As summer shifts into high gear and fashionable New Yorkers are putting foot to pedal—courtesy of the ubiquitous and the hipster Bamboo Bike Studio, we take a look at some of the many bicycles that have pedaled their way through the pages of Riders’ feet could finally touch the ground when big-wheeled, high-seated Penny Farthings gave way to “safety” bikes in the 1880s. The popularization of the pneumatic (inflatable) tire by a Scottish veterinarian during the “Gay Nineties” meant that the golden age of cycling coincided neatly with the debut of in 1892. Once the metal-wheeled “boneshaker” models were a thing of the past, things really got rolling—the biggest bump in the road being the debate around what was and was not appropriate women’s attire.
endorsed the sport from the start, dedicating column inches and covers to the well-dressed women on wheels. “Conservative people can no longer maintain that nobody who is anybody will ride a bicycle when on Bellevue Avenue at Newport, the smartest women are to be seen on wheels every day,” the magazine informed its readers in 1894. They continue to appear in —look for them on the streets of Paris as part of Vogue World as well.
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