The New York Times Magazine - USA (2022-02-27)

10 2.27.

‘Bike Hunters’

exists not to

make you feel

bad, but to make

you want

a fancy bike.

Illustration by R. O. Blechman

stressing the need for individuals to bal-
ance the two. People who drink too much,
for example, might have a better chance
of changing if they can, in addition to
understanding alcohol’s negative toll on
their life, envision how drinking less could
add positives, like better relationships with
loved ones. ‘‘If I can’t dance, I don’t want
to be in your revolution,’’ the anarchist
Emma Goldman is often quoted as say-
ing. In fact, the phrase seems to have been
coined by an activist printing T-shirts for
a fund-raiser, but the point stands: Surely
we need more to look forward to than the
avoidance of worst-case scenarios.
In its own small way, ‘‘Bike Hunters’’
off ers a hint of how to gaze forward.
Importantly, it exists not to make you feel
bad but to make you want a fancy bike — to
see a bike as an aspirational good, more
steak than vegetable, something you would
be crushed to have stolen. The episodes are
littered with scenes of bike- related happi-
ness. A crowd gathered on an Amsterdam
street cheers while hunters grind the lock
off a stolen bike. A Moroccan medical stu-
dent who learns he has bought a stolen bike
invites the hunters in for tea, signs up to be
a hunter himself and gets a free bike as a
thank-you. We see how pleased VanMoof
owners are to have their bikes recovered,
as if getting pieces of their lives back. In my
favorite episodes, the hunt showcases the
everyday pleasures and conveniences of
bikeable streets and bike-friendly spaces.
We see bikes everywhere, woven into the
fabric of neighborhood life. It always looks
like something worth working toward. Yes,
the way the show whistles past the radical
inequalities of urban life can be annoying.
(Though it’s nothing compared with, say,
media coverage of carjacking.) But it would
be a mistake to let this discredit its entire
method. The lens is a powerful one; it just
needs to be widened.
Since watching the Stockholm epi-
sode, hardly a week has gone by in which
I haven’t imagined how wonderful it
would be to feel safe biking to a sauna,
emerging refreshed and biking off again
into the rest of my day. After Ludo has his
bike back, he and Daniel head to down-
town Stockholm for karaoke. Daniel sings
ABBA’s ‘‘Super Trouper’’: ‘‘Smiling, having
fun/Feeling like a number one.’’ Ludo opts
for ‘‘Feeling Good,’’ a song used often in
commercials for cars, including the 2022
Toyota Tundra pickup. ‘‘It’s a new dawn,’’
it says. ‘‘It’s a new day, it’s a new life.’’

Carolina Ebeid’s spring-ish poem is fi lled with mysteries, starting with the title and fi rst

line that launch us in medias res, making us feel as if we’re eavesdropping. A few lines

down, a ‘‘bee-hive made of glass’’ becomes ‘‘An observatory/of translucent arteries/lit with

wing-gossip.’’ I admire how this poem moves in strange but wholly natural ways, shifting

from the hive to something larger. Th e fi nal three lines are unexpected and remind me how

enjoyable it can be to follow a poet into her own particular Eden.

Poem Selected by Victoria Chang

Albeit

By Carolina Ebeid

Because I have wanted

to make you something

beautiful, I borrowed

a book on how to keep

a bee-hive made of glass.

An observatory

of translucent arteries

lit with wing-gossip.

An allegory for the soul.

Though what do I understand

of beauty that thrives

in a place of exile.

(Bees can anger so.

A grist of killers has swarmed

a boy beneath the windowsill.)

You said the soul-to-be.

Vegetables fl ower

outside. Squash-blossoms.

& for what is that

an allegory?

We live in a copy

of Eden, a copy

that depends on violence.

Screenland

Victoria Chang’s fi fth book of poems, ‘‘Obit’’ (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), was named a New York Times

Notable Book and a Time Must-Read. Her book of nonfi ction, ‘‘Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and

Grief,’’ was published by Milkweed Editions in 2021. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch University’s

M.F.A. program. Carolina Ebeid is a poet whose debut collection, from which this poem is taken, is ‘‘You Ask

Me About the Interior’’ (Noemi Press, 2016).