The Tyranny of Youth Transportation
Imagine growing up in the Dust Bowl.
Do it. I’ll wait.
So, imagine growing up in the Dust Bowl, either inured to the poverty of subsistence farming, or working in a factory for a pittance while the factory owner taunts you with his fine fedora hat and drape suit. While the simple automobiles of your youth served the reliable role as “A-to-B transportation,” after returning from WW2 and having a your boomer children, you watch them obsess over their cars and roadsters, marveling at the rocket ship inspired body styles. Then the runaway affluence in the post-war economy enables your complacent children to buy their first car, which looks a hell of a lot better than your father’s. Whole cultures develop over who can race the fastest, meanest car overnight, and you look on, utterly perplexed, from your armchair drinking a martini and ignoring your wife. What the hell is happening?
My thesis: Every subsequent generation of youth since our great-grandfathers has modeled similar behavior, embracing bold and increasingly absurd modes of degenerate travel, and then flaunted it to make us feel old and unexciting.
Firstly, and strangely, this all seems to be a very modern problem. In my research on self-locomotion, the downfall of civilization started with the invention of roller skates in the 1760s. Apparently, they didn’t catch on at first due to their lack of brakes, but this was remedied in the late 1860s. The bicycle came quickly after in the early to mid 1800s, which also lacked the defining feature of having pedals at first. Then, an incestuous affair between a bicycle and roller skates gave unholy birth to the kick scooter in the early 1900s, taking root in urban city centers. At the time, the scooter’s defining characteristic (according to Wikipedia), was that it was LOUD, like an automobile and having grown up during the Razor scooter craze in the early 2000’s, I assume a gang of European street urchins tearing through the alleys of Berlin sounded like semi-automatic rifle fire. Finishing out the 20th century, the skateboard, which initially used roller skate wheels, was introduced in the 1940s and 1950s and was embraced fondly by surf culture. Through film, television, and animation, it became the predominant symbol of youthful rebellion on through to the end of the 20th century, and has terrorized sidewalk pedestrians ever since.
Notice that I didn’t even mention the Onewheel and the Segway?
What brought this all to bear was the increased prevalence of E-bikes in the Santa Ynez Valley that seemed to start a little after the pandemic. And everyone had one. Children piling on and blitzing through my neighborhood at 25 miles an hour. Whole gangs without helmets! Where are they going? McDonalds? There’s already nothing to do in the valley other than drink expensive wine and wonder who has the time and money to raise horses. God forbid children driving on unregistered vehicles get thrown into the mix! Granted, I as well spent much of my youth biking across North Escondido with nothing to do, but that was on something my mom practically picked up at a yard sale benefitting delinquent toddlers. Radbikes are $1500! Where the fuck are they getting this money?
Although, given how rapidly technology is progressing, I often wonder what will plague my daughter when she’s in her thirties? Baring Jesus’ return, I suspect by then children will be riding enlarged capybaras or sentient vegetables. Or, worse, mole people.
