{"id":240065528,"date":"2012-08-10T12:52:08","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T12:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=240065528"},"modified":"2012-08-10T12:52:08","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T12:52:08","slug":"where-h-l-mencken-learned-to-ride-a-bicycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=240065528","title":{"rendered":"Where H.L. Mencken Learned to Ride a Bicycle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>H.L. Mencken learned to ride a bicycle in the lot behind a bicycle shop owned by Joseph Wiesenfeld at the southwest corner of West Baltimore and Paca Streets. He recalled the story in a piece from <a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=R2eoUwk4WcsC&amp;lpg=PA3source%3Dbl&amp;ots=4S29I5JeXc&amp;pg=PA32#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\">Mencken on Mencken<\/a>, a collection of autobiographical writing originally published in the New Yorker and Esquire during the 1940s:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u2026in an ancient two-story house which still stands, was Joe Wiesenfeld\u2019s bicycle shop, and at the rear of it was a large yard, floored like a room. On that floor, coached by one of Little Joe\u2019s salesmen, I learned to ride a bicycle. It all seems remote and archaic today, like mastering the subtleties of medieval equitation. But bicycling was a great and urgent matter in 1889, when the pneumatic tire came in.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/historicsprawl.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/27\/where-h-l-mencken-learned-to-ride-a-bicycle\/\">https:\/\/historicsprawl.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/27\/where-h-l-mencken-learned-to-ride-a-bicycle\/<\/a><br \/>\n<em>[There is a nice old photograph of the building with a couple of bikes parked outside here as well.]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>H.L. Mencken learned to ride a bicycle in the lot behind a bicycle shop owned by Joseph Wiesenfeld at the southwest corner of West Baltimore and Paca Streets. He recalled the story in a piece from Mencken on Mencken, a collection of autobiographical writing originally published in the New Yorker and Esquire during the 1940s: &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=240065528\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Where H.L. Mencken Learned to Ride a Bicycle&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240065528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-in-baltimore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240065528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240065528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240065528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240065528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240065528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240065528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}