William Hahn
I personally am really into this discussion, I think it highlights some
real issues the OBRA community is facing: How do we involve cat. 6 in bike
racing, how are we going to keep racing bikes when the race calendar
becomes slimmer every year, how do we raise awareness about bikes in
general, how do we reinvigorate our culture. So prepare yourself for a
lengthy response -
Every idea listed so far is how we need to proceed promoting bike racing -
there is no one way to reach people and there is no one group of people
we're targeting. There are so many different types of races and categories
(and you know I'm talking about bmx and cat. 6 right now), everyone is a
potential bike racer in some capacity, plain and simple. The idea that
paper ads with sick designs is a dead platform is ridiculous and spits in
the face of the efforts of Cavalia (any relatives you haven't considered
seeing Cavalia with?) and artists in general; for every 1 paper ad you
make, you'll have to make 3 tweets, have 10 retweets...(obviously you've
seen the video of the Oregonian staff being fired and restructured Marek,
but my Sister's works for advertising at WW and that would be an easy way
to reach people, they put the ad in print, they automatically tweet it and
send out digital media email ads to "subscribers," among other things; I
only read the Mercury personally). Which in no way discounts the
accessibility of the online community, because obviously everybody's mom
has a facebook. The issue is when OBRA pages are missing, or you see on the
Bone Crusher facebook that there's a movie and goldsprints at Velocult on
Saturday, but there's no time listed in that ad and the Velocult website
has nothing on their event schedule so you simply find something else to do
that's a bit more obvious and you never end up meeting a chiller that takes
you on a ride that kicks your ass, tells jokes to you the whole time and
fills you with a sense that you could do it that easily too if you just
rode your bike more often. All these ideas are great and this string is
evidence that there is a community of people out there who are willing to
fill in the gaps of missing promotion if we simply knew how we could help.
As far as race promotion, my own experience is that when I began contacting
race promoters to understand the process and set up a race for the NW
Collegiate Conference in Portland for PSU, I was met with a lot of
opposition within the community. Most of the time I was told it was a time
sink, impossible and prohibitively expensive between fees to rent courses,
insurance and closing down streets with Police (I spent a year trying to
start a discussion and got nowhere). This is a serious problem and it seems
like awareness of the process is interceding with the community addressing
it. Perhaps the directors and race promoters are jaded with the glory days
of bike racing, but keeping the general processes of how race promotion and
event management has historically occurred hidden from easy access and
trying to dissuade interested community members feels non-inclusive (and
our 'club' is endemic with this attitude at every level) and prevents the
process from evolving to continue to function effectively and meet the
cycling community's need.
How I became involved was someone in a kit slowed down and had a
spontaneous conversation with me and said I was fast enough to race (7
years later, thanks nameless hero, that was a critical bit of
encouragement). Later my girlfriend at the time set me up on a friend date
with Jon McCoy, who took me up Saltzman and commented that at least I was
faster up the hill in sneakers and cotton shorts than the fat lawyers
bursting out of their obviously expensive outfits, poorly pedaling
Pinarello's (and how cool is Saltzman since you can ride your bike and
entirely forget about the impending death offered by every car that comes
within your fleshy body's safety bubble). A year after that I raced for the
first time during the collegiate season. It wasn't the one thing that
brought me in, it was a little of my own interest, a lot of encouragement
from the community and several subsequent events. Our sport is prohibitive
because it's expensive and filled with people who take themselves and their
'club' way too seriously. Considering all the Cat. 6 racers Portland has,
the Merckx category should be $2 to race, 70 deep and filled with beach
cruisers, fixies and retro steel frames. Instead those people feel
alienated from us, the Merckx category is some weird joke idea that only
exists in my head, and that's a real issue.
I believe all these issues are tied together: opening up the culture,
making everything a bit more transparent and everyone encouraging each
other is what is going to build the sport and the community. With increased
awareness about the culture, we can start to deal with the larger issues
facing our community, which is that our playgrounds are disappearing, our
toys are too expensive, people driving metal horse carriages are killing us
by slow rolling every stop sign they come across and the local government
doesn't see us as cohesive community who's needs aren't being met (i.e.
where's the single track within city limits, how do we decrease the cost of
renting community spaces for our gatherings, can we decrease speed limits
to reflect the needs of cyclists safety, how do we get the police to be
empathetic when interacting with us about the very real problems of our
expensive bikes being stolen and our bodies being hit by cars, instead of
accusing us of stealing bikes, dismissing our *emotional* attachment to a
complex system of metal triangles and circles and not even taking a police
report when someone commits attempted murder with a deadly weapon, a car).
I'm personally interested in designing a course on defensive riding in
Portland: I think it would be cool to get a bunch of go-pro footage of the
stupid shit cars do that nearly kills us every time and make an interesting
video of tips for riding Portland's uniquely bike accessible streets (my
portfolio of making videos is small, but speaks for itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDUU2RT5CuE). I think it would be a good
idea to reach out to Nike and the Biketown team and have some ambassadors
from the OBRA community work jointly to go out to events and company's to
promote riding safely in Portland and maybe offering group lunch rides. I'm
also into making posters, I have a background in illustration and a 500
page print limit every semester that doesn't get used. I'd be more than
willing to work with 5 different promoter/idea haver's to produce 100
copies of a poster and post them around town for them every semester for
free. I am also into the idea of promoting a regular ride that's a cross
between the Ronde De Portland, the Lucky Lab Pub crawl and pedalpalooza,
getting people onto different cool routes they didn't consider riding
before and drawing in a crowd of leisurely Sunday riders to ride more
cohesively as a group and draft potential racers into the community. I'd
totally be willing to put whoever in touch with my sister at the WW and
work with them to promote the OBRA calendar in any capacity.