A native Omahan through and through, I'm a master's student in urban and regional planning currently living in Albany, NY.Over the past few years I've been taking notice of a paradigm shift in popular culture and advertising regarding bicycles as a mode of transportation - from dorky, loser-mobile to chic, green, and fashionable.
I recently stumbled upon an excellent blog called "The Bicycle in Pop Culture"(
http://bicycleinpopularculture.blogspot.com). The blog hasn't been updated in close to two years, but the blogger, Scott, makes some brilliant (though, as I intend to show, increasingly irrelevant) observations about the depiction of bicycling in popular culture. This blogger has come up with his "Law of Bicycles in Pop Culture," which is as follows:
"All adult characters shown riding a bicycle for utilitarian purposes in a creative work will be depicted as either perverts, losers, or both."
See the blog (linked above) for some excellent examples.
The purpose of THIS blog is to sort of pick up where Scott left off; to show that his "Law of Bicycles in Popular Culture" no longer holds true; and, most importantly, to showcase the appearance of bicycles and bicyclists in various forms of media where the bicycle is either passively or neutrally shown as an average person's means of transportation (and recreation) or where the bicycle or bicyclist takes front-and-center as a statement of fashion and style. This blog will showcase the new era of bicycling that, though still in its youth, is already well afoot.
Featured in this blog will be screenshots of popular websites, publications, and advertisements; videos of commercial advertisements; scans of magazines and catalogs; and photography from various style and fashion blogs.
Finally, I'll put a "real world" face to this bicycle revolution by featuring Q&A interviews with friends and utility cyclists that I spot on the street.
Thanks for taking a look at my blog, and please come back again!
No comments:
Post a Comment