Le bike, c'est chic

The NYT Style magazine is evidently gearing up (sorry) for a bicycle-themed issue, given how many of its recent posts are biking-themed. As is generally the case with style (see also), whatever it is is stylish if those who could afford otherwise opt for it. Head-to-toe denim (think "boyfriend" jeans and a tucked-in chambray button-down) are the height of chic, but not if god forbid worn on an actual worker. (Unless it's an artisan-food-craftsperson in Bushwick.) And riding a bike is so-very-now, but only if you've nobly opted not to be escorted by your car-and-driver, only if you've stylishly rejected the possibility of getting from your apartment in SoHo to your office in Tribeca by cab. If you're a Milanese fashion designer, chic. If this is actually how you get around, because, for example, a car seems like a huge investment, especially when you're not sure where you'll be living in a few years, and when there's alternative transportation to the further-away supermarkets, it's not chic in the least. If you have to wear a helmet because you ride in heavy traffic, on roads where furious New Jersey SUV drivers honk at you simply for having taken a slower-moving vehicle into their road, forget it.

But fantasy Bikeland is another matter entirely. Even if the place is ostensibly Chicago, it's all white-walled minimalism, London or Scandinavia, off-the-beaten-path cafés where you might get a "flat white," men with those quasi-fascistic haircuts where the sides and back are shaved off but the top is kept long. And the bikes themselves had better look straight out of the Netherlands. (A bike like this, $1,255.) Bikeland is a vacation to Northern Europe where exchange rates are no matter, where the fact that a beer in Sweden (or is it Norway?) costs $10, where you are hob-nobbing with creative types, joining them at art openings that begin at 11, when it's still light out, of course, so you don't even need to ruin the clean lines of your bike with unsightly lights. You have family money, so your job is designing the packaging for an eco-friendly brand of nail polish. You are biking from aperitivo hour with beautiful Milanese of your preferred gender, to repurposed industrial spaces in Greenpoint where unknown goth-chic designers are hosting all-night runway shows. Bikeland, in other words, sounds fabulous, but has little in common with bike riding as actually experienced, which is to say, mud-splattered and with a backpack filled to capacity.