Not long after I moved to Berkeley, back in 2010 a man at a party asked me what kind of road bicycle I had. He pronounced it “by-sick-uhl” acting kind of silly and sheepish as he was completely drunk on wine. Where I moved from, Portland, we called them bikes. It’s perhaps an indicator of the casual nature of Portland bike riders that we used single syllable words there in the Pacific Northwest and require 3 syllables here in Berkeley to communicate the same thing.
This was the first of many prestige bicycle conversations I would have in Berkeley over the next few years. The answer to New York’s “how much do you make?” or Dallas’s “are those real ostrich?” Berkeley’s “what kind of bicycle do you have?” is a precision social ranking tool. At the bottom of the hierarchy is Mayor Jesse with his Huffy Sea Star, above this the marginally fancier Bianchi Volpe, then the Specialized Roubaix, an off the rack road warrior’s workhorse, right on up to the social pinnacle of the custom made and Berkeley born Jitensha Studio.
Riding a high-end road bicycle is the Berkeley equivalent of leaving your Tesla key on the bar while enjoying a beer in LA.
Perhaps this city’s fascination with bicycles is because it’s a kind of incognito conspicuous consumption – only other bicycle aficionados even know the difference between Jesse’s Sea Star and the exited dot com exec’s Jitensha. (OK, that is a bit of a stretch, everyone knows the Sea Star is a POS.) This is a city that celebrates the appearance of failure and places a high value on blending in as a commoner despite owning a $1500 per square foot house in the flats. Riding a high-end road bicycle is the Berkeley equivalent of leaving your Tesla key on the bar while enjoying a beer in LA.
There has always been a bit of an arms race amongst professionals, particularly males. In an era and a community where that is seriously frowned upon, “what kind of road bicycle do you ride?” serves to communicate everything one needs to know about their cocktail party counterpart. It says it all – from do you take your health seriously? to how successful are you in your career?
This is Berkeley but the struggle to excel and peacock your success is as fundamental here as anywhere else. We just have a different way of showing it. This is what I love about my beloved Berkeley.