Shanghai Bike Polo

Last week, my English friend Yanis and I set out across Shanghai in search of a place to play a bit of pick-up polo.  I was fiending for a game, even a game of one on one, as I hadn't had a chance to play since leaving Australia.  So while Yanis had never even heard of bicycle polo before meeting me, much less played, he was still keen to have a go if we could find a place.  So he on his ladies cruiser with a front basket and rear luggage carrier and me on my Giant ATX cheap Chinese mountain bike, we set out in search of a smooth, flat surface.  

Heading north through the city, we reached the river before I realized I'd forgotten the ball.  Unimpressed with what we saw heading north, I suggested we head south from the hostel.  It turned out to be a great idea.  With the tower of Isengard in the distance (see the pointy spire rising upwards into the sky), we found the perfect, rounded, recessed surface; a place seemingly made for bicycle polo. 

The court, a public square (circle) in front of the Metropolitan Theatre, seemed an unlikely place to have a polo match.  It was too open, too public.  But as Yannis and I observed a half dozen skateboarders grinding the marble stairs we thought, all things considered, smashing a small rubber ball around and off the steps would be fairly harmless.   

Turns out we were right...sort of.  That day, as Yanis and I rode around playing one on one, the police and local security guards all passed us by.  None of them gave us a thought, much less a look.  The people who did give us a hard glance were mostly intrigued.  And so it was with great joy that I texted Tyler with the news that I'd found a fantastic, central spot to play some polo.

Tyler created a post detailing the space and calling for a session on the upcoming Sunday.   The stage was set for epic bike polo. 

And then the police showed up.  

Actually, it was the security guards who turned up first, blowing their whistles and speaking Shanghainese at me.   I didn't have to pretend I didn't understand.  But as more polo freaks turned up, polo freaks who could speak Shanghainese, it became clear that they wanted us gone.  

It wasn't necessary to speak Mandarin or Shanghainese to understand that this guy wanted my bike off the court.  Or maybe he just wanted to have a go at polo.  

It worked out quite well that the skateboarders stuck around until the police turned up.  I think it was their complicity in clearing the court that made it possible for us to stick around.  

So while skateboarding is not a crime, it turns out bike polo is less of a crime.  

At any rate, being the insolent non-conformists we are, us polo peeps didn't follow orders.  We instead stuck around until the 5-0 buzzed off.  Which meant we played some polo. 

  

Tyler has a full re-cap of the day, complete with a couple videos here.   In both videos you can watch as Rich, riding an orange fixed gear, takes me out.  Legal contact?  You decide.

Jue Hou also took some amazing photos of the day, the last two of the above set being a representative sample.   

One of the best parts of bicycle polo, in my opinion, is its ability to appeal to a variety of people.  When I turned up to polo in Melbourne, I saw a couple of older men--gray hairs, as it were (no offense, Pete!)--rolling around the court smashing the ball.  It was amazing to see older and younger people enjoying the game in a healthy spirit of competition.  When I arrived here in Shanghai, I was again pleased to see that one of the younger fellows, Nelson, had both his parent's turn up to the polo match.  Chris, Nelson's father, is pictured below.

Chris was fantastic at polo.  He rolled up to the polo match on his tricycle, which you can see on Tyler's blog, carrying the cones and assorted other polo equipment--along with his polo bike, of course.  He had such a nice style of play, bumping shoulders when necessary and shooting through gaps where possible, and he heckled me with relentless enthusiasm.  While bike polo is still primarily a sub-cultural realm dominated by bike messengers and bike freaks across the world, it's inspiring to see non-traditional bike people taking up the sport.  Here's to more diversity on the court! 

A Journey through Hutong

On Chaos in Oregon

I read an interesting story today originally published on Oregonian reporter Jospeh Rose's commuter blog, "Hard Drive".

The article, entitled "Chaos: A roundabout way to defeat traffic," documented what has been called "a traffic miracle" in Clackamas County.

An intersection previously plagued by traffic queues was transformed recently by introducing a traffic circle at an intersection formerly controlled by a blinking four-way stop.  Rather than calling it a mircale, Rose wrote 

"...traffic engineers lean on a more scientific explanation: Fighting chaos with chaos, a strategy that's increasingly being applied to the region's troubled intersections."

With four churches and a buddhist temple within a half mile of the intersection, parishoners were arriving late to services because of gridlock traffic. 

"'Not anymore,' said Paul Osborn, a pastor at Rolling Hills, which gave $1.5 million to fix the intersection so that its parishioners could get to church on time. 'Something very good has happened.'

The miracle?

Last October, the county removed all the signals. In their place, workers built a $4 million two-lane roundabout where uncertainty now breeds caution and mostly free-flowing traffic.


Suddenly, unsafe is safe.


Thank God. Or thank Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman, who has long argued that ripping out traditional traffic controls is the way to deal with gridlock.


The theory: Drivers behave more responsibly when faced with uncertainty, becoming more aware of others. The evidence from Holland shows crashes are now far less serious, mostly because open-range roundabouts have taken the place of stop signals and signs."

I've spoken to planners in Memphis who believe in the "less safe is more safe" planning practice, and I've ridden through the stop-sign-less Dutch intersections mentioned in the article above.  The evidence and the anecdotes, alongside my own experience, tend to support this idea that less traffic predictability actually leads to an increase in caution.

While it's arguable that traffic circles are the same thing--or even similar--to four-way intersections with no calming infrastructure, the idea of introducing chaos into traffic patterns raises a bigger question for cyclists.

Among the fundamental tenants of bicycle education in the United States is the mantra, "Ride Predictably".  But is it possible that predictable cycling may actually lead to more dangerous roadways?

In the Netherlands--arguably the most bike friendly place in the western world--I observed that the traffic functioned according to a sort of controlled chaos.  Sure the infrastructure was developed to provide every user with their place in traffic and give them clear indicators for how they should behave. 

Nonetheless, traffic often felt like a pot of water at a rolling boil, perking up and splashing around, but never quite spilling over the edge.  Cyclists and pedestrians appeared to behave according to their own rules, disregarding signals and lanes and directional patterns and curbs.  It worked well--effeciently, actually--largely because cyclists (and pedestrians) broke the rules with an air of caution that was accomodated by motorists.

Perhaps, then, all those these lawless cyclists whon run red lights and ignore stop signs, those riders the "haters" continuously cite in newspaper articles, are actually doing society a favor! 

Probably not.  

Still, China should provide an interesting immersion experience in controlled traffic chaos.  China boasts the world's most interconnected system of bicycle lanes in the world, but they also have cities that are huge and over-populated--cities increasingly filled with cars.  On the other hand, my perception of China as a country moving more towards automobile use was dispelled a bit by this article from the New York Times, which put a price on the growing Chinese rail system.   

Still, a look at bicycle crash rates and safety perceptions in the most bicycle dense place in the world should provide a perfect opportunity to test the chaos theory.