TimothyH

Anyone with a keyboard can confirm my claim about the popularity of competitive cycling in the early 20th century.

Any number of books will give a feel for its popularity. I suggest "Road to Valor" about Gino Bartalli. It is an entertaining read even apart from cycling.


-Tim-

livedarklions

The point of the book was that people get a sense of belonging and community from the clubs and organizations they belong to, bowling leagues being just one such example. Putnam's argument was as such communal activity was declining, it leaves us more vulnerable to extremist politics as we turn to politics to fill that gap in our sense of belonging (or to use Putnam's word, being "implicated" in the community).

A lot of people are looking at it as an explanation for the rise of Trumpism, but that's for a different forum.

Not sure it relates at all to laid-backedness.

Rollfast

Those days take more naps.

I-Like-To-Bike

Listened to "Road to Valor" already, nothing about bicycling in North America at all, and it hardly indicated that the Italian or European general public was crazed about bicycle racing in the late 30's or 40's.

I find nothing on the Internet about any country where the general public , but especially in North America, has ever been crazed about the sport of bicycle racing anymore than they were about flagpole sitting or wing walking.

Now if you were talking about soccer or American style football, that might be another story

There are however some indications that perhaps 0.1% of bicyclists might be described as zealous bicycle enthusiasts who are just crazy (as in obsessed) about competitive/racing bicycling activities and its associated equipment and seem to not understand that 99.9% of bicyclists may not be so affected.

Jim from Boston

Whatever happened to the laid-back days of old?From the thread, “Is Bicycling the New "Golf" and Then Some?”: Many posts to several threads about expensive bicycles claim they are bought as status symbols (only, though I dispute that), so maybe in the social order, cycling is becoming more competitive than previously.

rydabent

Again the 80s still seem to be the zenith of cycling so far. The bikes with their beautiful lugged frame and down tube shifters were a work of art. Now we have plastic frames or machine welded butt frames. Some of the romance and mystic has gone out of cycling. While I was never into racing my self, sadly the days of the Coors Classic are just a memory. I attended several. Fortunately many of us still cycle for the joy of it.

Maelochs

Lol .... good old twistedryder ...

Sorry that You have lost the mystical appeal of cycling. Sorry you can only appreciate the bikes which will never come back .... but those are Your choices.

Cycling at its zenith? In the U.S. or the world? Zenith of what? Ids a bike which reminds you of your youth in some way objectively "better" than a modern bike which does all the same things, and more, and does them better?


Were you riding a bent in the '80s?

Sorry you have lost the "romance" .... it happens with age, but you can medication for that.

How can we tell what is ahead for cycling? How can we say it has reached a "zenith"? (Well, we can Say any kind fo stupid crap ... I have proved that amply ... ) But for all w e know, in ten years there will be a North American Grand Tour. For all we know riding will spread massively across the globe with more people using bicycles than at any time in history. Quite possibly there are more people riding Today than ever before, so how has cycling passed its peak?

You are nostalgically attached to your favorite period---but you are also old enough to be wise enough to realize that it is just nostalgia, and personal preference. And even you, the Nostalgia King, don't ride a steel '80s diamond-frame with 12 or 15 gears and down-tube shifters.

There are more options nowadays---including beautiful lugged steel frames for those who want them---than ever before. more people riding, more acceptance of road riders, more bike paths and bike lanes, rails-to-trails which didn't even exist in the 80s, more MTB trails ....

People always have the option of growing old and bitter and saying the world sucks ... what they are really saying is that they enjoyed some earlier period of their lives more.

Me, I hope I get ever better at living and each year I get more out of my life.

However ... i am still scared to ride a tadpole trike in traffic. So even I have to admit the world is not perfect.

MattTheHat 

1. What's a magazine?

2. Because that's all on YouTube, now. Except MUCH MUCH better quality and it's free. And it happens when the viewer wants/needs it. And there's LOTS of content. Touring for example: check out Iohan Gueorguiev. No name should have that many vowels, but his YouTube channel is as laid back as it gets. Awesome touring content.

3. As for other folks not smiling, I guess I just don't worry about it. Look around...there are lots of reasons for folks not to smile these days. Some people walking their dogs don't smile either. Additionally, some riders like to work hard and/or concentrate on training while riding. As a result, they don't spend a lot of time smiling and waving. Why should that concern anyone else?

-Matt

Maelochs

What ever happened to not conflating the limited and biased messages of certain small media outlets with general reality and the actual experience of real people?

livedarklions

Exactly! Magazines make money by delivering eyeballs to advertisers. So all that's going on here is that people are mistaking the marketing strategies of magazines for descriptions of how people actually bike.
Biking magazines attract bike marketers, and only the high end bicycles have enough of a margin to justify spending on marketing. No one buys higher end than racers, so the magazines appeal to racers. In the old days, the low end of the market also had a pretty good profit margin per unit, so advertising those items made economic sense, and the magazines were targeted at a broader spectrum of cyclists. Also, these days, magazines themselves are marketed to a much smaller segment of the market because casual bicyclists aren't going to take the trouble to get paper magazines when there's so much free info online. Your point about the types of videos available on YouTube being more indicative of the range of cycling is a really good one.

MEversbergII

What about mountain bikers?

M.

Maelochs

Too stoned to read?

Cl904

Either that’s not a thing or I need to hang out with more mountain bikers.

livedarklions

https://www.bikemag.com/

OK, you got me--obviously, still, the marketing skews to the high end.

shrtdstncrdr

I think we get the idea sometimes that what we read is how things are everywhere. Like back in the day when I read articles in magazines which made the world seem like doom and gloom while outside my own door, life went along well enough. My family never took much of the media portrayal to heart (I was the first generation born here). The attitude was, if you let yourself get caught up in things, you'd suffer the same consequences as those ranting and raving about how bad things were when in reality, things were rarely as bad as portrayed. My grandfather enforced not asking stupid questions. It is better to pause and refrain from action until you've asked yourself what the potential consequences to your choices of actions appear to be.

Limited view, limited perception. All of us to some degree.

StanSeven

Good thread. But just a reminder before the thread turns south...no politics or current event discussions pleaser else the thread gets moved. I cleaned up the thread to take out posts going off topic. Carry on.

Rollfast

I can't carry most of my bikes anymore.

Spinay70

I blame it on the marketing approach. Slower, more analog back in the day, but same end goal - gettin that dolla. Fast forward to the hyperfocused in yer face ads blitzing us every millisecond wherever you look, its just been turnt up to 11 these days.

Spinay70

P.s. I got no clues on the whole fixie lifestyle fanatics tho. Mars is my best guess.

EddyR

This seems to be a popular topic so I will add my two cents. I was born in 1940 in a smallish upstate NY town. I started riding what we now call road bikes in 1947. I moved to Florida in 1972. In those years I do not remember anyone who road bikes as being laid- back. I road so much that in high school I was known as the guy who is always on a bike. In the 1960's I was on college campuses all over southern NY including Cornell and never saw a lot of bike riders and none that looked like those old Schwinn pictures. I entered a few local races but was a passionate sport rider. I do not remember anyone older that late 20's riding a bike back then. Last years when I was back in my home town for at least the 30th time I took one of my bikes with me and road many of the same places I did as a kid and young adult. One thing that I noticed right away was I felt safe riding in traffic. It was light compared to what I have had to put up with in the last 30 years. There seemed to be a lot more people out riding now that when I lived there years ago. Before I had a car I road my bike to the hobby shop I worked in summers, 35-40 miles round trip.
Funny thing about memory is we remember what we want to remember but it can get distorted with time. I now wish I has some of those old 1930's bikes given to me as a kid. I through them all away as junk around 1960.
EddyR