Bicycle Culture - Subculture

Subculture

North American cities with bicycle cultures in the second sense include Portland Oregon, San Francisco, Toronto, Montreal, Peoria, IL, and the Twin Cities.

In some cities and countries transportation infrastructure is focused on automobiles, and large portions of the population use cars as their only local mechanical transport. In these places interest in utility cycling remains a subculture. Countries with regions where this is the case include parts of the USA, Canada, Australia, and Brazil Within this subculture are bicycling advocates: those who advocate an increase in population-wide commuting, acceptance of cycling, and legislation and infrastructure to promote and protect the safety and rights of cyclists.

Advocacy within the cycling community may aim for improvements including requesting bike lanes, improved parking facilities, and access to public transportation.

Within the cycling community, activism may take many forms, creative and practical, such as the creation of bike related music, bike related films, organized bike rides, often noncompetitive in nature (such as Critical Mass and World Naked Bike Ride), the building and showing of art bikes, printed word advocacy such as blogs, zines and magazines, stickers, and spoke cards, and the publication and distribution of books such as: Thomas Stevens's "Around the World on a Bicycle," Mark Twain's essay "Taming the Bicycle" and H. G. Wells's novel The Wheels of Chance.