Bike Vessel (2023)
Directed by Eric D. Seals
The 59th Chicago International Film Festival
“Pretend that you’re invisible,” said an old colleague of mine. Steve was 30, maybe 35 years my senior. A bald, Republican white guy that enjoyed dinner theater and advocated that I get a FOID card. Bored at work, he’d take me to the back warehouse and had me shoot a pellet gun for target practice. He was an odd character that enjoyed cult movies like Eating Raoul and Putney Swope. We’d argue about our politics. I’m glad I never knew him when Trump was ascending. But the one piece of advice he imparted that sticks with me to this day is to pretend that I’m invisible when I’m cycling. I’ve been doored, had my foot broken, and lacerated more times than I have fingers and toes. My blood has hit the pavement on both ends of the lakefront trail and everywhere in between. It’s not easy cycling in the city of Chicago. But I keep pedaling. It’s a mental illness at this point.
Bike Vessel is a local production, where filmmaker Eric D. Seals follows his father, Donnie, as he prepares for a 4-day cycling sojourn from St. Louis to Chicago on the Route 66 Trail. At age 69 (nice), Donnie has overcome his share of ailments. In between issues with his health (having undergone three separate coronary surgeries) and the compromises of raising a family as a black man, Donnie’s tale of woe is one of struggle and endurance. On a whim, he decides to begin cycling and with it, he expands his worldview, finding camaraderie within a community of like-minded cyclists. Accompanied by his son, the two embark on the journey with some reticence.
Eric D. Seals constructs the narrative of his documentary by focusing on Donnie’s training and his self-doubt. With two legs of the trip involving 100-mile rides, Donnie is reluctant to proceed with the journey. Seals deconstructs his father’s history and tumult by also including various talking heads, mostly physicians, as they speak on broader, sociological and racial issues that plague the black community. While the former is a personal essay that reminded me of my own father, the latter is a bit too scattershot and simplistic. In Donnie, Seals sees his father as representative of many of the issues that black American men must overcome to succeed; whether it’s poor diet, a distrust of medical institutions, or the anomie that develops when working and living within predominantly white spaces, Seals examines these issues through the lens of his father’s journey.
Problem is that much of the film’s socio-political observations are only superficially acknowledged within Donnie’s journey. As Donnie and his son make their trek, it’s only a fleeting comment, where Donnie suggests that as a black man he’s often seen as an intruder in cycling spaces, that even remotely ties Seals’ commentary together. That feeling of invisibility that I suggested earlier isn’t really cited in any meaningful way beyond this, with Seals settling for an in-between space; a docudrama with a cursory examination of the historical context that placed Donnie in the situation that he’s in.
Chicago’s cycling community is fairly active on Twitter, with bike grid activists pushing for the importance of divisions in bike lanes and city traffic. Just this past weekend, after watching Bike Vessel, I took to the 606 as a chill descended on the city. Cycling down Milwaukee Avenue, I was greeted by cars in bike lanes. I was nearly hit on more than one occasion. I’ve accepted this as part of the territory. A few weeks ago, as the school year began, a young cyclist posted on Twitter about getting hurt when a school bus cut her off. She posted a gory photo of what appeared to be a broken nose. And a few days after that, a young man posted about a hit-and-run on Halsted and Chicago, a particularly nasty intersection that I frequent regularly. The cyclist has a particularly gruesome bruise on his leg from the fall. The complaints were familiar, with a call for action in hopes that Mayor Brandon Johnson will fulfill the campaign promises he made to Chicago’s cycling community. It should be noted that these complaints came from white cyclists. As a Latino, I’m familiar with being invisible. It’s how I’ve had to operate, in one facet or another, for most of my life. Sometimes you’ll be recognized by a driver, who’ll tell you that you don’t belong in their space. A finger salute is shared between both parties.
To be invisible is to lack agency. This idea operates in stark contrast to what cycling offers to me, offers to Donnie, offers to anyone in the community: freedom. It does not surprise me when a cyclist gets hurt given that a cyclist operates as secondary in a dominion of motorists. The only time the invisibility cloak is removed is when cyclists band together, during Critical Mass or a litany of bike buses that have become more prevalent through the city, whereby black, white, brown, young, old, sad, happy, poor, rich, etc. cyclists seize the streets. A shared, safe experience that levels the field, where the shared agony of climbing uphill is met with a pocket of benevolence when going downhill.
Bike Vessel opens locally at AMC NewCity as part of the 59th Chicago International Film Festival on Saturday, October 14, 2023 and Saturday, October 21, 2023. Director Eric D. Seals is scheduled to attend the first screening.