Bicycle Diaries written by David Byrne

Hoopy · Tue Apr 26, 2011 12:37 am

don't typically read books by musicians, or athletes, or celebrities. I do however respect the artisitic work of Byrne in Talking Heads, his projects with Brian Eno and his independant film True Stories enough to give Bicycle Diaries a fair chance. I picked up the book yesterday evening and have had a hard time setting it down. It is so easy to read from short section to section on the infrastructure of cities throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, the United Kingdom and Australia. Byrnes describes industry, politics, race, and culture through the perspective of a cycling tourist. Cycling brought to an basic level, not for sport or fitness, but as simple transportation and tourism. The theory in linking city planning to lifestyles and the basis of economy and culture is insightful and fresh in a green movement kind of way.

Has anyone else enjoyed Bicycle Diaries as much as I am?

DWill · Tue Apr 26, 2011 7:06 am

Hello, Hoopy. Thanks for bringing up the book. I have it on my shelf and just haven't gotten around to reading it, but now will consider your post a prompt to do so. I suppose what Byrne does is the most enviable thing I can think of, from a bicyclist standpoint and from a broader stance as well. I've been a cyclist for almost all my life and am interested in all aspects. I live an hour or so out of Washington DC, and in May will participate in Bike DC, an event in which bikes take over 20 miles of city roads for the better part of a day. It gives a sense of what a city could be like if really scaled for low-impact transportation.

I hope to have something to say about the book soon.

lady of shallot · Tue Apr 26, 2011 11:46 am

My husband is currently a strong bicycle fan, both riding and repairing and somewhat dealing also. In the 70's he biked to work over the bridge separating Portland from our town. Then stopped doing it so much and now has adopted it with a great enthusiasm. Makes me happy too as it gets him out of the house so I have it alone and because he is in such terrific shape for 76. We will most definitely get him this book. Thanks for the recommendation.

Hoopy · Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:34 pm

Hi DWill, bike DC sounds like an amazing event. I would assume parts of DC without an event like this would be really overwhelming to bike through daily.

I started biking shortly after moving to Portland, OR an extremely bike-friendly town. I think Portland has some of the highest numbers of people commuting to and from work by bike in the country. The city officials are promoting the biking community further by continually improving seperate bike lanes, reviewing city streets for uses, and designating official bike routes. I am sure Portland is not the only place that is so into the low impact transportation, but I am very grateful to see an attempt to displace the auto as the primary form of daily transportation.

Like you were saying Lady of Shallot, it is fun and is also really good exercise that gets you out of the house! Pretty awesome way to enjoy a commute, I think.

Saffron · Tue Apr 26, 2011 2:20 pm

I love David Byrne and as new bike commuter (only one day a week right now) this thread caught my eye. I read an article, I think in the Washington Post, about a year ago about David Byrne and his passion for biking. I also heard an NPR piece (sorry I keep posting NPR links -- but they are good).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... =113386842

I am planning to go to Baltimore on May 7 for the Kinetic Sculpture Race. It is one of the wackiest things you are ever likely to see. The "sculptures" are built on bicyles. The race takes all day and goes all over Baltimore, including into the harbor. The spectators follow along with the race, mostly on bikes.

http://www.kineticbaltimore.com/

DWill · Tue Apr 26, 2011 6:25 pm

Well, DC is not one of the bike-friendliest cities, but it's getting closer. It has Bikeshare now, similar to the system that Paris started; it even has a bike parking garage. An innovation they're trying is bike lanes toward the center of the streets. This sounds dangerous, but really is better than traveling on the side and having to worry about car doors opening on you. But I've heard of Portland's reputation as one of the very best cities to ride in, and I want to go there!

I rode from Pueblo, Colo. to Yorktown, VA in 1977, along the old Bikecentennial route. I want to someday ride the western part, which ends in Astoria, OR. Oregon is also the home of Bike Friday, probably the best company making folding bikes.

DWill · Fri May 06, 2011 8:40 pm

I've gotten into the book and am enjoying Byrne as a tour guide all over the world. His focus is exclusively cities; he's a dedicated urbanist while I have a greater affinity for the rural. "Diaries" is a good description of the book, as he gives us his thoughts and observations about each place he visits with no particular organization, a satisfying free-form approach. Running throughout the book, though, is the theme of how cities have made themselves either more or less livable. A big part of the livability equation is how people get around. Byrne always brings along his folding bike and is out there testing for bike-friendliness. Even when he finds virtually no accommodation for bicycles, as in Istanbul, he has no doubt that the bike is the best way to both get from A to B and to scope out the humane dimensions (or lack of) of the city he finds himself in. He must log more air miles than just about anyone, and a fair number of bike miles.

I'm not actually familiar with Byrne's work. Somehow I missed most of the music of the 80s except for the cheesy numbers I caught on the car radio. These days Byrne seems as likely to mount a show of "visual art" (something I'm not real keen on) as to play a concert. His knowledge of contemporary world music seems encyclopedic.

But he's no insular, arty guy. He has a wide frame of reference, which helps him develop a number of really interesting ideas. For example, when in Buenos Aires, he wonders at the lack of any other bicyclists on the wide streets of that easily navigated city. He thinks of Jared Diamond's thesis in Collapse, that the reason in many cases why cultures don't adapt to realities (such as the impending end of the oil age) is that they get so stuck on their cultural ways that they see no desirable alternative. Looking back at our response to constricting oil supplies, will our descendants puzzle over our seeming blindness?

There is this one, too, which struck me. He talks about his astonishment at the cleanliness of Germany. Even the elevator shafts are immaculate. A friend says to him, "Yes but we Americans have better music." Byrne replies:

"Whoa! You may not care for techno, a musical mainstay of the discos here, but a lot of people would claim that Ludwig van, Bach, and Wagner alone could hold their own against whatever North American crap you care to name. So, yes, that statement is ridiculous, but what does it mean? What was implied? Besides being unprovable, is there an underlying assumption that cultural and social qualities are finite? That a surplus of one necessarily means a deficit of another? That cleanliness and order will necessarily sap some other qualities? (This has a corollary that if someone is beautiful he must be stupid.) That whole nations and people have psychic things in common that only take effect when you cross passport control? Is this the idea like one expressed in Will Self's wacky short story "The Quantity Theory of Insanity," where there is only so much sanity to go around? The implication is that every psychological thing, every part of our mental makeup and character is a trade-off against some other, unexpressed, form of social behavior. If you're happier than average, you have, in this view, forfeited something else--intelligence, for example....Do creative geniuses necessarily have less common or business sense? Do extremely rational minds inevitably miss out on some wild, creative intuitions? Are sensuous people hopelessly disorganized? As one improves oneself in one area does another area necessarily shrink and suffer as a result? Is there a chart with sliding scales we can look at so we can be aware of how we're doing on the psychic tally board? (pp. 48-49)

Saffron · Sat May 07, 2011 6:42 am

I'm just about convinced that I need to read this book. That last paragraph's got me thinking. It is an interesting way to think about the make up of a personality.

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