Bikes Point the Way to a Sustainable Future

By Chris Carlsson, AKPress. Posted December 18, 2008.

The outlaw bicycling subculture is distinctly anti-consumerist. It is a tinkering culture that spontaneously re-uses and recycles in ways environmental advocates of recycling can only dream about. It is a culture that often merges bicycles with art and performance. Portland's   C.H.U.N.K. 666, an exemplary and probably typical group of bicycle hackers, "acquires whatever bicycles we can ethically without spending, [or] spending as little money as possible. We cut them into pieces and weld them back together again in different configurations." In the first issue of the C.H.U.N.K. 666 zine, a feature on one of the legendary early groups, the Hard Times Bicycle Club (HTBC) in Minneapolis, described how it has no dues, no regular meetings or rides. As the article explained, "part of the HTBC aesthetic is anti-money and anti-retail … A mechanic and artist, 38-year-old Per Hanson, is president of the HTBC … He lives ‘minimally,' having few possessions and no real job."

The Hard Times Bike Club spread the word that they would recycle used bike parts and as a result, parts were dropped off at their garage regularly.   Martin Leugers founded Chopper Riding Urban Dwellers (CRUD), a San Francisco-based group that also puts bikes back together "artistically." As he put it:   I like the punk rock ethics of not wanting to make money from my art … I decided I'm going to make money at my job, and I enjoy what I do (industrial design), though it's not my perfect ideal. But it gives me the ability to make crazy bikes that basically nobody wants. The bikes I make I view as a kind of sculpture … It's my totally creative outlet where I don't have to worry about selling them. Class doesn't often enter into the identities being created in these new subcultural spaces, and yet, a resilient anti-capitalist instinct runs through much of it and gets expressed in various ways. Echoing Leugers, a recurrent theme is the refusal to allow the wage-labor relationship to define one's engagement.  

Bicycling outside of the waged day   Jessie Basbaum, private investigator, and Catherine Hartzell, immunology lab researcher, co-founded San Francisco's Bike Kitchen in mid2003 while still in their early 20s. The Bike Kitchen quickly became a favorite haunt adjacent to Cellspace, a large community space in the Mission District. Covered in graffiti, the Bike Kitchen sits in a former truck rental facility surrounded by asphalt, and on weekends, a neighborhood flea market. It's an all-volunteer space and deliberately refuses to provide paid services. "It's part of our policy not to do repairs for money… we're here to show people how to do it," says Basbaum. "It's definitely not a job," emphasizes Hartzell. In fact, if it were to become a job, Hartzell wonders "how I would feel. I don't think I would love it as much. When it's required of you, and you're not making the decision, you lose some sense of enjoyment."

Copyright AK Press, 2008

Click on the link for a copy of "Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-Lot Gardeners Are Inventing the Future Today!"

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