The Wiggle of Least Resistance

I got a bike — a fixed-gear with bright blue wheels, custom-made to my specifications. I am a San Francisco techno-hipster, so this selection was a bit of a self-caricature. But sometimes the predictable thing turns out to be the best thing, too, and you can’t let that stop you. When I went to receive my bike from its maker in a cramped workshop down on Cesar Chavez Street, I didn’t know what I know now: a single San Franciscan in possession of a good bike must be in want of a Wiggle.

I got the bike and I started to ride it. Gently at first. Tentatively. When you’ve biked only on quiet cul-de-sacs and college campuses, the idea of riding in the city, right up there alongside the cars, seems frankly pretty absurd. So in those early days, I picked my path carefully through quiet avenues. I pedaled exclusively on side streets with no stop lights.

But slowly I gathered my courage. It began with a Saturday foray down Market Street, San Francisco’s ugly, angry main artery. I didn’t get flattened or flung over the handlebars and I liked the look of the tall buildings blurring by on both sides. Next, I wanted to ride my bike to work — but I couldn’t quite figure out how.

San Francisco is spotted with steep hills, and in the middle they mass shoulder-to-shoulder like a defensive line, splitting the city in two. To the west, there’s Golden Gate Park and the long avenues of the Outerlands, the grid that stretches all the way to the Pacific; to the east, there’s the Mission and Market Street and the glistening bay. To the west, my apartment; to the east, my office. The train that takes you from one side to the other tunnels through the heart of a hill. If you drive it, your car labors up one side, teeters at the top, then pitches down the other.

But there is no tunnel for bikers, and bikers can’t climb those streets. (Well, maybe some bikers can. This one couldn’t.) The shallow grade outside my door left me breathless, and the hills that separated me from downtown were much, much steeper. I cursed the blue-wheeled bike for its lack of mechanical advantage.

And then I heard about the Wiggle.

The Wiggle is not a secret, not exactly; there is a detailed Wikipedia entry. But you would never know to Google “the wiggle” unless someone told you about it, right? You would never know the Wiggle was even a thing unless one of your techno-hipster co-workers, also in possession of a fancy flat-colored fixed-gear, upon hearing of your plight, said: “Dude … you know about the Wiggle, right?”

by Robin Sloan, NY Times | Read more:
Illustration: Wendy MacNaughton