Cycling and Class

When the Observer Culture section does a four-spread feature on cycling then one can be sure that the current cycling trend is a revolution indeed. "Middle class revolution" muttered my friend Liam sipping his tea while I poured over an item on Mariella Frostrup's preferred choice of bike (very cute, though I would have opted for the Christiania version).

And he's right. In my East London ex-council estate building you can tell the temporary residents (me and my friends, hipsters and students mostly from middle class homes) apart from the permanent residents (those more likely to be working class, immigrants, poorer and/or with lower status jobs) by looking for the bike on the doorstep.

It's ironic that the trendiest bikes of the cycling trend is the fixed gear and single speed bikes, popular amongst hipsters for their simplicity and elegance, is very similar to the type of bikes that used to be ridden by factory workers over fifty years ago. Inspiration is often sought in such romanticized images, the most desirable of fixed gear bikes in Sweden at the moment is named 'Strömmen' or 'The Stream' after the stream of workers that used to be seen cycling to the ASEA factory in Västerås.