Revolutions Every Damn Day

Table of Contents

1. Girl by Kate Berube

2. Introduction

3. Teen by Kate Berube

4. Feminist First, Bicyclist Second

5. Stripes by Kate Berube

6. Black Cloth Tape

7. Wine by Kate Berube

8. Everyday Revolutions: An Interview with Jude Kirstein

9. Flowers by Kate Berube

10. Some Social Observations on Cycling in Chengdu, China

11. Mom by Kate Berube

12. Six Things I Learned About Organizing a Ride

13. Chin by Kate Berube

14. Chapter 7

15. Credits

16. Colophon

Introduction

Introduction to the 2014 digital edition

Wow, a lot has happened in four years.

Here’s what I know of it:

Rebecca Roush is still rocking her job, in a far more women-friendly bicycle climate in the Seattle area. We finally got to meet earlier this year, at the National Bike Summit, much to our mutual star-strickenness.

Barb Grover’s then-new shop, Splendid Cycles, has become a Portland institution, supplying cargo and family bikes to the masses. Barb has an essay in the upcoming Journal of Bicycle Feminism, which is the bigger, more polished, less-frequent new incarnation of what Taking the Lane became.

Jude’s last name is now Gerace, not Kirstein, and her company’s name is now Sugar, not Epic, the latter after legal threats from a major bike company.

Jane Voodikon is moving back to the US and hopefully receiving zines in the mail from her will become a more frequent event. We’ve known each other since 2007, when we were both on a carfree activist listserve, but still haven’t met.

Monica Gallagher sent in her submission way back when and I never heard from her again. And the Bike Sabbath Facebook page hasn’t been updated since 2012. That’s all I know. I hope she’s having as much bike fun out there as all the folks she’s inspired.

(There was one more essay in the original print zine, but the author wanted to leave it in the paper record and not carry over into the wilds of the Internet, and it’s hard to blame her.)

And me, I’m still publishing! There are twelve issues of Taking the Lane out now, though another one seems to be going out of print every few months. It’s heartwarming and a little chagrining to look back at these early efforts at publishing, before I’d totally figured out how to do it. But I hope nothing that’s come out since then has lost the spirit of this original project—to find exciting ideas and people willing to give voice to them, and propel forward the cycling movement in an ever-more-powerful, inclusive, and revolutionary format.

Thanks for reading,

Elly Blue

Portland, Oregon, October 24, 2014

Original introduction

“I make revolutions in my studio every day.”

– Jude Kirstein

The theme of this issue was supposed to be optimism or solutions. Or something like that. I regretted it the minute I sent the email asking for submissions. The last thing I want is to paint a falsely cheerful view of the bike world. For one thing, that’s kind of a gendered thing to do. And then...well, there is undeniably a lot of joy to be gleaned there—bikes themselves, what fun! And then there’s the community you can find or make, and the free feeling of riding and the satisfaction from getting over a giant mountain or even just over the river to work on a slushy day. But there’s already a growing industry out there in gloating over the positives of bicycling and I don’t really see this zine fitting into that niche.

Fortunately, you readers are a noncompliant lot and the submissions that rolled in covered a refreshingly diverse array of styles and perspectives, from a downright pessimistic inside look at bike shop culture to an exuberant song of praise for women’s bodies, thinly disguised as a critique of the sports apparel industry. Not a pollyanna in the lot. One contributor questions the relative importance of gender as an issue to focus on and another skips that whole topic and dives right into telling you how she learned to go out there and get things done. Which is the point, right?

I wrote the last issue, Sharing the Road With Boys, in one big rush, simultaneously working out a lot of theory to make sense of my experiences. This issue is a group effort and I think stronger for it. There’s less philosophy here and a lot more action. Work is a theme: Buckling down and making things happen is at least as important as dreaming big and honing your ideas. But a critical, cynical eye is necessary, too—if the system you’re working in is fundamentally broken, no amount of elbow grease is going to get you anywhere.

That’s why I chose to interview Jude Kirstein for this center piece in this issue. She puts in 14 hour days building custom bicycle wheels, honing her craft and integrating herself into a hard industry. You can tell she’s getting tougher, but she still radiates this amazing enthusiasm and energy. And she still has the vision. She works to get by, for sure, but she’s in it, literally, to make revolutions.

So in that spirit, I present Taking the Lane #2. I tried to begin and end this issue on a down-to-business note. In between, there’s something for everyone, including Kate Berube’s completely uncynical illustrations. A lot of people worked hard on this, and I hope you’ll consider setting your own vision down on paper for a future issue. There’s every compelling reason to keep publishing this zine, and it’ll be quarterly until those dry up. The theme of the next issue is Unsung Heroes, so send your stories of badass bikey women who you want the world to know about.

Feminist First, Bicyclist Second

by Rebecca Roush

Rebecca Roush works for a major transit agency and makes intricate, beaded artwork on her own time. I like the way she structured this otherwise straightforward story about the nuts and bolts logistics of a successful effort to bring more women into bicycle commuting.

Much of my early childhood was spent on wheels—roller skates, skateboards and bicycles—and I still fondly remember my first bicycle. My father bought it at a garage sale and brought it home to me when I was five years old. It was way too large but I loved it, even when it beat me up.

For the past 15 years, I have intermittently commuted to work by bicycle, and in the past ten years while working at a regional transit agency, have been surrounded by coworkers who also pedal to work.

Each year in May, my coworkers and I compete in the Group Health Commute Challenge, a month-long event put on by the Cascade Bicycle Club. This challenge encourages companies to compete against each other for miles pedaled, trips, numbers of employees participating, etc. I’ve been involved in the Challenge almost all the years I’ve been at the regional transit agency.

In 2010, I decided to make a push for women to participate. I’m a feminist and I always count what percentage of women are in groups, and far more men participated in the Commute Challenge than women. I suspected that given outreach and support more female employees would participate.

I made a pre-emptive strike and sent an email in February to many of my female coworkers, asking them to consider participating in 2010. I told them that, statistically, far fewer women than men commute by bicycle, and encouraged them to significantly increase the percentage of women pedaling on our teams in 2010. I asked them to start getting their bicycles ready and to contact me if they had any questions about commuting.

We held a Commute Clinic where staff and consultants who were willing to consider bicycling could meet with others who ride from the same communities. We set up a lunch room with established commuters at tables around the perimeter of the room, with their city or neighborhood posted above them. Anyone could go to a table and talk to that person about their commute route, specific issues with that route, commute times, etc. Many of our established commuters offered to ride with the newbies. As a result of this clinic and other outreach efforts we had eight teams of ten riders each: six mixed and two women-only. We had never before had women-only teams.

I did get some grief from my male counterparts about having the women-only teams. I was quite open about forming these teams, and the need to have more women participating. Since I work for a government agency and we’re all well-versed in avoiding sexual harassment, it went no further than “in fun” comments. Having experienced true sexual harassment in other work settings, I was grateful this was low-key.

Still, I wondered why my male coworkers felt compelled to frequently mention my efforts. I think it was because there’s work left to do to educate men about, in this particular instance, women on bicycles. I will consider them educated when I count the percentage of women on bicycles during the Commute Challenge and nothing catches my attention.

We had a haiku contest amongst the Commute Challenge participants. One of my favorite coworkers submitted the following:

Feminist Haiku

I am so lucky

For the two cycles this month

I’m not talking bikes.

Black Cloth Tape

by Barb Grover

Barb Grover is a bicycle industry veteran, and provides a sage window into that world. She and her husband recently opened Splendid Cycles, a cargo bicycle shop in Portland, Oregon.

A mechanic’s voice booms out over the shop intercom, “Black cloth tape. Black cloth tape at the front counter.” Before a minute passes half a dozen guys are at the counter trying to look busy or furtively peeping through the service window in response to the announcement. Jeez, what’s that all about? Why does this most basic of handlebar wraps create such a fuss? You’d think it was an announcement about the arrival of a Campy anniversary edition gruppo or maybe some Tour de France maillot jaune signed by Eddy Merckx himself.

Truth is, it was simply code, code for “hot chick, get over here and check her out.” And, I’m sorry to say that this code language was common culture in a bike shop I managed many years ago. It’s the late 80s and we’re enjoying the fruits of the women’s movement. Title IX is changing sports, more women are choosing to work in traditionally male jobs, the glass ceiling is beginning to crack. Hey, look at me—I’m managing a bike shop. But shop guys still have full leeway to behave in the store as if it were a locker room. No matter that the manager is a woman or that they’re being disrespectful to a customer. It’s the 80s. It’s a bike shop. And that’s a man’s world

I’m shocked at my tolerance when I recall that time. Rather than put an end to such rude, sexist behavior I just grinned and brushed it off. I certainly knew that I had to fit in. I knew that if I showed disdain over boys being boys that I would not retain my authority as manager. I was young and new to managing but well aware of the thin line I trod being a woman in the cycling biz.

Fact was that back then it didn’t even occur to me to speak up. Wow.

Nowadays, this would no longer be tolerated at that particular shop. Nor would I hesitate to call it the crap that it is. But this is just one shop, one little blip on the map of bike shops, and only small progress. What hasn’t changed is that sexual discrimination is still quite common at in the bike industry. As may be the case in the world in general, it takes on an equally powerful but much more subtle manifestation today.

Even a “progressive” shop with a long history of hiring women employees still blunders along in treating those women as equals, not knowing how to address sexist, offensive, and discriminatory behavior among individual employees and the company as a whole. Women are still held to a different behavioral standard. What is passion in men is construed as emotion in women. Men are labeled as confident while similar behavior in women is called intimidation. Confidence and passion are encouraged; neither emotion nor intimidation is tolerated. Tell me when did a moody male illicit recommendations from his manager to seek hormone therapy?

Sadly, just as I was oblivious to the ramifications of the “black cloth tape” ritual as a young manager, today many shops still ignore sexual bias issues. In these shops, the onus still falls to the woman to tolerate sexist behavior or adjust her actions and fit into the male behavior paradigm in order to be accepted.

So really, how much progress have we made?

Everyday Revolutions: An Interview with Jude Kirstein

When I first met Jude Kirstein, she had just begun her one-woman custom wheel building business, Epic Wheel Works, and was holding down four other jobs and had a million ideas and sky high ambitions. Now, a year later, her business is turning a profit and has only one outside job—at the United Bicycle Institute’s Portland campus—and a whole lot of focus, but no less passion or determination. Her wheels can be seen all over town, on daily commuters, racers’ carbon steeds, family cargo bikes, and the workhorse electric assist tricycles used by local freight company B-line.

EB: What does it mean to be a wheelbuilder? How did you choose this vocation?

JK: I’ve been a bicycle mechanic for six or seven years. I’ve been solely wheelbuilding for the last two years, which isn’t a long time. (laughs) I get it, I’m a young chicken. People haven’t said that to me, but I’m aware of it, because the wheelbuilders I aspire to be like are so much older. After 40 some years experience, my two years pale by comparison. Wheelbuilding is a craft tradition. It used to be a necessity—wheels never used to be machine built. I can only imagine in the heydey of wheelbuilding there were so many philosophies, all over France there were little hole in the wall shops everywhere that built wheels.

Wheelbuilding isn’t one of those things that you’re awesome at right away. It’s tedious, it’s not fun, there’s no instant gratification. But the exciting way of seeing it is that I have a spiritual conquest every day. It’s very meditative. Every wheel is different and dynamic. The wheels I’ve put time and energy into, that my hands have touched every part of, are going out there and enabling someone to do their adventures. Two of my wheels are in the Himalayas right now. And B-line—they can’t run their business without a good set of wheels. I can’t imagine doing anything else right now.

When did you start working on bikes? What’s the appeal?

Living in Chicago, working at Working Bikes Cooperative. Also, traveling. One of the things I talk about most is when I was in Africa and I was in the middle of the bush sitting in this field with the person who ran the local orphanage and I realized I had no skills, nothing to help these people. My college education wasn’t going to help them learn dry farming methods, how to get things to market. I needed a skill because I loved people and I needed a way to connect with them.

When you had just opened up shop, I wrote about you on BikePortland and one commenter insisted that I did the profile just because you were a woman. Do you see yourself being pigeonholed as a lady wheelbuilder?

Yeah, I’m really careful because I don’t want that. I think the misconception is that if you’re a woman in the industry you must be female specific. I ignore it. Giving any part of that my energy or my thoughts only draws attention to it.

So you do have bad experiences?

There certainly are times when I feel prejudice, but there are plenty of times where the opposite is true as well. I recently had an experience that felt like going back to the stone age. But I’m doing a much better job of thinking, well, that’s that man’s issue. Men are much more forceful with each other. You have to tell them what they want, make it seem like they can’t live without this. Women don’t do it that way, we like to give each other options and talk about different things. So I tailor my style, but I don’t think of it as a gender thing so much as I see this person standing in front of me and this is the way they’re interacting.

But those moments when I feel less-than are really difficult. It takes a lot not to feel like a victim in those situations. People are impressed when they see a woman build a wheel and true it and know what she’s talking about. Would they be that impressed if it was a man standing there? People are trying to figure out where a woman fits into the industry. I don’t think about that, I think about where Jude, where Epic needs to fit into the industry.

Growing up, what did you want to be?

I wanted to be a carpenter for a while. I know I wanted to be a plumber. I just wanted to know how things worked. At Christmas time I wasn’t given an erector set, I had dolls. I had legos too, but at some point you were supposed to grow out of that. Now, I want my nice china, but I also want a nice crescent wrench. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. But people need categories. Especially men. She’s that kind of a woman or she’s this kind of a woman. And I’m not. I’m dynamic, we all are.

You’ve spent a lot of time volunteering with Maya Pedal, a bike cooperative in Guatemala. And you’ve already donated some of your business’s profits to the project. How is that relationship going?

I’ve spent several months down there and it’s a great experience. But the last two years I haven’t been as involved as I’d like to be. When you’re young you’re so idealistic that you don’t always have the skills to get where you want to go so it takes a long time. I’m thinking about the future with Maya Pedal. I hope to run a successful business, to learn some solid lessons for helping them with financial planning and reach more areas of Guatemala, and how to reach out to that female constituency as well.

Bikes are so important in developing countries and women don’t always have the opportunity to learn how to ride them. In Asia it’s different, but in Guatemala and much more conservative cultures women aren’t going to learn to do these things—not from men. They need to learn from a woman. And bodies aren’t all the same. This Mennonite woman in Eugene, she had had 14 kids, and she told me all sorts of things in graphic detail. Can you imagine coming to talk to the guy who runs the local co-op in a conservative country about why you can’t deal with this little seat?

What’s the state of cycling in Guatemala?

I don’t think people are looking at bicycles as a viable method of transport. That’s because they’re getting our old Huffys and you can only make an old Huffy work so well. If they had even the $300 bikes we had here they’d be able to remove so much pollution. But unfortunately the car industry has so much clout and money. People look at cars as the next step. The bike is looked at as a bandaid. And a bike still costs a lot of money, and the maintenance is fairly significant, yet for wealthier families, it’s still looked at as recreational. There are not a lot of women cycling. Not distances. They mostly go by foot and bus.

Where do you see the bike industry going? Is the boys club breaking up any time soon?

Look, I think the bike industry attracts a certain kind of person, often times a guy who needs to be validated in some way. You go in because you want to have that image, of the guy in the bike shop with his little cycling cap and grungy pants. I don’t know if that will ever go away, but there are also new and, dare I say, positive stereotypes for mechanics being created. This is the new generation, I’ve been inspired by my experience working at UBI. The boys I work with aren’t intimidated by the girls learning mechanics. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

The women going into mechanics that I see, they’re just great people. I love helping to inspire the next generation of young women, letting them know that college is an option, you can think about technical fields too, there are other options for women who are serious, who loved legos as kids and want to do something as an adult that involves putting things together. And they can keep the femininity. That’s the biggest thing for me, being able to stay completely true to myself and do what I love.

Some Social Observations on Cycling in Chengdu, China

by Jane Voodikon

Jane Voodikon left the United States in 2004 for Chengdu, a ginormous city in central China. She edits the monthly English language arts and events magazine Chengdoo, occasionally produces the Chengdu Community Zine, and is an energetic advocate for carfree streets and reusable menstrual pads.

After visiting certain European cities, Americans tend to note, with a healthy dose of surprise, all the women who pedal to work or to the store in skirts and high-heeled sandals or other questionable footwear.

In Chengdu, and probably most other Chinese cities, it’s as common to see women biking in skirts and high heels as it is to see men pedaling impossibly huge piles of furniture, cardboard, or other cargo. Or you might see a male pedaling, with a female riding on the rear rack. Nor is it rare to see two males or two females on one bike.

Bicycles are sold in all varieties and colors—pearly pinks, soda-can silver, post-office green. A friend of mine bought a bright yellow bike with flower-shaped pedals and its name, “Amy,” spelled out in decals on the frame. Some bicycles come with a small attachment on the handlebars to hold an umbrella, not for Chengdu’s frequent rainy days—an umbrella wouldn’t do much—but rather for the rare sunny days that threaten the milky complexions of fair-skinned ladies. Equally gender specific are the stately black Flying Pigeons, originally issued for farm work, almost always being steered down the street by a middle-aged man, or the fast and flashy Giants, almost always careening down the bike lanes with a male in his teens or 20s on board.

But take my observations with a grain of salt. It’s not at all uncommon to see adult males riding by on shiny pink and purple bicycles, with the lowered frame that I was always told was for skirt-wearing women. My biases were, after all, formed in the West, and after six years, the sight still makes me giggle. Of the adult males I know in the U.S., I can envision very few riding a bicycle. I can’t picture any willingly hopping onto a pink bicycle for a jaunt to the corner store.

There are no old boys’ riding clubs or girl-only cliques of bikers that I know of. Perhaps because biking has been, for the past five decades, the standard mode of transportation in China, bikers don’t need a support group. I see biking as an equal-opportunity activity—but when I think about it, that’s not quite right, either. It might be equal opportunity for men and women, but there’s a growing class divide.

Long gone are the days when bicycles ruled the roads and only the truly elite—those with high-level Communist Party connections—had access to private, motorized forms of transportation.

Now, as more and more cars take to roads, bikers are squeezed into an ever-narrowing space between the sidewalk and motor vehicle traffic. We compete with the speeding of private cars, the swinging doors of taxis, and the pull-over-and-deposit-passenger swerves of buses. Pedestrians here also have the habit of spilling out onto the street as well, forcing riders to swerve, ring their bells, or brake suddenly. And, of course, to avoid traffic jams behind cars that have forced themselves into the bike lanes, bikers will sometimes go up onto the sidewalks.

On major roads, the bike lanes have survived countless repavings—and in some cases the sidewalks have even expanded—but on the small, narrow, neighborhood roads, cars are all but pushing the rest of us—no matter what our gender—out of the way.

Six Things I Learned About Organizing a Ride

by Monica Gallagher

Monica Gallagher lives in Seattle and that’s all I know about her. But I appreciate being able to close this issue with her upbeat call to practical action. Bike Sabbath ride details can be found at www.facebook.com/bikesabbath. Now get out there and ride your bike!

For over a year I was one of the organizers of Bike Sabbath, a weekly ride that meets every Sunday (duh), noon at Fremont Coffee. These are a few of the things I learned about organizing a ride, a lot from hindsight. Maybe you can take some of these to make a ride of your own.

1. Be consistent. Specify meet up time and departure time and stick with them. If you say you’re going to ride every week make sure someone is there every week. Sometimes life gets in the way but if one person shows up with no one there it will get around, and people will be less inclined to come. If you can’t commit to every week, have it every other week or once a month. Just figure out what you can realistically do and stick to it. Also, be consistent about departure time. People’s time is valuable and they don’t want to waste half an hour just waiting around.

2. Have multiple organizers. You don’t want organizing a ride to start to feel like a job. I would recommend enough people so no one has to plan a ride more than once a month (e.g., four organizers for a weekly ride). This also leaves enough people to cover if someone is unavailable for a while. Keep it something you want to do, not something you have to do.

3. Recruit people constantly. Post on facebook, pass out flyers, tell friends, get blogs to post about it. Whatever you can think of. Most importantly, do this throughout the life of a ride. Don’t chill out on this once the ride has decent attendance. Word of mouth will do some of the recruiting for you but no matter how great the ride is, life will get in the way: people get jobs, new significant others, school, etc. Keep new people discovering the ride and joining the community.

4. Fill a niche. Think about what your town already has and what would contribute to the bike community. Research what other rides are out there when you think about when you want to meet or what you want to do. No need to compete or make people choose between similar rides. Consider what makes your ride its own unique special snowflake that would draw people to it and promote that.

5. Be outgoing. Go up and introduce yourself to people you don’t know on your rides, especially first-time participants. This seems like common sense, but I also know sometimes it’s easier to hang with your buddies. Ask new riders how they heard about the ride, or about their bikes, say you’re glad to have them here, and introduce them around. You want everyone to feel comfortable with each other as soon as possible. It takes guts for someone to show up solo to a ride with all strangers; help them not feel so weirdo-new-person. You want to create a community, if only for a few hours.

6. Have patience. It takes time for a ride to build steam. Expect low attendance for quite a while and don’t let that stop you. If only 3 people show up, that’s ok, go have a good time. This is also where “be outgoing” is helpful. If your rides are fun, more people will slowly start to show up.

Organizing a ride is a great way to make the bike community just a little bit tighter. There are amazing people on bikes. Why not help bring them together?

Chapter 7

FURTHER READING

Jonesing for more pocket-sized reads about bicycling, feminism, or both? Here are a few favorites. [All of which are out of print as of 2014, darnit.]

Boneshaker Almanac

More polished than a zine but more diverse than a literary magazine, Boneshaker is inspired by old military field manuals and provides enough dignified, well-curated bicycle-related lore, literature, pictures and hair raising tales to keep you occupied no matter how long it takes your friend to deliver a pump and patch kit to whatever out of the way place you got yourself stranded. $6. You can get it direct from wolverinefarmpublishing.org but might have better luck at a bookstore as the print runs sell out fast. [Boneshaker stopped producing new issues a couple of years back, but used copies still can be found from time to time and are worth a bit of searching.]

CUNTastic

We recently passed through Grand Junction, CO and met Laurel as she was headed out to the desert with a large group of friends and a large trenchcoat to do the photo shoot for the next issue—theme: sex toys—of CUNTastic. Other issues have covered topics including menstruation and radical parenting through thoughtful essays, personal stories, and bold art. $4 each. [It’s unclear whether or not this zine is still produced, but it now seems to be at: www.facebook.com/pages/CUNTastic-Zine/

Dames on Frames

Another feminist bike zine! There is a huge feminist component to the bicycle scene in the Twin Cities, and this collectively-published zine is your starting point. A couple issues are still in print, and you can order them from microcosmpublishing.com. You can also freely download pdfs (and read a lot of fascinating conversations) from the collective’s forum [which no longer seems to exist in 2014, sorry to say.] Some of the issues are bilingual, others talk about forming a feminist/bicycling reading group. Only a couple bucks each. Good stuff.

Credits

© 2010 and 2014 Elly Blue Publishing

All content © 2010 by its creators

Writing by Rebecca Roush, Barb Grover, Jane Voodikon, Monica Gallagher, and Jude Kirstein.

Illustrations in this issue by Kate Berube

kateberube.blogspot.com

Graphic design by Ian Lynam

ianlynam.com

takingthelane.com

Learn More at Creatavist.com