Episode 189: Breaking Away with James Longhurst

In this episode, I sit down with historian James Longhurst, author of Bike Battles, to break down the 1979 film Breaking Away and what it reveals about cycling and American life. We talk about why this coming-of-age sports movie still resonates, how it captures class and masculinity, and what it says about the 1970s bike boom. Along the way, we dig into the history of bicycling in America, the politics of the road, and how debates over bike infrastructure, cities, and transportation continue today. From Greg LeMond to Lance Armstrong to the rise of e-bikes, this is a conversation about film, history, and who gets to belong on the American road. 

Transcript

Jason Herbert (00:01)
Okay, so what I didn't tell you before we started like recording just a second ago was I have actually been looking, you know, when I started doing this pod, like three years ago, they're like this list of films that you want to talk about, right? And a lot of it were like stuff that we grew up with, like the Goonies and like, I was telling my girlfriend the other day, like, I'm my target audience, like, I want like late X, early millennial people, right? Because that's, that's me. And I was ultimately, I'm just, I want to talk about the stuff.

And I had thought about breaking away forever. Like this is a film that I've always kind of loved, even though it's set in the beleaguered state of Indiana, maybe in Kentucky. I just, you know, I was like, I can't, I can't do it, but it's, it's, I've loved this movie James for like the longest time. And then I, you know, we were talking the other day on blue skies, like, wait a second, you do bicycles. Have you, have you found yourself talking about this movie a lot? Cause you sent me some homework to read. Okay.

James Longhurst (00:57)
All the time, all the

time. This movie has a very strange staying power, both in your right generationally in Gen X, but also in the cycling community. And then also it hits a soft spot in people's hearts.

Jason Herbert (01:14)
does. You know, it's got this cool class issue that we'll talk about, you know, these things, this coming of age thing. I watched the trailer like three times before I watched the rewatch the film the other day, because I just got so you know, it was I written it on Amazon Prime. And I wanted to see how they were marketing the film in 1979. I think that that's sometimes a really important way to see like who they think

who they think the audience for this is and how they're building it. And sometimes that doesn't always align. And sometimes it really does kind of nail itself. Man, you're right. I just love this movie. It's so, and weirdly, I've got these weird parts of this film that I always remember, like the rock quarry and stuff like the swimming scene with Dennis Quaid, like, yeah.

James Longhurst (01:55)
And

one way to think about it is it shouldn't be as good as it is. ⁓ For being as small of a film and as having so many unknowns in it and really being sort of a strange thing in Peter Yates' career, it's different. And if you described it someone, they would say, that sounds terrible. It sounds trickly. It sounds like of its time and it's never going to last.

Jason Herbert (01:58)
Thank you.

James Longhurst (02:20)
And it has a continuing power that I don't think you would expect.

Jason Herbert (02:26)
No, in fact, I start to think about it. And we'll talk about this throughout the pod. We talk about the great sports films of all time. And I don't know that this gets enough credit, because I kind of feel like it deserves in that conversation in so many different ways.

James Longhurst (02:41)
And I wonder if newer generations are forgetting it, but when people put together lists of great sport films, this sometimes pops up and it has that underdog quality of Hoosiers, of Rudy, of other great sports films that captures an audience and sort of sticks with people and sort of transcends, because I don't assume that the people who...

Jason Herbert (02:53)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (03:03)
have an emotional connection to this movie have ever raced a bicycle before. And yet it somehow transcends that.

Jason Herbert (03:09)
No, it totally does, right? And I kind of wonder, like you wrote this book, you know, Bike Battles, A History of Sharing the American Road, right? Which is about bicycling, but it's about more than, and I'm kind of wondering, did you come to this film before you started like writing this book? Like how did you first come to this film is my question.

James Longhurst (03:27)
Oh, well, I mean, I think, and this is sort of debatable. I'll have a conversation with my mom about this. I think I remember seeing this movie in like a movies in the park type of situation because of it has such a sort of family. think that probably in like the summer of 1980, I probably saw this in a movies in the park.

Jason Herbert (03:34)
Okay.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (03:56)
thing because I vaguely remember and I think that there's Enough I was young enough that you know the racy parts of this no pun Are you know had an impact that the coming of ageness of it had an impact? but then also it was a sweet movie but at that time and as a young person I was not a competitive cyclist I I'm an adult onset cyclist and I came

Jason Herbert (04:18)
the

James Longhurst (04:19)
I came to the subject of bicycling in quite an unintended and roundabout way. I'm to take a moment here. I'm going to introduce myself as a historian. Sure. I'll introduce myself. My name is James Longhurst. I'm a professor at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse on the far western side of Wisconsin.

Jason Herbert (04:32)
Go for it. No, I was about to ask you to do the exact same thing. So go for it.

James Longhurst (04:45)
And I describe myself as a historian of urban environmental policy, which is many words, but it sort of means I'm interested in the past decisions that people in institutions have made that have transformed the places where we live, work and play into really surprisingly unhealthy, unsustainable and unjust places. And so I'm

I wrote a doctoral dissertation in my first book on air pollution control in Pittsburgh in the 60s and 70s. I went to Carnegie Mellon for my graduate school. that's what I was interested in. was interested in how people fight over the place they live and they work and how those fights sort of give away more than you'd think when people engage in those

public policy fights, what they're talking about often is how they imagine a family and a society should be. They're not just talking about pollution. They're talking about how in their mind things should be organized. And I did that and I was in the process of publishing my dissertation as my first book. I was looking around for another project.

And this was 2008, and I was starting a new job, and I was starting to go to my new job. And it was a periodic in America energy crisis in 2008. And gas was unexpectedly expensive at that time. And in a way that I had not done previously in my life, I had not been a

bike commuter, I had just started doing a little bit of road cycling. I said, well, I'll ride my bike to work. And not only was I almost killed repeatedly, but I was yelled at while I was being almost killed. And I was sort of cast around for this, I need another topic where people get unduly angry. And bicycles on American roads obviously thrust itself.

Jason Herbert (06:23)
Mmm.

James Longhurst (06:40)
At me and so that became My second project, but what I'm doing is I'm not a historian of the bicycle. I'm a historian of Why have we made cities? where it's extremely difficult for Kids to bike to schools for for to seniors to have any other method of getting around except for an automobile Why do we why did we design our cities this way and?

Can we make better decisions if we understand those past fights? And so that became eventually the book named Bike Battles. I had an idea for a title. I was originally going to name it The Bike in the City as an homage to my doctoral dissertation advisors book, Joel Tarr's book, The Horse in the City, which is about the, OK, fantastic.

Jason Herbert (07:22)
know the book very well. yeah.

James Longhurst (07:25)
Joel Tarrop, Clay McShane. And I was pitching this idea at presses and I said, well, what I want to write about is these periodic public policy debates about transportation. And the editors at the University of Washington Press took that and they translated it oh, you want to write about bike battles. Like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what I want to write about. So that's where the title came from. So that's.

Jason Herbert (07:46)
Ha ha.

James Longhurst (07:53)
So I only returned to thinking about this movie and what other ever, movies or television or pop culture that talk about what Americans think about the bicycle over the last century in a bit. I only returned to that, you know, having gotten my doctoral dissertation and become a historian and, and

As I started thinking about these various touch points in my life, I was like, wow, actually that, I remember breaking away. I remember this really unexpected movie. And it became part of the way that I told the story of Bicycles in America.

Jason Herbert (08:30)
You know, I'm kind of what I was thinking about this, you know, about, you were talking about riding yourself and I was trying to think of my own, my own relationship with the bike, right. Which was as a kid growing up in Kentucky, it was the primary source of transportation because I lived out in the country. So all of my friends lived two, three, four, five miles away and through the woods, right. In like Western Kentucky. So you would like, we all had like the BMX bike and we just, you know, tore ass through the woods.

until we got to wherever. And we were like, phenomenally good at this because you got really, really good on the bike when you're 10 years old. And it was the only way to see your friends or to get down to the lake or whatever. And then that stops, you know, you get a bit older and then you get a car and then you stop riding your bike. At least I did. And were commuting back and forth to town, which was like 20 miles away or whatever. And I didn't really ride for the longest time. And then I do my graduate school at the University of Minnesota, which turns out to be one of the great

biking cities in the country. think Minneapolis and Portland have like this thing, right? Between who can like bike off each other. And I was biking back and forth. was living on campus housing. was two miles away. And Minneapolis is just, Minneapolis doesn't want you driving your car in the city. Neither does Seattle. There's a lot of cities that don't want you driving. They want you riding. They want public transit. They want you on a bike. And I loved it until my beloved Trek got stolen.

James Longhurst (09:55)
Yeah.

Jason Herbert (09:56)
outside of my, you know, my graduate housing. And this was like, I'm going through my divorce. I'm making $19,000 a year on a stipend. I'm living in some shitty basement apartment. That track was one of the few things that in my life that was like good and valuable. And some dude took it away from me. I was pretty pissed off. And then I had to like go to like Dick's Sporting Goods and buy like a $300 like beater or whatever, which is fine. You know, it got me through for a while. And then finish graduate school and stop writing again.

But for a while, this becomes like my, the way I get around. I never considered like a passion, but I definitely enjoyed it. like, hey, I can get extra calories done. I can do two miles in to campus. I can do two miles back. I can zip around campus real easy. There's a sense of a freedom with a bicycle, you know, especially in bike-friendly towns.

James Longhurst (10:39)
Yeah. And of

recovering lost childhood and the independence of movement. you have this conversation, there's a terrible and overused trope that says Americans have a love affair with the car. And there are emotional connections with the automobile that's very much true.

Jason Herbert (10:48)
Yeah.

James Longhurst (11:03)
But if that's a love affair, it's quite an abusive love affair because it's forced on most Americans. You don't actually have a choice. And you sort of said that Minneapolis and Portland have, they want you to bike in many other American cities and suburbs and towns don't want you to have anything except for the private automobile. And this is the part of it that I'm thinking that the

We see and can talk about this emotional and you can you can talk to a lot of people and say well What kind of bike did you have when you're a kid and it will open up a lot of conversations and people will have an emotional connection emotional association But that ability to travel in this way or that way Is is something that is mediated and shaped by the city and by political decisions that are larger than any of us I also want to say that you know

Jason Herbert (11:34)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (11:55)
A lot of people in in cities that have that available to them Develop powerful associations with the subway which which once you master a subway And you can you can get from one side of the city to another that also has an emotional association and sometimes a romanticism, but also a freedom and mobility so I it's people's association with

bicycles is sometimes rational or purposeful or utilitarian. But it's also very often it's a powerful identity because it's how people discover themselves in space beyond just the home for the first time. I feel bad if there's generations that are not going to have that.

Jason Herbert (12:40)
Yeah.

Yeah, I wonder about it, because my boys are not bike riders down in Florida, right? Because everything's so... You've got to take cars to get to places and stuff. like, my younger boy, you know, he'll ride his... He's got like this trike kind of thing, this kind of cool trike thing he rides around in his neighborhood. But they don't... They never really had that BMX moment where it's kind of ingrained on them. They've got bikes, but I don't know that they ever like imprinted on them.

James Longhurst (12:50)
Yeah.

Well, having lived in and around Tampa for a while, I can tell you that there's a certain design hostility to moving either on two feet or by bicycle that make that really extremely difficult. You can't discover and transcend the neighborhoods or boundaries of a city when

when there is no infrastructure to do that on. And that's what I wanted to do in Bike Battles when I discovered is the why of that. Why are Portland and Minneapolis different? Why are most American cities really averse to public transit and to pedestrianism and bicycles and to anything else? And there are reasons for that. But one of the things I

want to say, and I always want to leave audiences and students with this, is the thing that I found in researching as a historian is none of it was inevitable. We didn't have to build cities this way. And there were, were and are so many instances where things can come out a little bit differently. And it's, it's historical contingency that things did not. And so discovering

Jason Herbert (14:13)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (14:20)
what I wrote about in bike battles, that there's an entire movement of the 1890s that nobody ever remembers to build a bicycle specific separated network called the side path movement. Nobody remembers that. And that fails. One of the places where it leaves its imprint is Minneapolis and the Twin Cities. And that's one of the reasons that the MSP is different than the rest of America.

Jason Herbert (14:38)
that makes so much sense.

James Longhurst (14:45)
and You know, there's other opportunities in World War two there's the victory bike inches and people are thinking that that is a real Necessity in a strategic necessity in World War two and then it turns out the victory bike program is for various reasons more rhetorical than reality and so The United States could have exited World War two

with a strong commitment to different kinds of transportation because of need. And yet the opposite happens. All other transit and trolleys and long distance trains really get used up and destroyed and are replaced by interstate highways after World War II. then Oregon, Portland's different because Oregon in the 1970s bike boom passes a unique state level funding law, the bike bill, which dedicates

a mere 1 % of transportation infrastructure funding to bicycle infrastructure. And that 1 % completely transforms what Portland is and what a variety, Eugene and other, and makes it different in the trajectory of the nation. So this is what I want to say to students that we turned out one way, but there were a lot of opportunities to do it a different way.

one of those opportunities is always right in front of us. We can always choose to do something different right now and that changes the future if we wanted to.

Jason Herbert (16:04)
I'm wondering, as you're looking back on this film, do you think the film knowingly captured the bike boom of the 70s? Or is this kind of like a thing that happened to tell this coming of age story? It seems, you know, before I read your book, I wasn't aware of this bike boom of the 70s. This film comes out in 79, and I'm kind of wondering, do you think that this was purposely trying to get in on this new fad, this new moment? you know, it's like we've seen other, I'm thinking about Teen Wolf and

basketball and I'm thinking about varsity blues and football. You've got a coming-of-age story of a townie, know, here they're cutters, right? But like we've seen this version in other films, Rocky, right? Why bicycling? It's like Dave is fascinated with the Italians in this, like what's going on here? Are they actually capturing this or is this a coincidence?

James Longhurst (16:57)
I actually, this is, buckle up because this is not cheerful. I love this movie. I partially love this movie because I think that it captures how Americans don't think of the bicycle as a serious object for adults. And I think this movie partially exists.

Jason Herbert (17:00)
Go for it.

James Longhurst (17:20)
not because America has a change of heart about what the bicycle means or is interested in the bicycle. This movie partially exists because it's a screenplay written by an immigrant from Yugoslavia who's experiencing American college life and it's directed by a British director. So it's

It comes out of the mindset of people who understand different possibilities and ways of getting around, and that also don't make a big deal of it necessarily. The bicycle is just there in this story. And as such, the parts of the movie that are praising the bicycle are also sort of

pointing out how foreign and strange the bicycle is because Dave can't just get excited about the bicycle and win the bicycle races he goes to. He feels that he needs to, for various reasons, adopt an Italian persona, a foreign persona, to go with his fantastic Italian bicycle, which is really not available to the American.

public, the mass market. In the story of Breaking Away, Dave has won a bicycle as a prize at a race, and it's a Mazze Grand Criterion. And that bike not only would be very expensive, but it really wouldn't even be available, physically wouldn't be in very many, except for high-end shops. There was like one Mazze shop in California at the time. And

Dave's sort of adopting of a different persona is both about him trying to find his identity in this sort of de-industrialized space where he doesn't know what class means, but also in his mind, bicycling and bicycling well and having a romance for bicycle racing is distinctly un-American.

And it fits sort of the two modes that Americans for most of the 20th century think of the bicycle as, after the golden age of the turn of the century of the 1890s, the bicycle is either for children or it's foreign. Those are the only two things. It's never really fully, it can't be for an American adult. And as Dave grows,

out of his teenage years, the only way that bicycling can be for him if he wants to be an adult is it has to be foreign. So I think one of the things that this movie is capturing is how Americans don't really know how to think of a bicycle or don't really know how to make it American.

Jason Herbert (19:57)
I'm wondering, when does that transition take place? Because one of the things I was going into reading the book was like, wait a second, are bicycles transportation or are they recreation? Right? And now there's this other thing, like the Peloton and stuff like that we can talk about a little bit later on. But like, how are Americans conceptualizing this thing? It's only a thing for kids. So, you know, when does this transition begin to take place? I'm guessing after the film, but like,

Does it still take a while? we into the 21st century before this click starts to take place or is this a gradual thing that happens over time?

James Longhurst (20:29)
I'd like to point to a cultural anthropologist, Louis Vivanco, and he has a book called Reconsidering the Bicycle. And one of the things he says about the bicycle, like other objects, that the bicycle can have multiple nonlinear conflicting meanings. And these meanings and these associations both change over time and transition, as the word that you said.

But then also older ideas persist to the point that you have multiple layers of meaning that are Piled on top of each other and they can be completely contradictory and individuals and groups can have one meaning and other groups can and so when we say the same word bicycle a politician for example, they they will hear whatever association they have and it could be West Coast, California fitness it could be

green machine environmental sustainability, not dependent upon foreign oil. It could mean childish. It could mean urban elites. It could mean individual freedom for women who otherwise would not have access to mobility. It means, and these ideas shift and change over time, but they never entirely go away. And so you have these

By the time of here in the 21st century, we have all of these old ideas layered on top of each other. And it makes for a deeply conflicting situation. When somebody says they're riding their bicycle, it could mean that they're a minimum wage dishwasher going home at night with a plastic shopping bag off of one handlebar. And it could mean that they have

a $15,000 ceramic bearing full carbon frame. I'm riding my bicycle means both of those two things. So the transition about when is the bicycle for children and when is it for adults and when is it for transportation and when is it for recreation, those are all layered on top of each other now over a century and a half that it's really hard to do it really, really quickly. One of the things that I think people in the present

Might not know is that when the safety bicycles so the bicycle with two equal size wheels ⁓ And a chain that drives the rear-end the safety bicycle and it's named safety because it's more safe than the Than the high wheel which is just insane. You nobody should ride that. It's so terrifying It's for gymnasts and idiots And if anyone rides a high wheel out there You're you're a very brave person ⁓

Jason Herbert (22:35)
Mm-hmm.

I'm not really worried about

offending the high-wheel bicycling segment of our listening base. Whichever one of you is out there, know that we send our kindest regards.

James Longhurst (22:57)
Okay, good boy.

Well, look, I'm more likely to run into this person. And when I say this person, I'm more likely to run into this man because women are too smart to ride this. So when the safety bicycle comes to the United States, it is expensive and is associated with high status leisure recreation. And it is.

Jason Herbert (23:06)
Okay.

That's fair.

James Longhurst (23:23)
a huge fad in the 1890s and the golden age. It's a huge nationwide fad and it shows up in songs and plays and you know sheet music and newspapers are just filled with stories about the exploits of bicycles. It's extremely exciting. A little bit titillating because it allows courtship away from prying eyes and sort of breaks down Victorian social boundaries.

And it's seen as both transportation and it's possible for workers to very quickly cover longer spaces. But it's really not available for workers in the 1890s. It's really an expensive object. It is a high status object. And it's association with high technology as well, because it is high technology in the 1890s. The people who are drawn to it are later

the people who experiment with the other really expensive high technology transportation, which is the automobile and the motorcycle. And they transition over that same group. So its first association is with this sort of high status. And

I'm going to come back here because I want to talk more about the social history of the bicycle later. But you've asked me a question. And it's only as the bicycle comes down in price in the 20th century that it really becomes associated with children. And that's one of the things that makes it really weird when World War II sort of asks adults to take to the bicycle for wartime.

Jason Herbert (24:29)
Okay, good.

James Longhurst (24:53)
commuting when rationing of gasoline and rubber and other strategic materials make it necessary, that this is seen as really quite a sacrifice for adults to be riding a bicycle. And that's a very strange thing. There's very few adult bicycles available. And that's what the Victory Bike becomes. so throughout the middle of the 20th century, bicycles are just for kids. And the number of adults that would be seen on a bicycle is

is incredibly small and there's a small culture of touring through the 50s and 60s, but it doesn't really break through to a larger culture. And it's really in the decade of the 1970s, late 60s, 70s, where a couple of different overlapping trends, new technology,

Finally brings multi-speed bicycles to America, even though they've been in Europe and Japan for a very long time. Because bicycles been for kids in America and kids. We should not buy expensive things for kids. We should only buy durable single speed heavy. They're sometimes called gas pipe bikes of the 1950s. He's really

heavy single speed big tire balloon tire bikes and narrow tire multi-speed rear derailleur bikes come into the United States in the 1960s and the 70s and to the point that Americans don't really have names for those and so they they stick the name 10 speed on them even though they might have different speeds than that but the name

Jason Herbert (26:25)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (26:33)
When I was growing up, 10 speed meant adult, lightweight, high technology handbrake. So new technology, environmentalism as a movement, increasing interest in adult cardiovascular exercise. bicycling really sort of does that before jogging hits in the 80s.

And then finally in the 1970s, the twin energy crises of 1973 and 1979. And then that is the thing that sort of unleashes adult bicycling. And what happens in America is that adults return to the bicycle in that time. it's been a century since someone designed a city.

Jason Herbert (27:07)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (27:17)
that allowed for adult bicycling. And so the laws and the infrastructure and the culture are really not prepared for that. The bad news of my book Bike Battles is, I believe rather strongly, that that 1970s bike boom opportunity was squandered. We also didn't rebuild the cities at that point in time. It's only until now, until the 21st century, that there's some

Minor in large cities, we have some breakthroughs in protected bicycle infrastructure. And if people have been to larger cities, have been to Chicago, LA, New York, you'll see Seattle, Austin. ⁓ You'll see bike share as becoming sort of an assumed that every city will have a bike share system.

Jason Herbert (27:54)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (28:02)
and we'll also have some measure of protected bike lanes. And that is a very new thing. from the advocate's point of view, it's a heavy lift because we're attempting to rebuild cities in a certain way after a century of not doing it.

Jason Herbert (28:21)
You know, one of the things I'm thinking about is actually not this film and I'm thinking about another actually a TV series the very first time we hear of Jed Bartlett on the West Wing It's right after he's run his bike into a tree, right? And I'm thinking about this James in terms of this I'm like there's obviously there's a reason why they chose biking for him to have this accident because he's he's this liberal progressive President and he's got to be doing something that represents that right?

And I'm thinking about these policies. It's not a surprise that, you know, you have this biking boom during the Carter administration, which I am hell-bound and determined to resurrect in so many different ways. But I'm kind of wondering, is biking always been tied to a politically liberal standpoint? Do conservatives ride bicycles?

James Longhurst (29:11)
I'm gonna talk, I'm gonna come to that question. I just wanted to point out that your observation about the West Wing using the bicycle to sort of do a shorthand identification of somebody. I think that there's a lot of that. And if you just start thinking of your favorite television show that the cultural associations that I was talking about,

about the bicycle very often get used in narrative drama to do that sort shorthand characterization. So if you remember the television drama 30 something, there was a character who had almost no, he didn't have a lot of characterization to start with, but he was characterized as not having grown up as the rest of his friends had, and he hadn't started a family. And the way.

Jason Herbert (29:46)
sure.

Peter Horton's character.

James Longhurst (30:00)
The way that they showed that he hadn't grown up is he wore an old high school varsity jacket. He was a college literature professor, and he rode his 10-speed bicycle everywhere. And so that identification is a shorthand to say, OK, well, this person is quirky and interesting, and they haven't grown up. The Amazon Jack Ryan television show.

Jason Herbert (30:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (30:26)
first time we see him bicycling to Langley, he's riding his bicycle with a messenger bag, a slender cross, on some of the new bicycle infrastructure of Washington, D.C. And, you know, this identifies him as not a square, right, as, you know, athletic and moving through the world, but also interesting. And so this shorthand of bicycle has cultural meaning.

shows up a lot. I just wanted to point that out, but it gets to your question of bicycles have had meaning across the political aisle. And I think the answer to that is a really quick yes. I'm aware that our political parties have changed sides multiple times, but when I was talking about the 1890s bike boom, the

Jason Herbert (31:17)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (31:20)
the bicycle becomes associated a great deal with the Republican Party. And it's a symbol of young, active white men in cities who work in newly clerical jobs. so they're interested in demonstrating their masculinity in other ways. so this is a thing we always say about farmers. Farmers don't become cyclists because they sweat.

They get their labor in other ways. They're not looking for labor in their recreation. But guys are working in a shop all day. The bicycle becomes a very important symbol of their upward mobility, but also their masculinity and virility. And so there's been some really good history that's been written about the political

Associations known as the bicycling block BLOC And so there's that association that a lot of people have forgotten about because it's forgotten history But I'm also gonna I'm gonna tilt my camera up here. I understand the podcast or a visual medium, but this So this is this is a poster and it says there's nothing like a bike and it's ⁓

Jason Herbert (32:14)
By all means, ⁓ look at that. Okay, you wanna explain what we're looking at?

That's very cool.

James Longhurst (32:24)
It says Dr. Paul Dudley White, National Chairman of the American Bike Month. And the thing is that Paul Dudley White was a famous household name for a short while. But I fear that only historians now remember him. But Paul Dudley White was known as President Eisenhower's cardiologist. And this is a time where I think many Americans were

learning what the word cardiologist meant. And Paul Dudley White was interviewed in the press and became sort of a spokesperson for cardiovascular health. And he promoted the bicycle as this tool and in a way that a lot of people I don't think had really thought about. So I do think that there's moments before

Jason Herbert (32:51)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (33:06)
The 1970s association of the bicycle with the environmental movement or as a green machine where the bicycle has had different and complicated political meanings. And this is one of the things that I will say the history of the victory bike in World War II that the bicycle was, riding a bicycle as an adult was a visible sign of commitment to the war. And

because it was a thing that adults wouldn't normally do. And so if you were riding a bicycle, you were clearly doing so in order to save more time materials. And so it was a deeply patriotic thing to do in a way that television advertising convinces us today that driving a very large truck is deeply patriotic, is a thing that is sort of wrapped in the flag.

that riding a bicycle in World War II was a symbol of being sacrificed for patriotic purpose.

Jason Herbert (34:01)
I want to ask you about class because you and I were kind of emailing back and forth because obviously class is such an important undertone to this. There's a reason why this film was set in Bloomington, India and in the heartland of America. What does this movie have to tell us about this group and the choice of a bicycle as the quite literally vehicle for their deliverance in this film? Like what does this movie talk about when it talks about class with the cutters?

James Longhurst (34:24)
I think one of the things that I would say that this movie talks about and is possibly one of the reasons that this movie has more staying power, has more purpose is...

it's quite possible that this movie is more clearly and openly about class than a lot of American films. And I might still, you know, chalk this up to Yugoslav immigrant screenplay writer and British director. Do you know the joke? This is something I've heard.

in film criticism circles that they say that...

American films, whether they say it or not, are always about race and British films, whether they say it or not, are always about class. And so this is a British filmmaker, a British director making a film that speaks more of class and more directly than I can really point to a lot of other American films. And to talk about class, not as part of labor history or not part of unionization.

Jason Herbert (35:23)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (35:24)
But as a part of everyday existence and part of our lives and identity. And I think that the way that Breaking Away is about class from its beginning shots to its end are a thing that I think elevates it beyond just being an underdog movie about sports or about a bicycling movie or something like that. I think it elevates it a great deal.

I think there's other films that are of the same time period. I really like Slapshot with Paul Newman, which is also a deindustrialization film. then, oh, can I remember? Blue Collar. Blue Collar. Do you know that one? Blue Collar. Okay, all right. When I tell you the actors, you're gonna... No, it's crazy. I think Blue Collar is partly forgotten as well.

Jason Herbert (36:01)
I don't think I've seen this. No, tell me.

I'm gonna feel like an asshole. Go ahead.

James Longhurst (36:13)
And I don't really know why, but it's Richard Pryor, Yafit Koto, and Harvey Keitel, 1978, automotive factory workers. And they sort of go through a wild story of trying to set up, they're going to steal from the labor union.

And then they find that labor unions corrupt and then they try to blackmail the labor union. And so it's, that's a wild film and is more unashamedly about class and class identity than I think a lot of American films. I like Slapshot because it's a deindustrialization film. But the way that, the way that Breaking Away is, you know, sort of the idea that we as historians have

Jason Herbert (36:36)
Ha ha ha ha.

James Longhurst (36:56)
Occasionally spent too much time cataloging the The ills and the disasters and the negatives of a moment in time and we forget to capture the joy of people's lives because people are in the midst of difficult moments in their in in history, the story is going to write about about the war and the famine and and Jim Crow and about

Jason Herbert (37:06)
Mmm.

James Longhurst (37:19)
Imperial hegemony and oppression and we're gonna write about all of those things and and patriarchy we're gonna write about all those things and people also live their lives and and find joy amidst that oppression and then breaking away does that breaking away is In some ways a depressing story about A man who's lost his his job and his purpose in life as a stonecutter and

that that work is largely disappearing. And Dave's father is acerbically rude in the movie, but then also has one of the most tearful moments when he talks about cutting the stone for the university. And then somehow when the stone is cut and the buildings go up, they don't feel welcome there.

Jason Herbert (38:07)
Yeah.

James Longhurst (38:08)
It's an amazingly powerful line and it's dropped like a bomb from this character actor that has been funny up to that point. And it not only talks about class and the moment of deindustrialization, the moment of late 70s deindustrialization and what is the purpose of.

America and the American dream when that dream doesn't really, doesn't really exist anymore. And, and the, the town gown, silliness of, of the movie, is, is also talking about exceptionally hard truths. so it's, you know, this is, this is some of the greatness of, of this, movie is it looks slight. It looks like it's not about anything.

And it is really touching on extremely powerful moments of class, not only as class as how one works and how much one gets for that, but also the social segregation of class and the markers of class. I struggle to think of other movies in America that have done that sort of thing. I've heaped a lot of praise on this.

film. I do want to say here at this moment, one more thing is I think this is not only a powerful movie about class. It's actually a shockingly good movie about positive masculinity. And in a way that shows the good and the bad, the failings and

Jason Herbert (39:32)
Thank you.

James Longhurst (39:38)
the breakthroughs. But it's also a situation where I can't think of a lot of other.

I have Sinners on the brain a lot. I'm thinking about Sinners is also a movie about family relations and money and about masculinity. But this is also, it shouldn't be this good. And yet it is.

Jason Herbert (39:47)
or...

Yeah, okay. Couple of things. This episode is going to come out a few days after what I hope Sinners will win the best picture because I think I look back and I think Sinners might be the second best film of the 21st century. I've got Social Network as my number one. But I think what you're talking about here with this film, and this is why I think there was always this enjoyment. And this is why I've really come to love films. And if there's any, there's so many great things that have happened because of both

James Longhurst (40:05)
Aha.

Jason Herbert (40:24)
historians of the movies. And then as this podcast became its own thing, James, because all of a sudden, all of these things that I loved, these things on screen, especially growing up working class, kind of poor in Kentucky and Louisiana. And then I've watched these movies on HBO and it's funny you said the word joy, because as you were talking beforehand, I wrote down the word joy on my notebook here. Cause I was, I'm always scribbling as people are talking. So I make sure I, you know, stay with the conversation.

And I wrote the word joys. were talking, I'm like, that's, that's the thing always comes to me with this. When he's on that bike, he's finding this freedom. He's finding that the, and his friends are so damn supportive of him. You know, they're his boys. There is no like, since I'm like, why are you doing this? It is this unquestionable, like we're in it with, we're in it with you, dude. You know, and then even the conversations with his dad, right? The dad's got, this initially like kind of thing. And then he like, you start to see.

why his dad feels the way he does and talks. Well, you talk that that you're absolutely right. When you start talking about that, that talk that he gives about cutting the stone and not feeling like he belongs anymore, you're working class people like I am growing up. You feel that in your bones and I've wrestled with class dynamism, no matter, you know, where, you know, no matter where I'm at, you know, and I've struggled with that here in Colorado and damn it, I'm a 48 year old man. I shouldn't have to feel

Like I don't belong, but sometimes I still do. Right. ⁓

James Longhurst (41:56)
And

that conversation that Dave's dad has with him as he walks onto the campus at night and looks at the stone, that conversation comes after sort of a strange scene earlier, not just before, but a little bit earlier, where Paul Dooley, the actor, goes out to the quarry and to the mill that he worked in.

And I say it's a strange scene in that there's not a lot happening there except for you're watching the actor go back to the place where he felt meaning and go through the motions of swinging himself up onto a machine and driving a wedge. that...

that scene doesn't fit into the narrative of the story of Dave and the bicycle and his friends at all. And yet it sets in our minds this association of that actor, that character has more to say than just to complain about Italian food. has a surprisingly large amount to say. It's a movie that should not be as good as it is.

Jason Herbert (43:01)
It has, and this, well, this is kind of what I was getting back to. This is where I've really come to love with these films is when you start to look at them through these lenses and go, wait a second. And the first time this ever happened was, was when I was watching Trading Places, right? It was like the fifth film we ever did on historians, the movies on the watch party back in like 2018. I was like, wait a second. These movies have a lot to unpack and you can do so in a really fun way. Like when we're talking about this.

I want to ask you about a thing that we're talking about tights and now I got to talk about another about another American who's writing for some Italians. And like this transition, I started to become aware of cycling with Greg Lamont and then later on we can't not talk about Armstrong. He's too important to the story of bike of cycling in the United States and globally in there. The rise and fall of Lance Armstrong could be its own pod. But

What did these two guys, specifically the latter, mean to the ways in which Americans engage with bicycles? You know, in the latter part of the 20s, in the early 21st centuries.

James Longhurst (44:08)
I appreciate you phrase that we got to talk about. And I think that that's probably right. I don't know if I'm the right person to talk about it though, because as I said, what I want to write about mostly is, and what I'm most interested in is the utilitarian and the transport part of it. But I got dragged into writing about bicycles in culture because,

Jason Herbert (44:26)
Sure.

James Longhurst (44:33)
You know, one of the things that I, as a, you know, a pure policy historian, I'd love to say, well, institutions make decisions. It turns out people make decisions on their gut instincts. And so what the culture says about bicycles actually has a, a big thumb on the scale about law and politics and funding and financing and infrastructure and all those things. And so you're, you're probably right. We, got to talk about

Jason Herbert (44:40)
Hmm.

James Longhurst (45:01)
the professional and competitive cycling as well. I think that the success of Greg Lamond from Minnesota and his spouse grew up here just across the river in the Crescent and of later Lance Armstrong matters.

But it doesn't matter as much as you might think because road cycling as a part of American society has always, has been a subculture since the 1890s bike boom. It's never had that success again. And it's always been a fairly small subculture. it's, while people,

You know, loved the story of Lance Armstrong and everybody loves a winner and loves success and and went out and got road bikes That didn't really change the way that americans got around as transportation or the way that cities were built. It didn't transform cycling in america I I think that the the story of lance armstrong is important, I still don't know what to make of it though and

My research in bike battles, I wanted to stop in about 1980 or so. And there's a couple of reasons why that was happening. I had a series of stories that I knew I could tell with the sources that I had. And I was looking at the 1980s, and I knew that I would have to do three or four different things that I didn't want to do. And one of them was I knew I would have to completely

start over and tell a story of, mountain biking, which is an American invention. I knew that I would have to tell a story of a different bike battle, which is the fight. Over the helmet. and this, this movie breaking away is, sort of a, interesting moment where most of the biking we see, by most people is they're not wearing helmets. The only time that Dave puts a helmet on.

Jason Herbert (46:51)
Shocking

watching that.

James Longhurst (46:53)
It's shocking to you, and yet it's the way that most people have ridden a bicycle everywhere in the world for most of its existence. As I like to joke, civilized societies don't wear helmets on bicycles. And just to pacify everyone, I wear a helmet a fair amount, but not always. And I knew I didn't want to get into that fight because I knew what the sources were like.

Jason Herbert (47:15)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (47:15)
And

then I was also looking ahead to Greg Lamond and Lance Armstrong and going, well, what am I going to say about that? And I couldn't really figure it out. I was like, OK, well, we'll stop at about 1980 or so and finish it.

Jason Herbert (47:27)
Well, I think it's also fair.

like, you know, I don't want to talk about Reagan. It's like, I don't want to talk about the downfall. Like, because here's my historical joke. Everything bad can be traced to Reagan. It's, it's. Oh, there's hope then, James. You know, it's I kind of wonder here in Colorado, we are in the midst of a debate over high speed rail because for the love of God.

James Longhurst (47:31)
You

Sure, I've had students tell me that joke back actually. Yeah.

Jason Herbert (47:53)
We need more than just I-25 running from Wyoming to New Mexico. And I kind of wonder, know, as we're talking, I'm thinking, I'm seeing these kinds of parallels between these debates over trains and bikes and these two phenomenally successful ways of moving people around, whether over large scale trains or short scale. And then there's this huge pushback for things that clearly work.

Why is that?

James Longhurst (48:20)
So that is the most difficult and important question. if the people who are listening don't already know this, I'm going to bore them all. But in the last several decades in the 21st century, a whole literature, an interdisciplinary international literature

known as Mobility Studies has sprung up. And it's different from environmental history. It's different from urban history. It's fairly different from transportation history. And Mobility Studies has at its, it's associated with the organization, the International Association for Transport, Traffic and Mobility known as T2M and the Journal of Transportation History.

Some other publications and the central question in thinking about mobilities as a larger thing The central question and and study Has about been about this this term called automobility that automobility is a thing that has occurred in the last 150 years and you can see it occur Similarly, but differently in different nations and regions

But automobility is this self-fueling, self-generating transition, not only in technology, but in the politics and the law and the things that make it possible. Automobiles basically create the necessary conditions for their own success. It is this self-expanding thing. And some people use the metaphor of something that positive.

sometimes fall back on it's a cancer. It's sort of, it's a thing that grows without stopping. And automobility is not simply an American thing. There's other versions of automobility, but it is a observable phenomenon that is incredibly powerful and that often pushes out other ways of living associating

moving, working, and automobility is a historical phenomenon that we can study. And if it's a historical phenomenon that we can study, it's more and more meaningful than that terrible phrase that I had previously introduced, which is the American love affair with the cars. It is a thing that has inflection points and decisions.

and things that unfortunately I'm going to pun, drive it. And we can understand them. And the central question of why do Americans in the present day essentially have to have an automobile of their own, not just for the whole family, it has to be one vehicle per adult person, one vehicle per adult person. And they have to have it not only to work and to live and to recreate.

But also it almost is a part of political identity that you must have like a driver's license to vote. What insane, we have a democracy where one has to have a, that's a very strange thing. How did we get to that point? So this is a, the good news is this is a thing that we can study and understand that automobility is not a force like gravity that has just occurred. Automobility,

has things that drive it that we can understand and perhaps not do that quite as much in the future. And we can also see variations of it, where other nations or regions have some automobility and don't let it take over. It is somewhat accidental or contingent, I guess, that American history hit those inflection points.

and by and large eliminated other options to the point that we have at this point in time the freedom to only get around in one way. We've only we've limited our freedom to one way of living. And it's sort of the accidents of the 20th century that have brought us to this point. I actually have now forgotten the question you asked that got me.

on such a rant. I had a thing to say about your show I wanted to get back to, but did that rant go the places you wanted to?

Jason Herbert (52:17)
Well, congratulations. You've now

been the 189th person in a row to do exactly that. So that's good.

James Longhurst (52:26)
Well, no, actually, this gives me a good transition is one of the things that I wanted to say about your show, because you were talking about, you know, watching movies and understanding that movies have, the movies that we love have more to say than you might think. What I've gathered from listening to people on your podcast is one of the subcurrents of this show is

that historians are people too. And that it's not necessarily the movies that have this encoded in them. It's us as historians who go look back at things from our childhood or look at new films and new culture. And we look at it and we say, do you know what this is? It's not just a fantasy.

science fiction with laser swords set in a galaxy far, far away. It's also about empire and hegemony. it's this quality of, I think, thinking people reflecting on stuff that you might brush away and say, well, this is not a very important. This is just a very silly movie about kids pulling pranks on each other.

and in a small town and yet, you know, through some viewership it can have a great deal of more meaning to it.

Jason Herbert (53:44)
No, and I'll tell you that's one of the joys of this this pod is like so many times, dude, I will sit here and talk to people and the things that get told to me on like every episode basis regularly blow me away. You know, because I look at these films and obviously started this whole HATM thing and so forth. And people kind of look to me as like this this guy that knows movies and to some degree, that's fair. But then people and I always want people to come to me with these films that matter to them, right, or have a special significance to their work.

And as a result, you get these real deep thoughts on stuff. And it's almost like, you know, when you're a graduate school and you would write something and you're like, this is what I think I'm writing. And then your advisor would read this and go, this is what you're doing. And you go, okay. You know, it was very, it's very much that process. My de facto advisor, who's Andrew Frank at Florida State University. I would send him all of my stuff because my advisor and I were always fighting.

I would send this to Andrew, like, here, this is what you're writing. He's like, yes, that is clearly what I will tell David I meant to do. You know, I would go back and forth between my academic parents. I want to ask you this, and this is a thing that I should have thought of earlier. And as you were talking, and this is the beauty of these conversations, you know, you mentioned earlier that British filmmakers are often talking about class and American filmmakers are talking about race. And I'm looking at this film going, wait, where are the black people in this movie?

You know, it's in Indiana in 1970s. And I started thinking, wait a second, what about, and this is the question you get to ask about your work now is thinking about, wait a second, who's riding these bicycles? Cause I tend to, for better or worse, tend to look through the world through the gaze of a straight middle-aged white dude from the upper South, right? Are people of color taking to bikes in the same numbers as white folk in the United And what about the sexual?

dynamics of this? Are men and women adopting the bike as well at the same time? Like what's going along these like racial and sexual lines when it comes to bicycles?

James Longhurst (55:39)
And

I really deeply appreciate you setting up for this because this is going to be on a whole other rant. So one of the things about, being an academic that I came to writing about bicycling history, and I wanted to do that partly because there were at the time very few academics riding about the bicycle. If Americans by and large don't take the bicycle seriously as a historical subject,

Jason Herbert (55:45)
Go.

Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (56:05)
Historians are often Americans as well, and so historians also have not taken. But enthusiasts have. know, in enthusiast history, you know, people who are very committed to bicycling as a subject have written in the past. And this has set up some very strange dynamics that have happened in more recent years because as academic historians,

trained particularly in the examples of social history have gone to excavate the history of the bicycle and say, well, we should also look at this. The history of the bicycle also has encoded into it all of the racism, classism, sexism of American history. And you had asked me in the emails about what we should talk about.

Lance Armstrong. Well, we should talk about Major Taylor. Major Taylor is an African-American racing cyclist of the turn of the century who is incredibly famous, world famous at the time, international star, sometimes described as the first American international sports celebrity. And Major Taylor for

much of white America in the present is unknown. Major Taylor is known for black American, for black cyclists in particular, because major Taylor clubs are black cyclist clubs across the United States. And the reason that those clubs are important, but that they're also quite rare and small is that the sport of cycling

In the era of Major Taylor, in the early 20th century, the sport of cycling actively drew the color line, pulled the curtain of Jim Crow into recreational cycling where it had not been. And there had been, particularly in northern cities, but also elsewhere, there had been

African-American men and women who had become cyclists and become competitive cyclists, become recreational cyclists. And then in the topsy-turvy world of the logic of Jim Crow segregation, adult cycling or the bicycle in general became forbidden. It also would, you know, it would be a thing that would be unsafe.

Certainly because you'd be out alone and away from a community and so African-American cycling in the United States in the 20th century was incredibly rare and low Because of racial segregation it is built into the structure the League of American Bicyclists, which is the modern-day inheritor of the League of American Wheelman the League of American Wheelman Expells African-American

cyclists from its ranks in both southern and northern cities and the southern chapters sort of require that the national draw the color line. And so in Boston, know, sort of perhaps home of American equality, African-American cyclists are thrown out of League of American Wheelman chapters. And so

know, black cyclists are extremely rare throughout the 20th century because of this. And it is a sport that, you know, through its associations is associated with a white audience. And so when social historians started pulling out some of this deeply disturbing history,

particularly it's, you know, I've talked about race, but also the more recent immigrant groups at the turn of the century were discouraged from cycling and were mocked when they did so. It was associated with higher status, wealthier elites. And there's this negative stereotype that pushes out

the poor, the recent immigrant. this, we're going talk about the different associations of cycling, but this, I certainly persist in recreational cycling to the point that if you go to the Peloton in Europe, to the professional cyclists, cyclists of color are extremely rare. There's certainly, there's some things that are changing.

from Latin South America, from Africa, but that is still extremely rare. This is a racially coded sport, as many sports are. And actually, to turn full circle, as social historians or academic historians or scholars historians started pulling some of this out, and there's some really good history that has been published or is very recently coming out.

Jason Herbert (1:00:12)
Mm.

James Longhurst (1:00:21)
the the enthusiast historians who have you know, sort of done this work in in the past but have not pulled out these exclusionary tendencies of a sport that is to them very important have been very critical and have not been very happy about that at all. And so you've got the situation where scholarly histories will come out and they will be reviewed someplace and the reviewer is someone who has been a bicycle.

sort of a historian of bicycling for a very long time, but will be extremely upset and very critical of what they read and say. No, no, no, the bicycle is only a tool of liberation. It has never been a tool of exclusion.

Jason Herbert (1:01:03)
okay. mean, there's a boy I see this is what I love because now there's just so much God you can unpack now. I want to come back to the film for a second, James. You and I have a both have a love affair with this film. I think we both love it. What are your favorite parts of this movie? Just as a pure fan of the film? What do love about it?

James Longhurst (1:01:23)
Okay, well, we haven't mentioned it yet, but the scene of, and you kind of asked this question, is this film indicative of what the experience of cycling would have been in 1979? And yes and no, the little 500 race at the end of the, is not a cycling race. It's a fraternity,

games stunt is a Greek games stunt and you the bicycles that are there are American track bikes. They're not very Nice and and it's not tactics. It's not racing tactics. It's basically it's modeled on the Indy 500 and so it's it's a very strange thing. It's not a bike race but there are bike races earlier in the film and one of the things that's I think

the my favorite moments beyond Dave riding his bicycle through the woods in a moment of joy, know, sun shining down and he's riding alone and he's just talked to a girl and he's and he's spread his his arms out and he's just so happy. That's a moment of joy. But then also a thing that cyclists when you bring up this movie, they will talk about Dave

chasing the Chenzano truck. You know, he's heard that the Italian team is coming to an Italian team is sponsored by a vermouth company in Chenzano and so he's He shows up. There's no narration that explains this but he shows up and he tucks away a map So he's clearly figured out a place to set up and he looks at his watch and he sees the truck coming and he paces

And he basically motor paces behind the truck and the truck driver sees him back there and gives him hand signs for how fast he's riding. And this is crazy. mean, he gives him the hand signs for 60, which is, you're not cranking 60 on a flat. You're maybe doing 50 downhill sometime. And then also it's just terrifying to imagine being pulled along in the vacuum behind a truck.

Jason Herbert (1:03:09)
Mm.

bit much right.

You

Mmm.

James Longhurst (1:03:36)
and so close to its wheels. This is all on what looks like a divided highway. And so this is both a thing that cyclists will say, you know, that's crazy. I'd never do that. That's nuts. But then also, I think the excitement and joy and amazing thing to do with human power to be out on a road moving as quickly as

an automobile and to be doing that yourself of your own volition. The kids these days say, good use of free will. This is something Dave has just done. And he's done because he wants to and because it's a joy. And I think that that actually does capture a little bit of what's powerful of many different kinds of cycling, be it gravel or mountain or road or touring or whatever.

Um, the good use of free will to be able to do something, um, that you think of as a good idea. I'm going to go catch that truck. I'm going to go climb over that mountain. I'm going to go, you know, uh, string together these five climbs. I'm going to do this in less than two hours. You know, this is, um, that is a thing I think that, captures, um, for cyclists, the, the, the love of the bike and the, the love of that, um, that freedom and free will.

Jason Herbert (1:04:57)
You know, I posted a clip on Instagram recently of things that are to come, conversations, historians, books, stuff like that. Obviously I posted this. What do I post? I post a clip of this film. I post that scene. Because again, that to me is like, that is the joy of this film is that scene. There's definitely for me the swimming scene with Dennis Quaid, you know, running himself like this stubborn, I'm not going to be beaten by these people that I always related to.

My hot take is that Quaid could have been a Han Solo kind of guy. I thought so. Now I look at Quaid and I'm like, we lost you, bro. We lost you. I have this thought as you were talking, you're talking about this amazing Italian bike that he has, right? That he's got. And I think of an almost like this Excalibur-esque kind of moment. This is like this weapon, this thing, this instrument of righteous power.

that allows him to become more than he is. And like all of these films have that, whether it's Luke and his lightsaber or hell, even thinking now I'm thinking about the color of money and the bad Bushka with Tom Cruise. I'm like, I kept thinking about this in terms of like Excalibur.

James Longhurst (1:06:05)
Well, but then I think it's also it's a black feather from Dumbo because he his bike is broken. The dastardly Italians are and you know, this is part of Dave has never ridden in a pack. He doesn't know a Peloton. He doesn't know how to ride. And they they get him with a lot of the standard tricks.

Jason Herbert (1:06:10)
⁓

James Longhurst (1:06:28)
They reach over and grab his down tuned shifters and shift him out of gear. And then later they jam a frame pump in his wheel and he goes flying in and the bike is ruined. And he loses his purpose in life and it's sort of, he goes home and he doesn't have the Italian accent and it's, he cries in his father's arms. And he resists racing in the little 500, partly because of the

the American-made road master bike, track bike that they're gonna do it on is junk. It's not a mozzie grand criterium with campy gears. And he overcomes that. The black feather isn't needed. The magic is in him the entire time. And so that structure of the story, we see that over and over again in a variety of ways.

The MoZI grand criteria matters, but it actually doesn't.

Jason Herbert (1:07:16)
That's so good. I wish I thought of that. Can I ask you some lightning questions that I did not prepare you for? All right, I'm going to ask you some. How do cyclists respond to this film? Positively, negatively? Is this a popular moving in the cycler community?

James Longhurst (1:07:21)
Hit me.

Absolutely. mean people you know if if if a cycling group needs to raise some money and they need to do something in the winter, know, you can just say we're gonna we're gonna have a viewing of of Breaking away or of rad the bicycle the BMX movie But there's a really positive the fact that you can go out and buy cutters Bicycle jerseys so bicycle jersey with cutters on it this

This movie has a more positive association even than American Flyers, which is some way the more commercial Hollywood film that Steve Tesch also writes that comes later. So there's a lot of positive associations with this, cyclists of a certain age, ⁓ which might be, there might not be another generation of cyclists as exciting. And I think that that's

Jason Herbert (1:08:09)
Okay

James Longhurst (1:08:15)
It speaks to the quality of breaking away. It also speaks to the fact there's not a lot of other movies. There's not a lot of other film. There's Quicksilver Messenger service. There's Rush, Premium Rush. But there's not a lot of other ones. So this might be either by quality or by default.

Jason Herbert (1:08:38)
All right, which leads actually into the next question. There may not be a lot of biking movies, but there are a lot of bikes in film. And I'm wondering, top of your head, most famous bike scene in movie history.

James Longhurst (1:08:52)
I, it would,

Man this lightning round is really going to get me ⁓

Jason Herbert (1:08:56)
I thought this question up about

10 minutes ago, by the way. The rest of these questions I had prepped and you're talking, I was like, I've got one.

James Longhurst (1:09:02)
Kiwi's Big Adventure. That is a movie that's entirely about the love of a bicycle, and it's motivated by a love of a bicycle. And I can't, there's not a lot of other movies that are like that, that have that centrality. Sure.

Jason Herbert (1:09:04)
Ooh, yo, Peewee!

Can I give you another one?

ET.

James Longhurst (1:09:25)
Well, and so, and, you know, people talk about this about Stranger Things being sort of a new edition of ET, that those are both situations where the protagonists are children who need to have ways to get around, and they're getting around sort of suburban 1980s America on their bicycles, and they have a great deal of power.

I actually in writing about some of this in the book Bike Battles in my book, I had to go to Japanese cinema to find films that had more powerful associations with cycling for adults than for kids. And so the bicycle, particularly in post-war Japan is a tool of national rehabilitation, but also of

mobility and independence for young adults.

Jason Herbert (1:10:12)
Thank you for giving that cause I got Drew McKevitt coming on soon to talk about his post-war. He's coming on to do Black Rain. The Michael Douglas film with Andy Garcia. Yes, we got, I've been on Drew for like, do know Drew? He's, yeah, Drew's been on a couple of times. very first time he came on, he did Dirty Harry and he's like, wait, I messed up. He's like, I thought I was supposed to pick a movie I hate. I was like, no, that's fine. And he spent an hour and a half just beating the shit out of Clint Eastwood.

James Longhurst (1:10:20)
wow.

No, but I'm very interested in that.

Well, mean, you know, movies can, I have a love hate relationship with the searchers. And so I can, I can go this way and that way on the searchers.

Jason Herbert (1:10:47)
Pin that one because we can come back to that

because I would love to do that film here. One policy change that would transform cycling in America overnight.

James Longhurst (1:10:56)
my goodness, your lightning questions are absolutely, absolutely, so, wow. So the policy change that would make, so one of the things that I would say about this concept of automobility that I introduced earlier and the fact that automobiles sort of are self-

Jason Herbert (1:11:00)
I'm bringing it.

James Longhurst (1:11:18)
driving a self-expanding and there's a variety of ways that that's happened. It's through zoning laws, it's through parking laws, it's through a variety of tools that have sort of horsed our economy and our cities and our society to serve a single purpose. But I think none of those drivers are as important as funding and we have had

a variety of decisions in the United States, be it the way that property taxes pay for city streets, but then also the national gasoline tax pays for interstate highways. And so I think that the number one way that we could change things in America for bicycles or for other transportation

Would actually be to make cars pay for themselves because we actually have gotten Streets and highways become so expensive that they can't actually be paid for out of gasoline tax anymore And so we're pulling from the general fund and so the the single Largest transformation we could have is if 1 % of Streets funding

or 1 % of highway funding was put towards bicycles. That would multiply the amount of money spent on bicycle infrastructure by hundreds, if not thousands of times. 1 % of what is spent for automobile movement, if spent on bicycles, would completely transform the way we get around. And also, actually, if we just draw the line and say,

Cars have to pay for themselves and only gasoline taxes pay for it. That would also That would that would change things rapidly

Jason Herbert (1:12:56)
Is that something you think that the automobile manufacturers and big oil fear? Are they purposely trying to lobbying to keep biking down as an alternative?

James Longhurst (1:13:06)
I do think,

I do try to get away from sort of feeling conspiratorial about who's controlling things. And in the United States, there's a long standing sort of conspiracy feeling or explanation about what ended transit and trolley cars in American cities. Because American cities were walking cities to start with and transit, know, street cars were the way that people's got around until World War II. And there's sort of a conspiratorial explanation that says,

that automobile companies conspire to get that. And I think the problem is there's enough truth to it that it makes everyone feel that it's completely true. that absolutely, Goodyear and GM and other automobile companies did everything they could to kill off transit and street cars. But then also, Americans voted to end those and voted to do so because

the streetcars had become run down and destroyed and not invested in. And they were largely run by private companies that people didn't like. so I do want to say that these are decisions we've made as a democracy. And we can unmake them. We can make other decisions. No matter what conspiratorial shadow cigar-filled room might be by doing things, we can change things.

Jason Herbert (1:14:22)
Last lightning round question. If Dave from Breaking Way were still alive today, what kind of bike would he ride?

James Longhurst (1:14:30)
man. Well, I got to tell you,

I've, we've talked about sort of different bike booms where new technology or new changes come along. the e-bike revolution is wild and I'm not certain a lot of people understand what is coming. I believe, I believe that in a number of years or decades from now, this word e-bike isn't going to make any sense to people because essentially bikes and e-bikes are just going to converge.

Jason Herbert (1:14:37)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (1:14:58)
And they're going to be the same. And a lot of the people who are most interested in, most empowered by, get around the most, are seniors and retirees who were not previously cyclists in their lives and have discovered a way of living and a way of getting around that they didn't know was possible. And this is one of the things that I...

I say about automobility that we sort of say, well, automobility has to happen. It's gravity. We sort of think that because it's all we've ever known. We've not known other things. know, Americans go to a very small list of places where you can get around on foot or by bike. And those are college campuses, Disneyland and European tourism destinations. And

The rest of America isn't like that. But if you put somebody on an e-bike, if you loan somebody an e-bike for a week, and they don't even have to be a cyclist. I think that Dave, since he likes high technology, would like a Gazelle e-bike, something that's top of the line.

Jason Herbert (1:16:09)
You know, you mentioned earlier, we didn't even talk about like mountain biking. We didn't get into BMX. just got as you're talking to, I was thinking, you know what, there's a healthy population of hunters who have adapted to taking bikes into because they're quieter and you can take your bikes, your hunting gear in deeper into the woods. You can haul your harvest out of the woods. Like there's a whole like utilitarian version of bikes that are being used by like these hyper outdoorsy masculine men and women or, you know, men and women who were out there hunting, right?

James Longhurst (1:16:37)
Right.

Jason Herbert (1:16:37)
never really thought. Yeah, totally right, which is kind of exciting

James Longhurst (1:16:37)
A totally different user base.

Jason Herbert (1:16:41)
and cool, I think to see it happening. all right.

James Longhurst (1:16:44)
We can tell when they come into the shop. I volunteer at a shop on Friday afternoons rebuilding bikes for kids or for shelters. know, sort of as a guy walks in in camo, like, okay, all right. You would like to, and the manufacturers have made bikes that are camo pattern. And so they're clearly aware of that.

Jason Herbert (1:16:47)
Okay.

Yeah?

It's cool. All right, second to last question for you. If someone made Breaking Way today, what does that movie look like?

James Longhurst (1:17:20)
I don't know if that movie exists. I mean, because we've been talking about how this movie is better than it should be. And it has, I think it has a sweetness to it and a smallness to it. And unfortunately, Hollywood is somewhat allergic to films that are less than 40 million dollars budget wise now.

I don't know if that exists.

Jason Herbert (1:17:47)
I don't know if the America of this failing of this like Rust Belt, know, of 47 years ago exists. know, it's like, you know, it's the conditions were kind of perfect for this story to be set the way it was. And like, as you're not talking about, please nobody make this movie again. Don't, don't remake this.

James Longhurst (1:17:56)
Right.

Well, now that I'm

thinking about it, I think that this movie might be Ted Lasso.

It might be a movie that's about sports, but not about sports. It's about class, but not about class. It's about masculinity. And it's humorous and small and sweet.

Jason Herbert (1:18:10)
⁓

You know, I was, I've got bones to pick with Ted Lasso because it pushed me out. was the number two most famous Wichita State affiliated person. I've got a bachelor's and master's degree from Wichita State and so does Bill Parcell. I guess the big show of Paul White also has it. But either way, he pushed us down. All right, James, you wrote this book. We've been talking about this film set in the past for a while. What's in the future for you? What's next? What are you working on? What comes next for you?

James Longhurst (1:18:49)
Well, this, so bike battles is, is nearly a decade ⁓ now, sort of coming towards that. And, I have been, working on another project and it's, it's been delayed because, essentially I'm going to blame, I'm going to blame COVID. I was, I was working on, I was really making progress and then, the demands of, of service teaching and, sort of horsing around are.

Jason Herbert (1:18:52)
Mm-hmm.

James Longhurst (1:19:11)
curriculum and teaching schedule since to respond to COVID and then to un-respond to COVID have made it difficult to make progress. But I've got another project that I've been working on and it continues the sort of theme that I was, I'm interested in arguments that people have about cities as places to live. And I wrote about Pittsburgh as being both a place to work and place to live. And it has to be both of those things.

but sometimes the work makes it impossible to live, right? And so, and then I went to bike battles. was interested in cities as, you know, places to get around and to recreate and then also to movement that's necessary for us to get, to live our lives, to get to shops and school and home. And both of those things make people...

Unreasonably angry people got unreasonably angry about air pollution control in Pittsburgh. It made me for huge public debates People get just bizarrely angry about bicycles in in cities to the point of danger and so I Was sort of kicking around I wanted something that people argue about in the same way because I think it gives away the game I think and I think that I may have found

The thing that's so basic and quotidian in every day has to be overlooked and yet makes people furious. And the subject is, of course, the history of parking. And this is an untold history, and it's about our cities. And there's a lot to say there that people have not, historians have not dug out. It's about automobility and rebuilding our cities.

Jason Herbert (1:20:36)
Yes, please.

James Longhurst (1:20:50)
for cars and it also makes people absolutely insane in ways that are unexpectedly gendered and based in racial segregation and also downright violent.

Jason Herbert (1:21:06)
Can I tell you, this might be the first part if we do this book that we tie to a music video. Because I'm thinking immediately about Bob Seger's night moves, parking at the outdoor drive-through films. Like, I'm in. Like, okay, yes, absolutely.

James Longhurst (1:21:21)
Well,

don't forget that Coolhand Luke starts with Paul Newman stealing, cutting the heads off of parking meters. And that's what he goes to jail for.

Jason Herbert (1:21:29)
buddy, starting, you're starting, you know, you're going cool. Hey, Luke, you're going searchers. You're going to to come back on. Like we're to have to do this again. And in fact, this has been yet another one of the films where we have actually gone longer than the runtime of this film in our conversation. And I think that was just because it was, dude, it was so awesome. Like this is our first like talk talk we've ever had. And dude, this was, I was so, I was loving the book. I to relive the film and then talk to you about this. This has been a blast. So.

James Longhurst (1:21:33)
You

Absolutely.

Jason Herbert (1:21:59)
Man, thank you so much for coming on. was, this was, was looking forward to it. That's awesome, man. Well, thank you.

James Longhurst (1:22:01)
Jason, I've really enjoyed it.