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...AND THEN THERE WERE BIKES

The genesis of Portland's bicycle culture.

BY JOEL SMITH jsmith@wweek.com

Portland is nationally recognized as a leader in bike culture, but before '71, and the passage of an obscure bit of legislation, the bike scene in this city was like everywhere else in the U.S.: nonexistent. Now, there are more than 3,000 bike racks in Portland alongside at least 250 miles of bike paths.

In case you blinked, here's an abridged explanation for why we're never at a loss for wheels.

1971: And the Lord said, "Let there be bikes..."

Freshman state Rep. Don Stathos (R-Medford) wishes there were some place for his young daughter to ride her bike. He and lobbyist Sam Oakland create a bill stipulating that at least 1 percent of funds doled out by the State Highway Fund for future Oregon road projects must be used on bicycle and pedestrian accommodations.

1976: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

The Bicycle Repair Collective opens its door to legions of sweaty, grease-stained Portland gear-heads with a yen for Zen and the art of bicycle maintenance. For a marginal fee, bikers can throw their steeds on a stand and monkey with the shop wrenches. The pinko community spirit of the shop is indicative of the bike ethos percolating in shops across the city.

1984: Whoop! There He Is

Bud Clark is elected mayor of Portland (see "Bike Geeks Unite").

1990: Vive la Révolution!

A small band of two-wheeled pirates begins rattling its sabers at kitchen tables across the city. They want bike lanes, they want bus racks and they want bridge access. Calling themselves the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, they will become one of the city's most potent lobbying groups.

1992: It's Alliiiiive!

The clouds part with a thunderclap over Mount Tabor, and out speeds a new race of terrifying zombie bikers on cannibalized choppers from Hell. Based "on the classic cycling and drinking clubs of yore," Chunk 666's members wobble about town on mangled, post-apocalyptic tall-bikes, itching for road rash and cheap beer.

Summer 1993: Hail to the Bus Driver

The Bicycle Transportation Alliance gets it first real taste of victory, persuading TriMet officials to outfit the agency's entire fleet of buses with bike racks.

September 1993: Critical Mess

More than 150 rebel cyclists converge on the South Park Blocks to make every Portland motorist's life a living hell. Thus the Oregon incarnation of San Francisco's Critical Mass is born. Though assailed by autos and occasionally pummeled by police, the monthly masses indeed make a critical point, as their silly costumes and anti-car rhetoric continue to draw out closet cyclists by the thousand.

September 1994: Portland--Like Amsterdam, But Without All the Whores

Inspired by a film on free community bicycles in the Netherlands, Joe Keating and Tom O'Keefe, a couple of eco-activist idea men, launch a few hundred yellow bicycles into the wilds of the city. More of an ephemeral community performance than a viable transportation option, the yellow bikes, picked up and dropped off at will by anyone who need them, capture the national imagination and bolster Portland's reputation as Bike Central.

December 1994: Fighting Nemo

Fred Nemo, a longtime Critical Mass devotee, sues to get Portland cops off of the participants' backs. And it works, at least for a while. Many riders notice a marked, but short-lived, decline in city-sponsored whup-ass.

October 1995: Duh...

Bicycling Magazine names Portland the most bike-friendly city in the nation (a title the city regains in 1999). Like we didn't know that already.

March 1995: Mr. Schwinn Goes to Washington

The slumbering giant that is the 1971 Bike Bill finally awakens when the BTA wins a case in appeals court against the City of Portland. Virtually ignored for more than 20 years, the bill is put into legal effect when the BTA insists that the city use at least 1 percent of the money it was putting into road work around the developing Rose Garden into bicycle and pedestrian paths.

June 1996: Because the spandex-and-necktie look is so 1985...

The city makes a deal with five local athletic clubs to give bike commuters a place to shower, shave and put on makeup before and after work. This is typical of the mid-'90s, when the Department of Transportation is flush with gas-tax money and eager to throw it at anything with a derailleur.

March 1998: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

When the city closes down the Hawthorne Bridge for a year, it makes no plans to include bike or foot paths on the reconstruction to-do list. But when the BTA flashes the bat signal over downtown Portland, bike-activists coast to the rescue. They win over the city with an overwhelming postcard campaign and a little help from City Commissioner Charlie Hales (who, with his forebear Earl Blumenauer, is the bicyclist's man-on-the-inside).

May 1999: The BTA Rides Again

State Sen. Marylin Shannon (R-Brooks) tries to run the Bike Bill off the road, but she's pushed back by a legion of riders from across the state--backed, again, by the Bicycle Transportation Alliance.

Summer 2002: "...And There Were Bikes"

The summer of 2002 proves to be a veritable jazz age for bike freaks.

First, around June, there's an unruly group of ragtag riders who, with little more than beater bikes, croquet mallets and a few half-racks of Pabst, create a new Portland tradition in "bike polo."

Then Portland hosts the fourth annual Bikesummer in August. The festival, begun in San Francisco in 1999, is a monthlong orgy of bike fancies, including tours, rides, races, a series of lectures, a film-and-video festival and a group jaunt across all the downtown bridges. In the spirit of celebration, Chunk 666 hosts the Chunkathalon, a series of faux-Greek events like the Harness Snap and the 40 oz. Relay, and Critical Mass breaks all previous attendance records with a swarm of more than 1,500 riders buzzing as one through downtown Portland.

Like any good orgy, Bikesummer gives birth to a couple of unexpected love children. The most notable is SHIFT, which quickly becomes the organizational heart of the city's bike scene, scheduling, promoting and developing weekly events. The second bastard child is a cadre of speed nuts calling themselves the ZooBombers, who develop a taste for piloting kids' bikes at breakneck velocities from the Oregon Zoo to downtown.

The city's office of transportation continues to plug away at bite-sized projects, like the new crossing by the Rose Garden. And the BTA is casting about for more visionary ideas with its new Top 40 Great Ideas survey (available at www.bta4bikes.org/survey/survey.html). For the average cyclists, though, our advice is simple: Enjoy the ride.