Ironically, living in Germany — the land of fast cars and no speed-limit autobahns — has freed me from the tyranny of the automobile.
I am a third generation Angeleno. My grandparents settled in Echo Park where they raised my dad and my aunts. My mother arrived in the 60s with her mother from Detroit after her parents divorced.
What does this mean? It means I grew up with cars.
The way to get from point a to point b was always and only in a car. It was only decades later, into my thirties that I understood how this fit into the vague sense of alienation that I felt growing up in L.A.
I got an inkling of it when I was maybe about 10. We were visiting my dad’s girlfriend’s sister in San Francisco. She lived on Clement street in the Inner Richmond.
I loved it immediately.
I loved how you could walk up and down this boulevard, full of places like Green Apple books, the Toy Boat cafe, mom and pop dry cleaners and chinese restaurants. There were people on the street. It felt alive, bustling, safe.
At the time I didn’t understand the charge and vitality I felt from walking around Clement street had to do with things like density, zoning and walkability.
I just knew I liked it better there and some day I was going to find a way to live in San Francisco.
When I first moved to Munich, a friend of mine generously announced ‘I brought you my Mom’s old Bike from Austria, so you can use it around the city’ I looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. I grew up in Los Angeles, who the f*ck rides a bike?
“Oh thanks, but, I don’t ride bicycles”
Up until then I hadn’t associated bicycles as an actual means of transportation. Sure I had a bike growing up, but that was just for riding around on neighborhood streets (or sidewalks) for fun.
L.A. is so spread out, even within the same neighborhood riding a bike as a practical means of transportation was a non-starter. Never mind that bike paths weren’t even a thing.
In San Francisco there were bikes. But the whole ‘bikes thing’ was a slightly strange sub-culture for bike messenger dudes and the critical mass people. And really, who was going to tangle with cars and huff and puff up all of those hills.
Back to Munich.
Despite my instant dismissal of his bicycle offer, he encouraged me to take it anyway. I soon noticed that almost half the sidewalks were elevated bicycle paths – usually when some Münchner was aggressively ringing their bell like mad for me to get out of the way, while practically running me over.
It dawned on me that if you didn’t have to embark on a life-or-death battle on the street with cars, that maybe riding a bike did make sense.
Also, unlike San Francisco Munich was flat, flat, flat. I decided to give it a try.
Oh Mein Gott! Who knew! Riding a bike! What a revelation; riding my bike through the English Garden, rolling past the street musicians past Odeonsplatz, woozily departing from the Biergarten. It turns out I loved radfahren!
Fast forward twenty years and “I don’t ride bikes” has become:
“I don’t ride bikes in the snow”
It’s not just that riding a bike is a charming and pleasant experience. As a way of life I find it completely liberating.