Bicycle Fixation Weblog
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10/03/2009: "When Worlds Converge"
Perhaps inevitably, my son, now twenty-three, went through a phase once common in the US when he was too cool to ride a bicycle. He preferred, as they often do, to storm about noisily in a car--though he was careful to keep his bikes well cared for in the garage, at least: even his first ever, a tiny red Schwinn that he long ago vowed to keep for his own children.And he did not forget my promise to give him my old Bridgestone XO-2 when he became large enough to ride it: he called in the promise when he was around 19, though he rode only a few times a year.
Now, suddenly--thanks in great part to fixie punk culture, Midnight Ridazz, C.R.A.N.K. Mob, and the like--he is riding again.
LA's new bike youth culture works out well for him: unlike his early-bird dad, he is a night owl, and he's been scorching about town in the wee hours with crowds of other twentysomethings, partying in vacant lots till 4AM, then pedaling home. Yes, the boy who didn't like to break a sweat outside the gym is riding from his door to Echo Park, Downtown, and East LA on the swift little Fuji road bike I gave him a couple of years ago, when he wanted something "faster than that XO-2." (Not that he will agree to give the XO-2 back....)
And now he's speaking of a fixie, which would be nice for "tooling around the neighborhood."
As he put it himself a few months ago, "for better or worse, it looks like our worlds are converging."
Or just opening their eyes to one another.
Let the curmudgeons mock the fixie punks and their party culture all they want: it has been good for cycling, and so for the city and our worlds. Party on!
