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Well I finally procured a copy of "Bicycle Diaries" today. All I can say about this book is that it's very entertaining. David Byrne has a certain style of writing that makes me think I'm reading a post card from a friend on vacation telling me about the new city he's visiting. Very cool. The fact that it's seen through the open air prism of a bicycle makes it all the better. He not only writes about his personal experience in the city he happens to be peddling through but he seems to want to teach you something about each city. Almost as if it were his own home town.
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“David Byrne: singer, artist, composer, director, Talking Head.” I’m quoting the bartender Moe Szyslak from “The Simpsons” here, from an episode in which Byrne appeared. One could also add photographer, author, designer and, since the early 1980s, serious bicyclist. At first he just rode in downtown Manhattan, but as his career has taken him around the world he’s packed his full-size folding bike and carried it with him, sometimes resentfully paying a $125 “sports equipment” surcharge on airplanes.
BICYCLE DIARIES
By David Byrne
Illustrated. 297 pp. Viking. $25.95
“Bicycle Diaries” contains accounts of his travels in distant cities like London, Berlin, Buenos Aires and Manila, as well as some closer to home — New Orleans, San Francisco and Detroit. His description of riding in Detroit is especially good: “I bike from the center of town out to the suburbs. It’s an amazing ride — a time line through a city’s history, its glory and betrayal.”
For Byrne bicycling is partly a means, partly an end. It helps him get places, makes him feel more connected to life on the streets, and also serves as a “form of meditation” that keeps him sane.
Inevitably the diary format gives the book a random, scattershot quality: Byrne is in no sense a “programmatic” bike rider, and he admits he’s sometimes just skimming over the surface of the cultures he encounters. Even so, his interests and activities — cutting-edge art exhibitions, rock festivals, a subversive PowerPoint presentation about PowerPoint presentations, a belly dance party — and certainly his personality are singular enough to give the book consistency and coherence.
Byrne can be a very shrewd and droll observer. In Berlin he finds his ride disrupted because Colin Powell (“he of the Evil Empire”) is in town and many of the roads are closed off and guarded by riot police. In London he sees an upper-class matron in “full regalia — a green hunting jacket, beige trousers and Wellington boots. Is she planning on off-roading it?” No, she’s going for a walk in Hyde Park. In Manila he tells us about a television channel that plays nonstop karaoke. “You can stay at home and sing along with your television. Like some kind of radical conceptual art piece — but unlike conceptual art it’s super-popular.” You’ll have noticed that not all these observations are strictly bicycle-related.
The book, then, is partly about cycling but also about whatever Byrne happens to have on his mind at the time, and fortunately a lot of it is quite interesting. He writes (not surprisingly) very well about music, saying that “singers . . . when they write or perform a song don’t so much bring to the work already formed emotions, ideas and feelings as much as they use the act of singing as a device that reproduces and dredges them up.” This must come as news to “American Idol” contestants. I also very much enjoyed this sardonic observation: “The two biggest self- deceptions of all are that life has a ‘meaning’ and that each of us is unique.”
At other times he overreaches, wrestling with huge philosophical and ethical problems — the nature of beauty, the time limit on justice — issues that have exercised the greatest minds in the world for millenniums, and rather unsurprisingly he doesn’t come up with anything new. But then who would expect him to?
The book’s epilogue is a manifesto of sorts about the future sustainability of cities, and it’s fine as far as it goes, but I’m not sure that David Byrne’s quirky talents are best employed in such a thoroughly unironic enterprise. Finally, however, he does have a piece of advice for would-be cyclists who are older than he is (he’s in his mid-50s) or at least less willowy: “You don’t really need the spandex.” That’s so good to know.
You don't have to be a yoga practitioner to wear Lululemon yoga pants, a surfer to wear Ugg boots or even a bowler to wear Prada bowling shoes.
Even bicycling - whether for sport, relaxation or commuting - is influencing the ways people shop and dress, especially in the Bay Area, where it's easier to hop on a two-wheeler than it is in soggier, wintry climes most of the year.
The big fashion spin-off from bike culture, though, is more conceptual than literal.
You won't see ordinary folks wearing neon Tour de France jerseys for fun, but some bicycle recreationists and commuters make a point of wearing locally made products to be socially conscious at the same time they're reducing their carbon footprints.
At Mission Bicycle, pants by two California companies, Cordarounds and Swrve, are stylish enough to be worn by noncyclists. Cordarounds add flair to the khaki pants with reflective tape that shows when the cuff is turned up. Swrve makes modern slim knickers that end at the shin (not 1920s newsboy knickers that puff out at the knees.)
The biggest crossover into the mainstream is the bike messenger bag: Practical and stylish, it lends an air of sportiness and environmental consciousness - and has less bulk than a backpack.
The Timbuk2 brand, founded in San Francisco, has fallen in popularity in some circles because it opened manufacturing sites in Asia. Customers at Mission Bicycle tend to favor bags by San Francisco's Rickshaw and Chrome, said bike shop employee Sal Alioto, 23.
"Personally, I shop those brands," he said, "because if you don't support the local companies and businesses, sooner or later they're not going to be there anymore."
Sustainability as a fashion statement, hitting the mainstream.
Carolyn Zinko is a Chronicle staff writer.
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