Commie Kitsch from Dero Racks
This bright red shirt — with a design like a poster in “Soviet Realism” style, a mock Soviet propaganda message, “Ride Your Bike for the People!” in fake Cyrillic type, and a portrait of Vladimir Lenin himself — was a giveaway from the Dero company, which makes bicycle racks. I picked up the shirt at a National Bicycle Summit — in 2007 or 2008, I think. The Summit is a national conference and lobbying event organized by the League of American Bicyclists. The event is funded by the rather high admission fee and a substantial grant from the bicycle industry’s lobbying arm, Bikes Belong.
The logic, and for that matter the question of good taste, with the Commie kitsch on this shirt baffle me. The JFK Library here in the Boston area is about to hold a panel discussion on the 50th Anniversary of Cuban Missle Crisis. Living in a world that included the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was scary —
— while Dero is very squarely situated within the seriously capitalistic U.S. bicycle industry.
The bicycle industry has more recently inverted the Bikes for the People slogan with its PeopleforBikes campaign, but that’s another story. I certainly can be thankful, though, that here in the USA, I can comment about “People’s” movements which actually serve some other constituency, without being hauled away in the middle of the night to some Gulag, or worse.
Anyway, I have adopted the appropriate stern expression and raised fist for the photo, in keeping with the spirit of the shirt.
Cyclist’s of the world unite! We have nothing to lube but our chains!
I picked one of those up at the 2006 Pro-Bike/Pro-Walk in Madison, the location of a more recent Worker’s Rebellion against the State.
One thing you had to say about those bipolar Cold War days–they were slightly more predictable than the multipolar present. May we live in interesting times, Comrade Allen!
Of course, commenting about Astroturf movements too loudly is politically incorrect in some circles, but as you say, such comments don’t result in midnight relocation to the sub-basement of the local police station.