Boneshaker Magazine / Issue #3

boneshaker

magazine

issue #3

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So here we are. Issue #3. And what a ride it’s been. The enthusiasm and excitement we’ve put into Boneshaker thus far continues to beam back at us from all over the world, and as before, this issue shines a light on cycle-life globally, from Belfast to Berlin, Portland to Colombia.

night in Bristol, and a second in a friendly bike-bar in London.

We met couriers, frame-builders, illustrators, writers and friends.

We laughed, we drank, we rode home in the rain, glowing – and poured some of that glow into this here issue.

We hope you like it...

We’ve also found time to get out there a little and meet some of you big-hearted bikesters in person, with our first launch

Team Boneshaker www.boneshakermag.com

Contents

We never leave a rider behind Breaking the Chain Thinking Caps My Beautiful Bike Upcycling Two’s Company Magnificent Revolution Slowcoast Soundslide El Taller del Mago Let Sleeping Dogs Lie Papergirl: The art of gift-giving Work your muscle, ditch the engine Gettin’ Cross Cycle-camping Even the name is beautiful

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contributors

words sam plant dempsey, giles perkins, brandon sequoia, david edwards, jen harrison, yael ben-gigi, mike white, nick hand, jimmy ell, andrea diaz, lizzie woodall, jet macdonald, simon nurse, sofie andersen drawings peter locke, garry marshall, warwick johnson cadwell, jethro brice, sebastien braun, joseph roberts, blanca gomez, nick souček photos dan nguyen-tan, just.ekosystem.org, heather tompkins, no gears, micah fischer, jason finn, benji wagner, simon keitch, adam faraday, hanglebads, nick hand, richard seipp, daniel powell

backpats and handclaps

gavin wilshen, yael ben-gigi, mike white, look mum no hands, howies bristol, matt45, taylor bros & the bristol bike project crew

copyrights & disclaimers

Boneshaker is a quarterly publication. The articles published reflect the opinions of their respective authors and are not necessarily those of the publishers and editorial team. ©2010 Boneshaker.

Printed on paper from sustainable sources by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd. 13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / www.taylorbros.uk.com Conceived by james lucas Compiled & edited by jimmy ell, mike white and john coe Designed and published by coecreative / www.coecreative.com Cover image by blanca gomez / www.cosasminimas.com

We never leave a rider behind

by Giles Perkins

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Since the dawn of cycling, people have come together in clubs and societies to ride together, learn together and compete against each other.

With the development of cycling innovations such as the ‘Safety Bicycle’ in the late 1870s the bike quickly became available to the masses and as its popularity grew, so did the number of cycling clubs serving the ever-increasing number of riders. As well as sharing their passion and know-how, cyclists realised that the bike was a great way to meet new people. Indeed, many believe that the humble bicycle has greatly expanded the gene pool across much of the UK! But in these modern times, perhaps driven by wider changes in society and the growth of the internet, the cycling fraternity has split into two camps: those riding and training alone, and those continuing the tradition of the long-established club system. Making the progression from lone cyclist to riding in the company of others can seem like a daunting prospect, but the benefits far outweigh the hassles. Or do they?

As a road cyclist, finding a club can be a slightly odd experience. You nervously turn up at your local club’s meeting point for the Sunday ride, your potential companions first look you up and down, then give your bike the once over and perhaps (if you’re lucky) grunt something mildly welcoming. Before you know it, you’re on the rivet, trying to keep up with people clearly fitter and stronger than you. Then bang, you’re dropped – welcome to another Sunday in cycling club hell!

Ok, so I grossly exaggerate, it’s not all like that, there are some great clubs around – but in a sport which still has peculiar customs and practices all of its own, sadly it’s not an unfamiliar tale.

When I was younger, faster and marginally braver, I used to race, time trial and ride the track. Not at any grand

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level, but enough to get occasionally respectable placings and stay safe (most of the time). But one day, and it literally was one day, I fell out of love with cycling – too many weeks of getting dropped, too much time spent not progressing, too much well, effort. That was back in the mid-nineties and I never touched a bike again for years...

But, when the bug finally re-infected me last year (I make no bones about it, it is a bug, the worst sort of virus that never really leaves you) I quickly progressed and got my confidence back, got quite fit again and needed to move to the next level. That’s when the club question hit me once more – who to join, how good are they, will I fit in, and will I get dropped? Questions undoubtedly being asked by hundreds if not thousands of lone cyclists across the country every day.

As the hackneyed saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention, and a few chance happenings quickly helped to hatch a plan.

A close friend with whom I’d ridden years before and stayed in touch with had set up his own club, West Lothian Clarion – built on the foundations of fellowship and inclusion, basics lacking in some dark corners of the sport. Chatting with a few friends I quickly discovered that they too were considering club cycling and again, couldn’t find a home. Within a few days the idea of the North Cheshire Clarion was born – our own club, one that could work as we wanted it to.

So, what’s the Clarion connection? The National Clarion is a network of cycling clubs that’s been around since 1894. At its peak it was home to an astonishing 8,000 cyclists across the UK. Nowadays, with over 25 sections and around 700 members, it still adheres to its principles of fellowship and inclusion, – perhaps

Illustration - Garry Marshall / www.superumami.com

unsurprising given that it was founded by visionary socialists. The politics aren’t so important now, but those solid values are, and that’s where it offers something very different, an alternative approach to club cycling – one where everyone is welcome.

We quickly developed a website with our values plastered front and centre, encapsulated by the phrase ‘We never leave a rider behind’. That was it in a nutshell: we ride together, we progress together, we help others do the same. First up the hill waits; if it’s a big hill they ride to the bottom again and ride up with the slowest rider. It’s about sharing knowledge and skills, it’s about supporting and helping riders to improve – it’s about remembering that we all had to start somewhere.

Back in Autumn 2009 there were three of us: by Christmas and the dark days of winter it was 28. Now it’s nudging 70 and growing week by week. Members are mostly former lone cyclists coming together to ride together, to improve their skills and to realise their own personal goals no matter what they are. We’ve got a great kit, we ride road, we ride off-road, we ride track, we race and we have social events – we do everything cyclists do, but together and shared.

Why shouldn’t a cycling club be inclusive?

Why shouldn’t it welcome riders of all skills and ages? West Lothian has set up a local kids’ club under British Cycling’s Go-ride initiative, effectively growing their own future champions. A new Clarion section has just been set up in Saddleworth, taking the same mantra of ‘never leaving a rider behind’ and claiming it for its own. We’ve all found a different way to get a cycling club going, using a model that definitely seems to be working.

Making that move from riding alone to riding in a club is a big step, but one everyone should try to make. Once you’re with like-minded people it’s amazing how quickly you progress and how much more fun you have on the bike – after all, isn’t that what it’s all about, fun?

www.northcheshireclarion.co.uk

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Words Brandon Sequoia

Breaking the

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Workshop Polaroid Benji Wagner

chain I love bikes. They are lifeless collections of steel, aluminium, plastic, rubber and carbon, but each of the lifeless parts that make up the whole was crafted by someone else who loves bikes. All the parts have their own story to tell. Stories of miles covered, memories created, and little glimpses into fragments of lives.

Bikes take on many personas, shift roles, and perform the duties of carrying us from point A to point B in an almost graceful fashion. They rarely complain. They never ask for anything but simple maintenance, and in return they give gifts that would be completely unfathomable to ask of them. They teach us patience, perseverance, determination, ingenuity, trust and self-reliance. They help us keep fit. They carry us through life; take us to school, to work, to play, to compete; out of the house, out of town, and around the world.

But the best gifts that bikes give us are conversations, memories and lasting relationships with others who share a passion for bikes. Mechanics and shop hands, fellow commuters, racers, trick riders, event organisers, photographers, musicians, artists and craftspeople all contribute little parts of themselves to a collective memory that is what bikes mean to us. We get to interact with amazing people, doing simple but incredible things, every day. This is what the bicycle is all about.

Loving bikes is not at all a one-sided relationship. While we often gain a lot more than we give, we’re also regularly asked to give things we may not even realise we possess. I don’t know a bicyclist who hasn’t had some sort of mechanical problem they weren’t sure how best to fix. Or a fit or comfort issue for which they had to find a creative solution. It seems our bikes are constantly asking us to bend, move, stretch, and change – and often we are required to give and share and learn along with others in the process. It’s almost as if our bikes know our weaknesses and shortcomings and find the most ridiculous ways to make us work on them. And on the other side of that coin, our bikes also show us strengths we never knew we had.

I recently moved back to Portland, Oregon, after a few years in the mountains. For anyone who isn’t aware, Portland is the cycling capital of the United States. The ‘P’ in Portland stands for progressive, and by progressive we mean trying desperately to figure out how to get it right. As such, people from all over the States, and all over the world, flock to

Portland to see what life is like in an alternate universe where bikes nearly outnumber cars in most parts of the city. (We can dream, can’t we?) And many of them stay for good.

The big draw that keeps people here, despite eight months of non-stop rain and dark and dreary skies, is something in the water or maybe in the air. It’s ether, a gas, a spectre.

It’s an utterly unnameable and unidentifiable spirit that permeates the city and everything in it. It’s the reason we can’t walk or ride down the street without strangers smiling at us and saying hello. It’s the reason our neighbors give us produce from their garden, and baked goods from their oven. It’s the reason our violent crime rate is so low despite our unemployment rate being among the highest in the nation. It’s the reason our World Naked Bike Ride is one of the largest in the world. People here are creative, expressive, passionate and alive.

And in a town with this much passion, creativity, vitality and independent spirit, it’s no wonder that our bike community is one of the strongest and healthiest in the nation.

They say that if you give a man a basket of fish, he’ll eat for a week. But if you give a man a fishing pole, he’ll eat for his whole life. Or something like that. Well, here in the Pacific Northwest, we share that sentiment. Give a person a bike, and they’ll get fit, get around, and consume less oil. But if you teach a person how to give other people bikes, entire communities will get fit, get around, and consume less oil.

It’s kind of a way of life here. We like to do it ourselves, and we like to do it in the most sustainable way possible.

We dream. We create. We share.

Portland is home to more independent cycling companies, manufacturers, designers, outreach groups, non-profits, retailers and journalists than you can shake a stick at. In fact, there are so many that it’s hard to accurately count or catalogue them all. What brings them all to Portland? What makes Portland such a great place to create and live the cycling life?

I sat down with a few of our finest to get their take.

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Photography Micah Fischer

21st Avenue Bicycles Amanda Sundvor www.21stbikes.com www.backyardblam.blogspot.com Amanda Sundvor is a bike mechanic at 21st Avenue Bicycles and an event organiser responsible for the world famous Backyard BLAM. She’s also ridiculously funny, as you’ll soon find, and one of the friendliest and most welcoming people I know.

BR: How long have you been a bike mechanic?

AS: We are drawing to a close of my third season – and holy crap, what a sweet ride. Everyday I go to work I get hi fives. Everyday, can you say that, Mr. President? Probably not. I started out in Chicago assembling bikes at a Kozy’s in Boy’s Town. I got paid per bike build and it wasn’t much, but I loved every second of it. I would go home completely drained and fall asleep in my bed with all my clothes on leaving a grease spot on my bed. My girlfriend would complain, but I was too tired to listen. In the morning I couldn’t wait to get to work and do it all over again. With the help of some great mechanics sharing tricks of the trade, I was building a crap load of bikes... and I am talking a crap load. That’s a lot! After months of solitude building bikes in a room above the shop I was moved downstairs to mechanic and I hit the ground running.

BR: What drew you to wrenching bikes?

AS: Well, I got into bikes late in life – when I was given a single speed from a friend five years ago, I felt like I had missed out on so many years of this amazing thing and I had a lot of making up to do. I submersed myself in bikes... not literally. That would leave some marks I am guessing. Pretty much everything I would read or talk about was bikes. My girlfriend loved it [please note sarcasm – ed.]. Being able to take a shitty bike that someone has neglected in the basement and breathe some life back into it... well, there’s nothing quite like it.

BR: What made you decide to start event organising?

AS: I moved to Portland and got a job at 21st Ave Bicycles and that kind of jump-started all of this. I met so many creative people in the industry through the shop and it made me want to be an active participant. I was in Portland about a month and decided to host my own sprints using the Open Sprints program. I am good at bossing people

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around and asking for favours so event planning seemed to come naturally. I’m also good at back rubs and hi fives so that helps. I set up in my backyard and from that moment on it just kind of took off.

BR: How long have you been organising the Backyard BLAM? AS: Not that long actually – only about a year and a half.

That’s what blows my mind. It started out with me and my backyard and just grew and grew. Each one is better than the last and it looks as if things are going to stay steady in that direction. More people are getting involved. Sponsors are stepping it up. The future is really bright, so bright I am getting a tan because I left my sun block at home. Crap.

BR: What’s the best thing about the bike community in Portland?

AS: All the weirdos. No, I kid. I guess what I couldn’t get over, with not only the bike community, but the entire Portland community, was how freaking nice almost everyone was. I have lived all over the States and the only place where I can make eye contact with someone on the street, say hello, and not get looked at like I am a creep is Portland. Everyone here is doing something amazing and, on the whole, really happy. It is truly inspiring. It makes me excited, like when I watch the fighting montage in Blood Sport with Jean-Claude Van Damme.

BR: What did you do before you started obsessing over bikes?

AS: I was a mixed martial arts fighter. Little known fact: I’ve killed a man with my bare hands. But before that I was a DJ. I still bust out the funky house from time to time, but I’ve been doing that for a hundred years and when everything went digital, it kind of lost it a bit for me. I feel like I sound like a pretentious asshole when I say this, but what the hell, I’ll say it anyway: I am a vinyl purist. I love the sound of analogue; it’s like a warm blanket.

BR: What’s next for BLAM? AS: The world. Have you played the game Risk? Yeah, kind of like that. We are like Vikings conquering a land and then we burn our ships to tell everyone that we are here to stay.

We are going to have sweeter jumps! More hi fives! Free cookies! I mean really, what else is there?

Photography Jason Finn

TCB Racks Tad Bamford www.tcbracks.com Tad Bamford is the owner of TCB Racks. He makes amazing racks for bikes. If you haven’t heard of them, you should look them up. They’re one of the most sought after bike add-ons here in Portland, and for good reason. Super functional, efficient, well designed and classy – TCB Racks kick ass!

BR: What’s your full name?

TCB: Thadeous Charles Bamford... to seek the Holy Grail... what do you mean, African or European?

BR: Where are you from?

TCB: Your mom’s house. Um, I mean, Denver. Sorry, it’s a nasty habit I have.

BR: How long have you been in Portland?

TCB: More years than I have fingers. And I’m not missing any fingers.

BR: Why racks?

TCB: I was a messenger for a long time and when my friend Ira Ryan built a porteur (a type of cargo bicycle designed for carrying cargo loads on a platform rack attached to the fork) for another friend, I thought, “Hey, I need one of those and I could make it myself.” Later on, I saw that I had a good design and there was a hole in the market for it and said to myself: “I’m a full-time student, but I should really start a business too... no way will that eat up all of my time and stress me out and risk driving me broke.” Yeah, I’m pretty smart like that.

BR: Why Portland?

TCB: I think my friend Bobby put it best. He’d just returned from studying in Europe for six months, and when I told him I was building a rack for a client to mount an oven on a bike, his brow furrowed for a moment before a shrug, and he answered: “Of course you are – it’s so good to be home.” We also have beer here.

BR: What did you do before TCB? TCB: So’s your face! Er, sorry, there I go again. Sex, drugs and rock and roll... no, no, that’s not right either. Actually, being a messenger was kind of like that. OK, maybe not.

BR: What’s next?

TCB: I’m a year away from getting a degree in story problems, AKA a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering. So, yeah... if my racks are cool now, just wait until I’m a fully papered nerd.

BR: How long has TCB been in business?

TCB: Snap – thanks for reminding me to renew my business license. It expires after two years.

BR: Who are your customers?

TCB: It seems like most folks who buy my racks are people with a townie bike finally realising that backpacks, panniers, and messenger bags just really aren’t that awesome. And messengers! I can’t believe I ever put a banker’s box in a sling bag. I’d say about 80 per cent local, but I can ship anywhere.

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Photography Benji Wagner

Hufnagel Cycles Jordan Hufnagel www.hufnagelcycles.com Jordan Hufnagel builds some of the prettiest bikes I’ve ever seen. The detailing and aesthetics of each piece he creates are stunning and his name has become synonymous with precision craftsmanship and hand-built bike style. Each time I see his work displayed at a hand-built show it blows me away.

Sometimes I visit his Flickr account just to dream and drool.

BR: How did bike building begin for you?

JH: I’ve spent the better part of my life being stoked on bikes, working on them, traveling with them, and just having a good time on board them. When I moved to Portland in 2004 my focus became much heavier on road-type bikes and I began seeing handmade ones from local guys floating around. I thought that was rad, and being a capable human with some good ideas I thought I could offer something there. So I worked non-stop for a couple years to save up money for equipment, took some welding courses and a couple of great frame-building classes at the United Bicycle Institute, and just went for it.

BR: Didn’t you at one point ride BMX? JH: BMX took up a good part of my life; I was still riding pretty non-stop until a few years ago. My favourite riding buddy actually just moved to Portland and got himself a BMX again, so I think we’re going to have some old dude sessions going soon between the two of us!

BR: Why don’t you build BMX bikes?

JH: ‘Cause nobody wants to pay $2,300 for a BMX frame!

BR: How was the bike community in Indiana?

JH: When I lived there ten years ago, it was sparse. I managed a shop there and we would jump through hoops for anyone that walked through the door because of it! Trying to get everyone stoked on every experience with bikes there. It seems to be coming around now – whenever I go back to visit, I see a lot more people cruising around, especially in the downtown neighborhoods. It’s awesome. When I lived there I had a cross bike for commuting and the light mountain bike trails we had, but my main focus was BMX, for sure. We had a good crew there.

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BR: When did you move to Portland?

JH: 2004.

BR: Why Portland?

JH: I was living in Austin, Texas beforehand and needed a change. So I sub-leased my apartment and took off for most of the year. Just jumping in on random road trips back and forth across the country. When I got to Portland, I didn’t want to leave! So I went back to Texas and got a one-way plane ticket back the next day.

BR: Who are your customers?

JH: Total package people. Ones who love function that comes with awesome and simple aesthetics.

BR: What bike do you ride the most?

JH: My cross bike or a 1940’s Schwinn – I like to cruise. But I’ve got a new flat-bar, rando-style bike coming back from paint soon that I think it will be hard to separate me from for a while!

BR: What’s your favorite bike you’ve built this year?

JH: I’m almost done with it! It’s a super rad city bomber for Mike Giant (the world-famous tattoo artist). 650b Grand Bois hetre tires, truss fork and some other fun styling. It’s one of those bikes that I’m super bummed it’s not going to be mine!

BR: What’s your most ambitious project ever?

JH: Starting a bike company.

BR: What’s next for Hufnagel?

JH: I have a lot of stuff in the works right now. The graphics and details package is getting a make-over right now that I couldn’t be more excited about. Really reflective of where I’m at right now. I’m also working on a few components like brake levers and shifters, as well as a prototype bike for a short run of custom-fitted Porteur bikes that has me stoked out of my mind. Can’t wait!

Photography Jason Finn

Ira Ryan Cycles Ira Ryan www.iraryancycles.com Ira Ryan is an incredibly talented cyclist and frame-builder from the Midwest. He grew up riding and racing bikes, and eventually moved to Portland to become a messenger and escape the competitive racing mentality. He found a whole lot more than he bargained for.

BR: You grew up in Iowa – racing, commuting and touring in the heartland. How did those early experiences with cycling in the Midwest shape your love for bikes?

IR: I grew up riding on rural roads before I drove a car so it made an indelible mark on my youth to see the world pass by from the saddle of my bike. It was the best way to explore the tiny roads and parts of the country that you drive past in a car. The bicycle is a tool for exploration, literally and figuratively.

BR: You moved to Portland and joined the ranks of the nicest bike messengers in the business in 2001. What prompted this move to the Pacific Northwest?

IR: I sort of ended up here on a motorcycle trip from Iowa to Mexico to who-knew-where. I moved here the following season and got a job as a courier leading to a group of friends and a keen knowledge of the city.

BR: What was it like couriering in Portland?

IR: Living in the Midwest where you can’t ride at all in the winter, it was great to find Portland a year-round cycling city. I drank a lot of coffee and got a chance to ride every day while eking out a living.

A group of us eventually started our own messenger company that is still in business. I made great friendships that I still have today but the work was tiring.

BR: How has living here changed your outlook on cycling and what new perspectives has it lent to those earlier days in Iowa? And what about racing?

IR: Seeing Portland turn into “cycling city USA” over the past decade is great, but the fad of cycling makes me wonder if the culture will really stick versus just a city’s worth of bikes hanging in garages in a couple of years. I think the movement of cycling has taken a real foothold in a place like Portland that hopefully will spread to other cities. Portland has worked hard for 30-plus years to make it what it is today, and I think a lot of cities don’t realise how much work needs to go into the cycling culture of a bigger

city to make it stick. Racing is another faction of the greater cycling culture and has grown the same way, but I don’t think racing is as sustainable in a bigger cultural context. Grocery-getters and commuters are the bread and butter – look at Europe.

BR: How has the Northwest’s racing community impacted your feelings toward competition?

IR: It is a big scene in Oregon. Racing is good but the culture of racing doesn’t feel as welcoming as randonnées, touring or an organised riding club.

BR: How do you feel that your frame-building craft serves the local bike community?

IR: I am one builder in a community of builders that are always looking to push each other to make something different. We push each other and also encourage each other because I think we all realise a rising tide in the industry lifts all the boats. The whole bike community is so large in Portland that it is hard for one person to understand it all, so I end up just trying to focus on making my bikes better every day.

BR: What’s your most ambitious project to date?

IR: I don’t really know if I have had a single big project at Ira Ryan Cycles. I have done pretty well over the six years since I started, by making bikes better and better, some of which have competed in the Race Across America and the Tour Divide race across the United States. Maybe the most ambitious project has been to run my own frame-building business.

BR: What are your plans for the future of Ira Ryan Cycles?

IR: I would like to be a little bigger – meaning build more bikes in a year while keeping the quality and craftsmanship just as high.

I would also like to find some inventive and new ways to support racing and cycling culture outside of Portland.

BR: How do you think these plans will affect the bike world?

IR: It seems that Portland has a great thing going with its support of bike culture and business, but I think some of that energy needs to be directed back out to places that might need the shot in the arm more than Portland. As far as building more bikes, I am all for more bikes, period. If I build them, all the better, but I think the momentum needs to be continued.

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Photography Jason Finn

Pereira Cycles Tony Pereira www.pereiracycles.com Tony Pereira is a classy guy. Everything he does, from getting dressed to finishing a conversation, is done with the utmost attention to detail. It’s no wonder the bikes he builds are so beautiful and timeless. They ooze class. Just like Tony.

BR: What was it like growing up in Jersey?

TP: I was born in New Jersey, but moved a lot. We lived in Missouri and New Hampshire, but I call Connecticut home.

We moved there when I was 12 or 13. The town where my parents live is fairly rural and there are lots of great trails. We rode all over when we were kids and I started mountain biking there in the 80s.

BR: Were bikes a big part of your life from the beginning?

TP: Yes. I’ve ridden since I was four. Mostly bombing around town when I was a kid. It was the best way to get over to a friend’s house and our main recreation.

BR: When did you start building bikes?

TP: I built my first bike in 2003 and started Pereira Cycles in 2005.

BR: How and when did you come to live in Portland?

TP: I moved to Portland in 2005. My girlfriend, now wife, wanted to go to school here and it seemed like a fun place to live, so I moved here with her. We planned to move back to Salt Lake City when she finished her two-year graduate programme.

I knew of Portland’s reputation as a ‘bike town’ but had no idea what that meant. Once we were here, we fell in love with the town and decided to stay. It was a pretty lucky move for me. It’s great to have a strong peer community and that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else in the world.

BR: Do you still ride mountain bikes?

TP: Mountain bikes are still my favorite. I don’t get to ride as much since I don’t live within riding distance to trails, but I still mountain bike plenty.

BR: Do you feel modern bike technology makes it difficult for independent bike builders to keep up with the rest of the industry?

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TP: I will assume that “modern bike technology” is a reference to carbon fibre frames. Steel continues to be the most versatile material for building one-off custom bikes. There are hundreds of tubes to choose from, enabling the builder to finely tune the way a bike rides. Actually, I’m not trying to ‘keep up’ with anyone. I build bikes to perfectly match my client’s needs. I choose to use steel because it is the best material for accomplishing this task. I still get to use all the other advances in technology, like hydraulic disk brakes, suspension systems, drivetrains, lighting, etc. I even use carbon forks when it suits the rider.

BR: What makes Portland a great place to live for bike lovers?

TP: This may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s the climate. It never gets all that cold here and rarely gets very hot. We have a handful of days below freezing and handful in the 90s. It is almost always comfortable to ride. Sure it rains a lot, but not all day, everyday and it is not usually dumping down. With fenders and the right rain gear, it’s perfectly comfortable to ride year round. During the summer you can race every day of the week on road, track or off-road. In the fall we have the biggest, best amateur cyclo-cross series in the world. And every Sunday night, you can join a bunch of freaks to take your bike on an elevator to the top of the biggest hill in town and bomb down to the bottom (aka ‘Zoobombing’).

BR: Why are there so many bike builders in this town?

TP: The combination of bike culture and DIY culture in Portland has probably made a big contribution to the number of builders in town. It also probably helps that the biggest framebuilding school in the world, United Bicycle Institute, has been in southern Oregon for about 20 years and now has a Portland campus. Frame-building teacher Tim Paterek, author of a book called ‘The Paterek Manual for Bicycle Framebuilders’, lives in Vancouver and taught a few of Portland’s well-known builders.

Also, Strawberry Bicycles, founded in the early 70s by Andy Newlands and Mark DiNucci, was the Northwest’s first bikebuilding company. There have been a bunch of other legendary builders here over the years like Jim Merz and Steve Casmano, so there is a bit of history of building bikes here.

Photography Benji Wagner

Ask anybody in Portland why it’s such a great place for bikes and you’ll always come up with the same big picture. It’s not really about infrastructure or the city government’s embracing of the bicycle.

In fact, it’s not even necessarily about the bicycle. It’s about the people who live here and love bikes.

Yes, Portland has embraced the bicycle.

And that’s probably because the bicycle gets people out of their houses, out of their offices, out of their cars, off the freeways, and opens up the neighborhoods to communication, conversation and community.

It gives us all a common ground and a common perspective from which to view the city, each other and ourselves. And at the end of the day, it’s people, not products that make our communities thrive.

Ingenuity, creativity and a pioneering spirit go a long way. But without people, those things wouldn’t even be words.

There are countless other cool, independent, bicycle-related companies in Portland. Here are some suggestions: www.wtfbikes.blogspot.com www.ridepdw.com www.tonicfab.com www.vanillabicycles.com www.sweetpeabicycles.com www.strawberrybicycle.com www.rivercitybicycles.com www.bike-central.com www.revolverbikes.com www.chrisking.com www.pedalconsumption.com www.benjiwagner.com www.brentonsalo.com www.bikeschool.com

WTF Bikes Portland Design Works Tonic Fabrication Vanilla and Speevagen Bikes Sweet Pea Bikes Strawberry Cyclesport River City Bike Shop Bike Central Co-Op Revolver Bikes Chris King Precision Components Pedal Consumption Benji Wagner Photography Brenton Salo Photography United Bicycle Institute

17

Thinking caps

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Some bits of sporting kit are iconic, conjuring up instantly the romance and drama of the pastime for which they were created - the jockey’s gaudy silks, the golfer’s plus-fours, the boxer’s flying red gloves – and, of course, the traditional racing cyclist’s peaked cotton cap. Having seen something of a resurgence in popularity over the last few years - inextricably linked to the increasing cycle-fashion crossover – the classic cycling cap continues to keep the rain, sun and sweat out of the eyes of many a serious rider, and now adorns many a hipster’s head too – though they may have never even pedalled up a sweat. Whichever way you look at it, the humble cycling cap retains a simple beauty that has lasted decades and is evocative of a bygone era – the glory days of two-wheeled touring.

Amongst the whirl of other cycle-related events taking place at Bristol’s first bicycle festival, ‘Thinking Caps’ really caught our eye. The project encouraged up to a hundred local artists and designers to create fun and expressive designs for the traditional cycling cap, which were then brought lovingly to life, stitch by stitch, by Jen Harrison (the mastermind behind the project), proving that cycling is not all about hi-viz and padded lycra. We met up with Jen to find out more...

How did the Thinking Caps project come about?

I guess I’d been thinking for a long time that cycle kit could be a bit more fashion-led. In the past, cycle attire has been fairly uninspiring, so the idea of creating a collection of quirky caps really appealed to me. There is also so much graphic/artistic talent in the UK (especially the South West), and I wanted to tap into this and see how it would transfer into cycle fashion. I guess I also wanted to know if cyclists are generally interested in art and fashion too. Then I heard that the Bristol Cycle Festival would be happening a couple of months down the line, so I contacted the organisers, told them about my idea and got a really excited response from them. This was enough to set the ball in motion and the more people I mentioned the project to, the more positive feedback I received.

So the idea was definitely popular from the start. I just needed a venue to exhibit the caps. I went straight to the clothing store Howies in Bristol to see if they’d want to get involved. They were also very positive, wanted to get on board with the project and were a huge help with the promotion, contacts and ideas. I should have listened to them when they told me that stitching 100 caps was too many but I was already taken by the big round ‘completeness’ of the 100 figure... I didn’t ever stop to actually work out how many man-hours that would involve on my part!

I like the fact that you chose an interesting, 3D medium and encouraged people to be expressive and have some fun.

Was there a design brief as such?

No, not at all – I gave artists a completely free brief, which actually seemed to throw a few of them... “What, no set subject? No set colour pallet?” I was encouraging the artists that would typically use a ‘signature piece’ to get across their unique style. The only consistent thing across the collection was the shape of the classic cycle cap. Artists were supplied with the template in a digital format, to which they added their design.

Were you happy with the overall response from the artists you approached?

I have been delighted by the response from artists and designers wanting to get involved with the Thinking Caps project. Some designs were more about ‘the message’ than the actual artwork and these were very welcome too. The end result was a very interesting collection of caps and they looked fantastic exhibited together.

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Process Photography Simon Keitch Cap Photography No Gears

I understand that you were sent hand-stitched pieces as well as designs to get printed up – those originals must be like little works of art... was it inspiring to receive all that bespoke artwork and turn them into the caps?

I was so nervous about sewing the ones that had been hand-painted or embroidered! The dye sublimation caps (a printing process that uses heat to transfer dye onto fabric) were all going to be one-offs too, but I had the thought in the back of my mind that if something should go wrong with any of those I could get it printed again... there wasn’t that security with these totally original pieces.

If I made a mistake on these, it would require a very apologetic and grovelling phone call to the artist! I left these until last so that I’d had a lot of practice by then and fortunately I didn’t make any terrible mistakes.

‘100 caps’! That must have been a lot of cutting and sewing - any battle scars to show for your hard work?

On my initial ‘test-runs’ I hadn’t taken into account the time taken to cut out the fabric pieces. So, when it came to making the actual caps, I found that I instantly lost something like two or three evenings just to cut the fabric.

That was a bit of a shock. I eventually worked on the caps in a production-line style, so repeating the same action for all the caps and then moving onto the next step. I think each cap took at least 3 hours to make... although it was probably more like 5 hours each if I take into account all the time for promotion, correspondence, acquiring materials and organising the dye-subbing, which also went into running the project. My main battle scars have been large dark rings around my eyes from the lack of sleep!

What was the reaction to the Howies show?

The reaction was great. There was a genuine interest in the project and the caps themselves. It turns out that there is a strong relationship between cycling and art/fashion in Bristol. I think almost all the artists got involved with the project due to a love for both. Bikes have become a bit of a style statement for many people and a quirky classic cycle cap seems to be on everyone’s shopping list.

Any plans for similar projects in the future?

I really enjoyed the Thinking Caps project but I think it’ll be a one-off. It was a much bigger undertaking than I initially estimated and has cost me a lot in time and energy. I need to recover for a while! I’ll definitely continue working with graphics and fabrics/fashion but this will probably only be for personal projects or collaborations. I’m currently designing and making my own racing kit as I struggle to

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“ When it came to making the actual caps, I found that I spent two or three evenings just to cut the fabric. That was a bit of a shock...!” find female-specific cycle apparel that excites me. It isn’t a big market so I guess companies just aren’t prepared to invest in this area. I have given my kit a brand name, ‘moxie’, and maybe it will take off if people see it and like it. Designing and developing cycle apparel pretty much fulfils my main passions – graphics, fashion and cycling.

Happy days.

The project obviously kept you pretty busy; did you find any time to get out on your bike?!

Hmmmm, not really, or at least nowhere near as much as I would like to have done anyway, but then some would argue I still got out on my bike more than most people who think they ride regularly! Riding keeps me balanced and healthy and the physical aspect of riding provides a welcome relief from the long static days sat behind the Mac. But it is the way my mind is taken to a completely different space that I find so addictive and some of my most creative thoughts and ideas develop whilst out riding and I’m not even conscious of it – I just have to make sure I get them all written down as soon as I get in, so they don’t get forgotten again! And also riding my bike provides a large proportion of my social life. I’m not really into drinking and clubbing and would always rather go for a ride with mates - whether it’s a long road ride or just messing about on bikes in the woods or around town. Bikes are fun. Bikes plus mates is usually an even better combination and even more fun!

Please can I say a huge thanks to all those who got involved with the project by submitting digital and fabric designs, and everyone who helped me, particularly during the last few days of sewing the caps and pulling the exhibition together. Also thanks to Simon Keitch for helping to document the project with his beautiful photography. Thank you!

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I am not a cyclist. Since people stopped buying records or I stopped making records people want to buy (I’m never sure which), I no longer have the luxury of sitting at home in my pants convincing myself that Loose Women will inspire some tasty drum programming after lunch.

I’m someone who uses his bike to get to work; cycling as a utilitarian, necessary mode of transport rather than a pleasure activity. I’m not the most athletic chap, but certain things will get me off my chair – particularly the price of a return ticket to the Centre.

The first bike I tried commuting on was a friend’s old GT Palomar called Pamela. I liked this bike, it was light – every bike I’d had before was pretty heavy (the Raleigh Grifter I had when I was 12 weighed the same as a Ford Fiesta).

I took it to Jake’s Bikes, and he fitted some big swept-back handlebars, a comfy saddle and some skinny tyres. We had some good times, me and Pamela – she was the kind of bike that made you sit up to attention. Literally, the handlebars were pretty high up. I was cycling home once and the handlebars became loose. Of course I had no tools, so it was a bit like riding a clown’s bike for a few miles.

No-one was hurt.

By the time the initial rush of new love for Pamela faded (she did look pretty ridiculous – like the chunky big sister of a sleek fixie), I had been commuting in and out of Bristol for about a year. I never thought I’d make it a whole year – laughing in the face of rain, snow, sunshine and kids who spit their Fanta at you as you glide by. To celebrate I decided to actually spend some money on a real bike. A light, no-nonsense bad boy. Nothing quirky, just something sleek that would get the job done and require as little maintenance as possible.

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To my delight, Google told me that there was actually a proper commuter bike called a Badboy.This was too good to be true. Using my super internet powers and a combination of eBay and Gumtree, I discovered someone in Bristol had one for sale. I went round to see it, and it was love at first sight. A Cannondale Badboy. Matt black, sleek lines, big wheels with bald tyres (called Kojak), disc brakes etc. I wasn’t used to riding a bike where the saddle was higher than the handlebars, but I soon got accustomed to it. I could go really fast. Downhill. Uphill was still pretty embarrassing, but that wasn’t The Badboy’s fault.

This bike doesn’t have a name other than The Badboy.

Always ‘The’, like a superhero. And he’s totally a he. We’ve not had many exciting incidents – well, once I ran someone over but that was the pedestrian’s fault, he decided to change direction and step out into the road without looking. He even sat on the floor apologising to me after I had knocked him on his arse, which was pretty sweet.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy cycling to work. It’s definitely my favourite mode of transport. I’m pretty courteous, I stop at red lights and try not to go on the pavement, so I haven’t been fined, punched or squashed yet. I often have my headphones on (at a reasonable volume, Officer), and I find that cycling is a great way to spend time with music. I’ve rediscovered so many great albums. Not to mention audiobooks, podcasts from WFMU and NPR etc.

On more than one occasion I’ve taken a detour onto the cycle path, telling myself that it’s a shortcut but knowing that it goes nowhere near my house. I’ve willingly cycled miles from where I am meant to be going, just so I could stay on the bike longer. I’ve taken The Badboy on holiday with me. I’ve cycled to gigs that I’d normally drive to. Most weekends I go for a ride on The Badboy, to nowhere in particular (ie a pub). But, as I’m not a cyclist, this is just practice.

Pictures warwick johnson cadwell Words Minotaur Shock / minotaurshock.tumblr.com

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I have been working with found objects for some years now, so using bicycle parts came quite naturally.

Bicycles are beautiful objects, right down to the smallest component, and perhaps more than their beauty, what makes them appealing to me is their structural and mechanical properties.

I first used bicycle components in a design back in 2008 when I was looking for a suitable yoke for a lamp I wanted to build. It occurred to me that bicycle forks would be perfect for the job and that a wheel hub could then be employed as the pivot for the lamp’s armature.

Creating my ‘Castiglioni’ stool came about rather serendipitously when I noticed how a set of handlebars and stem I had lying at an unusual angle on my workbench formed a tripod that looked as if it might be sturdy enough to form the base of a stool or floor lamp. I attached an old saddle to the stem and gave it a try. To my delight it worked! With a little tweaking to get the balance right, the addition of handlebar tape, a shiny chrome pole and a vintage Brooks saddle, the stool was complete.

After finishing the stool I began to look for other uses for drop handlebars and realised that they would fit inside the top tube and when turned upside down could be used to support a bicycle. An old swivel chair base provided a heavy and manoeuvrable base. The result was a surprisingly effective and elegant product.

Once the stand was complete it needed a suitably handsome bike to go upon it, so I went about building my first fixie - the first bike I had built since I was fifteen. www.creoergosum.co.uk

“ Bicycles are beautiful objects, right down to the smallest component”

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Words Mike White Images Peter Locke

Two’s y Compan Ever closed your eyes as you ride? On a long straight path – no-one around – I give it a try. A briny tang; the slack-tide river sliding between sheened and birdprinted flanks. The sweetness of buddleia. A thrush sings, an insect wings my cheek and is gone. Away left, the sigh of rush-hour. There’s much to a bike ride for which sight is not needed, but soon enough fear and good sense compel me to open my eyes.

I swerve to avoid a dog.

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For obvious reasons, bike rides are not a pastime many blind people get to enjoy. Tonight though, half a dozen blind and partially-sighted riders are gathering in a riverside car park, exchanging friendly banter before an evening tandem ride organised by cycling charity Life Cycle UK, as part of their ‘Two’s Company’ project. The idea’s simple enough - on the front saddle rides a sighted person, and the blind or partially-sighted rider sits behind.

The project began when visually impaired people told Life Cycle of the lack of opportunity for them to take exercise and get out into the countryside.

Many had ridden bikes when they were young, but lost their vision in later life and had to give up cycling.

Others had never been able to try it at all. But all were keen to taste the pleasures of riding free, the wind in their hair, the whirr of crickets, the scent of earth and grass and flowers – the simple pleasure of moving quickly and quietly under one’s own power.

Life Cycle now owns eight tandems and has a team of regular volunteers to fill their front seats. Some of the volunteers, and indeed some of the sight-impaired ‘stokers’ (in tandem-riding terminology, the front rider’s called a ‘captain’, the back rider a ‘stoker’) have tandems of their own, meaning Life Cycle has access to more than twenty machines in total.

Tonight there may only be five tandems, but seen together they’re still an impressive sight. Buzzing between them is ride leader Sally, who’s riding a folding bike. She rolls her eyes. ‘My hybrid died; let’s hope the fold-up doesn’t disintegrate off-road!’ We head out across an old railway bridge, under a graffiti-scrawled flyover and away into greenery. Cow parsley throngs the hedgerows, swallows loop around our heads.

Tonight’s trip is more off-road than most, and there are some pleasingly rugged two-seaters in our ranks. The route takes us past the grandeur of a stately home, then climbs between towering beeches and though a faun-springing deer park.

There’s some friendly racing on the hill and a Tour de France-style battle for the summit, but those who prefer a slower pace are under no pressure – the speed demons sit at the top and admire the view: the city laid out below, the greenness beyond stretching away to the hills.

We reconvene, then swing off tarmac and into the woods. Soon we’re weaving between trees, warning those behind of head-height dangers with shouts of ‘branch!’ We climb and then race down steep valley side trails, bouncing over roots and rocks. Barrington, a stocky and fearless stoker, goads his captain on the hillclimbs, then lets out a joyful, ululating war cry on the way down.

The convoy rolls homewards riverside through a cliffsided gorge, a suspension bridge spanning the valley far above. Back at the car park where we began, we pause for a breather, and I try a little experiment.

Blindfolded, I swing clumsily onto the rear saddle of a tandem. “Ready?” says a voice from in front. “One, two, three, go!” and we lurch away. Surrendering

control to a relative stranger is exhilarating and odd, especially on the corners. The first time we turn I’m sure we’re leaning too far, feel myself tensing for a fall. But soon it becomes more natural, and we get faster, even try some zig-zags. When I climb off again, my hands are shaking but there’s a huge grin on my face.

We reconvene and meander towards a dockside pub.

The prospect of a cold pint as the sun dips behind the trees is all too tempting, but there’s more to our lingering than that; the sense of camaraderie is palpable. No-one quite wants the evening to be over yet. This goes beyond the simple pleasure of a bike ride – the joint effort and shared satisfaction of tandem riding, the sense of responsibility each front rider has, the trust each stoker places in his or her captain.

There’s a glow around us to match the sunset refracting through our well-earned beer. Heather, a smiling silver-haired stoker, leans over: “When you’re blind, you always move slowly, even with a guide dog.

You have to. But on the back of a tandem you’re the same as anyone else. You can feel the speed and the wind, the change from a path through the woods to a path by the river, you can smell all the different plants, hear everything flying past. But it’s more than that - on a tandem I feel free.”

Two’s Company rides head out every three weeks from March to October, working with adults and children who are visually impaired or have a disability which means they can’t cycle independently – see www.lifecycleuk.org.uk for details.

The US has a hub for visually impaired cycling: www.bicyclingblind.org and there are specific tandem clubs in San Diego: www.blindstokersclub.org and in Toronto: www.torontotrailblazers.org... and doubtless many more around the globe. If you can’t find one near you – start your own!

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Words Mike White Portrait Adam Faraday

All other images courtesy of www.magnificentrevolution.org

Darkness settles over the shimmer and throb of a pop festival sprawling down a long green valley somewhere in Hampshire...

In a marquee nestled in the festival’s midst, a clutch of wide-eyed young things are pedalling furiously on stationary bikes and staring intently at a darkened cinema screen.

Suddenly, the projector flickers into life, dust whirling in its beam. A cheer goes up: Magnificent Revolution’s first project is a success. The story of this collective of hardpedalling renewable energy champions is one of triumph over adversity, enthusiasm over apathy. It’s pipe dream meets Heath Robinson meets the future.

So the story goes, their first foray into bikes as energy generators came when a bunch of kids from Cambridge had the idea of a Drive-In Cinema, but with bicycles instead of cars – hundreds of legs whirring to produce the power for the performance. The problem was, they didn’t really know if such a thing was even possible, so they pulled together a motley array of engineers, electricians, designers, filmmakers and artists and began to experiment, initially using electric scooter motors with roller-skate wheels pushed on to the shaft, the whole unlikely contraption bolted to a homemade stand. The technology was limited, but after some trial and error, a workable ten-bike system emerged and the Magnificent Revolution Cycling Cinema was born.

Three years on, Magnificent Revolution have helped to educate thousands of people about energy consumption and sustainable technology, held hundreds of generator-building workshops and provided a renewable energy supply at over sixty music, film and art events. And they’re still expanding.

Boneshaker caught up with Director Adam Walker, a twinkly-eyed enthusiast with a friendly beard and an unruly crest of blond hair. “The volunteers call me ‘General’,” he laughs, “but maybe that’s because I make them all read an excerpt from this book by Che Guevara about the morals and discipline of the revolutionary fighter.” A joke it maybe, but the revolutionary passion beneath is very real.

Adam grew up in rural Shropshire, riding his dad’s old racing bike. “We were deep in the country and the tracks weren’t made for racers, but the fact that we lived over a mile from the local shop was a good incentive to get on a bicycle.

We’d head out around the countryside, up to The Devil’s Chair (a big pile of rocks on a hill nearby) - but mainly it was a way to get out of the house and away from our ’rents.”

After studying Fine Art at Uni in Newcastle, he worked on arts journal a-n Magazine, had some exhibitions at the Baltic, started a creative collective called Normal Life ‘and spent a lot of time scooting around the Tyne on a BMX’.

But it was only when he got to London that he really got into bikes. “It was just the best way to get around the city.

Your psychogeography totally changes when you cycle

around London. You start joining up all those dots on the Tube map, and the place seems a little more tangible.’

His growing love of bikes dovetailed with meeting the Magnificent Revolution gang. It was through the Common Room Productions project that Adam first met two other artists, Shaun and Babs. Common Room Productions employed artists to help engage and give hope to vulnerable people experiencing mental illness, learning disabilities or long term illnesses like AIDS and HIV. Adam, Shaun and Babs hit it off, and six months later Babs and Shaun started Magnificent Revolution – “and I just got sucked into it” says Adam. “I helped with their website, then started organising events, and soon I was totally hooked. It was a chance to use art for a purpose, as an educational tool, as well as just looking at its potential to communicate with people.

I remember the time when we first did the Wood Festival (Truck Records’ renewable energy-powered folk festival near Oxford), and talking with the Mag Rev guys about what they were into politically, socially, environmentally... their manifesto was just perfect. I’ve always worked collaboratively, so finding likeminded people who were so passionate, it all seemed to fall into place for me.”

Magnificent Revolution offers huge potential for cross-pollination of interests and ideas. It brings together art, bikes, cinema, sustainability, education, the potential for mobility, for exploring the DIY aesthetic. “It pulls so much together, just making and sharing these pedal powered appliances. Like the lawnmower chopper – it’s sculptural, educational; it touches on engineering, design, form and function... Magnificent Revolution’s so adaptable and it keeps evolving in so many ways. That’s what makes it exciting.”

That evolution is impressive – from that first scratchbuilt cinema, the Magnificent Revolution empire now covers sound systems, recording sessions with bands, educational workshops, an online ideas-swapping hub…

“The project keeps on growing. I just finished working on a new generator that can power a 12v LED projector and sound system off just two bikes - we’re going to take it out and try it over the weekend. We keep popping up with our cycle cinema screenings across London and beyond. We’ve also started a project called the Pedal Sessions, where we’re doing some recordings with bands at festivals, and taking local bands to do some pedal-powered recordings in unusual spaces like empty offices, car parks and rooftops. Music’s always been a big thing for all of us, so working with bands and DJs seemed a natural progression.”

But at the heart of all the Revolution’s fun stuff 31

is education. They run a programme of workshops to introduce people to renewable technology and give them a hands-on opportunity to try stripping wires and putting together bicycle generators for themselves. “A lot of the components are the same as the ones you’d use for setting up a solar or wind-power system so, for some, it’s the first step in familiarising themselves with renewables. People bring so many ideas to the workshops, it’s amazing. I hope that, in our own little way, we’ve helped some of them to turn their bicycle power dreams into a reality.”

Over the last couple of years, Magnificent Revolution have been bringing their bicycle generators into schools, too. “We set up the kit and then run an experiment to see what the kids can and can’t power. It’s amazing to see three of them struggle to power a single 60W light bulb, and then just one of them power three energy-saving light bulbs without breaking a sweat. We did a series of pop-up cinemas in Birkenhead earlier in the year. Huge areas of the city centre have been torn down and earmarked for redevelopment but when the economy went belly up, there was no investment available so the area has been decimated by a lack of community spaces and social hubs. We took over some of these spaces and screened some local artists’ films. All the kids and their parents from the local area came out to see what was going on and it felt like we had quite an impact there, despite the fact that the kids tried to nick our bikes at the end of every gig!”

Here’s where Adam’s enthusiasm really shines - the

evolved to include people from all over the world, working not just with bicycle power, but with tall bikes, scrap bikes, weird bikes, bamboo bikes, the lot.”

From a tiny grassroots project, Magnificent Revolution has flourished into a robust not-for-profit business. “So many people have shared our vision and helped us along the way, and now we’re very close to being financially sustainable – something that’s all too rare for environmental and social projects.” Though Adam and Babs now draw a minimal monthly wage, the project remains not for profit, so all the rest of the revenue goes into kit, office space, “the daily grind of keeping it all going.”

Of course it’s not all plain-sailing – “when you’re swimming against the current you have to work harder to get anywhere” says Adam. “Projects like ours are always full of set-backs. We’re trying to drive environmental and social change in a world that is not really set up for that.

Sometimes it feels like we’re banging our heads against a brick wall, but we’re starting to see through the cracks. The rewards outweigh the hard times and so we’re still here.

Hopefully when all kids are cycling to school, learning from books made of recycled paper and eating local food cooked from scratch... they will look back at us and be proud that our generation had our heads on straight.”

His optimism is inspiring – despite the almost daily run-ins with the ‘we’re all doomed anyway, so why bother?’ brigade. “That’s just part of the challenge of working in the

“It’s amazing to see three of them struggle to power a single 60W light bulb, and then just one of them power three energy-saving bulbs without breaking a sweat.” realisation of Magnificent Revolution’s potential to change people’s understanding. It’s not about suggesting that bike power might be a solution to mass energy-provision, but about connecting people with the power they use, encouraging them to take the need to reduce consumption seriously. “Telling people that they are using 1800 watts has a very limited value, because it is difficult to know what that means. How can we expect to change something we can’t comprehend? But the bike generators demonstrate without words, and people can relate it to their daily life. Wake up and jump into a nice hot shower (around 30 bikes), then a hot cup of coffee (60 people pedalling outside the kitchen), whack on the toaster and you’d need around a total of 110 cyclists just to get through breakfast. The workshops bring all that to life.

That’s why they’re so satisfying to do. People really love it; they walk away with a total change in perspective.”

To build a community around that perspective change, Bike Lab has been set up, as an online space for Magnificent Revolution’s thousands of former pupils to keep in contact, share ideas, ask questions and keep each other posted on what they’re up to. “You see bicycle power all over the place these days and it’s good to see so many people engaging with the technology and doing amazing things with it. The site’s 32

environmental sector. No one really knows all the answers.

We’re all just guessing. The Magnificent Revolution motto comes from the Zapatistas “We’d rather die on our feet than live on our knees”. It’s about principles. We try and demystify some of this doom and gloom and show that this could actually be one of the greatest opportunities in the history of mankind for us to show just how big our brains are and put evolution to the test. We can either end up like bacteria on a Petri dish or as an intelligent civilization on planet Earth. We still have hope. Isn’t that positive?”

There’s a popular misconception that reducing energy demand means living miserably austere, puritanical lives, but seeing the smiles at a Magnificent Revolution soundsystem party, or the excitement of an ad hoc outdoor film screening, you soon realise that there’s fun to be had too. And as Adam points out, it’s not like plasma screens and giant fridges ever made anyone genuinely happy. “The technology we need to live in a low carbon way en masse already exists. What we need is backing: by the people, politicians and businesses. We’ve all got some work to do to make it happen, but it is possible!”

The Mag Rev team practice what they preach - using bike trailers to travel whenever it’s possible, running a

biodiesel van when it’s not. When they did gigs in Greece, they went by train. An invitation to set up an MR in Australia presented a quandary. “Our environmental policy is vigorous and prohibits flying unless absolutely necessary.

We’re looking into ways to travel overland – possibly heading out across Siberia by train, but it looks like it’ll be prohibitively expensive. So we need to weigh up our CO2 emissions from flying there against the beneficial environmental impact the project could potentially have.

It’s a tough call.”

The principle of energy awareness isn’t that distant for most of us – it’s only in the last generation or two we’ve become such a wasteful society. Our grandparents knew how to be frugal – they didn’t take unlimited heat and light for granted. Magnificent Revolution brings something of that pleasing thriftiness back to the fore.

“Because we always start by finding the most efficient appliance to do a job and then work back, I soon found myself thinking how does a TV work? How does a projector work? Can it be built better, with energy use as a priority? The problem of course is that the workings are all hidden in a shiny box, so no-one thinks about it.

But I look at everything differently now. When I pass a skip I look for computer fans and electrical components – stuff I now know I can recycle. Our original kit was old reclaimed motors from junk shops, found roller skate wheels; the stands were from scrap metal.

Not everyone has sufficient time or serendipity on their side to source parts from skips, so Adam and his team have been working on getting the bicycle generator design stable

enough to sell on to interested parties. It’s taken a few years of fine adjustment. “We still want to promote the DIY ethic, so we can provide people with the kit to build it themselves but we also wanted to offer something readymade that groups could use in their campaigns, projects and communities.” So you can now bag a bike generator for yourself and start experimenting - even start your own cycle cinema. How much you spend depends on how big you want to go, of course. MR’s big bicycle cinema system cost around £3000 to put together. But you could build a bicycle generator with a scooter motor, roller-skate wheel, stand, capacitor and regulator for about £100. Then pick up a 12 volt sound system and LED projector or make them yourself, maybe another £100. You can find parts almost anywhere, skips, junk shops, Freecycle. “Be resourceful”, says Adam, “get some friends to help you. And give us a shout if you get stuck!”

Working with others is central to the Mag Rev dream – the coming months will see them hooking up with the Spoke n’ Chain collective for a special screening at The Cube Cinema, Bristol, and they’ve recently united with online community hub Buzzbank to try and fund a new Cycle-In Cinema to tour around London in 2011 – cyclists roll up on their bikes, hook them up to the generator and then power the performance for themselves. As all revolutions must, they’ve come full circle – back to the original Drive-In Cinema idea. A group of wide-eyed young things, pedalling furiously and staring intently at a cinema screen. And then the projector flickers into life, and a cheer goes up...

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words yael ben-gigi images jethro brice

Austin Brown Belfast Bicycle Workshop

More tales of folk that I met on the road. This summer I cycled around the coast of Ireland. Nick Hand, slowcoast.co.uk

“If someone asked me what I do, I would normally say I’m a bike mechanic. But I suppose my remit I’d say is a wee bit wider than that.

After a degree in environmental science at university in London I worked for a consultancy, but then decided to have a much more hands-on approach. So I became a born-again cyclist in London at the age of 20 (I’m now 44). I decided to try to get as many people into cycling as I could. As an experience for a young adult to have that freedom in London and then to get out of London and experience the home counties, Kent, Berkshire and Oxfordshire by bike was a terrific experience.

So some ten years ago I started a bicycle workshop here in Belfast. It was a shoebox-sized place in the city centre and it grew into a much bigger bike shop that sold new bikes and lots of accessories and stuff, and I just became disillusioned with that whole side of things. There was more competition, bigger bike shops, much more flashy and stuff.

At the same time I started to get into the idea of teaching about bikes and working with youth groups and kids who are on the edges of mainstream society. So I started working with community groups in Belfast, teaching young people different skills: how to fix their bikes, how to ride their bikes properly.

I went to York and did a trainer training course to teach people how to ride bikes safely. I came back and incorporated the mechanical skills with the on-road cycling skills. So that people knew what they were doing with bikes, so if they got a puncture they could repair it, instead of getting charged £12. You know a lot of families can’t afford that kind of money, and that’s why a lot of bikes end up in neglected in backyards. To teach people the skills they need to keep them on the road. More people on the roads on bikes means a better environment for everybody. I know governments talk the talk, and when it comes down to it, I don’t see a lot being done here in Belfast. But we here in the Workshops are at least walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

I do a lot of recycling as well, we don’t sell any new bikes here, we sell all used bikes. We get bikes donated to us. We’re not a charity, we’re more of a social enterprise and work in a social economy. Sometimes I do a job for somebody for them to do another service for me. A plumber came in the other week, I fixed a couple of bikes for him and he’s going to do a little job in the house for me. I like working like that, you know cash doesn’t have to cross palms.

I’m very interested in cycling, and cycling is what I do. I take a cycle tour once or twice a year. I did the Camino de Santiago, which I would recommend to anybody. And I’ve done a lot of cycling here in the north west coast of Ireland, which I consider to have some of the best cycling anywhere in the world, and a lot of other cyclists would agree with me.

That’s basically what I do, along with fix people’s bikes, hire bikes and I do bicycle tours of Belfast City as well”.

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words and translation by jimmy eLL & Andrea Diaz photographs by jimmy eLL

El Taller del Mago Roberto Agudelo is 58 years-old, but really doesn´t look a day over 40 all glowing skin and sparkly eyes. He’s the owner of ‘El Taller del Mago’, the only bike workshop in Capurganá, one of a handful of small, sleepy villages on the Colombian Caribbean coast. Its name, literally translated, is ‘The Magician’s Workshop’, and Roberto is ‘El Mago’ – the magician.

Inevitably, most of us have preconceptions about what a place will be like before we actually see it firsthand, and Colombia is no different. In fact, its reputation seriously precedes it. This is due in part to the largely unfavourable attention that Colombia receives in the mainstream media, which sadly serves to reinforce and even engender negative stereotypes, societal prejudice and discrimination due to its association with narco-trafficking and armed conflict.

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“ When I arrived here fifteen years ago, there were only eight bicycles. Now there are approximately two hundred and fifty,” Roberto says, beaming.”

Located in the north-westernmost part of the South American continent, Colombia is a strikingly beautiful country, a land with an abundance of natural resources and, living upon it, some of the warmest and hospitable people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. But it is also one of the most misunderstood countries in the world, and home to some of the gravest human rights abuses, social injustices, repression and violence ever levelled against a civilian population. As a result of the ongoing civil war that has plagued the country since the mid-1960s and the fact that rebel groups are being pushed further and further into the countryside, there are now over 3.5 million internally displaced people, many of whom are indigenous groups and campesinos – the second highest in the world after Sudan.

Before the Iraq war, Colombia was the third largest recipient of US military aid in the world (after Egypt and Israel) and remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist or social movement leader. Nevertheless, in the last decade, the violence has subsided significantly and there is hope here. The people are testament to this and are generally an energetic mix of happy, hopeful, curious and proud.

Proud to be Colombian, but not in a jingoistic sense, as can so often be the case where national pride is played out. During the time that I have spent here, many people have welcomed me in and have told me about their collective struggle but also of the increasingly bright future that they see not so far up ahead. This is a truly inspiring and progressive people who, whilst choosing to acknowledge and learn from their country’s bloody past, adamantly refuse to be left standing in it...

The village of Capurganá is surrounded on three sides by the dense jungles of the Darién Gap - a huge area of virgin forest and swampland separating Central and South America. The Pan-American Highway (a system of roads some 48,000km long that crosses through the entirety of North, Central and South America) has never forged its way through here and 42

the area is as notorious for its natural beauty as it is for its guerrillas and narco-traffickers. There are no roads to this town and the only access is by boat from a city two hours away. As such, it is refreshingly free from cars and many of its 2,500 inhabitants rely heavily upon their bicycles to get around.

Roberto’s ‘Magician’s Workshop’ is the only workshop offering bike repairs and spares in the village. I quiz him about the unusual name of the place and he excitedly launches into his first of a series of sleightof-hand magic tricks that he will go on to perform during my time in his company. The tricks - and the workshop’s name – make sense when he reveals that his other passion besides bicycles is magic – a craft he learnt in ‘la Universidad de las calles’ (the university of the streets), he tells me with a cheeky grin and glint in his eye. Originally from Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, he came to Capurganá fifteen years ago.

“I actually just came here on holiday and then fell in love with a girl here. I married her and I’ve been here ever since,” he tells me nostalgically, “although we have since split up” he adds, dashing romance to the rocks. He tells of his life as a ‘marino’ (a deep-sea fisherman), when he used to sail in huge boats up to Honduras for months on end, and the passion for competitive road cycling that consumed much of his early life before he drifted into Capurganá, settled and set up his wonderful workshop.

“When I arrived here fifteen years ago, there were only eight bicycles. Now there are approximately two hundred and fifty”, he says, beaming. “The majority of them are for day-to-day use and getting around the town, but there are also horses and carts and eight ‘bicicletas de cargo’, which are used exclusively for work”. Most of the bikes have travelled across continents to get here – shipped from India and Singapore – and are all aluminium, rather than steel-framed, because of the humid climate and Capurganá’s corrosive proximity to the sea.

Roberto shows us around his sizeable but unassuming workshop, stopping every few yards to treat us to yet

another slickly-executed magic trick. Being the only workshop in the village means demand for Roberto’s mechanical wizardry is always high - he currently has eighty bicycles queued up for repair, although he is waiting to be paid for many of them before carrying out the work. “I have two different piles of bikes here”, he says, sweeping his arm around in a large arc, “those who belong to people who will pay me – and those who won’t. Some bikes have been here for almost a year now, waiting to be paid for”. I get the impression that Roberto is a fair type of a guy, but one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Especially fools that don’t pay.

“The most common repairs I end up making are fixing punctures,” he sighs, “and fitting beach bars so people can sit more upright” - something that has become a real trend across Colombia in the last couple of years.

I ask him if people here are interested in learning how to fix their bikes for themselves and, for the first time during our rendezvous, he speaks in hushed tones.

“The people who live on the coast of Colombia are called Costeños (‘coastals’) and they have a reputation for being pretty lazy – as such they don’t have much interest in learning how to fix their bikes for themselves and prefer to bring them to ‘El Mago’”. He grins, conjures a coin from behind his son’s ear and then loses it again in the palm of his hand.

Despite the Darien Gap’s reputation as one of the most precarious areas in Colombia, Capurganá has been extremely “tranquilo” for the last decade.

Roberto appears nonchalant about the events that have taken place here, lackadaisically recalling an occasion when the FARC - the largest and oldest insurgent group in the Americas, well-known for their kidnapping exploits – entered the village ten years ago. “There were about three hundred of them,” he tells me, “and they came at nine in the evening and overwhelmed the Colombian military, who were based here at the time. A few people were killed and they stole all of the food from the shops and took many of the boats and were gone by six the following morning. We all felt entirely helpless and scared and everyone stayed indoors until they had gone”. Nothing substantial has occurred here since, although there is still a noticeably large military presence for such a small village.

The conversation draws to a natural close and, leaving Roberto to his steady stream of customers, I drift back into the village, appreciating the variety of bicycles that go quietly spinning past.

References

www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk / www.amnesty.org.uk “Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia” by Steven Dudley 43

Words Jet MacDonald / jaknory@yahoo.co.uk

Images Joseph Roberts

Let sleeping dogs lie. Well, I would do, if they didn’t want to bite my bleedin’ ankles off. In doggie dreams there is only one thing higher on the list of treats than rabbits, and that’s bikes, or, to be more target focused, ankles.

Back in the UK, dogs are an annoyance and at worst a threat. The further east you go, the more that threat becomes a risk, and if, like me, you are cycling day after day, month after month towards India, your ankles begin to flash like lollipops. At the time of writing I approach Turkey, home of the fierce Kangal, a huge black-headed mutt originally bred to protect sheep and more recently dislocated into rural villages to keep cyclists sprint-fit. Worryingly, they have collars with large metal spikes on the side like those cartoon hounds in Tom and Jerry. For petting they are not.

Most dogs do not advertise their credentials so openly however, and have to be judged on behaviour alone. To this end I have divided them into four, more or less toothsome categories.

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1) Domestic Leashed 2) Domestic Unleashed 3) Scared Stray 4) Scary Stray The Domestic Leashed concerns me least, though it comes with standard bicycle-detecting radar. The first domestic in any given village will often prick up its ears to your soundless cogs up to a mile away. There follows a series of yap attacks as each subsequent dog is alerted to your presence behind fences and chicken wire, yanking against their lines like impotent starlets.

A pertinent question here is why are these dogs so attracted to bicycles? Neither cars, nor children, nor, I imagine, ten foot waddling peacocks seem to incite quite the same reaction as the average two wheeler.

Some have argued there might be some kind of high-pitched sound (inaudible to us) generated by the spokes that drives them crazy – a kind of suprasonic windmill effect.

I personally believe it is a smell issue and it is the potent

combination of unfettered human sweat and bike oil that raises their hackle. Surely this is an area of research that some bright PhD student should embark on – one of those Oxbridge types that have cycled into University Challenge to beat the traffic.

Anyhow back to the dogs, and my next category – Domestic Unleashed, a nuttier proposition altogether. These hounds either mark their territory as the end of the driveway or, as with farm dogs, the sight of your arse up to three miles down the road. Strays are a different matter. The Scared variety look like they have suffered enough in this life and, like the most bullied boys at school, scuttle away with tails down. Their dark side is the Scary Stray, the Darth Vader of ankle loppers. No owner to listen to, no instinct to obey bar their own fickle urges; these creatures live off sweat and bone meat.

I first began to encounter such strays in Romania, the cities and outskirts of which are home to roaming packs of dogs.

The packs are a legacy of Ceauşescu, Romania’s cold war despot, who ordered rural and urban clearances to make way for his grand designs. Guard dogs and sheep dogs alike were ousted from their cages and set free to mirror the fickle terrors of Ceauşescu. They need a very wide berth (including cycling back the way you came) or a light sabre, or failing that a big stick.

Which brings me onto how to deal with the naughty ones, the ones expelled from pet school a long time ago. There are pages and pages of forums dedicated to this topic.

Defences range from the hi-tech (‘Dogdazers’ – ultrasonic dog deterrent, painful to their ears apparently) to the super lo-tech (imaginary stone held behind head). I’ve never tried a ‘Dogdazer’ but if it came to the crunch, I’d rather hit a rabid dog over the head with a stick than with a piece of batteryoperated plastic.

Most local folk use the stone option – stoop to pick up stone, wait for dog to retreat, and if said animal further advances, take aim and fire. This works well enough for pedestrians but for bikes more intricate tactics are required.

The best advice I was given was ‘stop and face.’

Dogs, like hormonal boys, love to chase. A passing cyclist represents a cowardly foe and the more you cycle away the more they think they are the boss guy and can whoop your saddle into a puddle, or worse, take a bite. Stop, however, and the dogs themselves, mostly, stop. With teeth-baring dogs my girlfriend and I now halt, dismount, keeping the bikes between us and the animal, and wait. Side by side we look like a defiant bike monster rather than a fluffy rabbit, and, generally, they back off. It takes a bit of courage to master and seems counter intuitive, as your natural reaction is to burn tyre, but it really does work.

If this doesn’t do the job then it’s the dog stick. Now before the RSPCA start calling, I should point out that the dog stick is a defence, only to be used where it’s my integrity versus the dog’s. Essentially a big piece of wood with the threat of a wallop, the dog stick triggers the memory of previous wallops, and, hopefully, your fido backs away. I have yet to use my stick in anger, though I have heard with properly mad dogs it can be a fight, literally, to the bone.

I was given the blueprint for a more refined dog stick

by Alain, a French cyclist we came across at the top of a mountain pass in Romania. You take a slender, stiff branch about the length of your top tube and where the wood divides into a “Y” cut it down so that this part fits behind the headset or steering tube. At the other end make a notch where a piece of elastic tied to the seat post can hold. Thus designed, the dog stick can be carried out of the way but close to hand, carried along the top tube. ‘Voila!’ Alain

demonstrated, whipping it up from his mountain bike like a character in ‘The Three Musketeers.’ As he went on to explain, the stick is no use stashed in your panniers or strapped to your racks, as the mad dog doesn’t wait for faffing.

I have since spent a fair few adrenaline-fuelled moments on back roads waving my dog stick above my head like Indiana Jones (well, in my head I am a younger Harrison Ford), much to the amusement of locals. Even if it doesn’t work it certainly makes me feel better. And it definitely makes the bike look more ‘organic’, man. Other variations include a friend who cycled to Damascus with a rams horn tucked into his drop bars and the old fashioned bicycle pump (too short and slippery in my opinion, though I read that the legendary 70s bike author Richard Ballantine recommended its use as a last resort weapon of death in a graphic section on dog warfare that was removed in subsequent editions for being overly cruel).

The ultimate dog deterrent must be to bring your own dog.

Popular on the continent, dog baskets took me by surprise when I first saw one on the back of a tandem in Somerset.

I have since read of a couple who toured for a year around Northern Europe with separate bikes, each with their own handmade dog trailer. This takes ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ a bit too far in my opinion, but it would be interesting to see if such eccentricity increased or decreased the relative ankle risk in any given ride.

All this talk of dogs and bites has to be put in perspective however. Cycling is a safe and healthy means of transport.

I have cycled many thousands of miles and only once been seriously worried about a bite. Most canines are “all bark and no bite” and rarely will a long distance cyclist find undisciplined, rabid or fighting animals. Don’t dismiss them but don’t let them stop you either. The road is yours to ride, and a bike will take you to the ends of the earth, far beyond their wagging tails.

Last month I had a dream where oversized dogs riding tricycles were being chased down country lanes by little rabbits. These days I always fall straight asleep after a day’s pedalling and float into such reveries. I’m too tired to be woken by dogs in distant villages.

They let me lie.

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Be it the head-down couriers, neon shoulder-strapped paperboys or heavy load-carrying cyclists in Asia, the bicycle can be a great way of moving not only yourself from here to there, but also a bunch of other things too.

Papergirl takes that principle and plays with it, for their priority is about getting a mixture of both locally-produced and international art to random, local people.

Anyone is able to submit one or more pieces of original artwork to the project.

These are then put on show as part of a Papergirl exhibition before being bundled up into a roll along with a wealth of other people’s work. It ends up looking a lot like a newspaper, but with a difference.

Papergirl The art of gift-giving

The Papergirls and boys then collectively distribute the rolls of artwork on bikes, freewheeling the city streets and handing out unseen art to the people who just happen to be passing.

Words Images

jimmy Ell & Lizzie Woodall Just.Ekosystem.org Dan Nguyen-Tan Heather Tompkins

Papergirl is, in short, ‘participatory, analogue, non-commercial and impulsive’ and debuted in Berlin in 2006. It’s spreading like wildfire and there are now sister projects in many major cities around the world, including Bucharest, Cape Town, Manchester, Glasgow and San Francisco.

I spoke with Aisha Ronniger – the founder of the project – on an unpredictable Skype line from her home in Berlin. She explained how the project started in 2006 as a reaction to a tightening of a law in Berlin in 2005 that equated sticking up posters in public places with spraying graffiti.

“I was chatting with a friend and we were brainstorming ideas related to this new law and she came up with the idea of throwing out art in the street in much the same way as paperboys do with newspapers. Distributing art by bicycle seemed like an obvious way of bringing art straight to society and having fun whilst doing so, without the fear of possible punishment”. At that time, Aisha was feeling particularly fed up of having lots of ideas but never making them a reality, and so this was her opportunity to do just that. Although nothing had been finalised in a practical sense, she knew from the outset that she wanted the project to be a collective effort and to distribute the ‘papers’ as a group. “The ethos behind Papergirl has always been to have fun and to make other people happy whilst doing so”, she says, “the amount of people that will actually turn up to help distribute the rolls of artwork is always unknown until the day itself. Last year in Berlin we had a group of 50 to 60 people turn up, which got us a lot of attention!”

But what makes Papergirl so special is the fact that it really embodies the idea of giving without expecting anything in return. I remember how as a kid at Christmas time, my mum would always try to convince me that giving a gift is better than receiving one and although I thought she was crazy at the time, it really does turn out to be true.

Aisha is currently finishing her diploma and has been writing her thesis about gift-giving in society and in art, “I have learnt many more things about this and have really been trying to understand how it works with the project – like why gift-giving is so important in our society, now more than ever.

You don’t get much in this life for free and if you do, it can sometimes be quite complicated. When you give something, you are normally waiting for something in return, even if you don’t admit it; there is always an action and a reaction. With Papergirl, the reaction part is what the papergirls and boys receive – this is the present in return and it is always a surprise for both sides involved”.

Although the actual distribution of the artwork by bike has always been a collective effort, Aisha was responsible for the collecting of artwork and

“ The ethos behind Papergirl always was and still is to have fun as a group of people and to make other people happy whilst doing so. ” curating the Papergirl gallery shows for a couple of years before expanding the team. “It has been interesting for me to find a team that I could work with over a long period of time, during which, I have learnt a lot about teamwork by just getting on and doing it. For the project to evolve, it really has relied a lot on me trusting my ‘gut feeling’ and just going with it”.

So what about the reactions of the random recipients of these rolled up artworks? It seems that the responses vary in style as much as the artwork itself, as Aisha explains: “Most recipients are surprised and many people are left smiling, but there are also a lot of people who choose to ignore it – like they are too cool for it and don’t want to display their reactions in public. To be honest, whether or not the reaction is positive is not what’s really important though. What is significant is that it is a present, but that absolutely nothing is expected in return – you give the person that freedom to decide without expectation, which is not normally the case in everyday life”.

I ask Aisha if the name of the project is a nod to all the ladies on bikes out there? “No, not at all.

This question has been asked a lot, but we are just playing with the ‘paperboys’ name – the project is

definitely not a gender-led thing at all... you know, paperboys are both girls and boys so it seemed obvious to me that it worked the other way round. I really, really don’t want gender to be an issue with the project – at the end of the day, it is just about people doing it!” Despite not mattering what you have between your legs, it seems that the majority of the current Papergirl projects are definitely being led by more girls than boys.

And what of the artwork? Does it really end up adorning people’s walls or is it simply put out with the recycling? Aisha encourages all participants not to think too much about the destiny that awaits their art, but instead to be happy that it has served a purpose, “What happens to the artwork is not the important part of the project”, she says. “One of the writers, Katrin Klitzke, who contributed to my magazine, ‘The Art of Gift-Giving’, summed it up well when she wrote that ‘in the moment of giving the present, it has served its purpose and what happens after that is not so important any more’. You really have to let go of your artwork as soon as you participate in the project – otherwise it can be upsetting if people don’t respond well”. Papergirl is about being public and on the streets and stays true to the ideals that manifest themselves there; most importantly the fact that no one curates what artwork appears in a city – it is an open canvas for all, and as such, every bit of art submitted to the project is accepted and used unless it is clearly advertising or deemed politically incorrect.

Papergirl does also not hold any rights to any of the artwork. Aisha goes on, “When you walk around a city, you look at the walls and you make a decision as to whether you like what you see in terms of the street art. Sometimes we have artwork submitted that I didn’t like so much and then people come up to me at the opening show saying how fantastic that piece was that I didn’t like, so it really is just a matter of taste!”

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Currently, the project in Berlin is taking bit of a breather whilst Aisha finishes her diploma and sister projects in other cities are given advice and encouragement to get started. She had never anticipated people in other cities wanting to organise their own Papergirl and this has made her think about how best to pass on the project without compromising its integrity. “We set up a DIY blog and give people log in details to it once they get in touch so that anyone wanting to start up a Papergirl

“ The project shows quite clearly that there is a need for gift-giving and fun, collective projects in our society.” project where they live can get more specific information, downloads and manuals. It is really important that we try to find the best ways of sharing what we have learnt in the last five years, so that other groups don’t have to go through all the teething problems that we had. I have been learning from experience and it’s great to be able to pass it on.

And you know, the people that want to start up a Papergirl all seem to have a similar spirit and state of mind, which makes it a whole lot easier”.

She is genuinely excited to see the project proving to be a success in other cities and hopes to visit them at some point. This summer, they received some funding from a European youth project called Youth in Action and could to afford to bring over to Berlin project organisers from Bucharest, Manchester (UK), Albany (New York) and Cape Town. “It was an excellent experience,” Aisha says, “and it makes such a positive difference when you meet the other organisers and can put a name to a face. What we really need to do now is to work at making the Papergirl World Blog a bit more successful, so that the other projects know what is happening and

where. The blog should be a place where all the projects can come together - artists can check in on deadlines and the people involved can leave feedback, which will hopefully prove invaluable to other groups”.

Looking ahead, Aisha tells me that the most important thing about Papergirl is its integrity and for it not to become commercialised. The project shows quite clearly that there is a need for gift-giving and fun, collective projects in our society. “In everyday life, we have so many things that we have to do, so the freedom that Papergirl gives us is the freedom to do what we want to do and it isn’t money-driven – as such, it is an important side project that moves us away from the normal, common sense approach of our day-to-day experience of the world”.

We finish the interview talking about our shared love of riding tallbikes, as I have seen photographs of Aisha out on one delivering Papergirl artwork. She says, “We had this mutant bike workshop in Berlin for the last couple of years and I had seen these tall bikes in NYC for the first time and was amazed by them. I really wanted to build one here in Berlin, and last year got the opportunity to do so – they are SO great when you go out distributing because they have this circus type feel to them and people are already smiling a mile off before they have even been given their gift!”

Feel inspired and want to start a Papergirl in your city? Drop them a line at: info@papergirl-berlin.de to receive info about the Papergirl DIY blog. There is also a beautiful-looking, limited edition publication, ‘The Art of Giving Art’ , written and compiled by Aisha which features, amongst many other things, information on how to run your own Papergirl - check the website for more details.

www.papergirl-berlin.de Keep your eyes peeled for Papergirl Projects elsewhere in the UK, including Glasgow and Bristol...

Papergirl, Manchester, UK

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www.papergirlmanchester. tumblr.com

Janice Stainton masterminded the first Papergirl Manchester (indeed, the first in the UK) exhibition this year where over 80 artists had their work on display.

In addition, when we spoke to her, more than 700 rolls of art had been collated in preparation for Papergirl Manchester’s debut distribution in October this year.

Papergirl in Manchester without any funding. She says of Manchester, “It’s a city with a strong creative community and many more creative people that don’t usually take part in exhibitions or events. I felt that Papergirl would motivate those people who do not usually create artwork or exhibit to take part.”

Having heard about Papergirl a couple of years ago, she thought it would be a great thing to start in Manchester and last year, after being unsuccessful in gaining a bursary for starting a Papergirl, she went to Berlin to take part in Papergirl #5. On her return and inspired by the success of the project in Berlin, she decided to start and co-ordinate a

Perhaps this is the start of things to come here in the UK, especially with the proposed cuts and potential gallery charges. Will we cherish local art work that is bestowed upon us a unique gift, or the art that is behind lock and key in an expensive gallery? Papergirl delivers accessible art from local people - you just have to be lucky enough to catch it while it’s there.

Illustration by Sebastien Braun

Main Photo - Richard Seipp / www.qwertyphoto.com Cross Photos - www.flickr.com/photos/hanglebads

‘GETTING’

CROSS b y S i m o n N u r se

Looking back through mud tinted spectacles, my childhood was full of trails and parkland, endless summers of nipping around on a heavy street bike and jumping off the lip of bunkers at the municipal pitch and putt. As a product of the 70s, I cherry pick the memories so only the innocent stuff survives. People were friendlier, you left your back door open, you could drop your wallet in a pub and somebody would return it within minutes (probably stuffed with an extra £1 note as compensation for its brief loss). If you’re the competitive type, races were faster and friendlier, driven by a sense of community and a shared love of two wheels and a human engine. Wouldn’t it be nice if things were still like that?

About five years ago, suffering from runner’s malaise and itchy feet, I stumbled across cyclo-cross. I can’t quite remember how it happened. It was probably admiring a 700cc fat tyred bike nipping through choked city traffic or maybe an image of a hunched cyclist clambering over Ingleborough in the three peaks cyclo-cross. It’s not important how it happened, but the discovery was a little gift from the cycling gods, one that totally changed my relationship with the bike and introduced me to a whole new community. But if you’ve never heard of cyclo-cross before, we should take a look at what cyclo-cross actually is, why we live in the perfect place for it (outside of Belgium) and why I feel that you should be headed off to the next local cross race armed with a hack bike, a flask of tea, a packet of hobnobs and a willingness to share them.

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As with many sports, the origins of Cross (as it is colloquially known) are as humble as they are hazy, with several blurry accounts of how man evolved to carry bikes over farm gates and across muddy fields. At the end of the 19th century in Northern France and the Benelux, it became established winter practice to race from town to town, bypassing the ‘smoother’ surfaces afforded by the local roads. The cyclists would nip into fields, hop across stiles, and forge a track through small patches of woodland. To ensure that they stayed on course, they were guided by the sight of the church steeple in the next village (such are the benefits of low country topography). This made perfect sense; the improved skills needed to master the slippery farm routes ironed out the wrinkles in their technique and improved the power in their legs.

The cobbled squares of medieval towns no longer posed a problem come race day. By 1902 there was a French national championship. By 1910 the Belgians introduced their own, starting a long and intense relationship with their eventual national sport. By 1930 most of Northern Europe was racing around muddy courses and a new sport was born. If we wind the clock forward 80 years, what’s the Cross community like today?

I don’t know if you’ve ever raced. The readership of Boneshaker is a broad church and many won’t have experienced the niche and occasionally oppressive world of race cycling. It’s a realm occupied by the fit and the fast, the obsessed and obsessive, performance-orientated cycling that often ignores the humble nature of the bike.

This is a sweeping statement of course, and if you are one of those madcap, blazer-adorned enthusiasts that lives for the Brompton World champs, you have every right to feel affronted. But on the whole, racing does 54

tend to attract a certain type and can be overly serious for the casual participant. Somehow – and really, don’t ask me how – Cross seems to avoid this. There appears to be something in the less glamorous time of year (autumn), the more prosaic kit (you get change from a grand and can use any bike you like) and the shared understanding that fifty minutes of silly-fast, muddy racing earns you the right to a couple of Belgian ales and a whopping big plate of pommes frites.

Cross is built entirely on its community spirit. On top of all this, there is the cross bike itself. It’s a thing of beauty – period. Nothing flashy, nothing experimental, with very little cutting edge technology giving an edge to the financially flushed. It has barely changed in a century – a nice traditional shape with walloping big chunky tyres and enough clearance between the forks to allow them to roll like a big cheese down a steep hill in Gloucestershire. Hack across a field, commute to work, bounce down a mountain or race a national championship. Is there anything more versatile?

It’s summer, June 2010, four years on from the baptism of fire dealt out by my first attempt at cross racing in the three peaks. It’s probably not the first race you should do on a cross bike, but it is undeniably the best one. Older, wiser (and wider) than that innocent time, I’ve become a convert. Cross is now in my blood. It’s stamped in my genes and woven into the fabric of who I am. From a pair of socks emblazoned with the lion of Flanders, to my choice of beer at the nearest café, I am now a crosser. So the news that the good people of Severn RC club are putting on a summer series is manna from heaven. A little piece of soggy autumn in the middle of a blazing summer.

Turning up at the first event is a delight. The park is pretty central and pretty innocuous. A little legacy from the Victorians, equipped with tennis courts, a pond, some trees and a nice little hump that I guess used to accommodate a bandstand. There is very little hint that a race will be held here this evening. A few crossers swopping wheels and exchanging pleasantries, an estate car with the boot wide open and a wooden trestle table stood up next to it. The odd bit of tape around the park. And that’s it. No fuss.

No glamour. No sponsorship banners, no discernible signs of money. These races exist solely for the riders – racing designed by people who love their sport for people doing the sport they love.

at 400m and the grin emerges at 800m. The familiar grind of cross begins. The course swoops and soars – down the bank, round the lake, up towards the trees. Swoop back down, nip back up, tight turn by the tennis courts, hurdles by the bandstand. Grinding climb, belting descent and back around to start all over again. There’s about 10 laps of this stuff. Once again, I’m back on that pitch and putt, aged 8 on my Raleigh Budgie (the Chopper’s younger brother).

I’m riding eyeballs out, chasing people down. Passing people and being passed; but it’s not about this. It’s not about grinding your opposition into the dust and beating everyone. It’s about being part of something; part of a local team, part of a cycling tradition and part of a

“Nobody is going to get fat on cross racing in the UK” Last year I organised a race for my own club (Cardiff JIF) and once we’d deducted the prize money, cost of replacement boundary tape and other ancillaries, we were left with £7. Nobody is going to get fat on cross racing in the UK. We sign on, earn the gratitude of the organiser for making the journey over the Severn, and rack up a few warm-up laps. The things I notice: the course is relatively flat and fast, there are some interesting hurdles (a staple sight in cross racing), and the park users have absolutely no idea what is going on. Our presence seems to generate a bit of enthusiasm amongst the local teenagers and each warm-up lap is greeted with rapturous applause and some Jerry Springer-style whooping. You don’t get that reception in the depths of winter. Only 23 riders have signed on, but the numbers make no difference to us; we’re there for the fun of hacking around a park at speed. The race starts and we’re off. Oxygen debt hits at 100m, legs are like lead

community. This, in essence, is the appeal of cross. Racing with your mates. Racing in a non-descript fashion. Seeing the same people week in, week out. Renewing old acquaintances, battling old adversaries. Flinging yourself down muddy embankments and remembering what it’s like to be a kid again.

Have you considered giving cross a go? Why not dust off the mountain bike or stick knobblies on the singlespeed and wander over to your local race? You’ll find them in your neck of the woods throughout autumn until the end of December. There’s a whole new community awaiting you, one that welcomes with open arms and provides 50 minutes of fast and furious fun, and many more hours of socialising. Who could stick a price on that?

Simon Nurse loves coffee, Belgian beer and bikes editor.iesme@gmail.com 55

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miscomp.wordpress.com 57

BLANCA GOMEZ www.cosasminimas.com

No estoy segura de por qué me gustan tanto las bicis, pero la pregunta que me hago es: ¿por qué ir andando o en cualquier otro medio de transporte cuando puedes ir en bicicleta? Incluso el nombre es bonito.

I am not sure why I love bicycles so much, but the question that I ask myself is: Why go by foot or any other form of transport when you can go by bicycle? Even the Name is beautiful!

The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart. Iris Murdoch