and some bourbon, I reflected on the significance of a George Smitherman campaign vehicle caught parking in a bike lane and decided that there was none.  I then reflected on the significance of his opponents' haranguing.  Joe Pantalone, the personification of minimality these days, made convenient use of Smitherman's indiscretion to emphasize the likewise minimality of his own error in comparison to Smitherman's clearly larger and prolonged use of the bike lane for unauthorized purposes.  Rob Ford in turn proved that his rapier wit is about as agile as his fat ass with this flaccid zinger: "“I hope he parked there by mistake because he was so busy looking for the $1 billion of taxpayers’ money he lost on eHealth."  But even these condemnations were of no significance.  What is significant is the all the feigned indignation over someone blocking a bike lane with a vehicle at all.  I'm waiting for the remaining candidates to get caught too so that all of them could, in a rare moment of consensus building and shared responsibility, issue a public statement explaining their behaviour:

"Thy coilings stinketh as much as our coilings."

At least then they'd actually be honest for once, rather than all this dissembling.

Continuing on the theme of misused infrastructure, I'm pleased to announce that a separated bike lane will be installed on University Ave after all.  This Sunday, in keeping with Toronto's official bike lane installation protocol, a segregated bike lane to nowhere will be installed, used for purposes other than the efficient movement of commuters from points various to sundry, and then removed in deference to automobile convenience shortly thereafter.  I refer of course to the heretofore ignored Queens Park Grand Prix, which only lately gained notoriety when Canadian competitive cyclist Ryder Hesjedal deigned to grace us with his presence.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the event.  I enjoy attending such events, not only to ogle fit women in spandex ("So what?  Everybody does it."), but also to take in the fascinating spectacle of pretentious white people trying to get more into competitive cycling for the same reasons they want to get more into soccer.  It's a physically demanding athletic pursuit steeped in European tradition, making it an excellent hobby for discerning (read 'class conscious') white people who like to telegraph through their possessions and pursuits that they're not the type of person who would vote for Rob Ford.

Fortunately, for those looking to telegraph their voting patterns through frame choice but are blessed with only a moderate sense of taste and suffer from chronic lapses in judgment (known elsewhere as 'conformity') there is a made-in-Toronto solution: Cervélo.  While not ubiquitous on Toronto's streets per se, thick flocks of Cervélos can be flushed out into the open with pro- tactics like decoying (ride a steel road bike on the Martin Goodman Trail) and baiting (erect a red stoplight on Lakeshore Blvd W or hang a sign offering espresso for sale).

Like a dingo to an unattended baby.  (Field photography by Hellovello.ca)

Their riders are rarely anything more than aspirants and, being copious in numbers and low on Power Gel, are readily easy to capture.  The subsequent dilution of Cervélo's pedigree in Toronto is already starting to trickle down.  Indeed, so passé is the Cervélo in Toronto that they're already being abandoned for commuting and fixie conversions, as seen here.

(For the record, fixie riders don't vote; they have a single-tarck mind.)

Those with more discerning tastes and a less than discerning sense of what they actually need, the GTA offers still more superfluity.  Vitesse, an Oakville bike fitter that milks the concept of prestige harder than middle-class hotel and brands itself through 'lifestyle partners' like Porsche, custom tailors bicycles to demanding riders who don't find stock frames acceptable for whatever reason.  This is supposed to sound prestigious.  All it implies to me, however, is that the purchaser's probably a deformed clod with poor flexibility and delusional aspirations.  But $6,000-$11,000 is a steep price to pay to learn that your old frame was fine and that you suck.  Being adverse to risk (among a host of other allergies) I prefer to just assume I do and pocket the money.

On the opposite end of the pay scale, there are those in Toronto who labour to affect bike snobbery under the strictures of a budget and the result sometimes leaves me apoplectic.  I do not refer to the uppity on Specialized aluminum road bikes with a 105 group.  I refer to this:

Mating a KHS Flite 100 with a single Sram S80 (or likeness thereof) is just... just... I'm sorry.  I can't go on...

The Dutch Oven: Toronto Guilty of Pedalling Foreign Influence?

Dutch cycling lore being all the rage in North America, trend watchers are scouring Dutch urban centres (read 'scraping the bottom of the barrel') for the hottest new trends in Dutch cycling.  This season's must-ape protocol is the advanced locking technique:

The Hollander High Lock.

Toronto cyclists, eager to flaunt their progressive (and therefore Dutch) attitude to cycling, are adding a sprinkling of Dutch Delight to their own locking techniques, as can be seen with this cruiser shackled outside the entrance to University of Toronto's Bike Chain:

So coercive is the allure of Dutch cycling (and so powerful is the sucking vortex created by the gapping vacuum where Toronto's indigenous cycling wisdom should be) that the City of Toronto, in partnership with the Royal Consulate of the Netherlands, is importing Dutch urban planners to assist Toronto in developing dynamically synergistic and integrative 'movementways' in partnership with cautiously optimistic public-private community initiatives on a going forward basis.  In other words, they're going to tell us how to do stuff we're apparently too stupid to figure out ourselves.  Organizers are publicizing the epic meeting of minds as the Toronto ThinkBike Workshop to create the illusion that genuinely reflective thought will be done at the event.

Toronto's Team Blue is tasked with the tasking task of making a network a network to free up Team Orange to tackle the more difficult issue of separated bike lanes, something Toronto has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that it's too stupid to figure out on its own.  Dispensing my usual pessimism, I'm genuinely eager to see the Hollanders' plan.  The Dutch, having mastered dikes before mastering the art of cooking, are also masters of the installation and routing of alternative transportation within urban centres.  I am convinced that Team Orange's system of dikes, sluice gates, canals, and locks will revolutionize cycling in Toronto:

When approaching an intersection, the cyclist will be floated up to street level through a series of locks powered solely by the cyclist's own smugness.  Exiting the canal system at destinations along the route will be facilitated through the use of sluice gates opening onto individual buildings, which will be paid for through public-private initiatives and will create much-needed jobs for local sluice gate artisans (when they've taken up rug-making, you know times are tough).

Given the rich Dutch content of the event, one marvels to see Curbside Cycle's Eric Kamphoff conspicuously absent from the event bill.  Perhaps he'll feature as a surprise guest speaker, ready to embiggen us all with a slide show and lecture on the vast superiority of cycling in Europe, topped off with the de rigueur image of Kamphoff sucking on a pastry:

It wouldn't be European without it.

Good: Bad

As a socially-challenged and pessimistic person (read, 'asshole'), I find it difficult to see the best in people.  However, I was genuinely inspired to a rare plateau of optimism yesterday by an empathetic Sysco Foods truck driver, who graciously parked his vehicle while making a delivery at College St & Huron St.

Curious, I asked the driver if his parking job was a reflection of progressive protocols at Sysco Foods.  "No," he replied, "I park this way because I ride a bike myself.  I know how it is."  Though heartened by the gesture, my optimism immediately evaporated the moment I turned around and saw the more typical state of affairs directly behind me:

So common is bike lane imbecility in Toronto that even the Toronto Police Service, who recently brayed about their wide-sweeping blitz of cyclists and pedestrians, can't use them properly:

Police 'salmon' in the Jarvis St bike lane.

...much less enforce the most basic rules, even when an offender is right in front of a flock of officers:

Out of eight officers, not even one could bother to ask the motorist to move along?

Certainly all major cities struggle with infrastructure issues and enforcement of traffic regulations is immensely difficult given the sheer volume of users.  London, Paris, and New York all wrestle with the counter-productive behaviour of their populuses populi? populae? pupae? citizens.  However, whereas the Thrivy League of major world cities have embraced the challenge of implementing progressive transportation policies and infrastructure, Toronto faces a bevy of incumbent politicians who will either stall such change or actively remove it.

Rocco Rossi: "When I'm elected mayor, I will take this city backwards."
Rob Ford: "But you won't take it back far enough.  We need to go right back to the dawn of humanity!"

One could either laugh or cry, depending on what mood one's in.