Musings: Bicycling vs. Velo-Vision
Purely editorial here, so your opinions may differ. We’ve been staying with a friend of mine who has a plethora of bicycling reading material. I was sitting around making coffee when I noticed in relatively close proximity an issue of Bicycling Magazine and Velo-Vision.
It has been a while since I’ve looked at either so I flipped through them both. What became immediately apparent, was that Bicycling (”World’s Leading Bike Magazine”) should really be titled Cosmopolitan for Roadies. Except for the article on Scott Cutshall, which isn’t even mentioned on the cover, there was really very little of interest. It’s no secret that Bicycling has very little to do with utilitarian bicycling and everything to do with moving plastic wunderbikes. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day the whole issue was printed on carbon fiber or had holes drilled in it to reduce weight.
In comparison, Velo-Vision, didn’t promise any secrets to losing weight or staying lean. Instead it had reviews of recumbents, panniers, touring books and dynamo technology. You know, useful stuff - atleast for me. I thought I’d do a short side by side comparison of the two magazines to illustrate the profoundly divergent paths of these magazines.
The cover of Bicycling reads (and looks) like Cosmo with 5 minute secrets to weight loss and speed (and oh! Matt Damon! He’s so dreamy!). Nothing about the only substance of the issue - the Scott Cutshall article.
The cover of Velo-Vision does not promise to reveal any secrets. Instead it’s going to review some ‘bents. OK, so in truth, it’s actually sort of a dull cover - I’ll even admit to that. The one thing I do appreciate is that it’s just a regular guy on a bike. No special clothes. A lot more accessible. No, you don’t have to be named Lance to ride a bike.
Car advertising in Bicycling. I’d love to see these same car companies spend some ad money on Share the Road campaigns. How about an alternative tag line of “Athletes stretch to prevent injury. We prevent useless death and injury to the very people that read this magazine by advocating for responsible and respectful driving of our two ton vehicles.” That MIGHT make me consider buying their car.
Bicycle advertising in a bicycling magazine.
How many times do they have to review stretchy pants? Seriously? Unless they glow in the dark, have impregnated turn signals on the ass or something, ANYTHING, that pushes the stretchy pants envelope this makes my brain go…zzzzzz.
Ohh…something interesting and useful. Dynamo technology to charge your iphone/ipod/USB device!
A short article about a bike shop that has carbon fiber road bikes…and water bottles.
A long article about a few bike shops that sell regular bikes, folding bikes, box bikes, Dutch bikes, cargo bikes, etc.,
I could go on ad nauseam with this. One is for roadies and the other is for the rest of us mere mortals. Why bring it up? Well, if Bicycling is indeed the “World’s Leading Bike Magazine” - we’re screwed. The message it is sending is that only one particular style of bike is allowed and in order to ride it you have to be skinny and wear stretchy pants or be Matt Damon.
Velo-Vision is truly visionary and it’s vision of cycling is very diverse and inclusive. One where you can wear shorts and a t-shirt, one where your bike can be a recumbent or a folding bike or have a big rack in the front or back. It’s a vision, that I feel, truly advances a more healthy and bicyclist friendly world.
When you reduce cycling to just a specialized sport that only athletes can or should do, you alienate cyclist and cycling from the public at large. If you look at car commercials, it’s rare that you see someone in racing leathers, gloves and a helmet behind the wheel because its suppose to be a democratic form of transport, accessible to all (young, old, white, black, single people, families, etc.,). Why do that with cycling? Why make it so specialized that it discourages those that need to ride most? Why portray cyclists like some funny looking alien race?
‘Cest la vie. I’m sure it has everything to do with advertising. I’ve heard stories of when Bicycling use to be about bicycling and not some thinly veiled pamphlet for the diet of the week. I’m sad that I missed those days.
I suppose in the end, who can blame them. They need to make a buck to stay in business. But if you want a magazine and need an alternative to Bicycling or some actual useful and interesting bike-related writing, check out Velo-Vision, Momentum Magazine, Bicycle Times, Urban Velo, and Bicycle Quarterly.
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While I agree bicycling magazine is mostly fluff, I don’t personally see cycling for sport and for utility as things that have to enemies of each other. Yes we need more and better coverage of cycling as utility, and the car ads in bicycling make me gag. But I enjoy bicycling for sport, for pleasure, for utility, for adventure, for everything really. I ride kitted up in spandex to work out and for competition, I ride in normal clothes to work, I own a carbon racing bike, and I own a utilitarian commuter hybrid bike.
As a comparison, there are automotive magazines that have little appeal to most people, that are all about high performance vehicles and race car drivers, or maybe classic cars or some other demographic, and there are niche audiences really into that. You would never expect a magazine such as that to do a special feature on a new minivan.
I’m not a fan of Bicycling magazine by any stretch (mostly suck with 1 or 2 really substantial articles a month), but just playing a little devils advocate here. I often hear on blogs devoted to more utilitarian cycling a sense of disdain for the spandex crowd, and as someone sort of living in both worlds it always irks me just a bit.
For a great although infrequently released read of cycling, that does a pretty amazing job of appealing to ALL types of cyclists, from BMX and track racing, to touring and puttering about Copenhagen, check out The Ride Journal. It really connects the dots between all of it. Amazing photography and art too.
And by the way, hope you are doing well, your travels really are an inspiration.
I’ve given up on the ad driven, racing bike oriented Bicycling Magazine a few years ago, opting instead for the Adventure Cycling magazine that come with my membership. My local bikeshop owner recently gave me a copy of Bicycle Times, and I enjoyed it.
Winter is hitting hard this year in Western North Carolina, so I expect to be spending more time lusting for a bike ride than actually taking a bike ride, so some good reading material will come in handy.
Thanks for the great post, I could not agree more,
Jack
What Gary said. We need more acceptance of utility cycling, but that doesn’t have to come with disdain for sport cycling. Cycling for recreation and competition is fun, and I’m always fascinated by the world of racing and racing bikes if only for the fact that they seem to exist out on the edge of what is possible. Will I ever own a carbon fiber bike? probably not; they’re impractical and expensive. Do I enjoy ogling the latest-model carbon bikes in mainstream bike magazines? absolutely. Do I take my old hunkered-down road bike into the park every once in a while to do some fast laps in spandex? sure thing.
Think of it this way– magazines tend to cater to niche markets, and they tend to describe things that are unusual or rarified — “sock-wearing techniques monthly” is never going to be a successful magazine. Utility cycling, almost by definition, aims to be as boring as possible from the cycling end– the bike is for getting from A to B comfortably and without drama. The whole political goal of encouraging utility cycling is to make it normal, unremarkable, accessible. So why would it be surprising that a mainstream magazine avoids it in favor of the more sensational?
VeloVision does the same thing, in a way. They’re not so much utility-oriented as they are engineering-oriented. They test cutting-edge technologies from an engineering perspective. You’d have to look pretty far to find a VeloVision article reviewing an old three-speed with a crate on the back.
Momentum? Nah it’s nothing but a fashion magazine.
SO TRUE. I get so fed up with this constant barage we must suffer about latest bikes and must have accesories. A few years ago I subscribed to this philosophy. I had a mega expensiive carbon road bike and all the gear. Then the bike was stolen and with no money to replace and needless to say no insurance I ended up buying a second hand road bike for £200. Has it made difference to my riding ? Not really. I do ultra endurance riding an in all honesty every bike is unconfortable after 24 hours in the saddle. And with regard to speed and weight. If I ate a couple less burgers a week then I could save the same amount of weight as I did before with my mega expensive bike.
Spot on, Bob, when you said “the bike is for getting from A to B comfortably and without drama. The whole political goal of encouraging utility cycling is to make it normal, unremarkable, accessible.” There’s certainly a place for carbon-framed speedster stuff like Bicycling pushes, but it’s a tiny part of the whole, which is that the bicycle (or the tricycle or whatever) is a means of transport first and a means of recreation second. Look at cycling in more civilised parts of the world that the USA or (my home) the UK: Holland, for example, or Denmark. There people cycle because it’s a convenient and cheap way of getting around, and not only are the roads arranged to suit this, but people on bicycles (not “cyclists’” please) are treated with decency instead of being “in the way.” And it’s this normalcy that’s needed here and in the USA: I dream of being regarded as a normal human being instead of people saying “Oh, how brave of you to cycle in London!”
I think the problem is you are comparing a general magazine that tries to cover all forms of cycling to a magazine that specializes in the form of cycling you do. Like Gary’s post above I own all sorts of bikes including racing bikes, dutch bikes, foldys and I enjoy a magazine like this. I also enjoy Momentum but I understand they are 2 different magazines with 2 different markets. But let me clarify, people think Bicycling is a road magazine or a racing magazine…and as a former racer who still hangs out with some of the racing crowd….they wouldn’t touch this magazine. They read Cyclesport and Pro Cycling and laugh at Bicycling. Bicycling really doesn’t have specialized place in the market….they try to please everyone. They have plenty of urban rider articles including off the top of my head in the last 6 months, articles on touring in Japan and Hawaii, custom frame builders, reviews of city style bikes, articles on John Mcenroe and David Byrnes’ riding and a funny little story about a rider and his foldy bike.
Plus…I purchased a Breezer Uptown 8 City bike because of a review done by Bicycling Magazine.
You said,”if Bicycling is indeed the “World’s Leading Bike Magazine” - we’re screwed.” And my simple comment is +1.
This falls into a category that my wife and I refer to simply by holding up 4 fingers to indicate our mantra: THERE IS NO HOPE. When I see magazines like BUYcycling, a little part of me dies inside. It is, in my view, anti-advocacy for utility cycling.
In order to shield my eyes from the inevitable decay and implosion of “civilization”, I have chosen to carve out my little world by reading the above mentioned pubs/cites and truly appreciate the small contribution that Velovision, Bicycle Quarterly and the others make to screening my view of mass culture and allowing me the phantasy that middle america is not really there and will go away if we just ignore it long enough.
I have to agree that disdain for other forms of cycling is silly and possibly harmful to our interests. A lot of riders of utility / touring /’bents once rode and raced conventional bikes. But even at my most enthusiastic (obsessive is the word my wife uses! How unjust!) I get a bit fed up with reading a constant diet of carbon bikes while the article waxes large about miniscule differences between them.
A mix is good. Here in the UK, Cycling Plus, once a great mix is veering toward wall to wall black plastic.
You missed out ‘A to B’ magazine (http://www.atob.org.uk/) from your alternatives list