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Lisa Anne Auerbach
Unicycle Shop
onestar press
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Unicycle Shop was open on May 12 and 13, 2007, as part of High Desert Test
Sites in Joshua Tree, California. During two days of business, we rented
unicycles to over 50 people for the price of ten cents per hour. Most of those
renting unicycles were first-time unicyclists and they approached the challenge
of unicycling with enthusiasm and vigor. Crashes into the soft sand were not
uncommon. Some visitors became quite obsessed with unicycling. The sun beat
down at 90 degrees, and unicyclists were covered in sweat and sand. Though
Unicycle Shop was fully equipped with First Aid equipment and a certified First
Air technician, the worst accident was a splinter unrelated to unicycling.
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I learned to ride a unicycle in the late 1970s, when it seemed unicycling
was as American as apple pie. I was an only child, so the one wheel thing
seemed especially appropriate. The unicycle was an old purple Schwinn with
a quilted black curved seat. The seatpost was bent near the top, which made
riding it a challenge. The gravel of the driveway was not a forgiving landing pad.
There was a lot of falling. I still have scars on my knees. My mother bought me
bright yellow knee pads and elbow pads after scraping rocks out of my wounds
too many times. I was always squeamish around blood and the tattered flesh
made me feel woozy.
Propping the unicycle up against the railroad ties surrounding the gravel
was the strategy for learning. The street was “too dangerous.” Cars sped down
Portwine Road, especially during rush hour. When we moved there in 1970, the
street was gravel too, but by the time the Schwinn entered my life, it was paved.
I thought Portwine would be the perfect launching pad for my new hobby, but,
even in the heydey of unicycling, traffic didn’t recognize a one-wheeled vehicle
as anything more than an ordinary nuisance.
The streets in my neighborhood were all named after cocktails, and there
weren’t many children around. On Daiquiri Drive, there were twin boys, but
while I was in grade school, one of them shot himself in the head. The other
one went on to become handsome and popular in high school, but I could never
remember his name and didn’t want to accidentally call him by the name of his
dead brother.
I rode a bicycle too, but refused to quit the unicycle before I figured out
how to go forward. I was jealous of friends who had paved driveways, but also
felt a little bit badass crashing in my gravel. It was a mix of caramel and chocolate browns, the pieces rounded. My mother told me it was very expensive gravel, fancy gravel. Designer gravel. I might not have had designer jeans, but I had
very exclusive gravel lodged beneath my skin, which seemed somehow better,
even if it hurt. Or maybe because it hurt. Punk was happening somewhere else,
but it didn’t get to me until years later. I was still listening to the Beatles and
my mom’s Steeleye Span albums and going to the Rennaissance Fair because I
thought the muddy maidens and jousting was pretty neat.
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The first time I appeared in public on my unicycle, I wore a tiger costume
and rode in a parade. It was my high school’s Homecoming celebration, through
downtown Deerfield, Illinois. All I remember is that the inside of the tiger costume stunk and that no one asked me to the Homecoming dance. I also did a
charity ride of some sort, a bike-a-thon, raising money for MS or something. 5
miles around a nearby subdivision. People thought I should get half as much
per mile since I only rode one wheel. I learned at an early age that people who
tell jokes about unicycles think they are really, really funny. One year my friend
Anna and I did a routine for the school talent show, where we juggled together
and I rode around the stage on a unicycle. I had circus skills.
Unicycling was about the least cool hobby a teenager could have. There
was really little about it that was good, but it was fun to have a skill that no
one else cultivated. In 1984, Nancy Reagan visited our high school to lecture
the students about “say no to drugs.” We were told in special assemblies in
the auditoriums that there were evil children pushing drugs in the bathrooms
and that we needed to be very careful and aware of these dangers so that we
too did not fall prey to the dark side. I spent a lot time peeing and touching up
my eyeliner, but no one ever offered me anything. I wasn’t even invited to the
parties my mother would read about in the local newspaper, the ones that happened when parents were out of town and involved topping off liquor bottles
with water so the level didn’t appear to change. It was years later that I found
out that people in my high school were actually having sex. I was shocked. I
credit unicycling with keeping me off drugs and clean of STDs. No drug pusher
or Svengali in their right mind wanted to be seen cavorting with my kind.
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Unicycle Shop happened in Joshua Tree, California on May 12-13, 2007 as part of the
High Desert Test Sites.
Lisa Anne Auerbach lives in Los Angeles, a city known for its heartfelt embrace of circus culture.
She makes photographs, sweaters, and small publications. She believes that humor can make the
bloodiest wounds and that politics begin at home. Although she has an impressive collection of
tomato-red unicycles, she prefers riding a bike, and her exploits are well documented within the
pages of Saddlesore.
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Lisa Anne Auerbach
Unicycle Shop
First edition limited to 250 numbered copies.
In addition to this book a limited edition multiple by the artist
is available from onestar press.
Layout and photos: Lisa Anne Auerbach
Printed and bound in France
© 2007 Lisa Anne Auerbach & onestar press
onestar press
16, rue Trolley de Prévaux
75013 Paris France
[email protected]
www.onestarpress.com
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