Saturday 22 January 2011

Cyclists: losers or gentry?

Our coverage of cycle-friendly hairdressers in Cheltenham Road raised a comment from a known subversive: are cyclists therefore gentry? Good point. We hadn't considered the origin of the word gentrification before now.
  1. Really important people: they drive.
  2. Poor, under funded students: they drive.
  3. Outside the inner city, people don't walk.
Cyclists are interesting. While cinema shows that any adult riding a bicycle is a loser, there is some discussion about how best to manage this conflict of images between cyclist-as-loser and cyclist-as-posh-git-with-fancy-bike. The answer is both images are true. Some have money, but not the intelligence to realise they can get a car for the amount they spend bicycles. All are losers.

That's why were horrified to see this footage from Horfield.


Within a couple of seconds, our van encountered two pedestrians and a cyclist -with one of the pedestrians walking in the road as if they had the right to. This is not Montpelier! This is a nice fast road where people park up on the pavement to let passing traffic through. Yet today, somebody walking. Here!

We had to drive up the rest of the road in shock, until the sight of all the cars and vans up on the pavement reassured us that this was a temporary event.
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