During the summer of 2014, I took a bus to Austin, Texas, to visit a friend and my older brother. One night, my friend and I rode bikes to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It was at that moment when something in my head clicked.
I hate driving. I hate the interstate. I hate going fast. So much of life in a car makes me sick. And not just in a "oh my god, I feel totally sick" way - no, it actually pains my body.
When I got home from that trip, I kept thinking about that bike ride. My job was just a couple of miles away from my house. “I could ride a bike to work,” I thought. But could I really?
There was only one way to find out. I bought a bike. This was a major investment for me. I was only making enough money to stay out of the red. I still had debt, even though I hadn’t used a credit card in over five years. I had no credit. I had some money saved, but not much. I had a little extra money every month for the first time in my life, and a few hundred dollars was still a LOT of money to me.
“Will you ACTUALLY ride the damn thing?” I questioned myself.
Again, there was only one way to find out.
I went down to the shop near my house and bought a bike with money from my savings account. I only had about $700 in savings, so a $350 bike was a major investment. But I did it.
A week went by, and I didn’t ride the bike more than a couple of blocks. “See, this was a bad idea,” my stupid brain kept saying.
I was going to be very mad at myself if I didn’t do this. “Get on that bike and prove that making an investment in bettering yourself ISN’T a mistake.”
I decided to do a test ride on the weekend to see what it would actually be like to ride to work. The good news - it wasn’t that bad.
Eventually, I started riding to work every day. The only time I drove was when it was raining.
My early days on two wheels were a solitary activity. I got on, rode to work, rode home, and left the bike sitting in my living room until the next day. On the weekends, I would attempt to go for longer rides. On one such attempt, I came across a group of people on bikes. As it happened, I knew the person leading the ride. I joined the group as they went around to various houses in the Garden District, looking at their gardens at each stop.
The man leading that ride, Mika Torkkola, would end up being my bike guru. He literally taught me everything I know about bikes, including so much about the history of biking in Baton Rouge. Funny, too, because he’s foreign - a fact I enjoy reminding him of every chance I get.
The first story the Australian-native-turned-bike-historian told me was about the tattoo on his leg. It says “Yeah Bike!”
“What’s that all about?” I asked.
Once upon a time, there was a small group of folks in Baton Rouge who loved to ride bikes. During these ancient days of the late 1990s, there were even fewer resources for bicyclists than there are now, so people would get together one day every month for what was called “Critical Mass.” The goal was to get as many people on bikes together to ride on city roads to show motorists that they too deserve space on the street. Safety in numbers, right?
The concept for this type of ride was not unique to Baton Rouge. In fact, the original Critical Mass happened in San Francisco. There, bikes represented more than just a mode of transportation, and certainly much more than exercise. The bicyclists of the 90s in San Francisco had a much bigger goal in mind - to save the world!
Okay, that might be a little dramatic, but maybe not. You see, car culture, we were learning, can have some pretty negative side effects, especially in large cities. Air pollution was becoming hard to deny AND THE NOISE! Go outside right now. Do it, I’ll wait.
Did you hear the birds chirping, crickets cricketing? I’m sure you did. But what else did you hear?
CARS! Whether near or far - I don’t care where you live, it’s nearly impossible not to hear them.
Getting people out of their cars in Baton Rouge is not an easy task. In fact, it’s almost as impossible as it is to live somewhere that isn’t surrounded by car noise. The city wasn’t built for anything but travel by car. This was a fact the original Critical Mass hoped to address. Showing the powers that be that people want to ride bikes and they want to do it safely was the goal.
“For some really weird reason, as it was happening, I knew we were doing something almost historic,” said Moshe Cohen. “It felt like we were part of this movement that was happening all over the country.”
Moshe came to Baton Rouge by way of LSU. For a northern boy, the deep south was a bit of a culture shock, but quickly he found his tribe.
“I came in as an outsider, and there were so many cool people who weren’t like everyone else,” he said. “Everyone just seemed really quiet about it, like they were hiding out.”
He began to see pockets of people who were outside of the “norm” and started asking them to join the ride.
“Somehow, this philosophy we had of saying ‘Yeah Bike’ became your way of saying now we’re in this club,” he explained. “I said, come ride with us, it’s not about being in a club, it’s about being on a bike. All you have to do is ride a bike, and there’s no entrance fee. And people were looking for that.”
They would meet once a month at the LSU clocktower. Each ride had a different path that would end at a different location.
“The whole thing about Critical Mass is there were no leaders, no agenda, no rules, so we tried really hard to make sure everyone got what they wanted,” he said. “It was really just a celebration about what was going on in the city and it was a little bit student-centric because that was my world, but we pulled people from all over the city.”
When the ride ended, the connection didn’t. Unlike Critical Mass events in other cities, the Baton Rouge edition was more about getting people on bikes with the hope they would enjoy the experience and keep doing it. Those who did would say, “Yeah Bike!” when they crossed paths with another rider. If the passing rider said “Yeah Bike” back, you knew they were part of true bike culture.
“In a lot of ways, a city that’s built around the car - which is Baton Rouge - makes people feel isolated,” Moshe said. “Getting into your car is an isolating thing. Tying the city together with these rides makes it feel smaller.”
Moshe eventually moved, but Critical Mass kept rolling. Today, there is no Critical Mass ride in Baton Rouge. Instead, neighborhood rides have taken over and are now popping up all over the city.
“All of these new entities came to fill the gap, and now these people living in these spaces also want access to that kind of community,” he said. “The bike rides were the ticket to help create that.”
Creating a biking community in my new neighborhood was the EXACT reason why I started the Downtown East Social Ride in 2019.
After a few dozen rides, I was surprised when Moshe was one of the participants on MY ride. He was in town visiting and had heard about the ride.
“I know who you are!” I said emphatically.
“I know who YOU are!” he said back.
We talked like old friends and there was a sense of connection that came with ease. That’s the thing about shared interests; it really does give you a sense of belonging. And I cannot think of a better group of people with which to belong.
YEAH BIKE!!!
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