Steve Karp
steve karp
The Ride, Issue 114
"My friend Ken built an old Raleigh Pursuit fixed gear bike for me and that changed everything," said Steve Karp. "I was hooked." After a childhood of tooling around his neighborhood on BMX bikes, cycling fell by the wayside as he aged. "I developed that typical American mindset of 'oh, I've outgrown bikes,'" said Karp. Skateboarding and playing in punk rock bands filled the void until 1998, when this former tattoo artist traded some ink for a client's 20" BMX freestyle bike. "When I started riding again it was just fun, and I stopped caring what people thought about bikes and adulthood." From there, Karp, 34, augmented his expanding stable of cycles with a used Gary Fisher mountain bike. He happily commuted a short distance between New Britain and Plainville before finding a new job in West Hartford, which required a longer route through more traffic. Conquering the distances, his metamorphosis into a bike commuter continued, but a domestic move to a different neighborhood temporarily derailed his daily crusades. "I had an entry-level road bike which I was riding a lot with friends and on long solo rides, but I was still spooked to ride into the office from my new town." Then Todd Holland, East Coast racer, advocate and occasional Ride Magazine contributor started working at the same office. Holland commuted daily by bike, and encouraged Karp to take to the roads again. After scoping out the route on a weekend, Karp was back to bicycle commuting the very next workday. "It was like a whole new world to me, and it had been in front of me all along," he gushed. "I was meeting people who were stoked to meet someone into bikes, even if I didn't know a headset from a bottom bracket." After upgrading to a LeMond road bike, Karp considered trying racing. He tried to enter a nearby criterium, but didn't enjoy the atmosphere. "I was hoping folks there would be open and accepting of rank amateurs," but instead he felt excluded from the high-end-parts clique. "I figured I wasn't destined to be a road bike star - so what?" he shrugged. "That moment made me focus on expanding my cycling to something most people weren't riding: fixed-gears." And eventually track bikes. Karp procured a used Bianchi Pista that he regularly rides for his 21-mile round-trip commutes, plus any errand that takes him out of the house. "Now the fixed-gear is my religion," Karp explained. "In a world of high-tech, high-cost bikes, I try and spread the word that cycling can also be very grassroots and street level!" Imagining a world where bike commuting could be accepted would require a "complete and fundamental reprogramming of the average American," Karp suggests. "I see lots of folks on bikes on the Rails-To-Trails that I incorporate into my commute home," he explains. "But they see bikes as purely as recreational. The trick is to get them to see a bike as a viable form of transportation. The same goes for fitness-minded people at the spinning class." Karp says: "I'm an army-of-one in terms of cycling advocacy. I'm not much of a joiner, but I do my best to encourage people to ride, especially to work. I try and spread the word on my own that 'the revolution will not be motorized.'" "But the hardcore cadre takes it one step further: 'the revolution will not have derailleurs.'" | more supercommuters » BikeCulture Magazine and Planet Bike honor the silent hero of the Revolution: the bicycle commuter. A supercommuter rides through every season, in all types of weather, day and night. Choosing the simplicity, health and pleasure of bicycling, a supercommuter isn't necessarily against automobiles. They simply prefer to ride a bike to the grocery store, to work, to a concert or the cafe. nominate a supercommuter » For each issue BikeCulture chooses a new Supercommuter. They are posted here in addition to BikeCulture Magazine. |
