On a pink bicycle in Amsterdam

[By Laurent Chambon] - For exactly ten years now, I have had the same bicycle in Amsterdam: a Kronan men’s bicycle, an undestructible Swedish bicycle, the only pink one in the city (the other one was stolen in 2001). Children are always intrigued: “Sir, why is your bicycle pink although it’s a men’s bicycle, isn’t pink for girls?” Behind this bicycle, there is a complete way of life and view of the city. That is why Amsterdam is infinitely more agreeable than Paris, despite the shitty food and the grey weather.

My pink men’s bicycle may be vaguely exotic, but it is just one particular element of the bicycle ecosystem of the Netherlands. Most Amsterdammers have a grandparent bicycle: an opafiets (from fiets, plural fietsen, bicycle, and opa, grandpa) for men, omafiets (grandma bicycle, without bar in the middle) for women. A black thing, reduced to its most simple expression, with back-pedal brake (inexpensive, and more importantly, other types of brakes are too complicated to maintain and the cables break too easily), the lamp replaced with a white mouse-shaped LED bought at the Hema department store attached to the handlebars and a red one hanging from the luggage carrier.

One also sees ligfietsen, those bicycles on which one sits reclining backwards, sometimes in a grenade-shaped body. It seems to be a pleasure to ride them. But there are also vouwfietsen, folding bicycles one can take on a train without having to pay a supplement. Tandems of course, but mostly in the country. And all possible combinations of bicycles for an adult with child(ren): a seat in front and/or on the back, a tamdem with or without pedals for a kid, a trailer for children (or dogs), an additional children’s bicycle without front wheel to be attached to the parent’s saddle, a tricycle for old people who have trouble keeping their balance…

There are minimalist design bicycles (my favourite is the Van Moof made of brushed aluminium, with solar powered automatic LEDs, leather saddle and handles: massive show off at the traffic light), somewhat kitchy Chinese retro stuff, bicycles for tall people (double reinforced bar between the handlebars and the saddle), tricycles with or without front wheel, and the latest fashion: a shiny foldable bicycle in the shape of a perfect triangle, the Strida.

‘Modern’ cities

At the entrance, the garage or the attic of the Amsterdam houses, there is always an omafiets being repaired, upside down on its saddle or hanging from cables. There is not a street without a good dozen opafietsen attached to trunks, poles, streetlamps or simply put against the wall, with enourmous chains with padlocks Made in China attached.

In front of the Amsterdam Centraal station there is a huge floating bicycle parking. There are thousands and thousands of bicycles in all colours. Opposite, the paid bicycle parking is always packed, and around the station the police spend their time removing bicycles that have been placed anywhere.

Now, imagine one car replacing two or three bicycles. Amsterdam would have to be ten times larger. The majority of the canals and many housing blocks would have to make room for motorways to allow the Amsterdammer to move around.

Incidentally, one of the great urban fights of the 1960s was not just about cultural freedom, but about preventing politicians and bureaucrats tearing down the historical centre to create a ‘modern’ city with large Brasilia-style cubic buildings, and mainly to build large motorways. Considering that Amsterdammers are willing to pay a fortune to live in the historical centre without being able to park their car, while the houses in the ‘modern’ cities created in the polders with parking places for both Mr. and Ms. see their price per square meter going down, one may well ask which one is historically the most modern.

Amsterdam has been built on sand. At the island I live on, one can dig a bit in the garden and imagine oneself on a beach: there is sand, and water rises gently if you dig deep enough. Anything moves on this soft soil: houses, the quays of canals, the gently leaning trees, and the streets. The cars and lorries cost the city’s residents a fortune: the vibrations caused by those things weighing one or more tonnes damage the streets and the fragile foundations of the houses and force the community to regularly repair the canal quays. When I was a member of the Amsterdam Oud-Zuid District Council, I was always amazed by the (enormous) annual budget made available for repairing the infrastructure the cars so vehemently damaged, whereas bicycles caused no damage at all. Incidentally, the most difficult issue in the negotiations for a new coalition was the number of parking spaces to be maintained or sacrificed to make room for bicycles.

Political parties

In fact, the real distinction between political parties in Amsterdam is their attitude towards the bicycle. Many right-wing people have stopped voting liberal because they are too pro-car and not enough pro-bicycle. The Dutch are socially Nordic and economically neo-liberal; the major part of their political differences can be explained by their view on urban transportation. The Dutch right defends the car as a basic right, somewhat reminiscent of how American Republicans defend the right to carry a firearm: emotionally and without any rationality at all. The suburb votes right to defend their cars and left to defend jobs. The left is divided between the parties that want to replace cars entirely by bicycles and those who still want to maintain some space for the cars of ‘the workers’.

When we used to live in the ‘chic’ neighbourhood of the Pijp (that is: full of pompous nouveaux riches), we had a bakfiets, which reassured my husband of our social status. A bakfiets allows one to transport two children and/or groceries in the wooden crate in front. In our case, it mainly served to take out Martin and Philippe, our two labradors. As soon as we would pass Dam Square or the museums, the would go crazy and shoot endless photos of us. The hairy monsters in the bakfiets are probably the most widespread Amsterdam dogs to circulate on the Japanese and Mexican versions of Flickr. The bakfiets also served to command the respect of all the nouveaux riches and their enormous 4x4’s which had never seen a hill or mud: 80 kilogrammes of steel and wood (not counting the cyclist) into the body of a chocolat brown Cayenne or white Range Rover, that was the terror of the rich fake blondes of Amsterdam Zuid.

The mode of transportation is the most conspicuous social marker in Amsterdam. The middle classes have an opafiets or omafiets. The intellectuals and the big shots have a design thing if they are single or a bakfiets if they have children. The creatives have bicycles in rare colours and shapes, the punks move their mess in a huge bakfiets that has enough room for a double bed, and employees who travel across the Randstad by train have their foldable bicycle, more or less design to the extent their budget allows.

Heads roll

The nouveaux riches have a SUV on hire purchase, the rich provincials have a Volvo or an Audi, also on credit, the Turks have a second hand Mercedes (maliciously called Turkenbak, Turks car, here), the white trash and their shaven and tattood children have a scooter, and black people such as Moroccans take the bus and the tram. The Hindustani all have a Japanese car at least ten years old (type Datsun), the right-wing sororities (the least stupid study law, the others literature even though they never read themselves) all have the same repainted stolen bicycle that has been spray-painted during their ragging, mostly pink or red. Girls will be girls, hey. Right-wing young dynamic professionals have an electric scooter and think of themselves as sustainable and green, and the highly educated young Arabs and Turks have a quite typical über classic Dutch bicycle (think black or green Sparta painted ultra flat with a bagage carrier on the front) to show off their integration and success.

In Amsterdam, show me your bicycle and I will tell you who you are.

Behind those bicycles, there is quite an organisation. First, well-designed bicycles, way beyond the vélib [the Parisian bicycle sharing programme]: tyres that can be easily inflated with a valve that does not have to be unscrewed, self-repairing chambers that are more and more widespread, a saddle and handlebars that are sufficiently high to prevent knee or back pain, comfortably large wheels, and an indestructible frame… Then there is a network of bicycle shops that also maintain your ride, and provide you with a fiets van de zaak (most employers offer a bicycle credit of about 800 euro each three years to those who do not own a car), guarded parking places across the city, and the possibitliy to buy a repair kit, lamps or a flowery saddle cover at all the supermarkets of the Kingdom.

Most importantly, there are safe bicycle paths across the country (and in most neighbouring countries to the North and the East): it is unthinkable to have a route from one point to another without being able to go there on bicycle in all safety. In the cities, there is the Hoofdnet Fiets, the network of primary bicycle routes, which in principle have priority over all other transporation infrastructure (see Amsterdam’s Hoofdnet Fiets in chapter 7). I can assure you that there is no room for negotiations with the engineers of the Kingdom or the cyclists’ associations when it regards maintaining the average speed of cyclists on this network or optimising the ‘ridability’ of the surface: if these networks are crowded, the entire city plunges into chaos. And heads roll at City Hall.

One only has to take a strategic position in the city to become aware of the impressive number of biycles passing during rush hour. In my street after 5 pm, I know when the red light has changed to green at the nearby crossing: a swarm of Amsterdammers of all sizes, sexes and colours fly by below my windows. Better not stand in their way: they are many, they are going fast, and they are hungry. Then, silence again, the light must have changed to red.

Stupid messages

Those who think that you live in Amsterdam for the dope or the sex are mistaken: you come here because of love or a job, and you stay because of the quality of living, despite the shitty food and the greay weather. This ‘liveability’ as the Dutch call it (leefbaarheid) is largely due to the bicycle. France, which likes to think of itself as the land of the good life, stubbornly sacrifices everything to the cars, without understanding that making room for bicycles would allow it to keep its promisses to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, to stop the stupid ‘exercise and eat healthy’ messages and turn Paris and the large provincial cities into something different from huge parkings with kilometers of congestion in between.

But well, while the elites still think that taxing the super rich will chase away the ‘talents’, that the French are necessarily white Catholic heterosexuals, that the separation of powers serves no purpose, that Paris is the centre of the world and that our republic is based on meritocracy (LOL), why not imagine that the car still has a future, right?

Until then, there are people who experiment. High educated Americans dream of moving to Oregon, where the bicycle is set to chase away the car, and there’s even a Bulgarian designer who imagines light structures with cables to transport people and bicycles quickly and cheaply in Greek cities.

While Renault and PSA lose money despite all the scrappage programmes and try to sell us the same metal boxes weighing a tonne, but this time electrical, there are people who are already imagining the future. Without Renault or PSA.

Oh yes, I forgot: the car causes stress and makes people fat.
The bicycle calms you and makes for beautiful legs.
No, nothing, just the summer coming up.

This article originally appeared in Minorités. Video: goldenonion