Conference noted::bicycle

3036.0. "bicycles prohibited" by STAR::CROLL () Mon Dec 18 1995 11:34

   Thougt you'd be amused by (and sympathetic with) this.  A friend of
   mine at Lotus who specializes in very obscure odd-ball stuff found
   this someplace.....
   
   
From: Cronopios and Famas
              by Julio Cort zar

Vietato Introdurre Biciclette
(Bicycles Prohibited)

In the banks and business offices of this world no one gives a hang if
someone  walks in with a cabbage under his arm, or a toucan, or with the
songs my mother taught me spouting from his mouth like a hemp cord, or
holding a chimpanzee in a striped T-shirt by the hand.  But let someone
walk in with a bicycle, what a fuss they raise, the vehicle is ejected
forcibly into the street while its hapless owner is subjected to the
vehement admonitions of the employees.

For a bicycle, a docile being of modest conduct, it is a humiliation and a 
mockery to always find these supercilious notices which keep it waiting 
outside  the beautiful glass doors of the city.  Be it understood that
bicycles have  tried every means to better their dismal social condition. 
But in absolutely  every country on earth BICYCLES ARE PROHIBITED.  Some of
the placards add  "and  dogs," which for bicycles and dogs only increases
their natural inferiority  complexes twofold.  A cat, a hare, a turtle, can
in principle enter the  import-export firm of Bunge & Born, or the lawyers'
offices in the calle San  Mart!n, without occasioning more than surprise,
captivating the overworked  switchboard girls or, at worst, an order to the
porter on the door to remove the aforementioned animals from the premises. 
This final alternative can  certainly occur, but it is no humiliation,
primarily because it constitutes  only one probability among many, and
secondly because it comes as a  cause-and-effect situation and not as a
coldly pre-established plot, a  dreadfully perpetuated and general
conspiracy printed on bronze plaques or  enameled notices, inexorable
tablets of the law which crush the simple  spontaneity of bicycles, the
innocent creatures...

(Originally published in Argentina in 1962.  Copyright 1962 by Ediciones 
Minotauro.)