I’m immensely proud to call myself a New York City cyclist. It’s an amazing community. There is so much camaraderie between everyone on two wheels. No matter whether you’re riding a dinky vintage bike, minimalist Dutch-style commuter, or fixie you built by hand, other bikers generally give you space and respect on greenways, in bike lanes, and over bridges.
With one exception … have you encountered the lycra bro?
I first noticed them when I started getting more serious about “training” last fall. (That’s what I called doing two laps of Prospect Park in a row.) Picture me absolutely gasping for air on my 500-pound, 4,000-year old Raleigh as I crawled up the last hill. “ON YOUR RIGHT,” I hear, not two seconds before someone in a skin-tight all-black kit zips past me just inches away, almost knocking me into the walkers lane.
At least they called their shot. I’ve ran into many different versions of this type of man (yes, it’s always a man) all over town. It happened on the Hudson Greenway. It happened on the Manhattan Bridge. It even happened on my way to the Rockaways, on completely deserted, basically suburban streets. “Bro,” I remember thinking, “there’s literally so much space for you around me. Why are you passing so close?!”
Every community of a certain scale has toxic members, even if they’re organized around unimpeachable ideals. For example: A free press is really important to me, but if you ever hear I’ve subscribed to “The Free Press,” please shoot me into the sun.
What’s weird about biking is that the most toxic part of our community is also the most visible. If you imagine a cyclist, for example, you rarely think of a folding bike commuter wearing slacks. It’s almost always a rail skinny dude with brick-sized calves wearing head-to-toe Rapha. Don’t take my word for it? Let’s look at Google Images:
Chalk the tiny percentage of women and complete lack of people of color1 or street clothes in these images to “the algorithm” and move on at your own peril. Google search is designed to show us what it thinks we want. And clearly, it thinks our cultural definition of cyclist is of a speedy man on a mountainous road in spandex2.
In my first few months of riding, I started to resent the lycra bros. It was at least in part due to jealousy. Someone would pass me on on the 1st avenue bike lane as I was riding to work and my lizard brain would kick in and make me want to smash past them. I couldn’t. But I wanted to.
As I started to take cycling more seriously, though, I started to see the clear advantages of cycling clothing for my training rides. Cycling shorts, for example, have built-in butt padding that makes long rides, especially on the hard ergonomic saddles that come with most bikes, more comfortable. (Tiny gripe: The “bike shorts” that became popular during the pandemic summer leisurewear craze really should be called “yoga pants, but cut above the knee” because they offer no real advantage for biking over yoga pants.)
I’ve actually come to prefer wearing cycling bibs, basically just bike shorts with built-in suspenders. The design ensures the person behind me will never have to gaze up my ass crack, no matter how bent over the handlebars I am. I have bought some cycling jerseys, which I love for the pockets they have along the back. You can classify them all as “extremely silly.” My favorite heavily features Oscar the Grouch.
My “lycra radius”, the range of circumstances where I feel comfy showing up in bike clothes, has started to surprise me. I’ve shown up to park hangs, meetings with media folks, even a 3Sixteen party to celebrate the release of a new clog3 in head-to-toe performance fabric. People have been nice about this—I even got some compliments on my “Seattle” jersey at the fashion party that I will choose to believe were genuine—but I cannot help but worry about whether I’m becoming exactly what I once feared.
“There’s a certain level of commitment to the sport that wearing lycra communicates,” said Neil McCarthy, a 27-year-old medical sales rep who lives in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. I met Neil, and his incredible dog Marvin4 at the aforementioned 3Sixteen event. We’ve become friends, so I feel like I can say this without hurting his feelings … The man literally looks like the Google Image photo of a cyclist.
He’s been cycling since 2019, pretty seriously from the jump. “When I started biking,” he told me this week, “I thought of it from a performance perspective. Not that I don’t enjoy riding, I love the freedom you feel on a bike. But it was always something I was doing as training.” He did his first rides in gym clothes, but realized he wasn’t going to be able to do big miles in them pretty quickly. “My ass was killing me!”
Even if he knows his choice to wear cycling clothes is informed by function, he’s also thought about what it indicates for other people. “Road cyclists don’t have a great reputation in New York. I don’t love being lumped in with Spandex Bro culture.”
“Maybe people look at me and think ‘oh, this guy is going to write me off because he’s this pro-looking dude that’s ripping by me in a carbon bike and $500 worth of spandex’… but I’m just trying to be comfortable on my rides.”
An average observer might also peg Mitch Boyer, 37, as a lycra bro. Mitch is a cycling YouTuber based in Los Angeles, who has documented his journey from “bald person who bought a bike to get outside during the pandemic” to “degenerate lover of extremely steep hills (with hair!)” He’s literally sponsored by Attaquer, a very cool cycling clothing brand.
This was never the plan. “As a kid, I always thought lycra was weird. My dad rode his bike a lot … He never wore cycling-specific clothes, so I assumed they were unnecessary.” But just like Neil, he quickly started wearing performance cycling clothes. “There are all kinds of advantages to cycling-specific clothing … its more comfortable in almost all weather conditions. It wicks sweat on super hot days and dries quickly after riding in the pouring rain,” he said. So now, if you see Mitch on a bike, he’s probably wearing padded bib shorts and a cycling jersey.
He has identified disadvantages, though. It takes time to get everything on and off, for one. And even though there are cool cycling brands, “most of the public views lycra-clad cyclists with confusion and disgust … I’ve had more close calls per ride with cars while wearing kit than I’ve had while wearing street clothes,” he said.
That said, both he and Neil think that wearing lycra helps them feel like members of the cyclist community. “In my mind, a cyclist is someone on a road bike, wearing spandex and using clipless cycling shoes,” said Neil.
But even Neil can recognize this definition is limited by the way he enjoys the sport. “I do believe that more people on bikes is good, no matter what they’re wearing … unity among all cyclists!”
If there is a middle path, at least optically, between lycra bro and total casual, Gabriela Ayala might be the blueprint. Gabriela, 30, is a video editor based in Astoria who is currently training to be a doula. She’s been biking almost every day for six years. If you spend enough time on the Queensboro bridge, you’re bound to see her pass by on her commute into the city.
Though she does participate in cycling as a sport—you can’t be called a casual if you’ve ridden a century and won a fixed-gear race—she does most of her rides in her normal clothes. This is partly because she does a lot of client-facing work that requires her to look like a creative professional. (Think flats, blouses, jeans.) On days with a lot of planned distance, she’ll often wear liner shorts, basically just butt pads held in place by mesh and elastic, underneath her pants or skirt. She also always carries “Dude Wipes” to help keep the sweat at bay.
These preferences, she says, makes her a constant target of lycra bro machismo. “Whenever I’m going uphill, there’s always someone trying to overtake me,” she said. “ I usually take it as a challenge. Like, ‘You’re going to try and pass me? I guess we’re in a race now.’” She enjoys showing them up, especially when she’s wearing the sick kits from New York brand Ostroy, but it definitely makes her want to wear lycra less. “I like that people just see me as a regular commuter, and that they don’t know my capabilities.”
There is, of course, another way. Plenty of companies have emerged that sell clothes that appear like normal office wear, but are constructed of stretchy, moisture-wicking fabrics. I chatted with the founders of a couple of these companies when I was reporting on a story about commuter outfits this February.
Unfortunately, for the most part, these clothes look … bad. The collections over-index on shiny button downs and tapered slacks. I, for one, would rather sweat through a shirt than dress like a Goldman intern waiting in line for a grilled chicken Caesar.
I’ve found something that works better for me. When I’m doing a training ride on my nice bike in Prospect Park, I’ll wear a padded bib and a jersey. But otherwise, the jerseys usually stay in their drawer. I’m more likely to ride in a cropped t-shirt. (My favorite at the moment is the Cake Zine Death by Chocolate one with a Sohla recipe on the back.)
Most of my jeans are too stiff to wear comfortably in the saddle, but my Carhartt and Dickies trousers are plenty flexible. On super hot days, when I know I’m bound to sweat through a t-shirt, I bike with an overshirt (and sometimes an extra tank top) in my milk crate.
A few weeks ago, I was biking to a meeting in Manhattan. At the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, the section before the hill begins, I was passed on the left by someone in a fancy kit. A year ago, I think I would have immediately tried to catch him, like he was just behind me in the general classification at the Tour de France, and not been able to hold the wheel. Instead, I let him go. Or really, I let myself ride at my own pace.
I wish I could tell you I caught him by the middle of the bridge. I didn’t. When I finished the ride, however, I learned that I had PRed the Strava segment. With a milk crate on my bike.
I thought back to something Gabriela told me. “At the end of the day, what gets you up a hill is your legs, it’s your power,” she said. “It’s you, not your clothes.”
Words to live by.
I suppose you could make the case that the cartoon character in the third image is POC, but I would encourage you to do something else with your short, sad life
Our maybe is just thinks this is what I am expecting to see when I search “cyclist.” Are your results different?
A Crocs collab. Pretty sweet design, though I personally don’t LOVE the concrete gray color
Marvin tax.