Bicycle Anarchy

"Growing up, Evelyn Martinez's mother didn't want her to ride a bike.

She thinks it's not safe for women to be riding late at night, and cars are dangerous too," Martinez said.

Moreover, her mother told her: "Bicycles are for men."

But after a chance meeting last year, Martinez joined an all-female, predominantly Latino cycling group that is both an answer and a challenge to the aggressive male biking culture. Like men's bike crews, it defies L.A.'s monolithic car culture with an in-your-face ethic, reflected in its name: the Ovarian Psyco Cycles Brigade."

"A man who fucks bicycles is on the loose in Sweden. After Swedish cyclist Per Edstrom had his bike violated one too many times, he installed a security camera in front of his home, left his bike outside, and then waited.

Sure enough, the hooded bicycle lover showed up, cut open a tire, and began to masturbate onto the bike as the tire deflated, all while holding a piece of paper in his hand."

A day before its public debut, Zak Pashak is tweaking the $550 commuter bike he’s manufacturing in west Detroit and plans to sell nationwide, mostly through bike retailers.

The company plans to roll out and start selling its bikes at a public party from 5 p.m.-9 p.m. Friday at the Old Miami bar on Cass Avenue in Detroit. Other debuts are planned in Windsor on Saturday and in Toronto on Wednesday.

“I think there’s a market for the bikes,” said Pashak, 33, who moved to Detroit from Canada and has invested about $2 million in the company, Detroit Bikes. “The key for us is volume. We need to sell a lot of bikes.”

The bicycle business has gained traction in metro Detroit in the past year.

The trend has been driven in part by people looking for American-made products and a sense that the Detroit label is hip. Other metro Detroit bike makers include Detroit Bicycle, AutoBike and Shinola, which opened a retail shop in Detroit this year.

But Detroit Bikes is the only one that is also mass-producing the frames.

After running some errands in St. Louis Park this morning, I returned to Minneapolis to have an omelette and coffee at one of my favorite spots, a Lyn-Lake eatery that shall remain unnamed. After I finished my meal, I had a sour taste in my mouth. The food was great, but I was disturbed by a bit of anti-cyclist chatter I overheard between the servers:

"I was driving down Lyndale and I was stuck behind these bikers."

"Isn't there a bike road on Bryant, just like a block away?"

"Yeah, but they still ride their bikes on Lyndale sometimes."

"Why do they do that?"

"I guess they just wanna be rebels."

"Geez."

I wasn't in the mood to interrupt the conversation on which I'd been eavesdropping, but I'd like to correct some of the pernicious assumptions they made. So here are four points I'd like the "get bikes off Lyndale!" crowd to consider.

Bicycle Anarchy, a zine about bicycles Table of Contents: MTB Team Dunghutti Cycle Jersey Shirt Art An interview with Jai Cooper Bicycle