Bicycle Diaries
Product Description
A renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-thehandlebars view of the world’s cities
Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour. Byrne’s choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights.
An account of what he sees and whom he meets as he pedals through metropoles from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne’s thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, archi… More >>
David Byrne is a smart, funny, artistic sort of fellow whose talents, inclination and curiosity have led him all over the world. A few decades back, David discovered folding bicycles and since then he’s ridden his bicycle along the side and back roads of many cities, riding, thinking, chatting, living life and seeing how it’s lived in a wide range of places. His view of the world seen from a bicycle saddle gives him “glimpses into the mind of my fellow man, as expressed in the cities he lives in.” Now, his meditations on people, places and the various ways we get along and get around are collected in his new book, Bicycle Diaries.
Bicycle Diaries is the best kind of art, a work that brings the reader along on the artist’s journey. Bicycle Diaries is a physically beautiful book, hardcover with no dust-jacket, yellow embossed letters cheerfully identify the title and author while a black silhouette of a rider draws the reader forward. An observant reader will notice a tiny bicycle peeking out from the spine at the bottom of page 11 and on each odd page thereafter the bicycle has makes more progress. Fanning forward through the pages sets the tiny typeset bicycle free, racing across the pages in the oldest style animation, persistent vision holding tight to the bike while the pages blur past. Ever the artist, be it in music, lyric, print, or type, David remembers that a book can be more than just a file on a Kindle.
The tiny animation is just one example of the playful digressiveness of this book. While he casts a loving and critical look at the world, David is always conversational. He ponders, rants, muses and marvels. He reflects on how our cities reflect our minds. We build what we value, but our shaped world shapes those values. In an age where it seems that every celebrity has a publicist and a book that screams “look at me”, David is instead riding his bike down interesting streets and pausing now and then to say “Hey, look at that!” He profiles interesting buildings, streets, people, cities and artists. He’s structured the book as a series of chapters each concentrating on a city such as Berlin, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Sydney or New York, but the book is not a mere travelogue. In Manila, he uses the life story of Imelda Marcos as a springboard for contemplation of the way we each build the mythic stories of our lives. In Buenos Aires he considers geography, faith, death, music, art, unemployment, sex, the pack behavior of dogs, politics, football, gentrification, nightlife, and worker ownership. In every place he rides, he finds the unique and the common and connects the local with the global.
Bicycle Diaries is an intensely human and humane book, a book that echoes in print the sense of “My God, how did I get here?” that David expressed years ago in the Talking Heads. To an interesting person like David, all places are interesting and he consistently reminds us just how interesting humans are. We are the ones building the human world — we don’t just travel the world, we make it. David’s work takes him out in the world, a world he shapes with songs and images. As he’s ridden more, in more places, he’s become more of a cycle activist, using his talents to shape the world to be friendlier to humans and bicycles. He’s designed and installed bike racks in New York City, he thinks about helmet design and he works with transportation planners. And most importantly, he’s written a wonderful book, a book that reveals the simple delight of riding a bike through an amazing world.
David Byrne is an enormously creative and thoughtful composer, artist and performer. He’s also a cyclist and a world traveler which makes him a kindred soul. These attributes prompted me to buy the Kindle edition of the book and, while my expectations were not very high, this book probably should have remained a magazine article. In the acknowledgments David says it was a publisher/editor who convinced him that there was a book here and the author would have done well to ignore the advice. It is really a collection of thoughts inspired by David’s bike rides in cities around the world and, while it is modestly entertaining, the thoughts inspired by his two-wheeled meandering are not particularly original or earth-shaking. I found myself abandoning the book about half-way through which is something I almost never do. The writing itself is not bad, but I just don’t think he has enough to say to make this work as a book. I remain a David Byrne fan and I’ll look out for his next effort, but I wouldn’t recommend buying the book.
This book is super fun to read. Hang out in David Byrne’s front pocket as he travels the world and shares his perceptions about the hidden dynamics behind the socio-political environments of world cities. He somehow perfectly captures the moods and vibes of these places while sharing his interesting personal opinions of current affairs along the way. A leisurely read that I highly recommend.
Follow scattered moments of the life of a very interesting person as he bikes through – and makes insightful observations about – a great number of interesting and sad places. A very pleasant read and a nice journey.
David Byrne, founder of the band “Talking Heads,” has compiled a series of short essays about bicycling in cities around the world. The bicycling essays are accompanied by additional essays about music, friendship, city planning, and the scale of human communities that were inspired by thoughts that sprang into Mr. Bryne’s head while he was riding his bicycle, visiting with colleagues, and performing. Mr. Byrne is an unabashed liberal, and he doesn’t suffer fools lightly; I got the impression that he’s of an age (mid-50s) and financially comfortable enough that he doesn’t have to take any guff from anyone. His perspective is refreshing.
Having enjoyed the book, I have to point out that there’s not much here that hasn’t been said before, especially about city planning. I enjoyed the bicycling essays the most, and especially enjoyed his reflections about bicycling in New York (where Mr. Byrne lives), in other American cities, and in Berlin; the essays about other world cities were not as fully developed. The recollections of interactions with musical colleagues might be interesting to fans of world music, but I hurried through most of them. A good (but not great) read, and a gentle introduction to city planning for those not already familiar with the basics. The book is 291 pages long, but the pages are small and there are lots of photographs.