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When Donnie Darko was made, in 2001, it was an historical reference.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

[elisem.livejournal.com]

It's really a historical reference? People don't do that any more?

[arkuat]

I'm puzzled too.

[rosefox]

Wow, people still did that in 1988? To me it's always been a historical reference. I certainly didn't have a bike when I was a teenager; biking in New York is much too dangerous. I had Rollerblades, but most of my friends didn't (except the geeks, because Hackers is seriously a documentary of my late teens and we all really did Rollerblade everywhere with our laptops in our backpacks).

So what changed between 1988 and 2001? In bike-riding land, I mean. As far as I know, present-day New York teens take the subway across town in the evening, just like they did in 1988.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

In 1988 in West Philadelphia as a college senior I was riding my bike everywhere because it was safer than walking. What I've never been able to do safely during my life is walk alone at night in a US city, except in very limited areas (i.e. within a few blocks of my house or else in crowded city center areas during the hours shops and restaurants were open).

My guess is Penn students in that area still ride their bikes at night, but that 14-year-olds in the same neighborhood *don't*.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

I suspect it's only kids in very small towns that still do this now, and even that may be going away.

[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.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

See my reply to Elise. And I didn't see bunches of teenagers on bikes together anywhere in the Bay Area when I lived there, either; this is not just a Midwestern thing. (Although with the Bay Area, some of what Rose says about the subway is probably applicable as well.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hackers is loff. Amazingly stupid in several ways. But loff.

But yes, people who didn't have subways had to do other things. See my response to Elise for the rest.

[rosefox]

Oh, I was well aware of them having to do other things. I just thought that mostly meant being driven around by their parents.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It does now.

[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.

[rosefox]

Most of my surprise over your initial post is from the notion that roving gangs of teenage bikers were common as late as 1988. Some of that may be due to spending much of 1988-89 in a small community upstate that was (and probably still is) suburban verging on rural. It was ten miles from our house to the supermarket in the mall, and the first four of those miles were down a twisty two-lane road where biking was manifestly unsafe. We did have bikes, but for exercise, not day-to-day transportation. We lived pretty far out of town, but even my friends in town relied quite heavily on their parents and their parents' cars. Near our house, kids who wanted to hang out on their own went walking or horseback riding down the various trails in the woods. Maybe kids in town rode their bikes to each other's houses or to movie theaters; I never spent enough time with them to know.

I distinctly remember being extremely proud of my independence when we moved back to the city and I started taking the subway alone (age 12, 1990), and feeling very bad for suburban kids who didn't have that option, so at least in my head the suburban parental chauffeur was a given by then.

[kendwoods.livejournal.com]

Yeah, when I was a kid in the late 70's and early 80's in San Diego, a whole pack of us rode our bikes everywhere, like miles and miles away from the house (with no helmet!).

Kids miss out on a lot these days, I think.

And I heart Donnie Darko, especially references to it, which allows me to break out the icon, lol.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I think 1988 was the tail end of it.

[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.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

If I were just a little more motivated, I'd answer you with Jumping Reagan. But don't quite care enough to make the icon.

[avocadovpx.livejournal.com]

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

[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.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You know, Ken, sometimes I question your commitment to Sparkle Motion!

Not often, though.

[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.

[kendwoods.livejournal.com]

You're already quoting the movie!

Now I'm going to have to watch it again soon, which of course, is not a bad thing.