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Hi from London!
It’s been an entire decade since I last visited the UK‘s capital.
I remember it as if it were yesterday, standing on the Southwark Bridge, admiring The Shard overshadowing all other skyscrapers in the country.
It was April 21, 2016, and Her Majesty, the monarch formerly known as Queen, was still alive, celebrating her 90th birthday. On the same day, His Majesty, the artist formerly known as Prince, was found dead in an elevator, overdosed on fentanyl.
Royals come and go. Upon departures, they continue to live in memories. Sometimes, in monumental ones, and occasionally, in just memory shards.
Four years ago, the United Kingdom crowned a new head, King Charles III, whose “official birthday” was celebrated this Saturday, despite the fact that he was actually born in November.
As someone who rarely changes currencies twice, my preserved, now dethroned banknotes featuring Queen Elizabeth, traveled with me to England, so that the polymer Charles can rule my wallet, too.
But before I headed to a post office, to save my 80 quids from going down the drain, I saw the king himself in the most unexpected attire, as he was rushing toward Buckingham Palace. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields, surrounded by the cheerful crowd, the emperor rode a bicycle – buck naked!
I’m not talking about The King’s Birthday Parade, celebrated five months before the actual birthday cake candles will be blown, but about the World Naked Bike Ride, an international event promoting cycling in London since 2004. Imagine more than a thousand riders exposing their skin on the streets, as a part of a worldwide campaign against car culture… Or even better, see it for yourself.
What I like about London is that in a highly serious ceremonial society (a democratic country that still believes in the power of a bloodline anointed by a crown-holding archbishop), one can witness events such as the nude bicycle ride as perfectly normal, positive-mood gathering.
Coming from Croatia, a country where a rather innocent edition of a Gay Pride can make the most salivating haters show up in a counter-protest, with strong police forces needed to guarantee order, seeing that there are places that show the world won’t fall apart if we provide a megaphone to someone’s opinion, no matter how radical it might be, is refreshing.
I would have loved to be able to show you this atmosphere in a video, but let’s be honest, it would’ve been reported and removed faster than you could mutter ‘censorship’. Unlike the evident hate speech comments that show up under the footage of events such as Zagreb Pride, sometimes literally celebrating nacism – I have reported a dozen, but after a weeklong process, Facebook didn’t find anything problematic in terms of violating their “community standards”.
In a way, it’s saddening to see the role social media plays in degrading our societies. While we are just feeding the monstrous machines producing billionaires on our saliva exchanges, I often wonder what the point is in being active in any such “network”.
The world is hard as it is. And yet, the greatest monopolists of the internet are simultaneously destroying the journalism of the real media and giving a free, bianco stage to the most extreme voices. The world is going wrong.
And all I wanna do is, as my favorite Queen would sing, “bicycle, bicycle, bicycle”!
Have a rebellious cycling week,
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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