Rapid cultural change in a nutshell.

[mrissa]

When Donnie Darko* was set, in 1988, four teenagers jumping on their bikes to go across town in the evening was a reasonable thing.

When Donnie Darko was made, in 2001, it was an historical reference.

Wow.

*Which I watched for the first time tonight.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Look around when you're out and about of an evening. Most of the people you see on bikes are alone. The ones who aren't alone are mostly families (mixed ages).

Even in broad daylight, several teenagers riding their bikes together is really unusual; if you throw out the cases where they're riding a trail as a form of exercise/entertainment and consider the ones where they are riding somewhere together as transportation, it's nearly nonexistent.

I'm on the near end of this cultural change, too: I think 1988 was about the end of it, because when I started high school in the fall of 1992, of course none of my agemate friends were old enough to drive, but we never got on our bikes and rode anywhere together. No one we knew would have considered it.

I think it was partly that as younger kids we were more restricted in the use of bikes. We couldn't just hop on our bikes and go where we wanted. It wasn't considered safe any more. When I was in junior high, I could ride over to a friend's house in the same neighborhood, but if I had announced that I was going to ride a couple of neighborhoods away, either I would have been told that that wasn't a good idea, or I had the impression that I would. So as teenagers, people didn't have a habit of riding bikes together to get somewhere from their earlier years. (I also suspect that if I had announced at 14 or 15, "I'm going to take my bike down to the Park 4 with Mandy; we'll be back after the movie [after dark]," I'd have still gotten an oh-no-you're-not from the parentals. And the Park 4 was a mile, mile and a half from their house with only midsize roads between. And if I hadn't gotten the parental negative, Mandy certainly would have.)

The other part, I think, is that when a lot of people reached high school, they became embarrassed about not being able to drive (or, horrors! being old enough to drive, being licensed to drive, and not having a car). I didn't get it at the time. The first day of school, the seniors would bring signs to the pep rally that said things like, "Hey freshmen! My mom can drive us there if your mom can pick us up!" Which infuriated some of my classmates and left me completely confused: I would not have been proud of being a high school freshman at 16 or 17, so why, exactly, was this an insult? But it was. Having a car had become not just a status symbol but an expected one (the richer kids had nicer ones sooner, but most people had them; I didn't, but most of my friends did). And mine was not a rich high school.

I think the latter factor was partly caused by the former: people began thinking of their kids walking or biking somewhere as unsafe, so they did more to make sure there was a car available sometimes even if the kid didn't have a car all the time. If you're not going to let your kid walk two miles home from tennis practice, it's far easier to make sure she has a car when she's old enough than to keep driving her back and forth.

[rosefox]

It occurs to me that I do see bunches of teens on bikes up here, but I only see them in the park (the big park up near us, not Central Park, where biking is a competitive madhouse), and a bit on the street around the park. I'm quite certain they never go to other neighborhoods on their bikes. They do the friend-sitting-on-handlebars thing, though. It's very cute and retro.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do raindrops, in fact, keep falling on their heads? Inquiring minds want to know.

[rosefox]

In the summer up here, probably quite a lot. Last summer we didn't get many good warm thunderstorms but they're usually pretty common during the bike-riding months.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

Well, when you're a teenager nothing seems to fit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Of4uozgXSjk&feature=related).

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Wow, I would never have cast Darren Jessee as Etta.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

The backstage fight between Darren and Robert Sledge over who got to be Etta was just one more nail in the coffin. RIP BFF.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

They do the friend-sitting-on-handlebars thing, though. It's very cute and retro.

Also dangerous as hell.

signed,
left leg broken from knee to ankle, and right femoral head pushed partly through hip socket, and I feel it every day.

[rosefox]

Point taken!

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I hesitated to say, because, well, ick, but still.

[rosefox]

Glad you said. It's worth saying.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

No, no, it's good to say. Because you have people like me who understand that it's theoretically dangerous and would probably not allow my kids to do it, on the principle that it's dangerous, but that's different from suddenly getting a real, concrete, and vivid understanding of what "it's dangerous" means.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I was still biking with my friends in 1997, FWIW. We were a little bit weird that way, but not a lot. Still, I had a lot more geographic freedom as a younger kid than you did, apparently.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I have a seventeen year old. I don't have a car. He doesn't have a car. His girlfriend doesn't have a car. His girlfriend's parents don't have cars. None of us have bikes either though, we have a metro and a great bus system.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how much Canadian fandom is above average for number of people who don't have cars or don't drive. But I know that -- outside New York, at the very least -- US fandom is way above average for adult US residents in general.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

So, the fact that I'm 20 and do not have a driver's license, much less a car (and frankly do not want or need either one) means that right now, I should be so ridiculously embarrassed that I should dig myself into a tiny little hole and curl up, never to show my face to the world? Huh, strange. I always figure if I have two perfectly good legs attached to my body, I might as well use them.

people began thinking of their kids walking or biking somewhere as unsafe, so they did more to make sure there was a car available sometimes even if the kid didn't have a car all the time.
I like this argument, because it's more dangerous to for a kid to drive a car than it is for a kid to bike home at 2AM.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The people I went to high school with would have considered you a total freak for not having a driver's license at 20. greykev didn't get his driver's license until he was 22, but he had already opted out of the main social stream of our high school.

The other option, of course, is that you could have been considered alternative. "She likes animals a lot, and she sometimes does stuff to her hair, and she doesn't drive even though she's twenty."

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

I could do alternative, if alternative meant that I wouldn't have to hang out with the people who equate "alternative" with "bad".

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'm 30 and I don't drive. People are horrified by me. I say, "Look, if you saw how I drive, you wouldn't WANT me to have a license."

That said, I live in California (see above) and the town I live in is one of the very few in the state where you can get away with not driving. There's reason for the horror. I doubt anyone would care in NYC.

[numinicious.livejournal.com]

See, I kind of missed my driving opportunity due to the fact that no one was around to teach me. Although I could learn to drive right now, I hesitate to because I live in Miami, and Miami has the worst drivers in the country. I would rather drive backwards on the Autobahn with a blindfold than drive in Miami.

Exactly, I'm glad I'm moving to a city where a car is actually useless.

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

Heh, I pretty much scared the crap out of anyone willing to teach me. From time to time someone or other (usually someone who lives out of town, has a stick shift, or both!) offers, but out of sheer practicality I can't take them up on it. And since driving school is what messed me up as a driver in the first place*, I don't want to do that again!

* little did I know that everyone in my town taught their kids to drive at the age of 12, so my instructor had no idea what to do with someone who didn't know how to turn on the ignition. He also took me out on the freeway after an hour, during rush hour traffic, when I'd already been crying driving around the neighborhood. So, yeah, nightmare.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Wow. OK, then.

I will watch for this. I'm under the impression that kids in my neighborhood still ride bikes together (or alone), but my impression might be out-of-date. (We're not the most well-off neighborhood, and we're next to some even less-well-off ones.)

There are definitely clumps of kids walking around sometimes. Sometimes there's one or two with a bicycle, walking with some kids without. That much, I do notice, because a couple years back we had some robberies on the street by a group of 3-5 kids, one with a bicycle, and that made that kind of grouping stand out a bit extra, as it might.

But those things are probably here-specific, if they're even still operative.

Pretty intense cultural change, this, then.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Two questions about the kids in your neighborhood riding bikes together: 1) how old? and 2) are they doing it to get somewhere or as entertainment?

Because 12-year-olds riding around the neighborhood for fun is not what I mean here. I mean 15-year-olds deciding they want to go somewhere and all going as a group on bikes.

I've seen the "clump of kids walking, one with a bike" thing, too, and I'm not sure if it's that a kid from farther away than one street or one apartment complex is hanging out with a bunch of kids who live close together or what the deal is there.

[elisem.livejournal.com]

I'll watch and see. I bet it's the former (hanging around the neighborhood) rather than the latter, though. Then again, the things they mostly do is, if memory serves, ride from Powderhorn Park to the park over in Phillips, and then to other parks. (I was told this by somebody who works in affordable housing in the area.)

If they want to go to the mall or something, it's the bus or the light rail, yeah.

[arkuat]

I see groups of kids riding their bikes together in Oakland quite frequently. Not every day, mind you, but it's nothing I'd consider unusual or worth remarking on.