Posts by Stephen Judd
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Notes & Queries: In The Face of Global…, in reply to Brent Jackson,
I did a project on 18th century piracy in primary school, and I’ve never understood why people want to dress kids up as rapists and murderers.
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Notes & Queries: In The Face of Global…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Didn’t anyone stop and ask themselves “Kids dressing up as a fictional child-molesting serial killer. Just a teeny-tad on the tasteless side, perchance”?
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Partly, I think it speaks to the nature of 9/11 as a media event.
On the day I wanted to punch some excited teenagers on the bus who were excitedly chattering to each other about how it was just like a movie. Yet it was, for almost everyone except those people who were actually there.
I’m sure that TV and film spectacle has something to do with creating a sense of detachment, as we are fed horror for enertainment. No doubt someone more learned than me can find an appropriate French theorist to cite in support of this.
I also see a mainstreaming of tastelessness and grotesque humor. The sort of thing I used to snicker at in alt.tasteless years ago has escaped and mutated via 4chan and Something Awful and memes and Reddit and so on to the point where it’s mainstream, particularly among the young. See also shockjocks, media deregulation, … If you had puerile tastes in the 70s or 80s it was pretty rare to find companionship except among people you actually knew, but some time in the last 20 years we reached a point where your formerly unacceptable snickering is shared by an extended, distributed peer group that competes.
As to the Indian-looking guy in the shirt – it’s a world event far away. I remember reading about a Hitler-themed restaurant in Taiwan. We identify with the victims because we’re part of the Anglo cultural sphere, but maybe that’s too much to expect from others. Or maybe he’s just tasteless too.
Finally: as a counter-proposal, maybe the internet is giving us a false impression. Perhaps carefully selected set of photos here that may have taken a long time to put together doesn’t really tell us as much about people at large as all that.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Lucy Stewart,
I got a really good deal on Ortliebs by haunting UK cycle retailer websites for a few weeks until one had some on special. Got them about half the price they would retail at here. They have proved to be excellent.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Martin Roberts,
Such cyclists rarely feature in discussions like this – perhaps like the construction workers discussed upthread.
+1.
I feel a Tumblr coming on.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Simon Adamson,
Essential detail in avoiding sweating: I never wear a bag on my back. The panniers have been a really good purchase.
Yes, panniers are part of my rig too. And avoiding back sweat was a factor in deciding to buy them.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Keir Leslie,
It’s a fundamentally bourgeois/professional conception of clothing.
This is true, and I thank for you bringing the radical class analysis to the discussion. In fact I should go on to note that many of the non-lycra'd commuters I see are guys in boots on their way to work in the red zone or surrounding building sites, and I doubt whether getting sweaty on the way to work makes much different when you're going to get sweaty anyway.
Nonetheless, if there's no secondhand tweed at the revolution then I'm not coming.
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I've got to admit that one big reason I could ride in work clothes in Wellington was that going to work was either flat or downhill, thus getting sweating on the hill climb home was a non-issue.
Here in Chch the lycra commuters are definitely a minority. Terrain makes the difference.
"Copenhagen chic" is predicated on riding modest distances at a modest pace with modest effort (whatever "modest" means to you).
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Alice Ronald,
there’s the one guy who likes to literally go against the flow & ride the opposite direction in the cycle lane (so he’s facing the oncoming cars & bikes).
NYC Bike Snob refers to this as "salmoning".
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About the bike lanes inside the line of parked cars: exactly this set up is being built in Ilam Road by the University of Canterbury right now. So there will be empirical data soon.
In fact the cycling provisions in the Christchuch council's draft plan are on the fact of it rather good, Dutch style intersections and everything if I understand correctly, provided they ever get built...