Community Building 101: A Day with Platte Gang

Have you taken a train lately? Sat in a cafe? Waited in a long line? Screens flash and thumbs scroll, music up and chin down, TikTok, Youtube, Instagram, Netflix. We stand together in line, we sit together on trains, we sip our teas and guzzle our hamburgers together. And yet, there’s no talking. No intermingling. No conversation. Here we are, passing through the transitional phase and hurdling towards the metaverse. Soon, it will be even more of this. Soon, we’ll be wearing VR headsets in public. Soon, there might not even be a “public.”

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We already live augmented lives, hyper-connected and hyper-distracted, with the infinite throes of the internet bubbling at the surface. The average teenager spends 14 hours a day on a screen and up to 90% of their free time watching, liking, and consuming digital content. There is no culture making, and no attention for anything slow or tactile. I fall into these same traps. I get tired, lazy, and bored, and late at night, I scroll, and I feel like a child again, back on vacation, parents gone and no rules, staring up at the sweet black ribbons fluttering down the visage of the chocolate fountain. I grab my skewers. I jump right in. I would have eaten that sweet chocolate until I drowned.

But… what the fuck?! Can we all just take a second and acknowledge how insane this is? Can we see how fast this has all changed? I am not that old, and even I was alive before all this! The iPhone is from 2007! It can barely drive! It’s too young to vote! It would still have pimples and piss itself in gym class! WOW, this has been fast. And in these 16 years, it is wrecking community spaces. It is decimating conversation. It has completely changed how we communicate. We stare for hours, every day, into these magic rectangles of hyper-glamorization. We can’t talk to each other because we’re too distracted to be bothered. Kids don’t read anything anymore. They don’t sit idle. Who the hell can?

We need community spaces again. We need a rotating table of random and genuine conversation. We need a sounding board for all the shit we’re seeing online. We need a place to feel welcome to just exist without having to prove anything, without having to impress, with more than eight seconds to engage. We need these things desperately, and we need them now.

That’s where James comes in. Welcome to Platte Gang. Please stick around.

JAMES

James is soft-spoken, reserved, thoughtful with his words, and far from harsh. Quickly, I can see he’s highly intelligent. In conversation, he goes from idea to implication in a split second, and from relationships to art, he thinks of everything differently than I ever have before. He shows up for dinner with a bottle of wine, chosen because it was the one with a bike on it, wearing an old greasy hat with just the word “Bible” stitched into it. He pulls out the chair and sighs after a long day of work and a long summer of riding. We will talk for hours, but I like him already.

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James had studied graphic design in art school in Edinburgh, and after a childhood spent roaming the streets, suburbs, and sewers of London, he had discovered an affinity for how cities are designed and the obvious and profound impact they had on the way people lived their lives. James was still only using his bike to ride to school until the class was given a homework project back in 2015.

Art school being art school, they told the class to go somewhere new and document the experience. He rode his bike 100 kilometers to the British border and took photos of the ride. He slept under a construction tarp, got dirty, and met new people. The photos were edgy and blurry, full of serendipity, and connected by the thread of movement down the middle. It was genius for an art school project. Something clicked. James decided he wanted more of it.

After art school, James was interested in using the bike as a research tool to dig further into the things he liked. He graduated on the day of the Brexit vote and left to explore the idea of borders, design, and movement. He bike toured from The Hague in the Netherlands across Europe and to Budapest. He met with design studios, interviewed them, and put together a magazine of the entire ride. It’s long, heady, intensely detailed, interesting, and funny all in one. Finally freed from school, the road gave his tangled mind the space it needed to unwind.

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James bounced around, finding a brief home in Athens and then moving to start a new life in Amsterdam. He says Platte Gang was started back in 2018 as just a way to make friends, and any higher purpose that came later was purely coincidental. He’d used bikes as a way to meet new people in Athens, going camping in the fuzzy green hills overlooking the calm emerald sea, riding along the coast, and ferrying to the islands. But in the Netherlands, on their first group Dutch ride, of course, the weather was awful, and everyone went home. Just James and his girlfriend made it out to the campsite, and all they did was “survive.”

The second one was a bit more successful. Five friends joined, and they made up a route as they went, freestyling a way to a campsite and then back home. Just fun and games, riding around on bicycles. The rides were built around this lack of officiality, with nothing special other than the special experience of being on bikes together, sleeping in the grass, and doing it all over again. Friends were made, and laughs were had. They got wet and had bad food, got lost, and got tired, but together, it was fun. An adventure with friends has that special way of making all the bad parts enjoyable. In Dutch, Platte Gang slyly translates to a group of flat rollers, and that’s exactly what they were.

Platte Gang was building, growing slowly to a slightly more official mailing list when the pandemic hit. James was in Athens again and quickly accepted life there when all the flights were shut down. Before the move, he had started volunteering with Thighs of Steel, a UK-based cycling non-profit. The organization collects money on a group ride from the UK to Athens, all of it to be given to organizations run by and for people with refugee experience. James was working with them and with Khora, a community space in Athens that has been supported by Thighs of Steels fundraising. They had to shut down their social café space, and James started delivering packages of food by bicycle to people in the city whose access to essential services had been cut off. When it resumed, he decided to join his first Thighs of Steel ride and raised 1,550 Euros while riding across the French Alps for a week.

Can you see where this is going?

James came back to the Netherlands after a few months in Greece. The cycling advocacy NGO he was working for wanted him in the office, and so he returned to the city of bikes, to work to make cities more bike friendly, riding his bike to bike work, and riding his bike on the weekends with his bike friends. Platte Gang was fired back up when it felt safe to do so, and more people returned to ride into the forest, the COVID cycling boom certainly giving a bit more wind to the movement. And here was this growing group of riders, this desire to explore social concepts, this non-profit cycle touring charity group, and this love for riding all working in the background. The pieces fit together so well. A bicycle puzzle, a positive feedback loop, a “pyramid scheme of happiness,” as James calls it.

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Platte Gang became a new thing, morphing into this next phase. James upped the production value of it, designing brochures and seeking out new riders, and in return for a donation to Thighs of Steel, James had someone lead a workshop while on the ride. Davie led a ride focused on mindfulness featuring meditation and psychedelics and forest walks. Kiran led a class on gourmet camp cooking. Leanne Bentley led a weekend focused on riding fast and hard, and this was the only time people didn’t show up on city bikes with backpacks strapped to the handlebars. Every weekend, people arrived on whatever bike they had and rode somewhere new, farther than they ever had before, curious to try this novel bikepacking thing out. People were there to give advice if it was sought. But mostly, people were focused on just enjoying the time in nature with some new friends.

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This year, Platte Gang evolved even further and became a space to investigate thoughts on movement, borders, design, and nature. Every weekend featured a central theme, and the associated route was designed around it. The first explored trade, and the group rode to Rotterdam to explore the transition from the Dutch West Indies days to now, leaving the former port of the infamous trading company and riding to the largest port today in Europe. For ride two, they explored borders and rode to Baarle-Nassau, a town partly in the Netherlands and partly in Belgium, marked by small white Xs on the ground. They rode to the island Texel to explore the concept of yield, how high-yield the small amounts of land in the Netherlands have become, and the unintended consequences of that. They rode to Arnhem to explore the concept of free spaces, past the old paalkamperen zones, where poles were placed in the ground, and within 10 meters, you could camp for free. They no longer exist, and the group thought together what it means that it’s no longer possible to camp anywhere for free in the Netherlands.

Platte Gang

I joined the final group ride of 2023. It was without a theme, more of a celebration of the year that had preceded than anything else. James had just returned from the Thighs of Steel ride, opting this year to cycle the second half of the whole length from Milan to Athens as a part of the core team. Through Platte Gang this year, he raised 1,164 euros for programs run by and for people with refugee experience, and in Athens, the entire group of Thighs of Steel counted the donation they finished with, totaling more than 100,000 euros. As someone later described the achievement, “That’s the territory where your impact is really making a difference.”

So, no theme, a vague sense of heading toward the sea, a campsite booked but not far away. Plenty of time for slow rolling and shenanigans. The group gathered early in Amsterdam-West, and it included old patrons of Platte Gang and several new faces. The night prior a rider came to my apartment to get her bags sorted and figure out how the seat post clamp worked. The shifters were broken, and it didn’t fit at all. The wheels wobbled like the walls on an acid trip.

“Are you worried about that?” I asked James. We were still having dinner. He was relaxed. So relaxed, I was surprised. He brushed it off. “Oh, that is so far from the worst bike to go on a PG weekend, and they’ve all made it so far.” Alex, who also works for the cycling advocacy NGO, showed up on his city bike wearing his dad’s old cut-off from the ‘90s. The chain lock was still wrapped around the seat post, and keys dangled from the lock. “Why did you choose this bike?” I asked Alex naively, handing him the perfect platform for a lecture on cycling culture and materialism. “Because it’s the only one I have,” he calmly replied.

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There’s an intentional nonchalance to a PG ride. One rider described it to me as “wholesome.” Another said it’s a “queer space, but as in the use of slightly different, open, like… accepting.” People show up, and the ride is there with no judgments. The pace is slow, and even still, James hangs back to make sure no one feels like they’re pulling the group back. He does the same when everyone gets ready in the morning. People from all across the rainbow show up to these rides, and everyone gets along. This ride is not about going far or fast, breaking records, or smashing miles. The rhetoric is inviting. It feels nice. The group is normally held together by that central concept, but it lingers in the background of the group dynamics. It serves more as an excuse to go rather than a homework assignment. Ultimately, on a PG weekender, it’s just a bunch of people hanging out on bikes. “We’re like adults going to an arcade and making jokes the whole time,” as James describes it to me. “It doesn’t take itself so seriously.”

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James talks a lot about cycling. About how bikes can be used to solve big problems. The catchy slogan of the NGO he works at is “Bicycles Transform Cities, Cities Transform the World.” And so James, with the long hair, the gentle demeanor, the scruffy goatee and the reassuring, benevolent preaching, he’s a sort of Bicycle Jesus. Platte Gang brings people into cycling, and a good amount stick around. Lucas, who is now out bikepacking on James’ old bike because of PG, says around the campsite dinner, “James is the perfect example of living your politics.” Urban congestion and pollution and obesity and climate change and depression and social isolation, they’re all things he, they, we, all of us, can start to fix by riding bikes instead of driving cars. “Bikes are awesome,” I say after a long tangent. “Bikes are awesome!” He repeats. We make for a grossly cliche pairing, but it does make for exciting dinner conversation.

So our bikepacking weekender, with strangers, riding with people who had never ridden out of the city and people who have raced ultras and ridden halfway around the world, with trans, straight, and gay riders, younger and older people, city bikes, busted-up road bikes, gravel bikes (and one recumbent!), a couple of tents, a couple of camp stoves, and no central theme, we all did the simple thing we were there for. We rode bikes. We pedaled circles. We moved through both space and time, with our own power, oh how glorious! We stopped for snacks by the sea, and a seagull stole Lucas’s bag of peanuts. We chatted a lot. We rode a slow pace and stopped in the forest. The light was nice, and the weather held.

The beautiful thing about group rides is the dynamic and the rotating dance floor we all share. One missed turn, one grab of the brakes, one pee stop, and we’re in a new conversation, with a new person, talking about a new thing, interconnecting those arbitrary points of experience that make up perspective. It’s amazing how many things there are to talk about I remember talking about at one point. The bicycle provides the perfect platform to engage with someone new, moving in tandem, with an idle mind and idle hands. And in our era of digitalization, of chatbots and selfie sticks, that is something to cling to. I think these group rides are something sacred. Something we must protect.

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And yes, of course there are more group rides in Amsterdam. But most of them are commercially affiliated. Brands put on social rides where you’re encouraged to buy their stuff. Bike shops, depending on the ride and the shop, do a similar thing. The Platte Gang charity donation is entirely optional, and it feels good to do it. We need to make cycling more appealing to the outsider if we want to get more people into it. “Make cycling sexy,” as James puts it. But he also says we can’t rely on an aesthetic of consumption to do that.

We need to make people feel invited to any sort of ride and make sure those rides are enjoyable, approachable, and rewarding. Is that a central theme and a concept to explore? Or just a swim in the river, a group cook-off, or an optional forest walk and an experiment with psychedelics? Someone shouldn’t show up to a ride and feel left out by not having the fancy clothes and the carbon wheels and those clip-clop-clip-clop shoes. Or not knowing the infinite trove of watts and efforts, or not putting the right stuff in the right places, or wearing the right clothes, or having the right labels. First, we must throw out the rule books. Then we can start opening doors.

And with bikepacking, while camping with strangers, there’s that extra layer of sleeping in a field and letting the conversation run and brewing coffee together and knowing how everyone slept. There are always more problems to solve, extra shuffles in the group dynamic, the blessing-in-disguise line for the toilet in the morning and the pile of dishes at night. Someone rode a Platte Gang weekender on a city bike with a ‘90s festival tent on their back last year, and when it poured rain, they slept with the campground chef in the restaurant. The two swapped stories and shared cigarettes all night. Sure, there are no big mountains, but that’s still a real adventure to me.

There’s a tangible sense of community that hangs in the air as we all ride together. While we sit around the fire, after the gentle teamwork of shuffling four wobbly camping stoves, in the quiet smacking and sing-song humming as we eagerly destroy our shared bowls of curry, or even while picking out what fry stand to ride to, I feel a warm glow I’ve never once felt from technology. It’s a weird thing what riding a bike and camping with a stranger can do. Whoever you are, whatever you do, and whatever you believe, I think we can ride bikes and camp and be friends. We have an epidemic of loneliness. The US Surgeon General recently released a warning to the public about it. More people report feeling lonely than ever before, up to 50% of us, and we are increasingly isolated in our digital bubbles, tangentially scrolling until infinity, increasingly “connected” through social media but only superficially, and burrowing even deeper. Religious institutions have been hollowed out, social clubs aren’t well-attended, we can get everything delivered to our homes now and never have to go through the burden of actually talking to someone. In this era of rapid digital uptake, it’s increasingly important to drop the devices and go outside and talk to someone. We need an analog rebuttal to this digital storm. I think groups like Platte Gang really can help to fix this.

So, here it is. It’s all right here, and it’s far from complicated. Take someone new out on the bike. Better yet, put them all in a group and see what happens next. Camp with them. Smoke a cigarette with the campground chef and swim in the river. Do a skid. Try a wheelie. Share your knowledge, and be receptive to theirs. There is nothing radical about these thoughts. But we need a mutual understanding that the most basic of interactions can be the most fulfilling. While moving to Amsterdam, I was shocked by the number of expats who complained how no one wanted to extend their friend circle. How people seem to have their small circle of friends and live content with that.

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James goes home after dinner, and I sit at the cafe to write. I look to my side and see the cold flashing of short-form video content. The AirPods go in, the phones come out, and the world sinks away. Today, the bitter shell of comfort is often too harsh to break through. But maybe this is your ax. The chaos of adventure and the shuffle of a group ride. A festival tent and a city bike, a thought to explore, a new place to go see, a shared pursuit of the common good. Wield these things. Make a group ride and take a stranger. Learn their story. See the world through their eyes. Follow up on them. Do it again. Go further or don’t, but just go. There is value in that, in this, in them, in everything slow and tactile.

Ride bikes, make friends, save the world. It’s really not that complicated.

Further Reading

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