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A ride and a moment
Mar. 19th, 2004 06:37 pmI went riding with Martin, one of the bike shop guys today. (The bike shop email list is great; anytime I want to ride, I put out an email, and chances are someone else can go too. Voila', fast company.)
More practically, they know all the good rides.
Martin pointed out the Altamahaw ski lodge, where typical clientele have pickup trucks, confederate flag bumper stickers, and are highly interested in NASCAR. The sign outside says "Please use the restrooms inside".
That would be 'as opposed to letting it fly in the parking lot', apparently. I love the signage here; it's instructive in a way the sign-makers never intended. (The other good one was on the Gold's Gym door. It said, "Please do not bring your guns in here." If they need to make that sign, I definitely need not to be in that gym.)
In any case, that gave me a segue to ask about the confederate flag. My one experience here was doing a civil war re-enactment demo at DeAnza College, Cupertino, CA. We had one re-enactor in a confederate uniform, and a tent with some random paraphernalia, and a flag, and me. I lost count of the number of third-world students who gave us dirty looks. So I asked Martin what it meant to Southerners (poor guy-- wants a bike ride, ends up playing sociocultural tour guide), and got "Well....it depends."
Clearly the confederate flag meant one thing to me (that would be.... history) and an entirely different thing to them. And apparently it is the same way here: One ethnic group (that would be the dirty-pickup-truck-driving white guys) sees it as history and culture (and masculinity, no doubt-- you rarely see confederate-flag-wielding women), and another ethnic group sees it as racist and oppressive.
Fine, I know when to say when. I'm staying out of this one.
More practically, they know all the good rides.
Martin pointed out the Altamahaw ski lodge, where typical clientele have pickup trucks, confederate flag bumper stickers, and are highly interested in NASCAR. The sign outside says "Please use the restrooms inside".
That would be 'as opposed to letting it fly in the parking lot', apparently. I love the signage here; it's instructive in a way the sign-makers never intended. (The other good one was on the Gold's Gym door. It said, "Please do not bring your guns in here." If they need to make that sign, I definitely need not to be in that gym.)
In any case, that gave me a segue to ask about the confederate flag. My one experience here was doing a civil war re-enactment demo at DeAnza College, Cupertino, CA. We had one re-enactor in a confederate uniform, and a tent with some random paraphernalia, and a flag, and me. I lost count of the number of third-world students who gave us dirty looks. So I asked Martin what it meant to Southerners (poor guy-- wants a bike ride, ends up playing sociocultural tour guide), and got "Well....it depends."
Clearly the confederate flag meant one thing to me (that would be.... history) and an entirely different thing to them. And apparently it is the same way here: One ethnic group (that would be the dirty-pickup-truck-driving white guys) sees it as history and culture (and masculinity, no doubt-- you rarely see confederate-flag-wielding women), and another ethnic group sees it as racist and oppressive.
Fine, I know when to say when. I'm staying out of this one.
