I got a note over the weekend from Canadian journalist Lesley Simpson, who wants “eccentric characters about the global commuting movement among cyclists for a CBC TV documentary.”
With an explosion of bike commuters over the past year as wallets have taken a hit from rising gas prices and declining income, it’s sometimes a little tiresome to see the mass media still portraying bike commuters as fringe extremists with a message.
I think most of you are people like me who just ride a bike and mostly enjoy doing it. They’re people like Tom in his suit in New York, or Mark with his box bike in Richmond, Indiana here.
What do you think? Are the interests of cyclists served by portraying us as eccentrics? Do we admire the loudmouths and their work? Or am I overreacting and we all recognize that the media portrays the fringe elements because that’s what makes for interesting television?
