Vancouver Critical Mass
super doo!
Just for fun, a 1940ish movie collection of some unusual bikes. Recumbents, seatless unicycles, triplets, tall bikes, trailers, etc.
You thought that most of these were new developments? Think again.
(from Ron Richings on velolove)
You thought that most of these were new developments? Think again.
(from Ron Richings on velolove)
Labels: fun, hpv, tall bikes, trailers
posted by VanCM Blogger @ 8/04/2008 12:28:00 pm
2 Comments:
At 9:55 pm, August 14, 2008,
wakeful said…
Unbelievable !!! Who knew ? CM is 70 years old. And I havent seen anything to match the sewing machine bike yet, in boring old Vancouver.
At 11:01 am, August 16, 2008,
VanCM Blogger said…
Pedalplay did make a sewing machine bike and also a bathtub rowing bike... But both of these were short lived... and I don't think were tallbike/tandems.
Where are you getting the 70 year old CM idea from? I'll have to re-watch the video (I don't mind, I get more every time) but I don't remember anything like that... Not to say that CM isn't 70 years old. Cyclists were Massing in the Thousands in SF in 1895 - for the cause of paved roads no less! (At that time bikes were the newest thing, not a counterculture) It really comes down to how you define CM. I would cite the Montreal rides in the 70s and "die-ins" as early examples of the CM/Reclaim the Streets movements.
I think probably that anything before the 1950s or at least WW2 would have to be considered fundamentally different from CM. I would say this because around then the era of automobile dominance began. Before then bikes were still considered so modern - that to compare Mass biking then to now - misses out on some of the Appropriate Technology ludditism (Luddite in the best activist historical sense) However, I do agree that there are important parallels and continuity. The bicycle was very early on a populist/pedestrian way to get around, simply because it is so simple and so self reliant. I suppose the comparison to Calvalry and the elite on horses might be fairly made when considering the earliest cycling when bikes and the metalworking technology attain them was fairly limited... But even then a bike could be repaired in a blacksmith's shop in 1890s (An American Cycling Odyssey, 1887 Kevin J. Hayes) which was pretty common... But that's on the topic of individual cycling rather than group Massing.
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