3200 Washington Street is the 73-unit building that landed at the bottom of our hill a few years back, another wave in the flood of many many new units getting constructed up and down that busy avenue between here and Forest Hills a mile away. It all means that in pretty short order we suddenly have hundreds of new neighbors and before the developers are done it could easily be a thousand or more. If that sounds like a foreign experience to you, you better believe it’s a bit strange for us, as well. Thus far 3200 and 3193 across the street (38 new units) are more than likely a key factor in the increased number of dogs and their best friends headed up and down Iffley Road these days, shuttling between home and Franklin Park with its promise of doggie joy at the top of the hill. Finding parking on our street has also become a bigger chore, but our worst fears have yet to be realized (i.e. being forced to park on another street or even blocks away, which might also sound like a foreign experience to you, or perhaps surreal or even a nightmare; welcome to the city!).
This brave new world is but a part of an urban vision that includes the bold concept known as Transit Oriented Development, whereby you line up all your shiny new luxury apartment buildings (all new housing in Boston nowadays is “luxury”, whether it fits Webster’s definition of the term or not) along the Orange Line which comes with the added bonus of the Southwest Corridor bikepath alongside it. The appeal is that one can live here and consider not owning a vehicle; in this city, with some of the worst congestion in the country and daunting parking challenges wherever you go, eliminating or at least minimizing the need to drive is luxury living, indeed. The developers have also been allowed to break with the longstanding national practice of offering one or more vehicle parking spaces per unit, which lowers the overall cost of construction and the apartments that are offered, while easing local congestion.
If that sounds revolutionary it’s because it is, and can be attempted in Boston because a transit system has long been in place. At present this would be unimaginable in most other cities around the country, a majority of which have only minimal or nonexistent transit, as the American Way of Infinite Personal Motorized Mobility evolves ever so slowly, if at all. The irony is that around here this is all happening in what was once a dense urban neighborhood already back in the late ’60s, much of which got demolished in the bad old urban renewal days to make way for an I95 artery into downtown Boston, the Inner Beltway, that never got built when saner minds and politicians prevailed (thanx, Governor Sargent!).
TOR also dictates what one might call lip service to bikes, requiring bike parking of some sort, all part of the bold new autoless vision. 3200 actually has a first floor parking garage for cars, that I would hope also provides protected parking for bikes, but all that is certain is that there are a dozen elegant hoops in the wide sidewalk out front for securing whatever wheels ya got. Locking any bicycle outdoors for extended periods of time in this ‘hood (or anyplace in any city in the world) is usually bad news, but for a few months this pink drop-bar “step-through” (formerly-known-as -“girl’s”-bike) has settled into the hoop near the front door. It is not clear if it is ever ridden as it’s always there whenever we happen to pass by, which is quite often. I will not comment on the gendering of bikes except to mention that the practice has a long tradition and I’ve fond memories from the shop back in ’72 when I’d unpack Raleighs that were labeled “Gents” and “Ladies.” We’ve come a long way.
It’s amazing this bike has not been stripped of its front wheel or anything else thus far, which is either a testimony to how civilized the world has become around here, or to the fact that a pink drop-bar step-through bicycle is something in which not even a thief finds much of interest. This makes it the perfect urban bike. You would still be foolish to leave it outdoors unlocked, as this is still the Big City and not Mayberry R.F.D., there in Andy Griffith’s “perfect” America (and it’s likely Mayberry just ain’t the same these days).
So as some of you know I put together my own take on the pink bike theme a few years back, and thought I’d set it down there with this rather lonely forlorn bridesmaid-dress-color machine for awhile, to keep it company and to do a bit of side-by-side comparing, an exercise that provides endless fascination, as one would expect.
The paint on the Shogun is pristine, whereas the Schwinn (the logo is barely visible on the downtube) bears the marks of a true urban warrior, having had its paint beaten off by many a bike rack (be advised that in the city anything might qualify as a bike rack). The pink on the Schwinn bears a nice metallic sheen (it was probably stunning at one time) while the Shogun is showy only in its hue and not its finish (I get more compliments on this bike than any of my other fancier bikes). Both bikes have fenders (still unusual on a bicycle in America, though not as rare as in the past).
The Schwinn has a cell-phone holder, lending an air of modernity to what otherwise looks like a neglected antique, while my Shogun has a bike computer and a Condor Horn. Maybe the Schwinn person’s phone has a horn app that suffices, but I doubt it. If there were such a horn app, what sound should it make?
I suppose it would be an oversight to not share a thought about the gendering of color. My whole lifetime and probably yours, pink has been a girly color and blue a boy’s; I assumed there’s a biblical verse about this in the Bible and that it has ever been thus. Think of infant’s nurseries and clothing, and even those little ID bracelets newborns are issued in the hospital. Gender-reveal parties follow these guidelines, sometimes dangerously and spectacularly. I also recall how an art museum in LA was famous for the matched portraits of “Pinkie” and “Blueboy” from the 18th century that hung together in one of their galleries, suggesting there is far more to this topic that will not be addressed here.
So as you might’ve already assumed, the cultural norms run deep. But also be aware that in the early 20th century, blue was suggested as the best color for girls, and pink for boys, when it came to clothing children. The big shift came along with the Baby Boom generation. Cultural distinctions such as these are forever fluid over time.
But ambling back into familiar territory, for me – the bike business – look at the product you are offered to sell to the little ones! I have vivid memories of sorting out bicycle donations at Bikes Not Bombs; at the end of the day we’d have this giant pile of pristine (little kids don’t pack on the miles or ride to work) tiny-wheeled machines, all of them pink or purple or some combination. It was blinding. The coolest feature of many of these was the streamers that were factory issue. Streamers! I’ve only vague memories of little bikes for little guys. The pile was definitely much smaller; boys are more likely to wreck their things, making them undonatable, or maybe since the pile was mostly black it did not stand out.
Of course the gendering of color has become rampant throughout the lifespan, at this point, which is too bad, but of course cultural paradigms can always be resisted. Which brings us to that T-shirt and its message that is subtle and brilliant.
It has special meaning for me, as one who waged a one-man effort to get the largest local bike club, the Charles River Wheelmen, to degender its name back in the 80s. The term “wheelmen” has a long and venerable history, going back to the Victorian cycling craze of the 1890s when lots of clubs took the name (that era is also famous for the ways the bicycle liberated women, but their numbers were also much smaller, and a term like “wheelwomen” never caught on, apparently). The venerability and grand history of “wheelmen” was the excuse/defense club members made in opposition to my suggestion. What’s funny to me is that none of the women in the club at that time – and they were a largish minority – took any interest as far as I could tell. My petitioning effort never even led to a vote, as I recall. Since then the club became the Charles River Wheelers, when an idea whose time had come finally came.
Of course the gender appropriation of a color – and a rather nice color such as pink – is like the gender appropriation of anything in toto, always worth questioning. Men are notorious for the glass ceilings they created to discourage women from so many endeavors throughout history, and that war is far from over. Gender equality of some sort is always the ultimate goal, which means doing away with so many obsolete assumptions about what is acceptable. So in a very small way, why can’t men take back pink? Pink bicycles, along with Cadillacs, can be beautiful, and are a good start in my mind.
