Fashion, literature, magazines or own restaurants: social networks have made cycling culture visible, increasingly present beyond the bike lane

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A bicycle is not a means of transport. Or at least not only. Because a device that is only used to go from here to there is not loved the way you love your bicycle, nor is it part of such a magnetic culture. Pedaling? Yes, but much more. The fact that the bicycle is part of the city's landscape does not only mean having the bike lanes full, but verifying that its influence is multiplied everywhere. In clothes, in books, in songs, on television and, above all, in the streets: a subculture with all its own elements that must be preserved, as it promotes values ​​of respect for history, the environment and the same sport that are very difficult to find in other activities. "The passion for cycling is no longer something as intimate as it used to be. Cycling has always beenVolata , which is not the place to find out if a cyclist has won or lost a race but the place for cycling culture which, since 2014, has been looking for the most extraordinary stories, big or small, of this sport .


The influence of the bicycle is in all elements of popular culture. Its place is here and there, in songs, films and books. Lucía Barahona has put it in order in El gran libro de las bicicletas (Blackie Books, 2022), a cycling anthology in which Federico García Lorca, Aldous Huxley, Maria-Mercè Marçal and Simone de Beauvoir appear paired with new voices. All of them putting the bike in the center. This book is the most palpable evidence that cycling appears in our lives in all possible ways. "It is the very instigator of adventures and the best way to get to know places, both urban and non-urban", points out Barahona, because "you just have to get on it, with a route in mind or not, and start pedaling. Ciclogeografía , they say, and I recommend it to everyone," he explains.



As Ábalos states, the internet has opened up a range of infinite possibilities: there are still the cycling clubs of all life, such as the centenary Unió Esportiva de Sants or the Gràcia Cycling Club, but now they share space with initiatives such as the irresistible Tour du Lord , which, rather than looking for stories, creates them from a mixture of cycle tourism with local produce in the Solsonès region. You do one of the stages they propose and take a good piece of meat from the village butcher. His greatest success? Have an aesthetically very neat Instagram, with a very fun tone.



Cyclist culture is a way of traveling around the world and understanding life with the bicycle at the center"



Pop cycling


But what makes this movement so special is that, more or less organized, it has been conveyed through a culture with all its characteristic and non-transferable elements. Common spaces, own fashion, specialized media. It is the so-called cycling culture. "It is felt more and more, but it has existed since the bicycle was invented, almost 200 years ago," explains the director of Volata, which defines it as "a way to travel around the world and understand life with the bicycle at the center". "If you do that, you end up developing a set of habits, going to certain places, relating to certain people, and developing and understanding a language of your own," he says. And what are these types of people like? Lucía Barahona answers: "I don't think that riding a bike implies having certain values, but it is true that many of the people who use it do so, among other things, with an ecological awareness."



The central points of this scene are still the workshops and specialist shops, but other types of establishments with an aesthetic related to the sport of two wheels have been consolidating. Now they're called biker bars or restaurants, although they've been around for a lifetime as meeting places with decorative elements. In Barcelona we find the Eroica Café Barcelona, ​​which is one of the cathedrals of vintage cycling . Decorated with vintage jerseys and beautiful bicycles, it combines devotion to sport with Italian and Mediterranean cuisine. Its origin is part of the same network as the Strade Bianche and the Eroica de la Toscana cycle tour. Other establishments with a cycling aesthetic are the charming Bicioci Bike Café, Girona's La Fábrica (run by ex-professional cyclist Christian Meier) or Hors Catégorie Girona, also linked to a famous cyclist, Robert Gesink.


vintage fashion


Like any other subculture, the cyclist also has particular clothes. And we are not talking about the brands of specialized equipment, such as Orbea, Trek or Bianchi, but other firms that have signed up to cycling aesthetics. This is the case of Fred Perry, always attentive to urban trends, who had a clothing line with Bradley Wiggins, mod and winner of the Tour. But she is not the only one. The brilliant French brand Le Coq Sportif is fully inserted into cycling fashion: just look at their vintage jerseys or Tour de France models, but also casual clothing with cycling motifs.


"The bicycle, like everything, is susceptible to being absorbed by big capital and becoming a circus. It is already happening, but what I like and care about is that there are references"



The iconography of professional cycling and the ease of creating pop images of the European Grand Tours has been the inspiration for several brands, which have made shirts with cycling images fashionable. This is the case with Cois and its t-shirts and hoodies with phrases like Life is better on a ride or with the Eddy Merckx print. Continuing with the casual , the Minimal Shirts t-shirts are particularly successful , with beautiful models of t-shirts with such iconic motifs as Strade Bianche or Alpe D'Huez. The field of technical clothing is already another world, but we must highlight the classic Santini, who have been making specialized material since 1965 and are currently responsible for the official jersey of the Tour de France.


The main danger that all this commercial movement continues to magnify is the loss of the essence, of the most primordial spirit. "It brings more people, but it has also gone from having a traditionally working-class hobby to incorporating people with a very high purchasing power and people who may not yet have internalized certain rules of behavior," explains Ábalos. Remata Barahona, editor of El gran libro de las bicicletas:"The bicycle, like everything, is susceptible to being absorbed by big capital and becoming a circus. It's already happening, but what I like and care about is that there are references. There will be people who have expensive bikes and others who can only afford an andromina, but the principle will still be the same: a frame, two aligned wheels, two pedals, steering and, usually, brakes."