Windy City Wool

Winston's Tweed
hits the Big Time!

Ode to cigarettes

Orwell’s obsession
with tobacco

Cigarette smoke so permeates George Orwell's stories it almost leaves stains on one’s fingers when reading his books.

So writes Josh Indar in Bumming Smokes in Paris and London. I was fascinated to read this last week in PopMatters' retrospective on the 60th anniversary of 1984. Anyone who's rolled with me knows that I'm a smoker ... an enthusiastic smoker! What started as the youthful urge to be cool has become a 2-pack a day habit. Having tried to quit cold-turkey several times, I certainly understand the power nicotine must've had over Orwell.

Skulking about smoke-free Eton College with a cigarette dangling provocatively from his lip gave Orwell that particular Bohemian air. Later, the ritual of rolling your own probably appealed to his machismo. Smoking also had its practical side. He writes in both Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London that appetite-suppressing nicotine helped him survive when food was scarce or too expensive.

I certainly can concur. My habit definitely took off when I was working in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war. While UN food convoys were often blocked by the warlords, Drina cigarettes always seemed to get through. And now, being woefully under-employed, I find myself subsisting on Winston Ultra Lights. There's nothing like war and poverty for reinforcing your existential view of life.

Indar points out that cigarettes were most often associated with the working class characters in Orwell's books. This should come as no surprise since much of his work championed the commoners. And perhaps by identifying with their daily struggles, smoking helped him to camouflage his middle class origins.

This is especially apparent in Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's memoir of the Spanish Civil War. Tobacco is listed as one of the five basic necessities of soldiers in combat. The other four are firewood, food, candles and the enemy. Sharing them at the front also built trust and camaraderie. Describing street fighting in Barcelona, he gratefully acknowledges the small act of heroism performed by a fellow militiaman, who finds two packs of Lucky Strikes under terrible gunfire.

Hill climbing

with
Mr. Punch Awheel!

The Squire:

But I tell you, sir,
this road is private, and you shall not pass except over my prostrate body!

The Biker:

All right, guv'nor, I'll go back.
I've done enough hill climbing already!

Hints for beginners

from Punch

Most folks, today, forget that back of the turn of the 20th Century cages and bikes were BOTH considered the epitome of modern transportation. As each became equally ubiquitous on the highways and byways of Merry Ole' England, the venerable Punch magazine humorously observed their impact. Then in 1910, J. A. Hammerton compiled these observations in Mr. Punch Awheel: The Humours of Motoring and Cycling. What strikes me most are the similarities in the not-so subtle humor of this work and that of Yehuda Moon or Andy Singer. As the French would say, plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose. Although it's unfortunate that the book is out of print, you can get a peek over at Project Gutenberg. Below is one brief example, Hints for Bike Beginners.

1. Insure your life and limbs. The former will benefit your relations, the latter yourself.

2. Learn on a hired machine. The best plan is to borrow a machine from a friend. It saves hiring. Should the tyre become punctured, the brake be broken, the bell cracked, the lamp missing, and the gear out of gear, you will return it as soon as possible, advising your friend to provide himself with a stronger one next time.

3. Practise on some soft and smooth ground. For example, on a lawn; the one next door for choice. A muddy road, although sufficiently soft, is not recommended—the drawbacks are obvious.

4. Choose a secluded place for practising. It may at first sight appear somewhat selfish to deprive your neighbours of a gratuitous performance which would be certain to amuse them. Nevertheless, be firm.

5. Get someone to hold you on. Engage a friend in an interesting conversation while you mount your bicycle. Do you remember Mr. Winkle's dialogue with Sam Weller when he attempted skating? You can model your conversation on this idea. Friend will support you while you ride and talk. Keep him at it. It will be excellent exercise for him, physically and morally. Also economical for you; as, otherwise, you would have to pay a runner.

6. Don't bike; trike.

When I was a child...

I biked as a child

Last Saturday, Rob O'Flanagan, a columnist for Canada's GuelphMercury, wrote Why bike laws fail so abysmally. It poses the theory that they way we bike as kids is the way we bike as adults. Although I agree with his conclusion I think there's more than childhood nostalgia at work here. Biking, like caging in the US, is suffused with a passionate sense of freedom. Below is his piece with more of my reactions.

I have a theory on why it's so hard to enforce bicycle laws, and why it seems nearly impossible to change cycling habits. The theory may extend to all manner of things related to what we learn as children and find hard to unlearn as adults.

Certainly, the ultimate success of bikes as a popular form of alternative form of transportation will depend on getting folks on bikes when they're young.

Every now and then police officers make an effort to crack down on cyclists who pedal on sidewalks or break other bike laws. But there is a futility to the effort because of the embedded cultural reality of the bicycle in Canada.

I've always wondered if the often sporadic enforcement of bike offenses by Chicago's Finest is due mostly to the the large number of bikers compared to the relatively small number of officers. Also, as many of my bike buds like to say, "Don't they have more serious offenses to cite?"

It looks kind of silly for anyone other than a child to ride their bike on the sidewalk, or to fluidly flow from street to sidewalk as though they were one seamless two-wheel thoroughfare. But you see big people do it often. I'll admit I sometimes get the impulse to bodycheck sidewalk riders, but I resist the urge.

I totally agree, especially since in my neighborhood most pedestrians are older folks.

The reason this fluidity exists is because most of us learn to ride bikes when we are kids -- when the sidewalk, the park, the train tracks, the parking lot, the riverbank and all other accessible pathways were travelled at will. Biking was strictly a form of recreation, with very little utility attached, unlike in other cultures where the bike is an indispensable means of transportation, even a means of livelihood. That was the beauty of riding a bike as a kid -- your route was unlimited. A bike was a tool of the imagination more than an object of practicality. That was the beauty of riding a bike as a kid -- your route was unlimited. A bike was a tool of the imagination more than an object of practicality.

This childhood nostalgia is certainly reinforced by the Bikes Are Toys marketing major US manufacturers introduced after WWII. Besides, anyone who's regularly participated in a Critical Mass, or observed one, would've noticed the widespread attitude that you can bike anywhere anytime.

I grew up on a farm, so most of my biking was restricted to dirt roads and fields. But taking my banana bike to town was a massive adventure because so much more territory could be covered on two wheels than two feet, and the energy and excitement of that exploration had a way of expanding the scope of possible routes and destinations. My gang of friends and I biked everywhere -- graveyard, schoolyard, gravel pit, hospital grounds and playgrounds -- up onto sidewalks, blasting across streets, riding on the wrong side of the road, bobbing and weaving through traffic. All at the highest possible speeds our legs could take us.

I too grew up in mostly rural areas where traffic was at a minimum. In fact, I didn't own a helmet until I move here to The Windy City over a decade ago when I was in my mid-40s.

A bike wasn't a bike after all. It was a motorcycle, a racing car or a spacecraft. The rider was Evel Knievel, popping wheelies, jumping gorges. Or Mario Andretti competing in the Indianapolis 500. Or a space traveller hovering over the surface of the moon. Then the controlling hands of civil society reached in to reshape the imagination and impose order. All those biking habits we learned as kids were to be abandoned. Riding on the sidewalk was branded a perilous thing, injurious, even life-threatening. And, most importantly, it is disorderly and therefore must be stopped.

Now, young and older adult bikers are divided into playful sub-cultures: freakbikers, tweedriders, full moon cruisers, midnight marauders, etc. This, I think, is a serious response to our dominant WASPY culture that scolds adults with I Corinthians, Chapter III, Verse 11: When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things.

If we actually rode bikes for utility -- as a carrier of market vegetables or hauler of scrap metal, as they do in a nation like China -- we might take the laws of the road more seriously. We might see the bike as more than a plaything. But a bike is largely a tool of fun, and it just isn't much fun sticking to bike lanes, hugging the curb hoping a car doesn't side-swipe you. The child inside wants unconstrained riding, wants to find his or her own path.

Having biked in Beijing several years back, I would say that utility, though a big one, isn't the one reason why the Chinese take bike laws more seriously. The number of bikers there probably dwarfs that of all the Western countries combined. If our our free-wheelin' style were to be adopted it would surely lead to chaos. Besides, bikers are more prone to follow the law because way more cops ride bikes there than in the US and being representatives of an authoritarian, one-party state, they definitely get more respect.

If you can do the Bart

you're bad like
Michael Jackson

RIP

Live a little...

bike a lot