365 party girl? Yes. 365 bike rider? Well, also yes.
Bratumn is in full swing.
Off the heels of Brat Summer, the release of Charli XCX’s remixed album of her latest LP, brat — her magnum opus that at long last ushered the 31-year-old singer into the mainstream — continues creating monoculture. It’s rare for the niche to break into such an esoteric, omnipresent space; arguably the last time we saw such ubiquity from an artist’s album was Beyonce’s magnum opus, Lemonade; Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, while impressive and no doubt will become the first-ever artist tour to gross $1 billion, exists as a continuation of majority culture; the marking and live performances of Lemonade and brat pedestaled and highlighted and introduced certain otherisms and left-of-center subcultures into the larger collective.
When Charli XCX posted on X that “Kamala Is brat!” it snowballed into social watercooler talk on what exactly is brat. (Of course, Fox News weaponized the brat discourse as a proxy to lambast liberal wokeness.) One of the year’s most viral trends, the “Apple Dance,” became an inescapable craze on TikTok. People say XCX claimed a color — a nauseating shade of highlighter-bright green; it even has its own specific Pantone code, 3507C — and the album cover’s lowercase, pixelated font sits as both a symbol of brattiness and delineation from traditional, glossy industry norms.
It’s this synonymous color palette and typography that’s allowed the bratosphere to collide with the cycling world, more specifically with those who commute on bikes on green-tinged bike lanes. As is the case with one San Francisco bike, the connection couldn’t be clearer.
“bike lane,” reads a commuter cycling route in a picture posted on X by Michael Vincent. The Philadelphia native who calls San Francisco home these days uploaded the image to Elon Musk’s increasingly dystopian social media company on October 2nd. The post — Vincent writing “Biking that,” nodding to XCX’s “bumping that” lyric found on her “365” track — quickly began making online rounds. As of publishing, the post has garnered north of 150,000 likes and has been shared over 6,100 times.
Where the bike lane with the demarcation is somewhat of a mystery at the moment. Commenters with keen eyes have noted it’s likely a section on the 2nd Street bike lane … but the notion that bike lanes in San Francisco are, in fact, brat … especially if they’re protected.
Feature image: Courtesy of [at]mvddm via X
[…] San Francisco bike lanes are brat. (Underscore) […]