Tag: bikes

How the newly evolved bicycle helped liberate women and modernize America’s concept of fitness.

Zilong Wang cycled 3,400 miles west across America to San Francisco on his bike, the White Dragon Horse. At Bicycling, John Brant recounts Wang’s enlightening adventure: how he befriended kind strangers along the way, found an appreciation for life in his solitude, and lost — but later found — his bike at the end of the journey.

For the original eight, the fountain tour was something of an epiphany. As the Mommas and Papas explored downtown, they realized something: At night, the city opened up to them. They suddenly had free rein on the roads, the freedom to discover L.A. on their own terms. They could pass through the richest and poorest neighborhoods in a single evening.

A trip through the “bike-crime underbelly”—and the futility of new technology when it comes to preventing it: The purpose of stealing a bike, after all, is to sell it. SFPD’s McCloskey estimated that 90 percent of bike thieves are drug addicts. In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. […]