The Thousands

In 2008 I walked alongside David Byrne as he rode his bike, and interviewed him for a feature in Wooooo Magazine. As we moved down the street I noted that he was a less than skilled cyclist. In fact, he had the frenzied look of someone who knows he might lose his centre of gravity and eat shit at any second. So imagine my surprise when I found out he’d published a conceptual travelogue entitled The Bicycle Diaries.

Initially I thought, That’s going to be a very short book. But, as you might expect from someone like David, or Rain Man for that matter, it’s not about bicycling. It’s about what he thinks while bicycling. It’s a record of the whimsical thoughts and ideas he’s had whilst wobbling gracelessly throughout some the world’s major cities – London, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Sydney, etc.

Trembling away on his rickety little fold-up pushbike, David ruminates on a variety of topics including, but not limited to: globalisation, urban planning, cultural dislocation, food, world music, and Lou Reed’s cock. I made that last one up. For a book about what a man contemplates while dangerously teetering hither and thither upon a machine he’s not fit to pilot, The Bicycle Diaries is an enlightening, humorous, and thoroughly possessing read.