eighty; Kat, Red Commuter (with a milk crate)

She’s the only person I’ve known who can pull off a tattoo of the Sun Records emblem (I lived in Nashville).
She studies Behavioral Economics and listens to the Bad Brains, the type in class that should speak but rarely does (unless its about Kosovo… honestly impressive), in a school filled with the opposite.
Fell asleep today in Sociology (apparently she’s read a book on the lecture topic), but prefers to nap on the grass.
She made her own Halloween costume (a skunk), literally lives with Swine Flu and knows who wrote the screenplay for “Where the Wild Things Are.”

seventy-nine; Gialiana, Specialized Mountain Bike (with a silver bell)

A talent can both be a suture and a binding tie.
She plays viola with passion that’s beyond physical constraints, literally.
In fact it’s so strong, her fatherly conductor has to check her back pain after nightly rehearsals, regularly running until midnight.
A one-track mind can often be mistaken for an absent one; ATM card and laptop in plain view as she unlocks her bike alone at night.
She’s learned to loosen the tension and the need for perfection, with a knitting habit.
Such little time fraternize (she’s playing on Halloween), someone surely will be wishing they were her strings.

seventy-eight; Michael, Diamondback Mountain Bike

Dawning a cardigan, tie and loafers is not just an ironic fashion statement; it’s practice.
There has never been a moment in his life where he can remember not wanting to be a judge.
LSATS are what he is, does, eats, sleeps and breaths.
He comes from a “horse family,” wallet is branded with an image of his grandfather buggy racing.
His whip/carrot pragmatism is both current (for school) and vintage (for style).
He has a heavy future and a light heart.
Admittedly the shoes came from the basement of his Co-Op, and his Halloween costume is better than yours.

seventy-seven; Kevin, Road bike (just sold)

Appropriate that when I receive my first C in years, he reminds me of the futility of education in relation to joy.
Outside the bar, he chides his friends for riding without nightlights.
Majored in literature because he “was good enough at it,” the only way he foresees using his degree is if, “I don’t know, I go back to school.”
He started working on his future (literally) in college, when, strapped for cash, he taught himself to repair bikes.
Started as an apprentice 3.5 years ago, now he’s the head mechanic at my favorite shop.
More importantly, he’s happy.

seventy-six; Patrick, Diamondback Freestyle

His handy work hangs around his neck in intricate copper spirals, laced through bone, glass and stone.
His craftwork ascends the Bob Marley shirts and “water pipes” typical of Telegraph street peddlers.
One might call it art.
He has aspirations of becoming “a kickass dad, with an awesome, hot wife and maybe do carpentry or something.”
Claims to be better with wood than wire, but since he moved from Virginia to the Bay, he hasn’t had a chance to get his hands dirty.
Wandering, but not lost,
Grounded yet adrift;
only bumper stickers hold the kind of truths he embodies

seventy-five; Blake, Mongoose Commuter

He has three different mustaches tattooed on the inside of the fingers of his right hand, providing a spectacle of expressions when he plays the mandolin.
He has his best friend (of 23 years) on his side, for whom he has provided his old bike.
He has a bit of a buzz, providing him with an enviable smile, and the fuel to make a doughnut run at 10:30pm on a Sunday.
He has a job doing something he likes (video game journalism), when 9.8% of Americans don’t, providing him just enough means to get bye.
He has no complaints tonight.

seventy-four; H. Scott Prosterman, Vintage Road Bike

The mans a “professional,”
In his words he, “helps people get in, and then gets them out”
So ahead of the curve he finished his Middle-Eastern studies degree 30 years ago, (lived in Egypt during the Camp David Accords).
He provides;
Tutoring for writing, grammar, citizenship, and accent reduction.
Editorial, Copy and Counseling support for academic, corporate and non-profit projects, as well as college and grad school admissions.
Marathons, Triathlons and “the shortest white-boy to dunk,”
he’s published various opinion, theoretical, and scholarly papers,
and most impressively, he makes an attempt at his own 100 words.
Did I mention modest?

seventy-three; Roman, Trek Road bike

Though history fills his sales tonight, he is shipping-out on physics, economics, politics and a lifetime of inspiration.
10 years military, scholar for life;
he’s filled with a modesty that is unrelenting, etiquette that’s to the letter and a sincere curiosity that is breathtaking.
He shocks my jaded sensibilities when he tells me, one, U.S. media coverage of Iraq isn’t half bad, and two, the only reason he didn’t need to drop out of school was the present administration.
“If you want to know what a country thinks of its poor, look at how they take care of their Veterans.”

seventy-two; Agnes, Rebuilt commuter

Transformed into Thursday night, she rides her bike in heels to find her evening’s niche carved into a bar and a double date.
She has a harder time hiding her daylight self than her companions. Their eager to crack into detachment, but she lingers just long enough to appease me (and just quick enough to appease them).
Public Health, immigrated from Hungry, likes cooking soup, Mother’s an American liaison for a European magazine, just out of a bad relationship…
She answers my questions like she’s taking a test, offers a professional exchange of email, and tends to her appropriate indulgences.

seventy-one; Natalie, Silver Road Bike from Austin, TX (Brooks Saddle)

If the gods were honest, life would be a lot less fun; poets wouldn’t need to suffer over subtleties, painting would be technique, not perspective, the bible would be written in Physics...
and she would be out of a job.
Thankfully (for her) the gods are inherently dishonest.
Her work is like that of a parent, trying to put together an idea of reality based on the fibs of children whose faces are covered in crumbs, but swear they haven’t touched the cookie jar.
I ask her how she feels about spirituality,
“I believe in the beauty of the natural world.

seventy; Johnny, Centurion touring bike

He’s utterly unfazed by the fact that the stranger borrowing his iphone is covering it in tears.
Just laid off of his corporate job in the city, now he part times, nickel and dimes, and plays music on the side.
It was a high-dive to low-end, but the music works wonders on his disposition, he even manages a full-toothed grin as he tells me the man who fired him didn’t know his name.
He’s got a direction (employment of just about any kind) but I think he should stop trying, because, as his bands name implies, The Aimless Never Miss.

sixty-nine; Justin, Specialized Mountain Bike

I taught performance-poetry workshops at his former high school,
Needles to say, he was bent left before he moved to the bay,
Three years of protests resembling parties (and parties resembling protests),
he’s growing disillusioned.
Jürgen Habermas spoke of two stages of the democratic public,
first, active, united and relevant voting community,
second, an apathetic couch-potato democracy, where no acts with trust or solidarity.
He stopped trusting limousine liberals when his first bike was stolen in broad, busy daylight,
“I’ve invested $150 in security”
he tells me referencing his bike,
“I’m more conservative now than I ever thought I’d be”

sixty-eight; Brian, Brother's Commuter (first day)

There is a kind of sixth sense that surfers share.
We can spot each other across thick rooms and crowded pretence.
Maybe it’s the sandals despite the sub-sixty bite in the air.
He got hooked two years ago at school in San Diego, ever since, his hart cant rest at home in San Jose.
It realigns all ambitions; initially, as a Pre-Med he had intended to do R&D, now he wants to do humanitarian work in Mexico.
His brother took up the family pharmaceutical business (the only lingering obligation),
Now he just has to finish Medical school, easy enough, right?

sixty-seven; Morton, Beach Cruiser

He was studying philosophy in Central America, after his Norwegian Punk band broke-up, when he met his wife, who was on a five-day vacation from Baja.
His professors told him to chase her, so he left town days before the tail of Hurricane Katrina leveled his town.
When he found her, she told him she was moving to Berkeley to get her Masters in design.
So he moved here, and got a job at a movie theater.
Though the most dramatic life gets these days is probably skateboarding, he is far more entertaining than any movie at the playhouse tonight.

sixty-six; Andy, Blue Mountain Bike ($99.99)

The Internet is faster in South Korea but the hamburgers are better here, and though the occasional Sympathy For Lady Vengeance comes out of Seoul, the heart of the media industry is in California.
He convinced his parents to send him to America to Master English (in a year).
Sure, they may have done so because they thought he was going to use his new language for a job as an engineer (considering that’s what he went to school for…and considering they paid for school).
“I’ll get an internship doing anything and work up from there.”
At least he’s realistic.

sixty-five; Camden, Rebuilt Road Bike

“Ideally I want to work for a magazine writing music reviews…and then go to law school whet I get tired of living in squalor.”
He’s optimistic about his future in journalism.
He’s convergence incarnate; raised on Orange County Hard Core, schooled in rhetoric (literally), climbing through free-lance music blogging, volunteer radio and student run newspapers.
Corporate media’s gears are greased with the oil of dreams like his.
With a bit of creative logic, his life seems to be about making these murky horizons look a bit more buoyant.
“I kind of feel like a storm chaser driving into a tornado.”

sixty-four; Kevin, Bianchi custom build

If he were a knife he would be a serrated blade:
Dull under blunt pressure, effective with momentum and direction.
In his fourth year at Cal studying Public Health, this weekend he’s off to Florida to interview for medical-school, but he doesn’t really want to go.
He could speak fluent Mandarin, understands it so well he tells me the inadequacies of hip-hop in Chinese, but doesn’t feel like practicing.
Competitive in speech in debate, now estranged.
Used to ride centuries, now he just commutes.
Regardless, he is possessed with infectious buoyancy,
even if he hides his smile from the camera.

sixty-three; Andrew, Raleigh Grand Prix

Talks about oil dependency usually end with, “someone should really do something about that.”
Here’s that someone;
A microbiologist from Marin researching bacteria,
Bike commuting in the nastiest rain Berkeley’s had this year.
Remarkably charming, contrasting the awkward we’ve come to expect from science.
Perhaps he’s the face of a new super hero; one in a lab coat, one who fights injustice with his lifestyle and not just some freakish biological endowment (besides his brain).
Perhaps I’m just endeared to him because he let me ask him some questions in time to get home before the rain started back in.

sixty-two; Marcus; Univega Mountain-Bike

The shine of this college town is rusting on him.
Working full-time as a chemist doesn’t feed the itch anymore.
Companionship has been mixing with disappointment like biter vermouth.
He needs a new chemical cocktail, so he’s trying serotonin in the end of a pen.
All day at work he ties his science arm, until his creative veins ache for an injection of late night inspiration.
Unpacks his pencils, orders a Panini and fills his pages with literally hundreds of hours of the high he finds in drawing.
“I used to think I would teach chemistry, now that’s highly unlikely.”

sixty-one; Andrew, Raleigh Road Bike (Moms hand-me-down from UCLA)

Chivalry isn’t dead, is just walking with a limp, and he might be it’s cane.
It’s not the fact that they stayed together over summer, though 344 miles away, both working in movie theaters.
It’s not the fact that he walks her back to her apartment (on cold nights, across town).
Rather the subtle way he pulls her into our conversation, telling me about her exotic bug collection, the way he walks closest to the street, the way he answers my questions with stories about her, like who had better high-school biology teachers:
The little big things that mean everything.

sixty; Ben Steel Road Bike (Salvaged)

If palm readers told the past instead of the future, his calluses would speak of two generations of craftsmen, a week of poring concrete along side his Father and perhaps some time in personal demolition.
Now he’s all about building.
Spending Saturday night in Berkeley, clasping a cup of coffee and plans for s bathroom, he’s up from Oakland with only his headphones, some indi-rock and the occasional bad memory to keep him company.
He knows contracting intuitively, designs with pencil and pad and makes lumber and land into somewhere you can store you heart.
He drinks coffee, not Americanos.

fifty-nine; Javier, Steel Ten-Speed Commuter Bike

What does one do after spending seven years in medical school?
After your brother and parents have left you and moved thousands of miles away?
He decided on country whose language he only knows from medical books, where he has to start at ESL classes in community college?
Why?
This is where his family is, so this is where his future is.
He just got out of Friday night salsa class, says it’s a good way to meet people.
He assures me he’s not nervous about becoming a doctor here (medicine is bilingual), its talking to people that worries him.

fifty-eight; Shaelyn, Univega road bike (complicated lock)

As I help her lock up her bike, I read the tattoo on the palm of her right hand,
“Let Go.”
She wins the “What do I want to be when I grow up?” contest.
She ran off the sugar high of being an “artist” after two years of art school in San Jose.
Now she’s working on getting into the Piece Corps, primarily because she wants to apply her knowledge while offering real humanitarian aid to a developing country (instead of just saying that ‘someone’ should)…and she thinks it would be ‘rad’ to live in the third world.

fifty-seven; Chelsey, Bianchi Road bike

At some point most actors are faced with the reality of their craft, innocence lost; waiting tables for the rest of their life is a scary possibility.
Perhaps it’s the fact that she’s from Southern California (and smart) that she realized this before she finished college.
Now she follows the flow of content across media platforms, drinks yerba mate and takes classes in DIY kombucha making.
Flashcards, study groups and typed lecture notes; she can do school, or at least portray it convincingly.
Though tomorrow’s midterm is sitting in the wings, she’s already got this weekend’s denouement within tongue’s reach.

fifty-six; Carlos, Amalgam commuter bike

His shopping cart is full of bunt cake and chewing gum; face draped thick with skepticism as I start interviewing him in the deli section of Safeway at 10:30pm.
This is what happens when one moves into their first studio apartment senior year of college; they eat food that would disappoint any mother and don’t trust strange men questioning them in public.
He’s studying pre-law (which explains the wariness).
He balances all this with a gallon of skim milk and his desire for social justice or environmental law (plus the fact that he drives a bio-diesel B.M.W. back at home).

fifty-five; Sean, Steel Peugeot Fixed Gear with Carbon Forks

A champagne cork hangs from his seat, a throwback to 1920’s track racing when it represented the celebration of inevitable victory and the stored explosion waiting to pop from the rider’s legs.
Untapped potential like a Cornell Geo-Physics degree hanging on the wall of a Peat’s barista.
“In this economy I’m just grateful for a job,” he spouts with sincerity, not at all shy.
His interest in physics sprung from a love affair with a rainbow, he commuted to and from SF this weekend for 45min of music and studies the earth just to say he knows how it spins.

fifty-four; Susheel, Trek Mountain Bike (free from a bike shop)

Though aware of the price of his time at Cal, he allows himself the occasional Patriot’s experience of getting beer faced at homecoming.
What would be the point in transferring from University in Scotland if he didn’t enjoy some U.S. debauchery rite?
He’s getting his American dollar’s worth, studying Latin-American Art History, riding his bike across the Bay Bridge and going to American football games instead of pseudo-European raves in the city.
The cost of admittance inspires his diligence, so he picks his vices wisely.
He has learned the price of Saturday night,
“That’s what Sundays are for right?”

fifty-three; Charley, Raleigh Road Bike

So what if we lost?
It’s homecoming, Dads in town and it’s Saturday night.
Gone are the warm months of summer paralegal practice, now he’s neck deep in infinite briefs.
But Law School’s labors subside tonight just long enough to gulp in a bit of October bite (a warm one by his Salt Lake City standards) and watch the slaughter of the home team.
“I guess we can’t be good at everything.”
I ask him why law and he replies modestly,
“Well I knew I wanted to go for a PHD or something.”
This is one hell of a something.

fifty-two; Mikael, Steel Road bike with big baskets

He didn’t like school, wasn’t into Washington.
He did like bikes, he liked coffee and he liked friends.
How can he make this work?
(First try)
Move to Panama with friends and grow coffee.
It was worth a shot.
Hopped a plane and went all in.Way more pricy than practical.
Scratch that.
Move to Berkeley, make friends, roast free-trade coffee from contacts made in Panama and deliver it…by bike.
Make business cards, make good with neighbors (“who doesn’t like free coffee?”), and make sales.
Made it happen.
Celebrate! Friday night burlesque show in Oakland, paper-bag IPA and a bike ride.

fifty-one; Planet, Schwinn Varsity 10-speed

“Too much dessert can make you sick.” And apparently Austin, Texas was a cakewalk.
Eight years ago he gave up everything but his van, drove to the heart of abandon (Telegraph St. in Berkeley) and fed on frugality.
He learned to live without the big luxuries (like a job) and the little ones (like his ego).
“I try to let go of things, and I have to trust that they will come comeback when I need them.”
They did.
He has an apartment now, and he runs a bike repair service with no advertising relying on the “boomerang of karma.”

fifty; Aaron, Schwinn fixed gear with carbon forks

He left college in Aberdeen just a handful of credits shy of a degree in urban social development to actually live in an urbanized social development (“with way better weather”).
Though he sports northwestern fixed gear intimidation like a second skin, it’s clearly just a familiar coat from harsher environments (he sheds it like a winter coat in spring the instant he starts to speak).
Now he reads crime novels (because he can) and sucks in bits of California between pulls of hand rolled cigarettes and coffee.
His head now firmly in the clouds: his feet loosely in the street.