Bicycle by Night, Eighth Street

Bicycle by Night, Eighth Street

Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
June, 2011

This photograph is a snapshot of downtown Columbia in the summer.  This bicycle, a Takara Grand Touring model with downtube shifters, once occupied a humble corner of a building on Columbia’s Eighth Street.  The corner was formed by Eighth and an intersecting alleyway running perpendicular to the numbered streets.  I don’t know how many times I walked by on summer nights to see this bike resting on this quiet, brick corner.  The alley in question was pitched steeply to the west as it led walkers (or bicyclists) down into the Flat Branch valley.  Fantastic sunsets still form at the bottom of this alley.  The building in question was an apartment building with a medium-sized walnut tree growing next to it on Eighth.  I knew people who lived in this apartment building, people who worked at places like Shattered, Flat Branch, Shakespeare’s, and Trattoria Strata Nova.  By the time I took this photo during the summer of 2011, two of those businesses were gone from downtown Columbia, my friends had moved out of the building, and within two or three years a development would displace this humble brick corner.  It is my hope that the touring bike has a new corner to call home.