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Tweed ride comes to the District: Freewheeling dandies bike through town
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"I do appreciate looking good and dressing like an adult, which in these days might pass as dandyism," Lamond says.
Social identities
The tweed riders in the alley are here because they value style, art, history and/or cycling, and because they find more inspiration by looking back than looking around. Danny Harris, 30, wears a wool tie and vest he bought in England, Vietnamese motorcycle goggles on his head and khaki shorts. On the other side of his taxicab-colored fixie is Kristin Hershberger, 27, who wears a 1970s high-waisted denim skirt and a new velvet vest trimmed with fur, yet still manages to look like she's from the Jazz Age. They talk about how going out used to mean orchestras and fine clothing, and how being macho meant knowing how to dance.
"I think our generation is lacking in a certain respect," Hershberger says.
A generation, in an alley, in search of a social identity.
Perhaps this is too much thought for a Sunday afternoon. Many are riding not for dandyism but for the mass absurdity, nothing more. Even irony and sincerity are mashed up here.
Around noon, Brewer rings a brass bell and the riders roll out of the alley, marking a leisurely pace down Eighth Street toward Eastern Market, gliding over the pulp of pulverized leaves, as pedestrians stop and watch and wonder what exactly distinguishes this mob from any other that organizes in Washington. A Metrobus huffs and puffs behind the bike jam, honking its horn. "You rapscallion!" cries one tweed rider, shaking his fist at the bus driver.
Hundreds of them breeze down Constitution Avenue and up Seventh Street NW, tossing "good day to you" to anyone in earshot. A man standing on the sidewalk calls out "Who are you?" as they angle toward the White House and send up cheers of "hip hip, hooray" against the file-cabinet-like office buildings of midtown. They breeze through red lights without police escort, rankle automobile drivers and take two spins around Dupont Circle, turning the traffic vortex into a merry-go-round of foppery.
The ride ends at Marvin, next to the Gibson speakeasy, at 14th and U streets NW. Riders crowd the upstairs bar and swarm around silver bowls of gin punch. Proceeds from gin drinks will go to Arts for the Aging, a Bethesda nonprofit. Brewer hopes to have another charitable tweed ride in the spring, as well as croquet events and evening picnics throughout the year.
The sun reflects off a condo building into Marvin's open-air deck, turning the inside crowd into silhouettes. The whole scene looks like a lithograph of cross-bred epochs: a pair of bloomers here, a pair of Katharine Hepburn ladyslacks there, bowler hats chatting with newsboy caps, fake handlebar mustaches being judged by real handlebar mustaches.
Sitting against the wall, quaffing gin cocktails, are District residents Zak Stutman, 31, Claire D'Alba, 30, and Anne Simmons, 31. They plundered their closets for the occasion, having already accumulated enough tweedwear from thrift stores (and J. Crew). This movement, if it is a movement, is a rejection of casual monotony, they say.
"We're so encompassed by technology and going into work and sitting under fluorescent light," says D'Alba, whose book club just finished "The Age of Innocence." "There's an excitement in this earlier era."
"I would wear this anyway," Stutman says, tugging at his wool vest. "This is an excuse to wear the clothes that I wear."
