Trixi.com
23-03-2005, 23:12
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Riding and Writing Between the Lines:
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New York City.
Though rickshaws have been in use in Asia for hundreds of years, and Webster's dates the first use of the word "pedicab" to 1945, the American bicycle taxi industry is just getting off the ground. In New York City, from humble beginnings in 1994, when six pedicabs were first put into commercial use, the field has exploded, to approximately 120 cabs in the summer of 2004. They are a ubiquitous presence in Times Square, and increasingly a part of the streetscape throughout Manhattan, from the Battery to Central Park. For the rush-hour commuter who springs for a ride after waiting ten minutes for a taxi; the adventuresome tourist finishing the evening on a high note with a swervy jaunt after a Broadway show; or the second-floor apartment dweller in the Village irritated by the signature "ding-dong!" of the loudest bicycle bell commercially available, the pedicab is changing the complexion of the city.
In this column I discuss pedicabbing from the passenger's perspective. It's fun. It's non-polluting. It's a vehicle whose time has come.
TOWARDS A THEORY OF PEDICABBING
Your Body Wants to Be Free
Millions of years of evolution have created a creature that can spend days chasing down big game, or walking countless miles in search of wild roots. Today, a few brave souls fulfill our genetic legacy by running ultramarathons or rowing solo across the Atlantic, but most of us walk fewer than 5000 steps a day. We rely on internal combustion engines for our basic transportation, and watch as our bodies turn into mushy plums.
Roughly coincident with the invention of the car that makes us fat and weak was the development of the modern bicycle. It's a marvel of efficiency; in fact, it's the most efficient form of locomotion found anywhere on Earth. According to scientists, if you could drink gasoline, you'd get 912 miles to the gallon on a bike.
Some people remain unaware of all the untapped transportation power available in their bodies, just waiting to be unleashed and turned to mechanical advantage by the bicycle. As a pedicab driver, that's where I come in. To the uninitiated, the effort seems daunting: "Who has the energy to pedal themselves around all day?" Well, for one, I do. In fact, I have a surplus. I'll lug your butt and mine all over town, and enjoy doing it. I'll take your whole family! Uphill! I'll pull 700 pounds of human cargo; throw in the pedicab and the motor (me), and we're tooling half a ton through the streets of New York with pedal power!
The fiscal and aerobic benefits of my job accrue directly to my bank account and my corporeal being. For you, the passenger, it's my wish that you get more out of the experience than a just a fun ride and a change of scenery; I'm also hoping to act as inspiration. You see, your eyes, watching me churn, aren't only reporting to your brain, which is busy daydreaming about Krispy Kreme donuts and flat-screen plasma TVs; they're also reporting to your body. We watch dancers and athletes with our entire bodies, not just our eyes. That's why Kobe's last-second three-pointer in the NBA finals had us at the edge of our seats.
If you've ever seen Richard Williams preside over the practice sessions of his daughters Venus and Serena, you've seen an extreme example of this principle. His body jerks and twitches in perfect synchrony with each of his daughters' powerful strokes, a body watching a body. By watching me, you can almost feel your own quads burn. If only you could hear what your body is telling you as we roll through midtown in my pedicab: "Hey, I want a piece of that action. It almost looks like fun." Your muscles have an encoded memory of racing through the wide-open African savannah under their own power, the endorphin high and the rushing inhalations that stoke the aerobic furnace, the sweet giddiness of the cross-country journey.
Go get yourself a bike and join me!
Your Head Wants to Be Free
We've managed to trap ourselves inside. We may not be writing frightening verse to a bucktoothed girl in Luxembourg (per Morrissey), but far too many of us are spending warm summer days indoors. We're stuck in offices with a mere square of sky to taunt us. The best part of the day is over by the time we get home.
Most of us make the trip home by spending more time inside. Our cars make us comfortable, but they also shut out the world. I remember the first time I came to New York, trying to see the city from the back seat of a taxi, marveling at the bustle of the packed sidewalks, craning my neck to look up at the skyscrapers. But the streetscape that is the daily drama of the city was playing itself out at a distance. I was stuck in a little room with a roof, walls and windows.
On a pedicab, you're not shut off from the city that you're rolling through. Instead you're way out in the open (so conspicuously, in fact, that can be a bit much for the timid soul. For the extrovert, however, it's manna from heaven-I once had a pair of passengers high-five all the people hailing cabs as we passed). Some nights, the aroma of the spicy Middle Eastern food grilling on the vendor's cart at 6th Avenue and 47th Street, a favorite of the cabbies, wafts for blocks. The smells of the city are yours to smell, which, I'll admit, isn't always a good thing in New York, but that's part of the experience. There's no engine to drown out the urban cacophony, no roof to block your sightlines in the vertical riot of the skyscraper forest. It's a liberating experience.
Your City Wants to Be Free
New York is the only city in America where the pedestrian is king. The key is density, and the key to density is mass transit. Every day more people take mass transit in the New York metropolitan area than in the rest of the country combined. The skyscrapers couldn't exist without the subway, and vice versa: to fill the buildings, you need the ability to move hundreds of thousands of people quickly into a circumscribed area; conversely, when you're moving so many people onto such a small parcel of land, you need tall buildings to put them in.
Into this synergistic mix has been added the current favorite vehicle of the rest of America, the car. Sine qua non of suburbia, the car has staked out a queasy cease-fire with the megalopolis. Granted, some people benefit by driving in New York: they don't have to walk to the subway, they can travel on their own schedule, and they can pick their noses while stopped at red lights. For the 78% of us that don't own cars, the impossible dream of a city without them is achieved only on those rare and glorious winter days when a monster blizzard blankets the streets and the ploughs can't keep up. The delight of the silent snowscape and the suddenly freed-up pavement makes giggling pedestrian conspirators of us all.
Unfortunately, for the rest of the year, the cars are here to stay. The subway and commuter trains run on electricity produced in power plants that are far away from the masses of people that they serve; in contrast, the cars drive right up next to us and fart black soot in our faces. Spend a day biking in the city, and woe unto any white towel with which you might wipe your face in a moment of carelessness.
Cars don't just kill us by polluting our air and making us fat; often they kill us in a more direct fashion, by crashing into us. Perhaps, in a future age, people will wonder why 21st Century Americans felt it necessary to strap two tons of steel to their bodies for short trips that they could have accomplished just as easily on 25-pound bicycles. As it is, all that rolling heavy metal doesn't mix well with a populace largely on foot. Some claim that bicycles are unsafe, when really, it's the cars that put us at risk.
To demonstrate the relative safety of the bicycle, here's an audio simulation of a crash between a pedestrian and a bike:
"Aaaaaah!" (crash) "Aaaaaah!"
In this reenactment, both parties are injured. They've probably suffered some scrapes and bruises; very rarely worse than a broken bone or two (as for the distribution of injury, the walker is likely to get bumped, while the biker is likely to take a header-but let's just call it even). Now here's a simulation of a crash between a pedestrian and a car:
"Aaaaaah!" (squish) "Oops."
Now, I ask you, which is safer, a bike or a car? I will admit that, if everyone in the world had a bazooka, your safety could possibly be enhanced by the acquisition of your own personal bazooka. I'm not sure that would qualify bazookas as "safe."
In America, and especially in New York, a city designed for pedestrians and mass transit, cars are by far the greatest danger that we face on a daily basis. Can we envision a future in which all those noxious, noisy, fatally massive vehicles are replaced with quiet, clean, human-scaled bicycles and pedicabs? Or will we continue to stink up the planet and squash our neighbors just to ensure that getting around requires no more effort than pushing a little lever with our right foot?
Your Planet Wants to Be Free
No foreign oil. Zero emissions (unless I had broccoli for dinner).
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New
York City. Marc is MyTown Columnist
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)
Riding and Writing Between the Lines:
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New York City.
Though rickshaws have been in use in Asia for hundreds of years, and Webster's dates the first use of the word "pedicab" to 1945, the American bicycle taxi industry is just getting off the ground. In New York City, from humble beginnings in 1994, when six pedicabs were first put into commercial use, the field has exploded, to approximately 120 cabs in the summer of 2004. They are a ubiquitous presence in Times Square, and increasingly a part of the streetscape throughout Manhattan, from the Battery to Central Park. For the rush-hour commuter who springs for a ride after waiting ten minutes for a taxi; the adventuresome tourist finishing the evening on a high note with a swervy jaunt after a Broadway show; or the second-floor apartment dweller in the Village irritated by the signature "ding-dong!" of the loudest bicycle bell commercially available, the pedicab is changing the complexion of the city.
In this column I discuss pedicabbing from the passenger's perspective. It's fun. It's non-polluting. It's a vehicle whose time has come.
TOWARDS A THEORY OF PEDICABBING
Your Body Wants to Be Free
Millions of years of evolution have created a creature that can spend days chasing down big game, or walking countless miles in search of wild roots. Today, a few brave souls fulfill our genetic legacy by running ultramarathons or rowing solo across the Atlantic, but most of us walk fewer than 5000 steps a day. We rely on internal combustion engines for our basic transportation, and watch as our bodies turn into mushy plums.
Roughly coincident with the invention of the car that makes us fat and weak was the development of the modern bicycle. It's a marvel of efficiency; in fact, it's the most efficient form of locomotion found anywhere on Earth. According to scientists, if you could drink gasoline, you'd get 912 miles to the gallon on a bike.
Some people remain unaware of all the untapped transportation power available in their bodies, just waiting to be unleashed and turned to mechanical advantage by the bicycle. As a pedicab driver, that's where I come in. To the uninitiated, the effort seems daunting: "Who has the energy to pedal themselves around all day?" Well, for one, I do. In fact, I have a surplus. I'll lug your butt and mine all over town, and enjoy doing it. I'll take your whole family! Uphill! I'll pull 700 pounds of human cargo; throw in the pedicab and the motor (me), and we're tooling half a ton through the streets of New York with pedal power!
The fiscal and aerobic benefits of my job accrue directly to my bank account and my corporeal being. For you, the passenger, it's my wish that you get more out of the experience than a just a fun ride and a change of scenery; I'm also hoping to act as inspiration. You see, your eyes, watching me churn, aren't only reporting to your brain, which is busy daydreaming about Krispy Kreme donuts and flat-screen plasma TVs; they're also reporting to your body. We watch dancers and athletes with our entire bodies, not just our eyes. That's why Kobe's last-second three-pointer in the NBA finals had us at the edge of our seats.
If you've ever seen Richard Williams preside over the practice sessions of his daughters Venus and Serena, you've seen an extreme example of this principle. His body jerks and twitches in perfect synchrony with each of his daughters' powerful strokes, a body watching a body. By watching me, you can almost feel your own quads burn. If only you could hear what your body is telling you as we roll through midtown in my pedicab: "Hey, I want a piece of that action. It almost looks like fun." Your muscles have an encoded memory of racing through the wide-open African savannah under their own power, the endorphin high and the rushing inhalations that stoke the aerobic furnace, the sweet giddiness of the cross-country journey.
Go get yourself a bike and join me!
Your Head Wants to Be Free
We've managed to trap ourselves inside. We may not be writing frightening verse to a bucktoothed girl in Luxembourg (per Morrissey), but far too many of us are spending warm summer days indoors. We're stuck in offices with a mere square of sky to taunt us. The best part of the day is over by the time we get home.
Most of us make the trip home by spending more time inside. Our cars make us comfortable, but they also shut out the world. I remember the first time I came to New York, trying to see the city from the back seat of a taxi, marveling at the bustle of the packed sidewalks, craning my neck to look up at the skyscrapers. But the streetscape that is the daily drama of the city was playing itself out at a distance. I was stuck in a little room with a roof, walls and windows.
On a pedicab, you're not shut off from the city that you're rolling through. Instead you're way out in the open (so conspicuously, in fact, that can be a bit much for the timid soul. For the extrovert, however, it's manna from heaven-I once had a pair of passengers high-five all the people hailing cabs as we passed). Some nights, the aroma of the spicy Middle Eastern food grilling on the vendor's cart at 6th Avenue and 47th Street, a favorite of the cabbies, wafts for blocks. The smells of the city are yours to smell, which, I'll admit, isn't always a good thing in New York, but that's part of the experience. There's no engine to drown out the urban cacophony, no roof to block your sightlines in the vertical riot of the skyscraper forest. It's a liberating experience.
Your City Wants to Be Free
New York is the only city in America where the pedestrian is king. The key is density, and the key to density is mass transit. Every day more people take mass transit in the New York metropolitan area than in the rest of the country combined. The skyscrapers couldn't exist without the subway, and vice versa: to fill the buildings, you need the ability to move hundreds of thousands of people quickly into a circumscribed area; conversely, when you're moving so many people onto such a small parcel of land, you need tall buildings to put them in.
Into this synergistic mix has been added the current favorite vehicle of the rest of America, the car. Sine qua non of suburbia, the car has staked out a queasy cease-fire with the megalopolis. Granted, some people benefit by driving in New York: they don't have to walk to the subway, they can travel on their own schedule, and they can pick their noses while stopped at red lights. For the 78% of us that don't own cars, the impossible dream of a city without them is achieved only on those rare and glorious winter days when a monster blizzard blankets the streets and the ploughs can't keep up. The delight of the silent snowscape and the suddenly freed-up pavement makes giggling pedestrian conspirators of us all.
Unfortunately, for the rest of the year, the cars are here to stay. The subway and commuter trains run on electricity produced in power plants that are far away from the masses of people that they serve; in contrast, the cars drive right up next to us and fart black soot in our faces. Spend a day biking in the city, and woe unto any white towel with which you might wipe your face in a moment of carelessness.
Cars don't just kill us by polluting our air and making us fat; often they kill us in a more direct fashion, by crashing into us. Perhaps, in a future age, people will wonder why 21st Century Americans felt it necessary to strap two tons of steel to their bodies for short trips that they could have accomplished just as easily on 25-pound bicycles. As it is, all that rolling heavy metal doesn't mix well with a populace largely on foot. Some claim that bicycles are unsafe, when really, it's the cars that put us at risk.
To demonstrate the relative safety of the bicycle, here's an audio simulation of a crash between a pedestrian and a bike:
"Aaaaaah!" (crash) "Aaaaaah!"
In this reenactment, both parties are injured. They've probably suffered some scrapes and bruises; very rarely worse than a broken bone or two (as for the distribution of injury, the walker is likely to get bumped, while the biker is likely to take a header-but let's just call it even). Now here's a simulation of a crash between a pedestrian and a car:
"Aaaaaah!" (squish) "Oops."
Now, I ask you, which is safer, a bike or a car? I will admit that, if everyone in the world had a bazooka, your safety could possibly be enhanced by the acquisition of your own personal bazooka. I'm not sure that would qualify bazookas as "safe."
In America, and especially in New York, a city designed for pedestrians and mass transit, cars are by far the greatest danger that we face on a daily basis. Can we envision a future in which all those noxious, noisy, fatally massive vehicles are replaced with quiet, clean, human-scaled bicycles and pedicabs? Or will we continue to stink up the planet and squash our neighbors just to ensure that getting around requires no more effort than pushing a little lever with our right foot?
Your Planet Wants to Be Free
No foreign oil. Zero emissions (unless I had broccoli for dinner).
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New
York City. Marc is MyTown Columnist
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)