On Queen Street East, you see a lot of old men on bicycles.
With the handlebars turned inside out, a man with a big, bushy biker beard wobbles down the street with a mysterious, half-full garbage bag slung over his shoulder. At the lights, he stops, picks something up off the street, stuffs it in his pocket, and then cycles off, his eyes darting from side to side as he looks for witnesses.
An old man on a Value Village bicycle rides slow and indifferent down the sidewalk. There’s about an inch of ash hanging from the cigarette that’s clenched between his teeth, and it doesn’t look like he has any plans to get out of the way of any pedestrians.
The bikes these men ride have the appearance of found objects. Stripped of colour, with the tape peeling haphazardly off the handlebars, the bikes are all at least 25 years out of fashion. Never encumbered by locks or helmets, it’s easy to imagine that they’re abandoned whenever the rider gets to his destination, and that there, the bike just waits for the next man to pick it up and cycle off wherever he’s going.
Beneath a baseball hat, a man in his 60’s rides down Queen Street. Suddenly, he swerves across the road, as if he was trying to avoid some creature that only he could see. Behind him a car honks angrily, but he just waves them off, turning his body to give them the finger. “Shut yer hole!” he shouts.
A man’s thin legs are pedaling furiously. The bike, an old-fashioned ten-speed, is far too small for him, and his knees keep rising up past the handlebars. Both tires look to be pretty low, and he’s chugging along in first gear. He’s not getting very far, and it’s pretty clear that his effort is more trouble than it’s worth, the sort of thing that one might even take for a metaphor.