As the Times pointed out, many people have documented city riding. One often-missed entry is Bike Gangs of New York.

This book and short film from Cheryl Dunn was produced by Puma back when they were still all over bike culture. It’s out of print, but in my opinion totally worth it.

Most, but not all of the gangs were real. C.H.U.N.K. 666 was one of the real ones. A friend from C.H.U.N.K. shared some videos and a pic with me, which is what prompted this post. Enjoy.

I went to India in October and spent time in Chennai and Mumbai. If you’ve never been, the human density is something else. Especially in Mumbai, which Wikipedia lists as the most populous city in the world. I spent most of my time just outside of Chennai on a new road that had cars, buses, cows, pedestrians, motorcycles, horse-drawn carts, trucks, and a variety of pedal-powered vehicles.

Chennai proper had many more bicycles and pedal-powered transports. People of all ages rode.

Old men

School Girls

Young men

While in Mumbai I stayed in a neighborhood in the suburbs called Chembur, which are nothing like American suburbs. They are actually denser than inner Mumbai with better street food and barely-enforced traffic laws. Bicycles are an important part of the chaos.

You can see unfiltered set of the wide variety of transportation options I saw in India this October and Pakistan in 2005 here.

Our eyes are a little like really cheap cameras. We have aperture but no ISO or shutter speed. And that aperture, our iris, has limited range. It’s pretty decent at night, but not so great with really bright light.

This was on my mind leaving the gym this morning after a particularly intense session. It was early, the sun was bright, and white buildings hurt my eyes. Many things can override our body’s automatic mechanisms controlling the iris, and exercise is on that list. Other classics include sex and drugs.

Exercise can be just as addicting as drugs. The combination of endorphins and adrenalin is hard to beat. Or at least not without some very real downsides. I think that’s why so many endurance athletes over train, and why so many aging racers sound like drug addicts – “Just one more season”. It feels really good.

I’m working on a video that features pretty  aggressive urban riding, and I’ve been guilty of the same in alleycats and sometimes just on my morning commute. Even so, I often obey traffic signals, yield to pedestrians, and even take the bike lane sometimes.

Regardless of my approach I get cut off, boxed out, and worse. I used to get pissed under all circumstances, and when I had been obeying traffic laws that was backed up with righteous vengeance. Eventually I realized that it doesn’t matter what happened. I think it was the livery driver who ran me down after I gave him the finger for cutting me off.

That pedestrian you buzzed doesn’t care if you had the right of way. Neither does that driver you yelled at. Both probably want to hit you. I know that livery driver did. I am certainly not the picture of restraint, but I do care less about other people on the road.

So ride however you want. Just don’t expect anyone to care except your peers, or the court if it ends up there.