damn, if cycling is elite why did I get called a poorboy all those years for biking everywhere? ripoff
"Buy a car you cheap fuk!" was shouted at me a couple of times here
I was yelled "buy a bike you cheap fuck!" by a coworker cuz I used to walk 8 km from work to home
Because you were probably riding Tr*k or any of those <5k USD bices
Cause it shifted.
Cycling activism had a resurgence in the past few years what with the looming apocalypse and all. And as the eco movement grew stronger you really noticed the transient property that shifted bicyclist from trash poors who deserve to be spat for not having enough money for a car to privileged elites
this is such a common misconception that there's a term for the lower class cyclists: "invisible cyclists"
they are so easily ignored by most folks, they are non-existent in the perception of a lot of folks, but they exist if you actually look for them
old article about this: https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20049826/how-low-income-cyclists-go-unnoticed/
this quote lays it out pretty clearly:
a lot of cities are focusing their efforts on building bicycle infrastructure to attract new cyclists (aka the “creative class”) rather build it for low income folks who already bike. This promotion of the creative class cycling is definitely linked to gentrification. In this way, cities are basically saying that “invisible” cyclists do not belong within their rebranded vision of a city for and by the so-called “creative” class.
from a discussion here: https://bikeleague.org/rethinking-term-invisible-cyclist/
It’s similar to how most vegans are non white and lower income but the media portrays them as some Manhattan socialite eating soy caviar at a Michelin star restaurant
Totally.
The first people I met that were vegan, trans, queer and used pronouns and also were internationalist intersectionalist (yes all of that at the same time) were punks in squats, who were poor, not seldomly drop outs (from school or in general) and most did not have rich or even economical okay parents. That was in the 90s-early 2000s.
But it is too hard for our Dr. Engineering to use words like they, fuck off.
I work retail and biked and skated everywhere for 30 years. Also I wish we got chairs as cashiers in the US.
I dont understand why cashiers cant sit? As a customer I feel bad for them. It must be uncomfortable, they're not on guard are they.
Lazy cashiers getting to sit all day
Now, let me go to my office job where I get to sit all day
Yeah it's bullshit, IDK if it's because of cheaping out on chairs or because of sheer spiteful "sitting is basically slacking"
Latent puritanism
Homeless guys bicycling to the scrap yard to sell deposit cans and scrap metal are the elite
Not allowed to do that here in the UK any more. Need a £250 a year waste collection licence. Little hitlers have done van drivers here for having rubbish in their cab.
Not sure if that is a bit or not.
fellas, is it gay to stay fit?
I'm far from elite. I just really like my bike over a car. In my city a car is slower unless you're going really far since a bike won't be stopped in traffic. Plus my bike is an MTB so i can ride over anything I want. Can't do that in a car without getting in trouble.
7 miles of standing traffic here sometimes when we have cruise ships in. Bikes and motorbikes are the only way through them.
I pay money for one of those bike rentals from Lyft
Still much cheaper than just parking or constantly getting my bike stolen lmao
this has nothing to do with anything except a critique of the characterization of physical labor jobs and cardio.... i used to be a seasonal farmworker. not like tractor riding, either. like straight up vegetable picker without any fancy automation. i was young and did a lot of stretching before and after work, so in some ways i was in incredible shape after many months of this. very flexible, strong back, strong hands, seemingly preternatural stamina for just constantly doing shit all day in the heat and humidity. and a remorseless eating machine. a lot of dudes i worked with didn't stretch and while they were tough as balls and could do major work, but had a lot of posture problems from pulls and sprains and shit. if there were any kind of equity in this world, farm workers would get unlimited massage therapy and all that body work stuff that is gatekept behind $$$ for people who like sit in an ergonomic chair and make six figures.
my cardio was dogshit though lmao. like i could walk anyone else into the ground, but anything quicker or longer than a little jog would have me feeling like i was dying.
Working in the sun increases the blood pressure too, due to the body dealing with UV as well as the heat.
I think elites usually get around in chauffeured SUVs and private jets
Cyclists run the gamut but cycling infrastructure favors the wealthy. This favor is explicit (where agencies choose to create infrastructure, systematically) and implicit (land use follows "the market", pushing the poor away from infrastructure).
This would not be the case if we fixed the latter by overthrowing the capitalist class - or at leasr scaring the shit out if them.
cycling infrastructure favors the wealthy. This favor is explicit (where agencies choose to create infrastructure, systematically) and implicit (land use follows "the market", pushing the poor away from infrastructure).
how does cycling infrastructure favour the wealthy
It's built where they live and where they want to go.
ok so you don't mean the existence of cycling infrastructure favours the wealthy you mean the lack of it disadvantages the poor
People choose to make capital investments to create cycling infrastructure. The active decision and investment and work is on the side of that coin that favors the wealthy.
Land use and the emphasis on car-centric streets do as well, and is normally what cycling infrastructure is bolted onto. So the "default" lack of infrastructure was also intentionally created that way to favor the wealthy - the people who could afford cars early on. Streets were a commons that got restricted to private vehicles.
I used to bike everywhere because my job didn't pay enough to save up for a car and its associated upkeep, and the busses were just slower than biking. I really hate carbrains.
My workmates always complained that I should have to somehow pay the same as they pay in avoidable taxes and add fuel costs on top.
Brought to you buy the people that think roads just inherently deterioate in like 2 years tops
Although this is sadly kind of true. In major metro areas commuting distances if you want an affordable apartment are often way too high for cycling. Although cycling to a commuter bus/train isn't out of the question!
sadly kinds true
No it isn't
Wait I misread the tweet. It's silly to think of office drones as the elite anyway. Where I live you'd need at least a second paycheck for a decent lifestyle with a lot of office jobs. I remember being surprised that most of the office workers had 40+ min train commutes when I had my first "real" job in 00s and the city and surroundings has only gotten less affordable.
While there is some percentage of people so desperate they literally don't have any choice about where they can live, that doesn't describe most workers at least in developed countries. For a given rent, most workers have a choice to have more space at the expense of living in the suburbs and having a long commute, or less space and living closer to/within the urban core, such that you can get around on a bike if you want.
The latter aren't elite, they just make different choices.
There's also the phenomenon of disregarding car costs in choice of location due to lack of imagination about not needing one car per person
I know quite a few non poor people who moved to the suburbs or exurbs because they "couldn't" afford a single family home in cycling distance, then pretty much immediatly spend 60k on new cars because they need them to be reliable and then burn through like 300€ / month in operating cost for the commute alone at which point they would've had enough budget to level out the price difference.
They're mostly cool people, but a few of them definitely turned into carbrained I am the disadvantaged working class, those damn 2br apartment elite city slickers people
"Walking? Exercise!??! WhAt ArE wE a BuNcH oF AsIaNs!?!?!"
Whenever you hear something like that, you know an idea is good.
Jeremy Corbyn was a pioneer of riding a chairman Mao style bicycle.
This is the type of post you make when you have direct experience in a major european city, but have fuck all in the way of tools to analyse this situtation, and have also given the subject zero extra thought beyond your gut reaction. I know this, because I had the exact same type of thinking when I was 19 and had just started university.
Also just a quick story time: When I had a job in central Copenhagen, there was definitely an element of class to the choices in transportation, as me and the other young grads had to take the train to work, as both of us lived some 20 odd kilometers from the office we worked in, while my boss and most of the upper management were all congratulating themselves on being eco-conscious and biking to work.
This is something that gets repeated on these very boards - in this very thread!
ubereats bike rider being the elite, imagine that
twitter = bad take machine
Random capitalization Really does seem like a boomer Trait! 
So does weird spacing and misuse of punctuation marks !!
This was supposed to be c/traingang, so post as many train pictures as possible.
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