Friday, May 6, 2022

Some Bike History in Salem Reporter

It was nice to wake up this morning and read in Salem Reporter a piece by the late Sue Bell on some bicycle history in Salem!

It was interesting especially as something produced by a person who did not seem to have any great interest in bike transport. 

She led with an image of progress, a kind of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" trope, the idea that kids growing up recapitulate the progress in transportation and independence we have made as a society:

Who hasn't, as a youngster, asked Santa for a bike all their own? It's almost a rite of passage into independence that young people learn to ride a bicycle.

In this reading bikes and bicycling are an inferior stage, and full adults move past it.

Consequently, a focus in the piece was municipal effort to regulate scorching and bad bicyclist behavior. Immaturity is aligned with bike use, on this view. She cites the Statesman criticizing

outrageous behavior around town and their lack of courtesy in cursing within the hearing of young women attracted to their antics.

And then shifts to the exceptional feats of long-range bike trips, and not on changes in city transport.

In the end, the piece is entertaining as a cabinet of curiosities, but does not really help us place the bicycle in Salem history. And maybe it doesn't need to.

Still, there is so much more, and the piece's omission of the first bike bill in 1899 for a statewide system of side paths has to be at the top. It was not a success, but at the time it was a big deal.

February 21st, 1899

If you are interested in more:

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