Local Color

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Have you ever heard the term local color before? It’s a term I learned growing up in the Midwest to refer to someone or something that lights a neighborhood up or makes it special. It most often refers to someone who is an endearing eccentric that people identify with a place. Yet, I also think of local color as all the things and idiosyncrasies that make a neighborhood a place that is unique. Those things could be architectural details, coffee shops, tattoo parlors, specific graffiti tags or art installations that you only see in that neighborhood, or just odd happenstance things that the weather and fate brought into your pathway that you cannot separate from that place. It’s those people, places, and features that make a neighborhood feel alive in a way that no corporate activated space can. As bicyclists, I think we are local color and incredibly attuned to the local color around us.

To embrace local color as a bicyclist is to live fully the philosophy that Sir Isaac Ramos, head honcho of peace sports productions, shared in issue five of Peace Sports Illustrated:

“The internet only shows a slice of the story. Visit new places, meet new people, and try new food.”

Yes, get off the internet and embed yourself into the world around you. Use your bike, any bike, and go places you have never been before. You don’t even have to ride far. Chortle mightily as you greet your fellow carbon-based life forms in the streets. Wave at strangers and wish them well. Refer to your baristas as the unholy triumvirate and call them “my liege” as you thank them for your drink. Go visit your friends in the middle of the day and make them talk to you. Take photos of the community art that was put up on light posts. To be local color you have to be the cringe you want to see in the world. You have to open yourself up to wonder and awe. 

Isn’t that surprise, wonder, and awe of what bikes are all about? I can’t think of a better way, besides walking, to really soak in all the tiny miracles that exist outside your door. Yes, I said miracles. Here I am talking about those secular miracles that make one feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Take a person spending countless hours making a faery garden or a tattoo shop cover a busted up window with a sign that says, “we forgive you.”

That’s the sort of stuff the makes me pause and consider how a place is made up of people who care for each other; a place that has embraced me and I embrace back. When I think of future utopias, I think about how we can have more time to build neighborhoods full of densely-layered local color. I think about how we can meet one another there in awe, wonder, and surprise, woven into each others lives in relationships of mutual aid and cultural creation.

If words are cheap for you, let’s practice local color together. Go out on a bike ride with the intention of taking pictures of the local color the surrounds you. Bring any camera. It could be your phone camera, a polaroid, a 35mm film camera. Within the first 5-10 minutes of your ride, find something to take a photo of. You will find that once you stop once that you will stop a lot. That first photo that you take of something that speaks to you will be the beginning of you noticing all the local color that surrounds you. Share the photos with your loved ones, do a slide show (like Isaac did) for your bike community, or put them up on the internet. I decided to share some of my recent local color bike photos with you!

This is a working draft for my submission to Peace Sports Illustrated, an incredibly cool bike zine put out by Isaac Ramos in Los Angeles. I just literally bought a scanner for my polaroids so I can get better resolution for them moving forward. The photos in this essay are placeholders until I get my scanner.

This essay was written while listening to Tool’s Lateralus for the 95 millionth time. I had my one of my first bouts with OCD listening to this record as a teenager, so it used to remind me of some dark times back in the day. However, now I just really enjoy listening to it and don’t much remember that history. This shows how quickly things can shift over the course of a few years. I find that flexibility in the span of my existence the most relieving. I remember a time when I wouldn’t even listen to this record because it reminded me so much about my OCD triggers. That didn’t change until I did exposure therapy for my OCD. Through exposure therapy, one has to descend to their own personal hell in order to face down the fears that they would rather spin out into compulsions than face. This is why I consider myself a demon now. I don’t think their is any other mystical being that could so boldly go toward the fear and fire like that. Now, I just live in the after times of not having my entire life ruled by compulsion. It’s really neat. Go toward the fear and the fire, face it down and be free. Now, I can listen to tool and not freak out. I really enjoy not freaking out.

New Omen bike questing sticker will be released soon. Local color is the omen fodder of all enchanted riders. This will be available in a few weeks once my local union printer gets them off the presses. I made this 8 x 3, because I think folx would appreciate a smaller sticker. Also, this omen bike quest logo was made by a fellow wizard, thee bicycle wizard

Thank you for reading. Apologies for the late essay. Mother’s day prep and bike rides took precedence. Happy mothers day to all the mom’s in the community.

Until next time, dear reader,

James