Rideout!: Freedom and Collective Movement in Black Biking Subcultures

Author

• Kristen L. Miller, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Sociology

Advisor

Thomas DeGloma

Committee Members

James M. Jasper

Amber Jamilla Musser

Lucia Trimbur

Subject Categories

Sociology

Keywords

South Africa, New York City, Baltimore, Bike Life, Blackness, Ethnography

Abstract

Rideout!: Freedom and Collective Movement in Black Biking Subcultures is an ethnography examining the social world of Black biking communities in Baltimore, New York City, and Johannesburg, South Africa. In the United States, I explore the decades-long tradition of semi-illegal street biking, known by participants as “Bike Life.” This community consists mostly of young Black men who, during “rideouts,” gather on bicycles, dirt bikes, and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to perform elaborate stunts while deftly navigating, and often taking over their city streets. In South Africa, I examine parallel urban cycling communities where young Black men gather weekly on bicycles, which they often make themselves from found parts, to perform tricks and ride throughout Johannesburg, entering areas that only 30 years ago they would not have been able to move through freely. In Johannesburg, my research centers predominantly on two cycling groups: The Banditz Bicycle Club and Street Friends. Drawing on two years of ethnographic immersion, including 60 interviews with riders and participation in over 70 rides, I show how, through the collective practice of riding, Black biking communities illuminate expansive forms of Blackness and Black life.

Despite the prevalence of Black biking communities in cities around the world, there has been no ethnographic research on these communities and, until now, they have been an unexplored case within sociology. Throughout this dissertation, I trace riders’collective practices and the modes of knowing and being that their practices generate; however, the goal is not to fix these communities or to make them more legible to others. Rather, the chapters in this dissertation—-drawing on the organizational structure of a group ride—-invite you to join the riders, and, in doing so, to feel and encounter Blackness and Black life outside what we are normatively told.

Recommended Citation

Miller, Kristen L., "Rideout!: Freedom and Collective Movement in Black Biking Subcultures" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6738