boneshaker
magazine
issue #1
Cycling l a e R : r ake igital. To Bonesh se, it’s d
f cour feel ’t real, o n is haker, to is s h e t n t o p e B l c Ex ier, go on a rea ur pann r hands o u y o y in t it e g hide too, ell it and ike stuff m b s t a d e n r a g it other hem e make Check t . s t in r p here. W le art ars take lly bicyc t your e especia le o t d ur . An there’s o , y out here e n r u d on a jo ies. your min cast ser new pod
Š Adam Faraday
Since helping to set up and run a community bike project here in Bristol, my eyes have been opened to the breadth of people and projects around the world doing great great things with bicycles. And what impresses me most about the vast majority of these is the humanity and desire to do things for the greater good that almost always seem to be an integral part of them. Boneshaker is an attempt to bring together some of these people and projects, both on a local level starting with my hometown of
Bristol, UK – where there is a steady-growing, vibrant bicycle culture – to further afield and around the globe. It is my hope that the following pages will both inspire and entertain, raise awareness and bring a smile to your face... and appeal to both bike-heads and to those who may not yet even have experienced the true joy and freedom that can be found from our two-wheeled friends. Thanks for reading.
James Lucas www.thebristolbikeproject.org
Contents
Last Summer I packed a few things into panniers and rode my bike around the coast of Britain. I wanted to learn a bit more about the country where I have lived all my life and know so little about. I wanted to learn about people too. So undertook to make some soundslide films about the people I met on the way. The amazing people who live and work on our coast. In all I made about 80 little films. I sat up in my tent at night and edited them before finding an internet café the next day to upload onto my site. They have a rough edge but (I think) a nice instant quality about them. Here are extracts from two of the films. Nick Hand slowcoast.co.uk
er said, you should put your name ather’s name’s been there long here, I’m quite happy at that. He’s , so.
Puncture Kit My Beautiful Bike Mini Bike Winter Olympics VII Jake’s Bikes Serai Spoke‘n’chain ‘Tunnel’ Slowcoast Soundslides Tour of Switzerland 1966 The Bicycle Quick Release: Let ‘em have it Bicycology My Beautiful Bike. The Magician Crimanimalz The Bristol Bike Project Riding Guatemala City
Contents
My bicycle is a speckled white Raleigh Elan. I bought it from the Bristol Cycle Hub over a year ago and thanks to their great servicing before my purchase, it has run smoothly ever since. As time went on I embellished the Elan and treated it to some needle threaded leather grips and stripped the graphics from the frame to make space for a new theme. This theme is in the form of two miniature bubble stickers. The first is Michael Jackson’s face positioned between the handlebars, and the second his signature placed on the rear of the frame. With these sited my bike was complete. On the tragic day that Michael passed away I noticed that the bubble sticker that had faced me for many months had become separated from my bicycle and lay on the floor of my bedroom. The previous days cycling in the rain could have loosened the glue, dislodging the sticker, but I like to believe that there is a supernatural bond between my bicycle and Michael Jackson. The sticker has since been replaced with a different portrait of Michael in memory of the great entertainer.
Illustration and words by Robert Hunter www.rob-hunter.co.uk
contributors
john coe, nick hand, adam faraday, gavin wilshen, ali sparror, robert hunter, jethro brice, maria baños-smith, sébastien bernaert, nick soucek, todd legler, bob coe, imogen, hal bergman, stine stensbak & jimmy ell
ing a bike. It was more buying , whatever. But they would leave ey went down the town to do their So they just came here, parked d anything doing to it, the two see to it before they came back t was five o’clock it would be e, if it was only an hour at the or two probably. So some of them uite as straight as they’d come.
well on when I took over. They nd close at maybe five or six. I’m and close at four, sometimes now ’m going that way now, same as here to hide, my wife took early see you sitting doing a crosse for an hour and a half. If I want coffee and a crossword for an it. It’s what I call my bolthole. If I ust put a notice up saying ‘gone inconvenience’ with wee letters damn (laughs)’ But no, I quite any that comes and goes.”
backpats and handclaps
yael ben-gigi, nick hand, taylor bros, the bristol bike project crew, howies, richie thomassen & chris carlsson
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 with paper from sustainable sources by Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd. 13-25 Wilder Street, Bristol BS2 8PY / Tel 0117 924 5452 Conceived, compiled & edited by jimmy ell Designed and published by coecreative / www.coecreative.com Cover image by adam faraday / www.adamfaraday.com
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words jimmy ell colour photography alex pettman b&w photography luis bernardo cano
The first time I saw Puncture Kit was a youtube clip of him street-busking earlier this year. In it, we see him cycling around London before setting up his drums on his upturned bicycle at a busy traffic intersection. A smartly-dressed gentleman stands to one side and taps his foot in appreciation, whilst an excitable man in a Scream mask and cape appears and begins spiraling around him crazily. A crowd congregates and as the incredible, percussive rhythms that he pulls from his drums come to an end, a hearty round of applause is heard. He packs up his drums into his panniers and cycles away into the night. Puncture Kit, aka David Osborne, is an Australian chap who conjures up a mix of energetic drum‘n’bass / jungle / breaks from his drum kit-cum-bicycle that he also uses daily to ride around on. It takes just 20 minutes to transform his bike into a drum kit with 5 cymbals, 3 snare drums and a foot pedal. He made his festival debut at Glastonbury Dance Village 2009 last year and can be seen day and night busking around the east-end of London. I spoke with him briefly and here’s what he had to say: 6
www.puncturekit.co.uk ffi: info@puncturekit.co.uk
Hello puncture kit! It says on your website that ‘Puncture Kit was brought to life after sitting in London’s Green Park with my new bicycle not long after arriving from Australia in June 2008… no car, no drums, and a need to create beats’. What gave you the inspiration to combine two great bits of gear into one– the bike and the drum kit? I love doing both and so it was just logical to me! I moved from Australia to the UK in the summer of 2008 because I wanted to travel and pursue music further. I was playing and recording in some bands when I got here but still needed a way to earn some money to get by. I used to be inspired by street performers in the main mall of my home town, in Adelaide, and used to watch them in my lunchtimes, but never thought I’d eventually be doing it myself. I was originally thinking of carrying around a small drum kit on the tube and buses but then one day when I was looking at my bike I just thought it was the perfect drum frame for some toy drums! 8
“...one day when I was looking at my bike I just thought it was the perfect drum frame for some toy drums!” How easy was it to adapt your bike to accommodate the drums? Did it take long to get it right and was there a lot of tweaking involved? It wasn’t that easy to think it all out – it took a lot of experimenting to get it right ergonomically and only last week I was back in the workshop again grinding bits off and re-welding better brackets on, etc. It also took quite a while to find and then modify drums that would be strong, yet small enough and also sound good. I wanted a lot of different weird percussion too, as I’m a huge Aphex Twin fan and love the way beats can be played just on percussion and make them sound quirky.
It is funny watching the youtube clips of you busking and to see the public’s responses to your performance – is it generally all-round good vibes when you take to the streets? Yeah, mostly it’s great vibes and people get right into it - just the other day a guy came up and hugged me and was crying after watching my performance! I am really grateful that people find it inspiring and like to take videos and pictures of me performing and I enjoy talking to people afterwards who want to know all about how Puncture Kit came about and I particularly enjoy it when people say it’s inspired them to take up an instrument. A performance highlight was definitely playing Glastonbury Dance Village last year when I was booked to just play busking style around the village during the day, but then a stage manager gave me a slot on his stage later that night and it was loads of fun!
What do you make of the current bike culture in London? The bike culture in London is very strong. There is a big cycling community and it’s very friendly and as with any big city, many people in cars (i.e. taxi drivers) find this irritating. I feel that London does try and promote cycling, although most of it seems to be done by independent, not-for-profit organizations and individuals, which is the way with most good things hey?! Have you always enjoyed riding a bicycle? I’ve either had BMX’s, road bikes or mountain bikes at some point in my life. I grew up in Adelaide with beautiful hilly terrain and amazing scenery and the best way to explore that was always on two wheels with a bag of bananas...
I imagine that it must be really great for you to have the combination of the more formal, live performance in clubs (collaborating musically and technically with Axel Castro / Silverhaze) combined with the more improvised, free, street-busking side of it – is that balance something that you enjoy? Yeah, I love doing both and each one helps the other. I treat the street-busking style just as importantly as if I were doing a full stage show. If you put yourself out there in the public, where you’re basically saying ‘check this out’, then you’ve got a responsibility to do your best. Nobody wants to listen to someone ‘practicing’ in the street, which is what a lot of people think busking is good for. The collaboration with Axel is great. We both write electronic music together and individually. He is an accomplished producer and most of the ideas I have for the electronica side of Puncture Kit are in ‘sketch’ form. I usually whip something up in Logic (basslines, effects etc) and then work on it with Axel in order to come up with a finished track.
What are your coming plans for 2010? This year I am putting out the Puncture Kit album. It’s a mix of bicycle beats and electronica - it’s all finished but I want to release it with more live shows. Puncture Kit is what I do now and I know that things take time to develop. I would really like to be touring and doing more live shows and would ideally love to go on tour where I could busk in the city during the day and play a live show at night... it’ll happen soon!! 9
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My Beautiful Bike. My bicycle is a speckled white Raleigh Elan. I bought it from the Bristol Cycle Hub over a year ago and thanks to their great servicing before my purchase, it has run smoothly ever since. As time went on I embellished the Elan and treated it to some needle threaded leather grips and stripped the graphics from the frame to make space for a new theme. This theme is in the form of two miniature bubble stickers. The first is Michael Jackson’s face positioned between the handlebars, and the second his signature placed on the rear of the frame. With these sited my bike was complete. On the tragic day that Michael passed away I noticed that the bubble sticker that had faced me for many months had become separated from my bicycle and lay on the floor of my bedroom. The previous days cycling in the rain could have loosened the glue, dislodging the sticker, but I like to believe that there is a supernatural bond between my bicycle and Michael Jackson. The sticker has since been replaced with a different portrait of Michael in memory of the great entertainer.
Illustration and words by Robert Hunter www.rob-hunter.co.uk
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Ben Hurt Chariot Wars Mini Bike Winter Olympics VII | 2010
A yearly, 2-day bicycling event full of F.U.N., activities, partying and biking brought to you by Zoobomb in Portland, Oregon. Mini Bike Winter is the staple of crazy bicycling entertainment which keeps everyone warm with laughter and... well, beer. It's an open invite event and free to all. Shot/Cut by Richie Thomassen zoobomb.net 12
©2010 Hal Bergman Photography
watch here http://vimeo.com/9715534
“Chariot Wars.... it’s fun to watch” REVEREND PHIL, PDX 13
Profile:
Jake Voelcker 14
of Jake’s Bikes words jimmy ell
photography adam faraday
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I SAW BROKEN OR BADLY MAINTAINED BIKES EVERYWHERE AND I JUST WANTED TO FIX THEM AND GET MORE PEOPLE CYCLING...!
W W W . J AK E S B I K E S.CO .UK 16
If you live in Bristol and ride a bike, the chances are you will already have heard of Jake. He is a friendly, independent cycle mechanic, who won’t make you feel stupid when you ask him what that ‘clk-clk-clk’ sound is coming from your bike... What sort of work do you do? When did you start Jake’s Bikes? Two years ago now. I was very naïve. I saw broken or badly maintained bikes everywhere and I just wanted to fix them and get more people cycling. I didn’t really think about the practicalities, and at the time I was a freelance web designer and assumed that I could continue to earn my living from that for a year or two and do bikes a couple of days a week. I always imagined a cosy little shed somewhere with a wood stove, where I could do a lot of barter and trade and swaps and charge people almost nothing. After a bit of searching I found a small industrial unit in Montpelier, Bristol, in which I could rent a corner. Very quickly it got busy, and within a few months I was doing it full-time. And so you then decided to move to this larger workshop space just around the corner? Yeah, well it’s a bit more established now. I am in a larger workshop and so can employ a couple of other people (workshop assistant Jake & mechanic Pete). When I started out people told me it takes three years to get a new business off the ground and I didn’t believe them, but they were right. I reckon by the end of our third year in business I should be able to pay myself a living wage, so it turns out that it really does take that long.
Mainly maintenance, servicing and repairs. It helps keep old bikes on the road and helps keep people cycling. We also sell reconditioned used bikes and build a few special bikes to order. We work almost entirely on fairly practical bikes for commuters and utility users: hybrids, city bikes, tourers and so on. To be honest, it’s cycling as a form of transport that I’m really interested in. Are there many bike workshops similar to yourselves based in the UK? As far as I know, there are very few bike recycling operations in the UK that aren’t charities and/ or externally funded in some way. The Oxford Cycle Workshop has been going for a number of years now and as far as I know does pretty similar work to us on a larger scale and South Coast Bikes in Brighton also run an appointment-only workshop but don’t sell used bikes or do any tuition. I do think that ours is a model that I’d like to see copied in other cities, and as cycling becomes more popular I think it will be. People sometimes talk to me about ‘the competition’ from other bike projects or bike shops but I don’t really see it that way. We currently help The Bristol Bike Project where we can, who are based right next door to us and I was pleased to see a new independently-run bike shop open just down the road in St. Werburghs.
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As well as repairing and selling bikes, I also heard that you were offering bike maintenance classes too, is that right? Yeah, just recently actually we’ve started running tuition and evening classes. There is a series of bike maintenance sessions for people who want to learn how to fix their own brakes or gears, and also a real beginners class for novices: how to fix a puncture - that sort of thing. For those who want to do more in-depth stuff like a complete bearings service or wheel build, we do one-to-one tuition. We’ve also just started a weekly drop-in session on Thursday evenings for people to come along and fix up their own bike using our workshop and tools which is ideal for customers who have some experience but need a little guidance or want to use the more specialist tools, and I hope it will make bike servicing affordable even for those on a very tight budget. Your sign says you work by appointment only - why is that? Yes, this causes some confusion! Jake’s Bikes is not a shop – it really is specifically a workshop and when we’re busy working on customers’ bikes it’s difficult to handle retail sales. We’d have to employ shop staff for that, and frankly I’m just not interested in selling the latest widgets and gizmos to punters on the high street. So we have an appointments system like a car garage. Customers book a time slot to drop their bike off and discuss what work needs doing, and then we can give a much more accurate estimate of when the job will be done. It’s funny that in Britain we see bikes as just 18
another consumer item that you buy from a high street shop. Cars have proper service centres and garages that work by good oldfashioned appointments systems. Why not for bikes as well? On that note, how do you think we can actually change the way we look at bikes in Britain and make them more appealing and acceptable as a means of valid transportation and therefore get more bums on seats? Well, I think it’s all about normalising cycling really - we have to get society to recognise bikes as a legitimate, normal form of transport for the masses instead of just a sporting or leisure activity for the few and there are a whole lot of things on many levels that we can slowly change to bring about this shift. For example, we need better cycling facilities, a wider range of sensible, practical city bikes and cycling gear and properly integrated cycle planning - not just a few hastily tacked-on cycle lanes. We also need petrol to be more expensive – which is lucky because that’s going to happen in any case and we need social demand for localisation, eco awareness and healthier and safer cities – which, again, we are slowly but surely starting to see. Ultimately we need a shift away from car culture and towards cycle culture. Then, not only will drivers and policy makers and town planners start to see bikes as real road vehicles which have to be respected and given space, but also cyclists themselves will become normalised as responsible road users. The trouble is that these things take time and it’s easy to get despondent or burnt-out when plugging away at cycle campaigning. Here and
now, one of the most effective actions is simply to directly get more people cycling. The CTC’s Safety in Numbers campaign (www.ctc.org.uk/ safetyinnumbers/) shows that the more people cycle, the safer it is for each individual cyclist, and the more political and social will exists to improve cycling conditions. Then all the rest will follow. The more people cycle, the more cycling will be seen as being normal, so it becomes self-perpetuating. This really is the ethos behind Jake’s Bikes one by one, we work on getting more ‘normal’ people cycling; and it seems that if certain individuals become customers, they can act as a gateway to other members of their peer groups. For example, we’ve built up a few nice touring bikes in the past, and customers have headed off to France and Spain and had the time of their life. They then become something of a cycling evangelist and before you know it a couple of their friends turn up here in search of secondhand bikes. Most are enthusiastic young male students, but we have had several older ladies, each of whom referred the next one to us, rediscovering the joys of cycling just as soon as we had supplied
ULTIMATELY WE NEED A SHIFT AWAY FROM CAR CULTURE AND TOWARDS CYCLE CULTURE 19
them with suitably high handlebars or low gear ratios or a step-through frame. Even with girls in their late teens or early twenties, amongst whom cycling rates are notoriously low, as soon as one in their social group gets a stylish bike the barriers start to break down and cycling begins to become acceptable or even normal. You can really see it when a customer, who six months ago was a complete novice, turns up on a wellused bike talking knowledgeably about the best cycle route to work! I guess it’s also about showing people who rely on having a car as a means of transporting stuff that it can also be done within reason on a bike, right? Yeah, absolutely – it’s about leading by example. When we use a bike trailer to collect and pick up bikes, it always attracts a lot of looks and comments, mostly positive, and in a small way it helps to show that it’s possible to carry cargo without a car or van and makes people think “maybe I could do that”. And lastly, it’s also about being positive, that’s so important. I’ve learnt that negative messages almost always don’t work. Making someone feel bad about their carbon footprint or lack of exercise doesn’t help; supplying them with a bike and enabling and empowering them to use it does. 20
It seems obvious from reading on your website about your environmental policies that the ethics of Jake’s Bikes is extremely important to you – how difficult is it running a business whilst still staying true to these ideals – do you have to make a lot of compromises? Yes and no. It’s not as if I was already running a bike shop which I decided to try and make a bit ‘greener’, so in a way it’s not difficult at all. The whole point of Jake’s Bikes is the social and the environmental. I used to work at CAT, the eco-centre in Wales (www.cat.org.uk), and then for a couple of other environment and climatechange related organisations, so by now I guess it’s pretty ingrained in me, but I’d become a bit jaded and cynical about environmental campaigning, and working on bikes is a great way of doing something positive and tangible both environmentally and socially, instead of just banging on about how screwed the planet is. The really gratifying thing is that the ethical stance of Jake’s Bikes is paying off, so I feel that kind of justifies my idealism. Customers definitely like the ethical stance, and some became customers as a result of reading our policies on the website. I really think that in an age when everything is disposable and fast-paced and technology-heavy, it’s really
important to show that repair and reuse of old stuff is still possible and socially acceptable. The very existence of Jake’s Bikes in itself demonstrates the viability of running a recycling-based, environmentally-friendly business; but I’m not pretending it’s all easy. Buying stock ethically is difficult. Unfortunately there’s just no such thing as local, organic, fair-trade bike components. All we can do is re-use or recycle as much as possible and buy all of our new parts from a family-run supplier. New components which wear out quickly are also tricky.
a bike which wears out quickly is still a whole lot better than driving a car! Lastly, what does 2010 hold in store for Jake’s Bikes? Well a whole bunch of things I hope! I would ideally like to be running more in-depth bike repair classes; having courtesy bikes for customers to borrow whilst their own is being serviced; having a fleet of affordable long-term hire bikes so that people can try cycling for a few weeks or months without committing to
THE REALLY GRATIFYING THING IS THAT THE ETHICAL STANCE IS PAYING OFF... Wherever possible I try and persuade people to go for the long-lived option rather than the lightest or the cheapest, and there are plenty of things which I simply refuse to stock on the grounds that they’re just not designed to last. But the truth is that modern bikes simply don’t last as long as thirtyor forty-year-old ones, and it pains me to have to sell stuff which I know will end up in landfill in five years time, but what else can we do? I comfort myself with the thought that it’s for the greater good: at least it’s helping people to cycle, and even
anything; hiring out cargo bikes, work bikes and bike trailers of the sort that people wouldn’t want to own themselves but would want to use from time to time; having a community pool of quality kids bikes that could simply be traded in for the next size up as your child grows... the list of possibilities is endless, and I would be delighted if other businesses or organisations joined in. What’s important is not that Jake’s Bikes grows to do all these things, but just that it all happens somehow. 21
words jimmy ell photography adam faraday
www.spokenchain.blogspot.com www.bikebeard.blogspot.com
spoke‘n’chain
Sylvie, Kev & Hinch are collectively known as Spoke‘n’Chain. They’re a wild bunch, making even wilder-looking pedal-powered machines and are some of Bristol’s best bicycle advocates. They took some time out from warping and welding their way through redundant bicycle frames to have a chat with us. Here goes...
And so who exactly are you guys and what are you up to?! K: We are Kevin and Sylvie, Viva la velorution, fun with bikes, it’s a carnival, a fairground, it’s the future. We’re moving constantly and are currently planning, thinking and involved in: Cap’n Bikebeard, Les Velobici, Mokostumblies and Two Loose Les Pegs (stilts), womens’ bicycle maintenance/skill-sharing group, bicyclecostuming workshops, Bristol’s first Bicycle Carnival, collaborations with the Magnificent Revolution, World Naked Bike Ride, Bicycle Basket Markets, The Polar Bee I-Cycle Cream Company Carousel, The Ten Tallbikes Tour, Running of the Bulls, The Quest, Sprockets and Dust, Mini Bike Maypole, Equinox Rides, oh and learning to weld! What are you making at the moment? We’ve just been finishing off 4 social tandems for Cycling City’s Schools project and now we’ll start on The Polar Bee Icycle Cream Company Carousel (thanks to the support of Arts Council England, Bristol City Council and Kambe Events).
What first got you interested in tinkering with bikes and playing around with the notion of what is regarded as cycling in a traditional sense? K: I was part of Friends of the Earth and involved in all sorts of environmental activism back in the day – Cyclebag, the M32 cycling club, the Bristol to Bath and Pill cyclepaths and then moved into circus (including riding a stilt tandem from Bristol to Maastricht) and now carnival and fairground stuff. Enter Sylvie who cycled backwards when she was 3 years old, was a cycle courier and moved house by bicycle from Germany to England seven years ago. S: Well, we began making stuff out of rubbish for carnival, for stiltwalkers and for poubelle dancers, to form a trash band alternative carnival section. Then we started with the idea of playing with broken bicycles and created Dr. Scrap and then coincidentally, Neighbourhood Arts asked us to put together a cycling section for St. Pauls Carnival 2009 in Bristol and so Spoke‘n’Chain came into being.
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You always seem to be having so much fun with what you are working on! Is this an important part of your approach and outcome of what you do? K: Fun is important that’s why we’re doing it – we want people to have fun with their bikes and everything, I completed a playworker course last year and so of course!!! Spontaneous, imaginative activities lead to happier, healthier children and adults – fun is for everybody! It’s free and active. It’s not passive consumerist or spectator – come and participate and share and join in... if joy goes, then freedom is in danger! How is Bristol & its relationship with cycling at the moment? K: There’s definitely something in the air, but it is not a great place to cycle. I haven’t had a bike for the last 10 years, as on my return from Germany I found cycling here more unpleasant than 20-25 years ago but there is something going on - Cycling City has provoked a resurgence and I am back on wheels. 26
S: I wish I could cycle more here in Bristol. It’s pretty rubbish compared to what I’m used to and I still don’t understand the vandalism against bicycles that goes on in this city. There seems to have been quite a resurgence in the popularity of bicycling over the last few years – both on a practical level, e.g. commuting and less reliance on private/public transport and also in terms of cool, lifestyle-led, e.g. single-speed/fixedgear. Is that something that you have noticed? K: We have found this particularly so in the USA - there is something definitely new and different going on there culturally. Public transport is still terrible here – over-priced and not much help at all, so no wonder fewer people are relying on it and turning to their bikes and it’s good to see renewed interest in the original stripped-down single-speed/fixed gear bike – talking of which, we recently met a 77 year old chap who had a fixed wheel when he was a lad and used to cycle to Weston-Super-Mare from Bristol in 20mins!! It’s great to see connections
being made with older generations! I still really wish kids had simpler bikes and didn’t get sold inappropriate copies of specialist bikes. But we think that the real change that is happening is a pedal-powered cultural shift – emancipation all over again from capitalism – an opportunity to regain freedom and autonomy for ourselves. A revolution is taking place... just check out Budapest and its critical mass to see that cycling there is spearheading a green eco-movement which is about much more than just bikes. I have recently finished reading Chris Carlsson’s excellent book, ‘Nowtopia’ and there is a great chapter in it called ‘Outlaw Bicycling’. He quotes Ted White, a long-time bike activist, “people who are into bikes tend almost always to be in some way independent thinking and self-sufficient... bikes are cheap, simple and democratic and sexy in a very different way than riding around in a car. Bike transportation is about individuality but not about excess. Bikes are congenial and social. Bikes force us to be in our bodies and help us to know and love our bodies as they are”. Whatcha reckon to this? K: Yes! FREE, simple and so easy to use, to make, to fix, to play with and to re-invent... and you know that joy as a child and teenager, freedom, you feel that freedom when you ride... man and machine, the fixed gear bike is almost complete unity with the machine but not dominated by the machine – it is an extension of the human body just like stilts are... but this isn’t new - the bicycle, first time around in Paris in 1897 with Sarah Bernhardt was fashionable and outrageous – they saw the bicycle then as a liberator, a machine to extend the potentialities of the human being. Alfred Jarry described it
as an ‘external skeleton’ which allows mankind to outstrip the process of biological evolution. Fernand Léger, a Paris artist, saw the act of cycling as an aesthetic fusion of body and machine: “A bicycle operates in the realm of light. It takes control of legs, arms and body, which move on it, by it and under it (Fernand Léger, The Circus)”. There is also a great part in Nowtopia where Chris Carlsson talks about kids and bikes and then learning to drive. He says: “In the U.S., the prevailing cultural norm still sees the bicycle as a toy. As children we are given a bicycle when we are deemed ‘ready’ and it is often our first experience of self-emancipation from the narrow confines of home, of our street and of parental supervision. On bikes, kids quickly expand their territories... our first liberation is eventually forgotten as the promise of “true freedom” behind the wheel of a car is pumped into us before we can even walk, shaping the imaginations of children from an early age. The bicycle is usually seen as a mere stepping stone to the real thing, one’s first car. And few people eschew that path and refuse to drive – the bicycle is left behind as a child’s plaything, or maybe in our overweening athletic culture it retains some use as a device for exercise’’. Is this something you guys experienced? K: This isn’t my story. I have never driven, although I agree that it is the prevailing culture. I still don’t understand the people who express concern for their environment and still drive private cars - it is the single most polluting act a human can undertake. It really is the car drivers who are still in nappies and who aren’t experiencing ‘true freedom’ and 27
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who are controlled and conditioned by the marketing men and still playing with toys. S: Think we’re coming back again to the idea that cyclists are more often than not, independentthinking and self sufficient people, who won’t believe the dream about the car that advertising is trying to tattoo into our brains. I certainly still feel that I have more freedom on my bike even after I passed my driving test. There are no constraints as to where a bicycle can carry you, as you can carry it through the dessert if you hit one or put it on a train if your legs get tired. I think it is the one way to really experience selfemancipation and to experience who you are and how far your legs are going to take you. You don’t get that sense of self when you drive in a car. How do you think we can change the way we look at bikes in our society? Do you think this is already changing slowly? K: Yes, but there is still this absurd addiction to cars. And to criticise the car is taboo – we mustn’t upset the motorist!! On the positive side though, we need to encourage more and more people to ride bikes, to act bravely – this is one revolution that actually can make a difference, so do it, be brave, be bold and if you really want to be ethical, revolutionary and to do something about the environment, our society and the awful corporate capitalist corruption, quit your addiction to the car. Make this world a better place and turn parking lots into paradise. Let’s have critical mass every day. I believe the bicycle can achieve all of this. S: To change the way our society looks at bikes, hmmm... but how do you change society? We need to take bicycles away from the marketing big wigs and let each individual experience riding for themselves. Ride more tallbikes, ride
any old bike, be a child again, have fun and enjoy the wind in your face, ban advertising, create a 21 hour working week, de-pave and dig up the carparks and turn them into gardens, ban cars from city centres, make pedestrians king of the road and banish the rich to a tax haven in the middle of the atlantic, e voila: A wonderful view on cycling! Tell us a little bit about your current location as it sounds and looks pretty exciting. S: Well, we are now back at Pro-Cathedral (an old, empty cathedral awaiting development into, yep you guessed it, more student appartments), but we’re not sure for how long – there is an exchange of favour and the developers are happy for us to be here as long as it suits them. Before being here, we were at the old police station in the centre of the city, run by ArtspaceLifespace, who have been really supportive of our project. There seems to have been quite a growth of autonomous, volunteer-led spaces in Bristol over the last couple of years (Magpie, Emporium & The Free Shop to name a few) and also the official use of derelict buildings awaiting development for creative endeavours (Pro-Cathedral, The Old Bridewell Police Station and the disused motorcycle shop in Stokes Croft) – this is pretty exciting for everyone? How do you feel about this? K: Autonomous spaces like this have been around Bristol as long as I can remember. They come and go. There is a little bit of a trend for them at the moment with the whole ‘regenerate empty shops’ grants. And yes it is exciting and one can only hope that more and more spaces will grow and stay and take over. Talking of which, The Cube (a famous volunteer-run cinema and arts microplex – www.cubecinema.com) is over ten years old now and I was involved in helping to start that
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up. It’s not a squat or a temporary space, cos it actually has a bona fide 15 year lease, but when it was started, it felt like we were making a last stand. Maybe it was the beginning of something. There are currently over 3,000 or so empty commercial properties in Bristol, which are a potential resource for all of us here in Bristol and yet they are allowed to fall into decay and ruin in pursuit of profits. Last year we were relying on the council to come up with some space for us to build the bicycles for St. Paul’s carnival – for quite some time this was leading nowhere and if it hadn’t been for ArtspaceLifespace, we may have had to abandon the project altogether.
What are you looking forward to this coming year and where can we see you doing your thing? K: We’ll be cycling to Shambala Festival and Weymouth Carnival on tallbikes, building our first fairground ride – the Polar Bee I-Cycle Cream Company Carousel – and then coming up soon, a midnight Dekochari Hausu bike ride and movie on May 30th. Can people volunteer and get involved with Spoke‘n’chain? S: Yes. Sharpen the tide of oil, dip in the sea of bikes and free the city from the car! Come join us! La Bici e Libera!
S: We could be homeless in a month or two and in the worst case we’d have to wrap up and go into hibernation. Sure we’ll wiggle our way through to somewhere, we might even start thinking about renting. But whatever happens, the plan is to always be like a bicycle - flexible, freewheeling, moving... not holding on to things too hard and just being able to turn this way or that. Always reinvent the wheel.
Kev
Sylvie
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miscomp.wordpress.com
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Ronnie Bowie RS Bowie bike shop, Stranraer
“When I took over mother said, you should put your name up there. But I said, no, father’s name’s been there long enough so he can stay there, I’m quite happy at that. He’s the one who started it all, so. It wasn’t so much as buying a bike. It was more buying bits and pieces, batteries, whatever. But they would leave their bikes here while they went down the town to do their shopping and such like. So they just came here, parked their bikes up. If it needed anything doing to it, the two lads out the back would see to it before they came back for their bike. As I say, if it was five o’clock it would be at the top of the passage, if it was only an hour at the bottom end. And a beer or two probably. So some of them went home maybe not quite as straight as they’d come. Mother and father were well on when I took over. They used to open at eleven and close at maybe five or six. I’m very good I open at nine and close at four, sometimes now quarter to five (laughs). I’m going that way now, same as they did. Ach, it’s somewhere to hide, my wife took early retirement. Women can’t see you sitting doing a crossword and a cup of coffee for an hour and a half. If I want to sit here with a cup of coffee and a crossword for an hour and a half, I can do it. It’s what I call my bolthole. If I want to go on holiday, I just put a notice up saying ‘gone on holiday, sorry for any inconvenience’ with wee letters underneath ‘don’t give a damn’ (laughs). But no, I quite enjoy it, enjoy the company that comes and goes.”
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Last Summer, I packed a few things into panniers and rode my bike around the coast of Britain. I wanted to learn more about the country where I have lived all my life, but know so little about. I also wanted to learn about people, so made a collection of short soundslide films about the amazing people who live and work on our coast. In total, I made 80 little films – I sat up in my tent at night and edited them before finding an internet cafÊ the next day to upload them onto my site. They are rough around the edges, but I think, there is a nice instant quality about them. Here are extracts from two of the films. Nick Hand slowcoast.co.uk
Keira Rathbone Typewriter artist, Poole, Dorset
“I’m Keira Rathbone, and I’m an artist, specialising in typewriter art. I was studying for a fine art degree, and I went home to pick up my typewriter, thinking I would use it for writing my sketch book, but when it came down to it, I didn’t have anything to write. So still wanting to use my typewriter I just thought I would see if I could draw with it. And that triggered a whole lot of different experiments. I started by trying to make portraits out of different characters, brackets and forward slashes. I started using it as a mark making technique. The performance element crept in when I decided to take it out of my bedroom and studio and into fields and on the suspension bridge and up the Cabot Tower in Bristol. I started to notice people’s reactions and decided to develop that into a performance element. And over the six years, I’ve started dressing the part as well, according to the age of my typewriters. Actually I’ve always liked collecting vintage things. And have got about fifteen typewriters now. I’ve got a friend who works at a recycling depot in Wimborne and he calls me when a nice one comes in. He sends me a text and picture saying ‘you might want to come and have a look at this one’. I will have them all in with my next exhibition. As I was growing up, I lived with my mum and her mum most of my life. My mum would be typing a letter or something or my Gran would be typing an airmail letter
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to someone back in South Africa. So there would always be this tapping, which was a bit annoying at the time. But typewriters were always there and I would play with them. Never had anything to write though, except maybe ‘hello’. There was a big gap, then taking up drawing with it seemed a more natural thing for me. Although I paint and draw, this has become my main art form now and I do love it. And the people I meet are amazing, all walks of life, children through to elderly people, everyone seems to have some sort of connection with typewriters, so I get to meet lots of interesting people.” Tap, tap, tap, tap, ping!
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TOUR OF SWITZERLAND 1966 BY BOB COE In 1966 I was 20. Being a keen cyclist and having in previous years toured the UK, Ireland and Holland, I and fellow members of the Upton Manor Cycling Club, decided to ‘do’ Switzerland in July that year. On the way round we would also venture into Italy and Austria. The Upton Manor club was founded in 1924 by J J Cooper, who had a cycle shop and made cycle frames in Upton Park, in East London – not far from West Ham’s football ground. Although sadly no longer in existence the club was thriving in the mid-sixties with both time-trial racing and touring members. I think you could say that all of us going on the trip were fairly fit, but as even the least experienced cyclists will know, cycling uphill is hard. So riding over Alpine mountain passes each day was not going to be easy. We departed by train from London, then by boat across the Channel, before boarding the train once more to Lucerne. The schedule had all been worked out and booked by the
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more senior of the club members. We were to tackle just one mountain pass and cover about 50 to 60 miles each day. I, and the other younger members of the group, having been used to riding much longer distances each day in the UK, thought this was going to be a bit of a doddle. My opinion was, however, changed half way up the very first mountain that we tackled! Showing off and racing ahead of the others, thinking I must be near the top, I hit the wall. Getting “hunger knock” is no fun at the best of times, but half-way up a mountain with falling temperatures, it’s awful. With only a packet of polo mints to revive me, I had to stop, munch the lot, and then slowly peddle up to the summit, another forty minutes or so of 10% gradients. Needless to say I had learned my lesson the hard way and after that I made sure I ate well, paced myself – the passes are a lot steeper and longer than I thought – and carried plenty of food with me.
On the way round we were to tackle some of the highest of the Alpine passes, including the Grimsel at 2,163m (7,103ft), the Furka at 2,436m (7,999ft) and the giant Stelvio at 2,757m (9,045ft), that’s over 1.7 miles high! The weather was mixed, as it often is in the Alps. One moment it would be tipping it down (rain lower down, but sleet or snow near the top), and the next we’d be in brilliant sunshine. The mountain air was wonderful, the scenery fantastic and the mellow sound of the cow bells echoing across the valleys was just magical. Staying in small hotels or guesthouses along the way our favourite evening meal was Vienna Schnitzel and chips! You could get it everywhere and it was just the job for storing up enough energy for the day to come, especially when it is washed down with a glass or two of German beer. Everything went well for me until we got to St. Moritz. This was our only overnight stop of the tour at altitude (over a mile high) and I was sick several times in the night. I blamed it on the altitude, but for some reason everyone else seemed to think that it was due to one too many strong beers the night before. Whatever the reason, despite being unable to eat breakfast, I had to get on the bike and cycle over yet another mountain pass! Rather than shoot off ahead with the younger riders I could only just about turn the pedals and stay with the more senior guys. It was the longest, hardest day I can remember, but I did make it and was absolutely fine the next day after a good night’s sleep. We were now crossing the border into Italy and ahead of us was the big one, the one we’d all been dreading. The Stelvio is the second highest Alpine road pass, being just 13m lower than the Col de L’Iseran in France. Now for those of you who follow the Tour de France, when you watch the pros going up the Tourmalet or Alpe d’Huez, remember that they are mere tiddlers compared to some of the Swiss/Italian passes. Alpe d’Huez, for example is only 1,860m high – the Stelvio is 2,757m, nearly half as high again! I will never forget the morning we woke in Bormio and saw ahead of us the Stelvio in
the distance – which is reached via 34 hairpin bends at some 22km distance. It was awesome and when, after much effort, we finally got to the top, we really began to think that it was all going to be down hill from here. From there on it was a relatively flat run across the border into Austria and on to Bregenz on Lake Constance. We arrived in Bregenz on Friday 29 July 1966 and the next day on our schedule was a rest day. Now you may be wondering why I remember this date specifically, but it was, in fact, the eve of a very important day. We awoke on the Saturday morning with one overriding concern. How were we going to see the World Cup final between England and West Germany. Now, right from the start, and every four years since, we had never thought that England would win the World Cup, so we had no plans in place. In fact, without the communications marvels of today, it was perhaps surprising that we even knew that England had got to the final. Anyway, we wandered aimlessly around this beautiful Austrian town with only one thing in mind, until at last we came across an Italian bar that had a television. No big screen and black and white of course, but nonetheless if we peered closely enough we could just about make out which side was which. With half the bar (mainly Italians) supporting England and the rest (Austrians) vying for West Germany, the atmosphere was great. None of us will, of course, forget that day. As West Ham provided the captain and all the goal scorers in the 4-2 win we really felt that Upton Manor and Upton Park had won the World Cup for England. When we went out that evening (for celebratory Vienna Schnitzel and chips of course), we were shown great hospitality from the Austrians and it seemed that everyone came up and congratulated us on England’s win – it was brilliant! After that it was a fairly gentle ride across country from Austria, back to Switzerland, retracing our steps back to the UK from Lucerne. It was a brilliant tour and one I will never forget!
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the bicycle quick release
let ‘em have it! For the fifteen or so years I’ve been involved in cycling, the ‘quick release’ wheel and seat mechanism never made any sense to me as a standard feature on bicycles. Many friends have had wheels and seatposts stolen in seconds – in the middle of the day – from busy public places. It got me thinking.. what is practical about having your bike disassemble so easily that when locking your bike up outside, you then need to carry your two wheels and seatpost around with you all day? Or, what is practical about carrying enough U-locks or cable to bind your frame, front wheel, rear wheel and seatpost to a secure street object? Why would bicycle design integrate a feature that made your bike so vulnerable and such a pain in the ass? The quick release (QR), an Italian invention from the 1920s, became popular among cyclists in race situations for speed of wheel removal to deal with punctures. In the 1980s the consumer bike market adopted it as the standard with hollow axle wheels – not for necessary speed but for everyday ease. Ironically enough, the most quoted reason for the ‘consumer advantages of QR’ is that you can ‘easily put your bike in your car’! While today you may still not find them on cheaper bicycles most bikes are sold off the peg with QR mechanisms. Don’t get me wrong; If you decide to fit them that’s fine. But for me, fitting them as standard makes the industry complicit in the constant theft 40
of bikes and bike parts that happens in any city. The industry cash in on wheels being nicked – as people keep purchasing new wheels to replace stolen ones. When I was a teenager I got into mountain biking and lapped up the scene like a thirsty alsatian – y’know like kids do – reading the mags cover to cover and reciting bike components with friends like top trumps. I got a job so that I could buy more bike parts. I spent all my money on bikes! By the time I had my second bike stolen however – which I couldn’t afford to replace – I was bike-less for two years. When I finally got a bike again I bought two good locks, ripped out the quick releases for allen key skewers and still have it 8 years later. I am no longer interested in the bike industry. Despite the humble bicycle being part of the love-in greenwash economic sector it is not an inherently ecological, society changing tool. The bike industry is big business and operates under the same profit motives as the car industry. Last week I got chatting to a guy in a bike shop who was telling me how the bike companies are starting to build their bikes with proprietary componentry - i.e. you would need a set of ‘Trek’ allen keys to maintain a Trek bike that would not undo the allen key bolts on a ‘Raleigh’ bike. I laughed. This is great capitalism! Proprietary Digital Bicycle Diagnostics anyone? MOT, Road Tax... is the bicycle exempt from any of this?
by Ali Sparror | www.participatoryspectacle.info
Cars (I’ve never owned one, or fixed one) were a one-time tinkerers playground. OK, I’m being romantic, they were a relatively open access technology that anyone could work on if they desired. Design innovation, psychological profiling and planned obsolescense have made cars into the brilliantly marketable commodity of a robot friend who understands not only what you mean when you press the brake pedal, but who you are and what your career and lifestyle motivations are – the mass production of KITT, David Hasselhoff’s intelligent and highly advanced car. The problem with proprietary design is that the technology is encoded and the interface unique to each model; it isn’t accessible to the general public. And the history of industrial design teaches us that great innovation is always followed by a subsequent regression of its liberatory potential to keep consumers and technological
progress teasingly at arms length. The next thing is always better, and the last thing is just about to break. Until I’m tooling my own bike components (I don’t think it’s gonna happen) I will be at the whims of an industry that on the whole exists to propagate itself through economic profit. Remembering that (all property is theft) if someone wants something enough they will steal it, ditching your quick release mechanisms is a simple action to better secure your bike. Hacking your existing quick release is a good non-consumption and free way to do this. The wheel is still easy to loosen and tighten, but opportunists won’t be able to nick it. The financial alternative is purchasing a set of allen key skewers (around 12 pounds for a set of three). 41
Okay, so here’s the get yrrr hands dirrrrty, technical part... It is pretty straight forward and doesn’t require technical skill… but... EXTREME WARNING... people slide screwdrivers into their hands when they do this. Shield hands with towels or rags. Other than a keen eye, this will require: * a very small flathead/slotted screwdriver (like a 1.2mm) * a vice (or some clamp system to secure the rod) * a steel washer with serrations approx. 2cm in diameter (hunt around your garage or go scrounge at a bike shop)
let ‘em have it...!
01 Open your quick release (QR) to remove your wheel. Unscrew the QR all the way – removing it from the wheel axle, so that you are left with the separate pieces of the skewer rod, springs, and nut. We are going to remove the cam mechanism that the lever operates. We will dissect the lever component so that we can remove the QR ‘head’ – leaving just the skull of the skewer rod.
02 Lock the skewer rod or the QR head into a vice so that the lever faces down to the ground.
03 The QR lever may have a nut. If it does remove this first using a spanner or pliers. The main task is removing the split washer – also known as a lock ring; sometimes there are two. This is both brute strength and a careful teasing – wriggling operation. Try to lever the screwdriver between the washer and the QR head – flipping the washer off the lever. Also try to lever the screwdriver into the split part of the washer, twisting the washer apart.
skull end of skewer rod
04 lever head
split washer
Once you’ve removed the washers the QR lever should slide out. You can then remove the head leaving you with one long skewer – threaded at one end, with the QR skull at the other end. Slide your new serrated washer up the skewer rod to the jaw of the skull. The washer should be wider than the skull, with serrations facing the frame – replicating the function of the now discarded head.
05 Slide the skewer rod back through your wheel axle. With the wheel back on your bike, screw the bolt onto the skewer rod. Insert the rod of a screwdriver, kitchen fork, etc into the mouth of the QR skull to tighten the mechanism, securing wheel to forks or frame. 42
WORDS & ILLUSTRATION BY IMOGENILLUSTRATOR@YAHOO.CO.UK In 2005, the G8 Bike Ride, a sprawling mass of cyclists, sweated its way from London to Gleneagles during one of the hottest summers on record, on a mission to spread the word about the protests that were to take place against the G8 Summit, and highlight the inequality of eight world leaders making decisions on behalf of all of us. We were a group of about fifty or so cyclists of all ages and abilities, with a custom-built, tandem-pulled sound-system in tow. Our travels by bike were in sharp contrast to the world leaders, off to chin-wag about Climate Change, who were being flown by private jet and helicoptered into the venue...
The G8 Bike Ride quickly became a community on wheels and friendships formed. Riders came from different towns and places along the route and many joined or left along the way. Many had previously been involved in activism – on the Road-protests in the 1990s, involved in direct action against the fossil fuel extraction, animal rights abuses, or GM crops and others who were peace and human rights campaigners. We also had many people on the ride who had never cycled long distances before, some who were not even regular cyclists, a pregnant mum and an eight month old cyclist-to-be. We began to swap ideas and discuss the potential for future rides. We knew the mass of cyclists and a bike-pulled soundsystem was a great way to attract attention, and that the bicycle allowed you the freedom and intimacy to talk to the people you passed along the way. But on the G8 Bike Ride there was little time to stop and chat about why we were riding and the issues we were passionate about - we were always in a hurry to just get there. So in the Winter of 2005 some of the G8 Bike Riders decided to form Bicycology: a cycle activist collective, with its initial aim being to do another cycle tour, with the opportunity to put on events along the way. Our name Bicycology (pronounced: bye-sigh-koll-o-gee) is an amalgamation of the words bicycle: our chosen and well-loved form of transportation; psychology: how our brain works, and how we work socially; and ecology: the planet and ecosystem we exist in. Bicycology’s first tour took place in August 2006, beginning in the (now sadly extinct) RampArt squatted social centre in London, and ending in Lancaster. We had devised a number of activities to attract and engage with people as we stopped off along the route. These included Dr.. Bike – a free bike check and repair, and various pedal-powered machines such as a game-boy. We compiled a booklet 44
Bicycle: our chosen and well-loved form of transportation, Psychology: how our brain works, and how we work socially, AND Ecology: the planet and ecosystem we exist in. ‘The Bicycology Guide’ which encompassed different environmental and social issues, and formed the basis of our topical leaflets – all of which are currently available to read and download from the Bicycology website. To enhance the spectacle we borrowed a giraffe-like tall-bike (two bikes welded on top of each other) and a reverse steering BMX. We pride ourselves in being able to carry everything we need on our bikes, actively demonstrating that bicycles are not only a practical but hugely enjoyable way to get about. We have since done another summer cycle tour but this time in the South West, improving our range of activities and resources, to put on events such as pedal-powered film nights and talks. In 2008 we worked hard to produce a week long event in Lancaster celebrating cycling and sustainability, called ‘Routes to Solutions’. For this event, we created a series of educational workshops such as ‘Food for Thought’ where we cooked and ate a vegan meal with locals, and discussed food and environment-related issues, as
well as showing a pedal-powered film about vegan organic farming. ‘Cycling question time’ was inspired by political panel shows, and gave locals a chance to air their cycling grievances as well as to explore what can be done to make Lancaster a more cycling-friendly place. We also created events for young people; ‘Planet Bike’ took place in a local children’s library and was a storytelling bike adventure and bike craft activities, whilst ‘Bike fixing for Kids’ gave young people a chance to learn and use some simple mechanic skills. In recent years we have been improving our skills and resources, through bike mechanic training, and development of leaflets and literature, as well as bike electricity generators and a smaller, more easily transportable soundsystem. We have been supporting larger events such as The Camp For Climate Action and The Climate Caravan, as well as attending various other actions and demonstrations to lend our support, and putting on some smaller events of our own such as film nights. Our group operates on a non-hierarchical basis; we make decisions through consensus, rotate roles, and try to share skills as much as possible. This means we all get to have a say in where our group is headed, and that we get to learn from friends in a supportive environment, skills we might not otherwise pick up – all of this helps to make our group stronger. Although we are geographically disparate, we try and meet several times a year in order to organise events and to share skills and information and to keep Bicycology on the road. At our most recent meet-up we had the pleasure of using The Bristol Bike Project’s extensive workshop space and resources to fix up nine bikes for us to donate to the No Borders ‘Bike Library’ Camp in Calais, France. No Borders is an activist group which demands the end to border regime for everyone and are currently working to support refugees in Calais, most of whom are from war-torn Afghanistan. They are currently camped at Calais with the hope of making it to the UK in order to seek asylum and are currently living in
makeshift shelters and face severe repression by the french police and by people-smugglers. It is hoped that these bikes will allow activists supporting the refugees to travel between groups of refugees more quickly and effectively. This is very typical of the kind of activity bicycology will continue to engage in, using the skills we have developed to support a cause that we feel is important. In the future Bicycology hopes to continue with its cycle activism. We are currently supporting the Merthyr to Mayo Solidarity Bike Ride in support of communities resisting fossil fuel extraction. We’ll be cycling from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, where locals are suffering from huge open-cast coal mining operations on their doorsteps, to Rossport in County Mayo, Ireland, where Shell propose to bring a dangerous high-pressure gas-pipeline onshore. We’ll also be attending the World Car Free Network conference that is happening in York at the end of June, and popping up at smaller events around the country. To find out more about BICYCOLOGY or the No Borders Camp in Calais visit:
www.bicycology.org.uk www.calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com
The Magician
From the floods in London, to an autonomous squat at the foot of the Pyrenees, passing through the naked bike ride in Paris, and snow storms near Toulouse, the bike seems to follow me everywhere I go. As a means of transportation no matter the weather, an ornamental object, or a way to celebrate as a critical mass, it takes on so many different forms to adapt to its new environment. It’s like a magician of sorts. One moment it’s hanging from a tree, the next it’s between the legs of a sexy half-naked cyclist before gliding through deep water and overtaking cars stuck in traffic. I am a secret admirer of the bike kind and those who saddle them.
Todd Legler 46
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Todd Legler
In a city made for cars, why are bicycles getting places faster?
Beginning in April 2008, as commuters were mired in the typical Friday rush-hour traffic logjam, members of an organization calling itself CRIMANIMALZ have taken to two of Los Angeles’ busiest freeways on bicycles in a flash-mob type protest aimed at raising questions about transportation. Weaving in and out of choked traffic, cyclists surprised frustrated motorists with a spirited sprint on the region’s most clogged and polluted arteries. While the ride’s political stance and agenda was neutral, many participants invoked the group’s collective motto: “If you rode a bicycle, you’d be home by now!” – a statement against oil dependency, in support of sustainable living and a collective critique of the L.A. transportation infrastructure. The riders are pointing out that in a city like Los Angeles made for cars, bicycle riders are reaching their destinations faster. CRIMANIMALZ was initially created out of rider reaction to the police crackdown of Santa Monica Critical Mass, a bicycle ride with as many as 300 participants that meet on the first Friday of the month. Ignored in large for over two years, Santa Monica Police officers issued 32 citations, many erroneously, at the Santa Monica Critical Mass 50
ride on November 2nd, 2007. Critical Mass participants voiced their outrage at the City of Santa Monica Council Meeting a few weeks later and some participants convened as ‘Council of N’, a secret group that privately discussed the police harassment. ‘Council of N’ talked with city officials and the police, but talks led nowhere. Several of the ‘Council of N’ members voted on creating a secondary ride in Santa Monica, this time calling it Criminal Mass, naming it so because they felt they were being criminalized for their legal behaviors. This name was changed to CRIMANIMALZ, a portmanteau of the words Critical, Criminal and Animals. The name CRIMANIMALZ invokes the animal spirit of the Westside bicycling community which is host to large group rides with
names like Los Angelopes, a large antelope with ape hanger handles for antlers for a mascot and Pier Pressure, in which a giraffe and pigeon with a handlebar moustache wearing a cycling cap is a recurring theme. Members of the CRIMANIMALZ are looking for city officials to make bicycle safety a priority, not only through the creation of safe and easy places to ride, but also as a means of transportation on the city’s increasingly busy thoroughfares. With rising gas prices and a government bent on pushing sustainable practices, more people are expected to turn to bikes as an alternative means of transportation. We caught up with Richtotheie, one of the three guys that started Crimanimalz, and put a few questions his way....
For more info: www.crimanimalz.com www.vimeo.com/crimanimalz
L.A. has a real reputation for being a totally car-centric city. Is there much of a bicycle presence in L.A. right now? Los Angeles is a “Car City”, no doubt. A few years ago, bicyclists were this “pesky P.O.S. that’s blocking my way”. Aggression was the norm out there and sadly still is today. However, bicycling has skyrocketed since then and now it’s something people are just ‘getting used to’. We’re slowly becoming an accepted obstacle of the environment! What do I mean by that? Well, Portland, Oregon has tons of bikers comparatively speaking and you can expect to see them everywhere, day or night, rain or shine; hopefully within the next decade, bicyclists will be expected on the streets here too in that way. When was your last Freeway Ride? Undetermined. There’s a fat blurry line between riding on the freeway for F.U.N. and for demonstration purposes. Although the total of illegally being on the freeway is somewhere just under 10. I noticed that on one of the freeway-riding videos, some car-drivers actually open their
words: jimmy ell stills captured from ‘Crimanimalz Freeway Ride II’
doors on purpose to stop you from passing - do you get a lot of aggro from motorists? We usually don’t get ANY aggression from motorists on the freeway... They’re too busy reading books or talking on their cellphones in traffic. When they DO notice us, especially when on the tallbike, it’s usually a sea of honks and cheers! We spice up the commute home and hopefully make them wish they were riding with us instead of being stuck in that metal heap. There definitely seems to be an ever-growing cycling culture in many US cities, the obvious ones being Portland, Davis and San Francisco – do you think L.A. could ever follow suit? L.A.’s bike culture has grown like a wonder weed through the cracks of this watered desert, but even though our numbers have probably overtripled in the last 2-3 years, there are just SO many vehicles in L.A.! The city is putting in train lines to connect more areas, but it still doesn’t quite get you places that your car could. You have to remember that L.A. is the second biggest city in the USA and spans out at almost 500 square miles – biking 20 miles or more to and from work is just too much for
the average person and most people are also afraid of riding in the street. Obviously this doesn’t excuse the people who are driving less than 5 miles to their workplace - imagine if they rode a bike instead of driving – that would be thousands of cars staying home and not clogging up the streets nor polluting our air. The real trick though is that biking has to become COOL in order for the masses to really get involved. Have you had many run-ins with the police whilst freeway-riding? We’ve had one run-in which you can see at the end of the 2nd freeway ride: http://vimeo. com/1050311 - that’s me with the PARTY TIME cape and the tallbike. After a long lecture and several questions, they asked how I made the bike. Very cool guys. They were mostly concerned with our safety which I truly appreciate. I am grateful even more that I didn’t get a ticket since we all ran from the officers and were chased for about 5 minutes up and down streets going the wrong way, sirens blaring... of course they picked me to follow – the guy on the tallbike whose head was bobbing around 10ft in the air... 51
The Bristol Bike Project was set up
by two friends in December 2008. It is a volunteer-run, community bike project based in the heart of Bristol’s Artists’ Quarter, Stokes Croft. They repair and recycle unwanted bicycles donated to them by the general public in order to provide them to underprivileged and marginalised groups within Bristol. Womens’ skillsharing workshops, single-speed nights, ‘chopshops’ and bike-trailer building are also all happening now on a regular basis.
all images ©2010 Stine Stensbak
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www.thebristolbikeproject.org www.thebristolbikeproject.blogspot.com
The workshop environment is all about sharing what you know and learning what you don't. It is an opportunity to empower yourself and those around you. Humanity, equality and respect are paramount.
We move forward together.
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words maria baños-smith pics sébastien bernaert
RIDING GUATEMALA CITY On my way to work one morning, I came up against a police block. It was a usual occurrence, but this time was different. As I stopped to see what was going on, a military policeman shouted “Hey you! You can go round that block over there to get down to your office”. How did he know I was headed that way? Easy, I was on a bicycle so I was easy to spot – the authorities had noticed me do the same journey every day – there were barely any other bikes on the road and so I was easily singled out and very visible. I used to give as good as I got to the endless cajoles from the gunmen guarding every shop front and government building who’d whistle or shout at me as I went past simply because I was a girl and on a bike. But after that day I stopped answering back. I became a little more aware of my vulnerability, but actually had never felt safer; if they’d been watching me for that long and not bothered me, they probably never planned to. It was my bike that gave me precious freedom in one of the top three most dangerous cities in Latin America. This was Guatemala City, 2004, where a fearful population is a controlled population. No one goes out after dark in Guatemala
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City. Therefore it’s dangerous to go out after dark. So, no one goes out, and so on. The concept of critical mass is often used in a bike setting, but in Guatemala (like in many other places) it’s used to limit people’s space to live. A CIA-backed ‘guerilla war’ ripped this country apart for 36 years and the shocking truth is that today more people are murdered every day in Guatemala than during the conflict which ‘ended’ in 1996. I had left my job just over a year earlier. My dream job advising a Member of the European Parliament on international development issues didn’t exactly turn out to be a nightmare, but certainly an interrupted night’s sleep with some panicky sweats thrown in. Like so many others I wanted to make change happen; I’d studied a Masters at the best lefty university in the UK and had lived in Latin America. Now I understood how the ‘big’ decisions are made, in Europe at least. However, I was aware of just how little I really knew and felt like I needed to go back and live amongst those people whose name politicians, policy makers and well-meaning rich kids (often the same thing) want to act in and hear it from them directly. I knew by now that it was the people that would make
“ the jolted and tragic history of Guatemala doesn’t allow a newcomer to share a sense of past” change happen. So Guatemala it was. I lived there for over 3 years. I say ‘lived’ because you don’t really stay or visit somewhere for that amount of time. Living somewhere that’s not home makes you redefine living. I was very alive, but I was also never really at home. Some places will allow you to create a home, but the jolted and tragic history of Guatemala that’s swamped in secrecy doesn’t allow a newcomer to share a sense of past, and the present is so tenuous that you’re never sure if it can really be the ‘home’ of anyone. Monday morning in Guatemala and it was my first day at work. I remember cringing at the thought of having to wait for an irregular bus to take me to the other side of town with no control over what time I’d get there. The Population Council offices were in the wealthy zone 14 – the area where Lonely Planet says you can get a milkshake and taco without risking your stomach – or your life on the street. The first thing that struck me about my workplace was that the road was cut off from non-residents, marked by two armed guards at both ends. The message was clear: in here, you’re safe. Outside this road, you’re not. And if you’re not in a car, forget it! This made the wait for my bus back home at the end of the day all the more edgy. Thirty minutes of looking over my shoulder and finally the bus came in to sight. Safe at last. At the next stop, a group of 5 or 6 soldiers got on, all heavily armed, all looking no more than 18 years old, and so used to swinging machine guns around their shoulders that the barrel of one in particular often came up against me, eventually pressing in to my leg, as the bus got fuller and fuller of workers making their way home. I ran the rest of the way home and a couple of hours later, James (my brother, who also happened to be out there as a journalist) arrived back on his bike, clearly having experienced quite a different city journey to mine. His rusting black racer had a thin pannier rack on the back and I used to sit on it as he whizzed through the
traffic, changing direction every time a bus belched out a cloud of black smoke. It was excruciatingly painful, but definitely preferable to public transport. I soon bought my own bike and it wasn’t until then that I was able to really move in the city. And ‘live’ in the city. From then on I cycled the main artery of the city every morning past the market stalls setting up, the grid-locked traffic and armed guard after armed guard standing on the entrances to shops, banks and government buildings. Invariably, some of them would whistle or shout some obscenity as I went past and I would respond in kind at them before whizzing down the road and out of sight. Bikes give you the safety of a get-away vehicle. Over time however, the presence of armed guards became complemented by
military personnel on street corners, not guarding anything in particular, just the streets themselves, or rather claiming a stake on behalf of the army Colonels and the Generals of the shared space and reminding the city’s inhabitants that they were in control, and these were their streets. The first time I rode past the gates guarding the entrance to the road my office was on, the 55
armed guards greeted me with some surprise but they smiled at the unusual sight. They’d get a bit miffed if I just ducked the barrier, so I’d stand and wait for them to lift it and let me through – it was their only daily task and I didn’t want to take it away from them. But it was clear as day that the streets were designed for cars, not pedestrians and certainly not bikes. At my office Cruz, the cleaner, beamed when I first brought my bike to work – he created a little space for it inside and I could swear he would take some polish to it and occasionally my brakes would be tightened or my wheel pumped up, and I didn’t know why! He told me it reminded him of the countryside where he came from, where bikes were the common mode of transport. But the bosses took a different stance. At first they mocked but, just like with the armed guards, my bike started to grind against their world view. I tried to point out that driving to the supermarket at lunchtime was slower than cycling – it was only ten minutes on foot for God’s sake and they’d enjoy the sunshine and some exercise if they came out with me on two wheels! But they considered themselves city people, and the bike was confined to the countryside – it was part of a life they rejected and strove to move away from. After about nine months, the big boss told me that cycling to the office was ‘too dangerous’, and ran ‘against the organisations policy’ so I should stop cycling in. Soon after that, Cruz told me I was no longer able to keep my bike inside because there was not 56
enough room for it. He looked at me with very sad eyes and I asked what was wrong. His niece had died that weekend because she was ill and his family had no money to pay for a car to take her from the remote village where she lived to the hospital. The head boss of the Population Council drove a Mercedes but his love of cars didn’t stretch to a lift for Cruz’s niece. I didn’t last much longer in that job and left to work with a grass-roots organisation run by indigenous women and it turned out they would give me the education of my life. Around that time, the idea of starting a Critical Mass in Guatemala City was taking shape. No one rode a bike, car drivers needed educating, bus drivers needed taming, and more than anything, people needed a reason to get on a bike for the first time and collective action seemed like the best way to go about encouraging this. We put word out that the first Critical Mass in Guatemala City was to be held on the first Friday of the month. About 12 people turned up – we made some noise and confused and annoyed the car-drivers! Numbers didn’t go up considerably as time went on and I realised that the reason people weren’t coming was because they simply didn’t have a bike. And so it was that we discovered a great little organisation about 2 hours from the capital off a beaten track, right next door to Maya Pedal who have become famous for making practical machines out of bikes, from coffee grinders to washing machines. Quite quickly, our front room turned in to a bike storage space for
around 50 bikes; we had all shapes and sizes and it felt good to be in the company of so many bikes.
family-friendly, more ‘cyclists rights’ approach and is now also seen as a way of exploring new places on the outskirts of the city.
Not long after, I cycled over to a gathering organised by an art collective and saw a guy I’d met once before who was involved in sharing circus skills with street-kids. Sébastien was immediately interested in the bike project and in buying a bike off me, so he cycled me over to my house then and there, with me on the back and him laughing in broken Spanish.
The bikes continued to sell and many people came to agree that somewhere between a pedestrian and a car driver, our bikes let us float in and out of places, immunised against the city’s many barriers and opening up the possibility of another Guatemala City.
When he saw all the bikes piled up his eyes lit up and I knew he’d be part of the future of the project. He opened up a whole world to me through the kids and his take on spending time with them. Unlike me, they had a strong sense of belonging and I began to realise that it was actually my bike that was allowing me
Since we left, the country has become more dangerous as the drugs trade and the gangs push the stakes ever higher. This translates into 15 murders a day in a country of 2 million. But it’s typical of the spirit of the people to come out on to the streets to stake their right to a different future so bike demos fit into a myriad of other visible struggles for a fairer and more dignified existence; the difference
“ our front room turned in to a bike storage space for around 50 bikes at a go...” to feel at home in Guatemala because it was part of how I could experience the city. All belonging is only as temporary as life itself, but when I was on my bike, alone or with others, I was interacting with the city, with its people, the different places and routes and taking in all the sounds and smells along the way. Like life, cycling is transient by its very nature; it is the journeys themselves that make up what matters and not the destinations.
between here and there is that they believe another world is possible, and that’s why in small pockets at least, change does happen. Critical Mass continues to happen in Guatemala City on Sunday mornings. For further information visit the blog: www.masacriticaguate.blogspot.com
Sébastien and I continued to go and pick up batches of bikes and they sold like hot cakes. Slowly cyclists became more and more visible on the streets of the city and people who had been genuinely shocked when they first saw me on a bike in a city dominated by danger and pollution, started to cycle and even turn up to Critical Mass. What had been unthinkable just months before, became a reality and over time, a group of Guatemalans took over the Critical Mass and gave it their own meaning. It started off as a sometimes angry protest aimed at car drivers, but this group preferred to take it in the direction of a 57
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boneshakermag.wordpress.com boneshakermag@gmail.com
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When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. 60
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE