Rather amusing piece in the Grauniad.
"It’s hard to find the hippies and the explorers any more."
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Cycling is the new golf.
(41 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
-
"So pervasive is this trend that it seems to be sucking the life out of other parts of cycling. It’s hard to find the hippies and the explorers any more. It’s all about the competition and the conformity"
He really can't be trying very hard to find the non-competitive cyclists out there. Not very hard at all...
What's interesting is the article is predicated on the fact he loved adventure, getting lost, taking time to see things, taking time to say hello... And yet it begins and ends with extolling the virtues of a female cyclist who is (granted self-sufficiently) setting out to cover a specific route as quickly as possible. So racing. And despite being on her own, quite competitive. And I suspect she's going to log to Strava or a Strava-a-like.
Weird.
It's very much an article along the lines of, "This is why I like cycling, though I don't do it anymore, but other people now do a different kind of cycling to the cycling I don't do, and it makes me sad because this means I probably won't be able to do the cycling I don't do." This guy is not one for standing up to peer pressure...
(And it's possible to be both - I'll go on training rides and race Strava; I'll hop on the bike in my jeans to go to the shop with a pannier; or I'll put my big camera in a backpack and take a slow pootle around Musselburgh looking for birds).
Why, as cyclists, do we look at cyclists who aren't like us and get all defensive? A Rapha-lycra roadie is on a bike; a hippy in sandals on a Pashley 3 speed is on a bike. Both make me happy.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Cycling is the new golf" or so they say
http://www.citycyclingedinburgh.info/bbpress/topic.php?id=10331
Posted 9 years ago # -
At least if golf-people are playing golfs or wearing golf-costumes in the vicinity of a golf pitch it's easy to identify them; it's trickier if they're wearing cycling outfits. Hopefully whilst they're cycling they're less likely to steal old railway routes to build new golf holes on.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@WC- well said- a strange article.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I played golf for years but it was never, ever, like the golf described in the article. Maybe what I played was "gowf", something that had no class distinction, needed no expensive clubs (I used a second-hand set) and cost next to nothing (annual club membership was £40 but you could play for free in the evenings when everyone went home). I think this is just another London-centric view of the world. And anyway, talking about bike kit is a lot more inclusive than finding yourself listening to someone describing their cycle trip around the world.
Posted 9 years ago # -
It must have been a REALLY long time since he last cycled because for a large tract of my cycling life, cycling was taken over by mountain bikers and mountain biking and all the gear and bike shops revolved around it.
There is much more bike diversity now than there has been in the past 20 years IMO.
This guy is not one for standing up to peer pressure...
Don't forget he is talking about London and London is all about fitting in and being with the cool crowd, no matter how silly the trousers.
(Cycling Mollie got there before me while I was typing)
Posted 9 years ago # -
"... no matter how silly the trousers."
I like the idea of trousers being the signifier of what is 'hip'. You're right though, London is a different world!
Posted 9 years ago # -
I like the idea of trousers being the signifier of what is 'hip'.
Aren't they? It seems to me that every trend brings in a new kind of stupid trousers. Like the super skinny drainpipe ones, the ones where the waistband encircles the wearers knees or the *current ones that finish somewhere above the ankles for no obvious reason. But it was when I started noticing that some cool and trendy men were wearing trousers that were actually joined together at the knees, I realised that we had reached the Trouser Event Horizon.
Golf trousers suddenly seem sensible!
*I might be out of date now
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min
"some cool and trendy men were wearing trousers that were actually joined together at the knees"
You what????
*Goes back and hides in his cave in darkest Fife*
Posted 9 years ago # -
Did they split into two legs as normal at the gusset then re-join at the knees or did the bodyrise extend from knee to waist, like MC Hammer's harem pants? I believe the "Hoxton Wheelers" photo-set included a gentleman in similar garb, where it looked like he'd accidentally put his legs through the armholes of a jumper.
Posted 9 years ago # -
That article is a bit of balls, isn't it?
I certainly prefer having all these why-aren't-they-playing-golfers on their bikes than in their BMW's impatiently trying to get past me to make their tee time at Gullane...
Besides, a side-effect of these "men with money and power" getting on their bikes is a raised profile of cycling that can be used to bring improvements for everyone else.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Did they split into two legs as normal at the gusset then re-join at the knees or did the bodyrise extend from knee to waist, like MC Hammer's harem pants?
We are talking MC Hammer but tight. They seem to be beloved of parkour persons and look like they could be the worst possible thing to wear for parkour.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I've seen those! I also saw someone the other day wearing the uber-skinny drainpipes with the 'carrot top' (where the crotch hangs low and the waistband is held up by the middle of your buttocks so that you can display your pants labelling).
Truly bizarre. I don't mind the slightly shorter jeans with a wee turn-up. Mainly because being tall I struggle to get jeans that fit properly (save a couple of notable exceptions where I shop now) and at school was always the butt of 'half mast' trouser quips, simply because I outgrew my troos too quickly and we were too poor (violins) to replace them regularly.
Not sure where my cycling 3/4 troos sit in the mix - though on my I've noted before that they're closer to 3/5 troos...
Posted 9 years ago # -
I am pretty sure that 3/4 troosers (the Americans call them "knickers", teehee) for cycling have been going for a very long time and are very practical although, ironically on me they tend to sit at the slightly above the ankle stage..
(obviously I am not talking about tall people who struggle to get trousers to fit but with the actual real trend for it)
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Cyclingmollie My Ayrish father-in-law refers to golf as "gowf" but I (6'0") still had to borrow a pair of trousers from him (5'7") when he wanted to take us to his gowf-pitch's gowf-building for some food when we were through one weekend. His other grandchildren (aged 11, 8 and 5 at the time) were also once moaned at by the building's operatives when they were taken in for a similar meal whilst they were wearing trainers.
The practise of golfings in England is fortunately much rarer than up here; unfortunately my childhood village came with a course already attached and was later to become a centre of golfing excellence with an entire extra fieldsworth of holes installed where there used to be some lovely woodland and a lovely pile of straw bales. Down there the people doing it are much more likely to be socially snottier, as exemplified by people barking at children walking along a public footpath that someone was daft enough to build a golf course atop.Posted 9 years ago # -
"We are talking MC Hammer but tight."
Magnificent thread drift.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I was at a wedding reception at Paisley Golf Club where we were told that they'd have to phone the Captain at home to get permission for the wedding guests to remove their ties.
Posted 9 years ago # -
By the way it's my belief that golf is the Scottish pétanque.
You should never play entirely sober, all kit should be second hand and contact with a good player should leave you psychologically traumatised win or lose.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I have never had a conversation with a colleague(s) about cycling where someone air cycled or air crashed.
I have witnessed literally hundreds (worked here 30+ years) amongst golfers where they will all swing imaginary golf shots. In fact I don't think I've ever witnessed a golf conversation where that didn't happen!
Posted 9 years ago # -
As a golfist myself, I find other golfists telling me about every single detail of their last round incredibly boring, regardless of the comedic value of their trews.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Min
"It must have been a REALLY long time since he last cycled because for a large tract of my cycling life, cycling was taken over by mountain bikers and mountain biking and all the gear and bike shops revolved around it."
"Don't forget he is talking about London"
I think this latter explains a lot.
Mountain biking was incredibly visible in Edinburgh during the 1990s because of Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op (importers of some of the first MTBs to the UK back in the 1980s) and also because the local terrain lends itself to the pursuit (Pentlands, lots of unpaved tracks around various hills, the Border, Glentress, etc.)
Darn Sawf there are not many mountains to MTB on. Not even many decent hills near Londinium. So I imagine that MTBers were less visible at local level because they took their bikes in/atop a car to a place where there were mountains (Wales, Scotland) or decent hills (mainly points west and north in England).
Also, the tradition of cycling as transport and for touring declined less rapidly in south east England. Think of Cambridge, Oxford, but also the counties around London, and folk cycling to work, the nearest train station, or heading to the leafy lanes of Suffolk for a weekend's touring. Partly this an effect of the gentler terrain. So English 3 speeds, tourers and the like were likely around in far greater numbers than here.
Certainly when I lived in London in the mid-1990s (probably "peak MTB" era in the UK), although I saw a few mountain bikes ridden as commuters around the city (mostly hard tails, rigid forks), they were outnumbered by more traditional bikes. There were not that many cyclists visible in central London at that time due to the horrendous traffic and the large numbers of motorcycle couriers revving at every junction (and roaring off before pedestrians had finished crossing). This is before the congestion charge and the rise of the internet as a means of getting documents etc. from one office to another.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Magnificent thread drift.
Aye thangyew. Although to my mind, any thread containing golf and trend obsessed Londoners could only go one way.
Darn Sawf there are not many mountains to MTB on.
True, however, there seemed to be a lot of them in Oxford in the late 90's to me although no doubt outpopulated by 3 speeds. Those don't make much money for bike shops though so they would still be dominated by MTB stuff?
Posted 9 years ago # -
Probably true. What we now call road bikes would have still been 'racers' then and thus deeply unfashionable, redolent of the late 1970s/early 1980s 'bike boom', Milk Race, etc. when every teenage boy wanted a drop bar bike with skinny tyres.
I think by late 90s we're heading into the era of the hybrid, which carried forward into the zeroes... Perfect for pootling along a Sustrans route near you.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Although to my mind, any thread containing golf and trend obsessed Londoners could only go one way"
And that way was MC Hammer???
Posted 9 years ago # -
MTBs with amazingly low gears were also weirdly popular in the early/mid nineties in one of the non-Woldy bits of Lincolnshire, not just amongst people who might have used them to travel between boggy fields. All the woodland paths in the area were perfectly navigable on a three-speed.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Round my way in the 80s/early 90s general northern man culture would only allow a male child to ride something suitably rugged and knobbly. Said child would possibly not be allowed to wear a coat by the prevailing mores, neither.
The growth in road cycle sport has made it more acceptable for fellas to ride less draggy bikes, which is all for the good.
Posted 9 years ago # -
And that way was MC Hammer???
The Emperor of daft troosers.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Perhaps cycling is the new squash as well as the new golf. Squash had a reputation as being something businesspersons did whilst having chats about business and being all sweaty and competitive. Cycling-in-costume-for-fitness is a lot more like squash than golf, which is more akin to pootling extremely slowly to the shops, except that you carry a heavy bag in both directions.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I don't think golf or squash have anywhere near enough cake
Posted 9 years ago #
Reply »
You must log in to post.
posts
