Bicentennial Subterrane

Depending upon whom you ask, the bicycle was “invented” between 1816 and 1818, about 200 years ago, by Karl von Drais, who fashioned his Laufmaschine, a wooden dandyhorse, upon which you sat astride and strode to glide, that is, if you dismiss Cardinal Borromeo’s compiled Codex Atlanticus (1609) of Leonardo da Vinci drawings, which clearly shows he doodled exactly the same thing 2 centuries earlier. Savvy historians point to blacksmith Pierre Michaux’s 1850’s iron boneshaker velocipede to which he attached a crank and pedals to front wheel, thus making it an integral conveyance in popular demand where sales could expand to America, eventually adding ball bearing hubs and more comfortable saddles. To this day tricycles for tots still mimic his design. Geopolitical and patent issues crimped production in 1870’s everywhere but England, where Starley and supporters added chain drives, coaster brakes, curved handlebars, and pneumatic tires, from which the safety bike emerged. In 1970’s San Francisco, Repack Races down Mt. Tamalpais hiking trails got Breeze and bros to innovate mountain bikes. Rather than a sole invention to which scores lay claim, the bicycle is better described as a technological evolution that credits many and enormously influenced modernity, particularly free locomotion on paved roads.

Labann has only been at this literary critique of bicycling culture for 2 decades, less than 10% of its existence, ridden for just 25% through 3 bike booms, though it’s history many would rather bury. Consumers don’t care or give credit due. Similarly, art economics resemble mental health treatments: Ignored too long then incarcerated to remove imagined threat to public. Sure, you’d have to be clinically insane to expect anyone to support your creations. As in Leonardo’s day, it comes down to individual patrons, such as an eager renaissance monarch, much rarer crowd funding, or steadfast self sufficiency. In 1800’s writing novels or poems was a pastime for bored well-heeled bourgeoisie, until two-wheelers boomed and they assumed another hobby. Society was thus spared a small percent of self serving drivel. Kids now attend cell phones where no education occurs, no effort is exerted, no judgment gets applied, and no rules or scruples are encouraged. This has already been identified as a new menace of depression and sleep disturbance, exactly the opposite of bicycling. Advertisers would have everyone settle for less, spend too much, and succumb to poor mental health.

Artists need not ask for a government handout. Despite existing Percent for Art laws, feds and states only endow art foundations and nonprofits, whose directors answer to entrenched institutions and power brokers, and pocket lion’s share of proceeds after paying slave wages and relying on volunteers. This is done to siphon taxation and stifle dissent. Beauty and truth undermine money-grubbing schemes, so suffer from abandonment and disenfranchisement. Without direct funding, art, something half of human brains seem wired to beget, has little chance to produce masterpieces. Consequently, too many creative minds wind up on welfare or worse. Wage earning taxpayers underwrite destructive non-production. Life without art would be unlivable. This equation doesn’t work on any level.

How does society expect advancement? Maybe get lucky when someone can’t help but innovate? From about 1880 to 1980, corporations rolled a tenth of profits into R&D, thus paid engineers to imagine more reliable ways of delivering avant-garde designs. All that changed in the 1990s, a decade of acquisitions, divestitures and mergers aimed primarily at cheapening products and cutting “backroom” efforts, particularly expensive accounting and engineering. Whenever an outsider beat them to an improvement, they’d simply buy out start-up to either absorb or block disruptive change. Corporations since spent billions NOT to introduce things that might serve your needs better or safer, thwart improvements to manage previous investments, and treat consumers as suckers. Yes, you’ll have to rebuy your favorite album, ap or book each time technology morphs per their profit motives. Already on 5th new cell phone, 8th new personal computer, 21st operating system. You either put up, shut up, or you’re crushed like a bug in their grill, do without, no real option when important information is only made available over internet, or lay down for a dirt nap.

Profits proliferate unilaterally when those impoverished convince themselves they must go faster. Bicyclists impede automotive recklessness, so other traffic can hardly stomach. Indeed, some would stick bicyclists below ground, with no sunshine and questionable air, already happening in Amsterdam, Louisville, London, Tokyo and Utrecht, out of sight, but still simmering in subconscious. What about safety when earthquakes occur or water table rises? Worst plan puts bicyclists on spin machines inside sweaty gyms. Breeds disease. No such necropolis could hold late avid cyclist Robin “Bicentennial Man” Williams, whose ashes were scattered in San Francisco Bay. His subterrane demise represents yet another route folks despise, so hastily surmise and seldom analyze.

News you can’t use fills airwaves, usually stuff that doesn’t affect you or you can do nothing about. Around bicycling’s dawn Mark Twain may have said but never wrote, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Media today seems determined to continue that way, fill you with dread through misinformation, and instruct you to act ineffectually. Lately almost everything you hear solely intends to make speaker’s life better, not yours. Scams abound. Meanwhile New England cyclists abide wet slush awaiting another chance to ride outdoors. Any more global temperature tip and you’ll instead have to invest in a personal submarine ship.