Cycling is punk, and so are you.

Original Substack newsletter here from January 2nd, 2025

What I’ve learned from conversations with other Baltimore cyclists and the Riot Grrrl movement.

What I’m Listening to rn: CHROMAKOPIA, honestly just reliving my Tyler, the Creator fan era from my second year of college. This Spotify playlist I made that features Jordana, Alice Phoebe Lou, Pip Millet, Luna Li etc. using AI which I feel happy but guilty about because of AI’s impact on the environment/society at large. Lola Young’s album This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyways (if you liked the music from this my “clean girl” video you should give this whole thing a listen, she’s new and cool and I liked it). And this random Ooonse Ooonse Ooonse playlist from Spotify? Kinda vibey.

What I’m Reading rn: Girls to the Front: The True Story of the RIOT GRRRL Revolution by Sara Marcus (follow me on StoryGraph here. I have “tags” which are essentially reading lists I have curated. They include ‘fucked-up-families-and-self’, ‘radicalize’-decolonize’, ‘class-consciousness’, ‘feminist-literature’, ‘favorite-fiction’ and ‘personal-stories-and-memoirs’ (I’m debating if I should add a section for queer/relationship books and one about neurodivergent brains).

What I’m Watching rn: youtube tutorials on how to crochet/other crafting things.

Products to Share: N/A

Upcoming Events: February 20th, 5:30pm, Trek Fed Hill. I will be hosting a bikepacking workshop at the Trek Federal Hill shop! This is a free event for anyone who wants to learn more about bikepacking and bicycle touring. If 2025 has some adventures in store for you, I’d highly recommend you come by to learn some crucial information and ask your personalized questions.

March 28-30th. As of right now I am aiming to host my Atlanta 3-day/2-night bikepacking trip the last weekend of March. Stay tuned for more details 🙂

Part 1: What is Punk?

I feel like the first time I ever heard someone say “bike punk” was from my boss (let’s call him Henry) on a drive back from an installation project in Montgomery county. Henry was describing how his boss at the bike shop he used to work at rode a $10,000 Cervelo (or whatever super nice bike it was) and didn’t like Henry because he rode a beaten down DIY bike that he covered in electrical tape since he thought it looked cool. Henry did things his way and wouldn’t abide by stupid rules that he believed were nothing but a power trip by some privileged older man and his draconian judgement. They bickered about something one day, and Henry was given an ultimatum to either follow the mandate or leave the job. Henry continued to narrate, saying something along the lines of “it was this older guy attempting to enforce his power, rules and money against a young bike punk”. Henry decided to quit.

I thought about how I view the bike world being divided between those two groups of people: rich/older straight man flexing money, power and dominance on an expensive road bike vs. a bunch of weird, thrifty, creative, queer, neurodivergent, turn garbage into something amazing kind of people who would aren’t concerned with luxury name brands or money.

This conversation gave me clarity, an epiphany. Maybe I was punk? Because what Henry was describing was what I felt made up the black and white dichotomy of the bike world, and how, of all the times I’ve heard women say horrible stories about the cycling community where they lived- the men who talked down to female cyclists, too much drama about Boston, the fatphobia and ego-driven mentality of it all- I had experienced some moments like this yes, but I had met far, far more members of the cycling community- particularly the men of the cycling community- who were fun, friendly, welcoming, allies, probably a little weird and maybe a little awkward, who made up all the people I know and love. It’s why I bike. They are why I bike. Because I found my people, my community. And maybe all along, it was punk.

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Part 2. Riot Grrrl

Riot Grrrl is a “feminist punk movement that began in the early 1990s in Olympia, Washington”…”The movement encouraged women to express themselves in non-hierarchical ways, and to create safe spaces for this expression.”

I first came across “Riot Grrrl” when I found Le Tigre on Spotify while I was in Melbourne for most of February of 2024. I remember leaving the apartment I was crashing in and going to a queer community center down the block to do some video editing and personal work for my YouTube channel and growing business. It was beautiful St. Kilda in Melbourne, the beach was a five minute walk away, there was a grocery store across the street, a cafe right below, three tram stops within a five minute walk of the apartment, shops everywhere, and a park with fountains, running track, playground and small lake as well. I was crashing with a man I had flirted on and off with for two years, and things weren’t going as I had planned. I did my work in the queer community lounge, listening to Le Tigre’s Deceptacon and Fake French, wondering where this music had been in my life. I consumed it fiercely, bobbing my head while I worked.

Fast forward to several few weeks ago- late November of 2024- where I was trying to find the right music for a small social gathering. I kept seeing sneering songs like “Teenage Whore” “Bitch Theme” “Your Mom” “Eating Toothpaste” “Maggot”, and vulgar band names such as “Slutever”, “Mannequin Pussy”, “Bratmobile” and “Bikini Kill” popping up from a random Spotify search. I queued them all excitedly and with nervous smile, eyes opened and looking away because I was unsure of what my ears and my friends’ would hear.

It’s Christmas now and Abbey (my girlfriend) has given her uncle a vinyl record of “The Singles” by Bikini Kill. Her uncle gave her the vinyl for “The First Two Records” by Bikini kill, as well as “Pottymouth” by Bratmobile. By this point I’ve found the book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the RIOT GRRRL Revolution by Sara Marcus stacked on Abbey’s shelf unread, and I have claimed it as my next reading project. I’m about a hundred pages in when the accidental-Riot-Grrrl-vinyl-exchange happened, excited to be a part of this movement with them both.

“I’m eating this up” is probably the most colloquial way for me to say that I am consumed with this book and what I am about learn in regards to the Riot Grrrl revolution.

This quote stands out to me:

By the end of the ‘80s, the town’s punk scene was thriving, even magical. “Punk” here meant not mohawks and spikes but do-it-yourself, or DIY: creating something from nothing, fashion from garbage, music and art from whatever was neartest at hand, whether that be kazoos or ukuleles or strange garden implements on liquidation special down at the Yardbirds. DIY was a philosophy and a way of life, a touchstone that set its industrious adherents apart from the legions of Americans who passed their lives- as the punks saw it- trudging from TV set to first-run multiplex, from chaini record store to commercial radio dial, treating art and culture as commodities to be consumed instead of vital forces to be struggled with and shaped, experimented with and created, breathed and lived.

If you haven’t listened to Riot Grrrl music yet, I highly suggest that you do.

Part 3. I’ve always felt a bit odd. Always the girl who stood up when the elementary school teacher would ask “for a strong boy to help open the window”. Always a DIY queen. Always a bit against the grain.

I’m the “DIY queen” and I’ve started to share that with people online. I have been proud of my creations, but also nervous to meet them with any artistic respect, usually keeping my creative pride small and to myself. Jewelry making, knitting, painting, sewing, taking garbage and nature and beeswax and unused beads and literally anything I could find to turn it into some beautiful creation in my own home. I’m currently turning disc brake rotors into a jewelry stand so I can display my discarded bike part jewelry wherever I please (ideally on my future tall bike which has yet to be made). As a kid I’d regularly spend my allowance money on craft kits from AC Moore, rarely ever reading the directions since I prefered to reverse engineer everything by looking at the pictures. For Burning Van I made a clown hat and clown collars from trash. For All Things Go I made an edgy festival bike fit just a few days prior. My bedroom walls are covered all over in artwork I’ve made, dead flowers I’ve treasured, and pieces of wood and string and glass that had another life to live. For Christmas I made Abbey some simple chainmail earrings to match her chainmail necklace, and made us matching earrings from thrifted miniature ornaments.

I’ve loved making stuff for as long as I can remember.

Aside from AP studio art in high school, my art education stopped, and my artistic practice and paintings slowed down drastically. Without scheduled time and guidance to create, I desperately found pockets of time to be creative, fighting a constant battle of giving up creativity so I could focus on school and a “career”, fighting the self-hatred of seeing my skills decline, and fighting the feeling of needing to give up something I love because of capitalist guilt. Sometimes I wonder and wish how things could have been different for me if I had a proper textile/fine art education. Maybe I’d be more talented, more refined, earning income from my creations and building a creative brand for myself. Maybe I wouldn’t feel stuck between selling myself out for a bureaucratic desk job that only lets you be creative if it’s for marketing purposes, being a starving artist, or being a creative mind who makes stuff for fun around the house and gifts for friends.

For now, I am preparing to sell and showcase my creations in 2025, a slow graduation from simple home display and gift-giving to a maturing portfolio that can be admired and purchased from. I still wonder if I’d rather keep my art private or publicly monetized.

There is something to be said as well for women who “craft” and men who are “artists”. I too have discredited the value of my creations, often wondering if I am pricing my work too high, too low, or not at all. This creator frames it perfectly in her video showcasing a hand knit tank saying “when a woman does it it’s a craft, when a man does it it’s art“. The bio is long, but a summary of it is “The common misconception is, that women have hobbies, like cooking, baking and crafting. As soon as this “hobby” gets monetised though, it’s a man’s job.” (for further reading on this subject, read Worn: A People’s History of Clothing. How women often are exploited and discredited for creating clothing, and how men have used that for their own profit, and to disvalue the work of other men in this “feminine” field).

I’m getting a bit sidetracked here, but what I am trying to emphasize is that I too have devalued my creative ambitions, not seeing it as an art or as meaningful, aside from it being a small hobby. I’ve gotten used to some friends finding me odd when picking up trash from the side of the road and viewing it as if it is gold, a project and unique creation waiting to make an imprint on the world. And as I have become more integrated in the bike community, finding so many like minded friends and folks, they often share this same mindset of unconventionality, thriftiness, and a mild anarchic view of value, hierarchy and law. My community of cyclists- both in person and with the following I have created online- create art from garbage in the same manners that I do. They are “bike punks” as Henry had described earlier.

Part 4: I’m leaning into the punk identity. You should too.

Not everyone reading this will identify with the punk culture as I have. For so long I didn’t think I was allowed to identify as anything “counterculture”, probably because I look like any other basic-blonde-girl-next-door (which is both an asset and a hindrance to my experience walking through this world). I thought punk meant red mohawks, all black clothing, leather jackets and skipping class. In many ways I had crippling anxiety which caused me to put myself into a box of perfectionism even though I so desperately wanted to break free for most of my youth. I am an adult now and have learned to be myself, channeling the energy of “if you don’t like me, then that’s your problem and not mine”. I have learned to stop masking (read Devon Price’s Unmasking Autism. Even if you don’t identify as autistic, I believe this book is valuable to read, because masking is something that anyone can experience and do). Putting yourself into a shoebox to fit in doesn’t create joy like we think it does. It only creates a phoney lack of friction, and a vast lack of self.

To be punk is to possess intentional friction against society.

To bike in a car-centric country is to be friction against society.

Biking, if you choose it to be so, is punk too.