Sunday 18 May 2008

i'm a guy who goes everywhere on a bicycle. I'm not a bike enthusiast; I just buy a relatively cheap one, run it till it's no good, then buy another. And I dress to ride the way I want to be dressed when I get where I'm going. I was looking for some pictures of bikes for a story i'm working on and i came across the webage of Brian Wilson, an American who has 83 photos of bicycles in Amsterdam taken during a holiday there. In Amsterdam nobody wears a helmet, they ride in their suits, in their nice dresses and it's common to see old people riding too, and everybody looks so fit and healthy.




Here's a kid in a regulation child safety seat, but she's standing up in it:


One of the commenters on the page sends his own photo: "It's our minister of social affairs who always rides a bike when coming to parliament. I know this is not in Amsterdam but in The Hague, but it's typical for our bicycle culture in The Netherlands." And another sends a photo of himself with his three grandkids and two dogs all on his bike with him. And he's smoking a pipe. What style.

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7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Aaa! Thanks for the link, I really miss Amsterdam! I've lived there for 8+ years, but I didn't really notice that their cycling habits are bizarre to foreigners :)

18 May 2008 at 19:00:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Eddie -- helmet or no helmet?

20 May 2008 at 09:37:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Eddie Campbell said...

the helmet is obligatory here in Australia.
As in all he States?
eddie

20 May 2008 at 15:43:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'd be happy to ride my bike all the time if there was as much traffic here as in those photos.

cheers
BS

20 May 2008 at 18:52:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bicycle helmets are not required gear in the US, at least not for adults. Twenty-two of the fifty states have child helmet laws. Most of those let kids lose the helmet at 15, though Louisiana and Pennsylvania say 11. Very odd.

My state doesn't require a helmet, though I wear one. I'd rather abuse my brain with good beer and whiskey than a curb or light post.

(Knowledge gained from linking to your story on my blog, getting curious about the lunatic inconsistencies of US helmet law, and letting the whole thing got out of hand.)

21 May 2008 at 10:45:00 GMT-5  
Blogger spacedlaw said...

In Holland, people are doing (and carrying) all sorts of things on their bicycles... When they get off their contraptions they walk like sawed off mechanical centaurs.

22 May 2008 at 13:28:00 GMT-5  
Blogger Yael said...

Hey, isn't that second picture Sufei (Anna Sophie Loewenberg) from Sexy Beijing? I don't think that's Amsterdam...

4 July 2008 at 10:22:00 GMT-5  

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