@chdot "Twitter troll" - "beyond that"
Possibly, but I'm only aware that he's bombarding everybody on Twitter and also has written a long rambling blog about Vonny, I don't know what else happened.
@SRD Disagreeing is part of life, what's problematic is trying to discredit a person rather than reasoning about arguments and opinions.
I too disagree with Vonny Moyes, but I also disagree with your blog article :-) Have to admit though that this all happened while I was travelling around Europe and didn't follow everything, so I may just have a very trivial opinion.
One thing that isn't clear to me what exactly everybody means by "culture". Wearing certain clothes is a part or symbol of culture, but what else do we mean by "(non-)cycling culture"?
"if we all dressed differently, everything would be fine" - I also doubt that. From a different angle, clothes isn't the issue in Europe. While most cyclists wear non-cycle clothes, some do, and nobody thinks much about it.
This is similar to pedestrians. In any shopping street you see a proportion of people in outdoor clothes (which would have looked totally inappropriate in the 1970s), even carrying rucksacks, but nobody ever thinks "oh they must be those nutters who climb mountains". Fashion buffs perhaps moan about it but everybody else just doesn't judge people for wearing outdoor clothes, everybody knows it's what some people find comfortable. Even more, even archetypical climbing equipment like rucksacks are now urban accessoires and have been redesigned for that purpose.
In Europe, that's mostly the same with cycle clothes. Some people wear it and some (most) don't, but you're rarely judged by it. In German I've never heard a term equivalent to "lycra louts" or "MAMILS" (the important bit being that these English terms refer to the type of clothes!). People do of course judge cyclists, but not by an item of clothing but by the overall behaviour. Where UK people say "lycra louts", Germans say "Kampfradler" (lit "fighter cyclists") - no reference to clothing but to behaviour.
There is a feeling that the clothes reflect how good the infrastructure is: Good infra and people cycle in ordinary clothes. I don't quite buy this either. There is an element that better infra enables more diverse people to use the bike, but whether people dress one way or another depends a lot on other factors, just like the shoppers in outdoor anorak with rucksack.
But I also don't think infrastructure is everything and culture is irrelevant. This just doesn't fit with observations. I know many places in Germany or Austria where the infrastructure is really bad but still more people cycle than here. Or, in Edinburgh, you have awful places like Tollcross or Clerk Street with a fair number of cyclists, whereas in my neighbourhood in the Inch people take the car to the local shop or the school even when it's only 200 metres in a quiet residential area where there is really little safety concern (kids play on the streets!).
Perhaps a more relevant element of cycling culture is that people have it in their mind that a bicycle is an appropriate everyday tool for doing a lot of things. I get the impression that many people see bicycles as sports equipment and as toys for kids, but it just doesn't cross their mind that bicycles can also have other functions. I think in psychology there is the term "functional blindness" - once we know one function of an object, our brain has enormous difficulties in coming up with other possible functions or uses for this object. So if people see a bicycle (only) used as sports equipment, then it just doesn't occur to them that they can also use it for shopping. It seemed to me that in UK these different functions of a bike got a bit lost, whereas in Europe there was always a proportion of utility cycling so that at least it remained in everybody's mind as a feasible option.
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