Healthy & Delicious Strawberries THE BENEFITS OF ADDING THIS FRUIT TO YOUR DIET
Queen of Speed VICTORIA PENDELTON TRADES IN HER BIKE FOR THAT PHOTOGENIC SMILE
When in Rome
YOUR GUIDE TO SIGHTSEEING THIS BEAUTIFUL CITY
MAY 2014
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WINDOW DISPLAYS AT THE FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN & MERCHANDISING
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summer2014 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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7 START WITH STRAWBERRIES 8
WINDOW DRESSING
10 WHEN IN ROME 14 VICTORIA PENDELTON
OLYMPIC TRACK CYCLIST CHAMPION & SUPERMODEL
22 RICHARD AVEDON A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST
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25 5 TOP REASONS TO BUY FROM A BIKE SHOP
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letter from the editor
ANGELA LEAVITT Founder + Editorial Director
PAUL SMITH President + Publisher
RANDY DUNBAR Art Director
RICHARD BIRD Senior Editor
MARA SZABO Features Director
ANGELA LEAVITT Designer
SALLY SUN Photo Editor
Dear Readers,
Thank you for reading Spoke. I purchaesd my 1st rode
bike in 2010 and fell in love with cycling. The dominant memories of that day are of shimmering carbon and endless possibility. I did not know that afternoon that I would someday wind up riding my bike over 200 miles in one day. But I understood it was
MOR WEIZMAN Art Prodution Assistant
DAVID LANDRY Assistant Editor
beautiful and would become a friend that would change my life.
This magazine is for people with a passion for cycling.
Whether you are a beginner or an avid cyclist Spoke will give you tips on the latest cycling trends and latest tips on keeping up with your fellow riding mates. Spoke is your road biking, mountain bike, and cycling bible. Spoke is packed with unrivalled, expert reviews of the latest road bikes and gear, inspirational
PERCILLA PRESS Associate Publisher
JULIE GULARTE Account Director
routes and rides from the U.S. and around the world, evocative features that take you inside every aspect of cycling and unmatched nutrition, fitness and training advice guaranteed to
LYNNE STRONER Sales + Marketing Manager
help you get the best from yourself and your bike. Thanks, Angela Leavitt
ROBERT SINGER Administrative Assistant
CHERYL LEAVITT Information Technology Director
SPOKE PUBLISHING LLC BETTY BICYCLE Chairman
GABRIEL GEAR Vice President + Chief Finacial Officer 5548 Newport Ave., 3rd Floor , Long Beach, Ca 90814, 565-222-4833 5
AD
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spoke
spring 2014
FOOD 5TH FLOOR TRAVEL
START WITH strawberries It is the perfect time to eat them. Throw strawberries in your salad and you will get your full days dosage with vitamin C
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ith over 600 varieties to choose from, there are no shortage of these red delicous treats around. Not only are they sweet strawberries these delicious treats were ranked as one of
the top ten antiouxant capacity fruits. Strawberries have a high flavonoid content which has shown to help prevent cancer. Eating strawberries on a regular basis has many health benefits.
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5TH FLOOR
Window Dressing Themed windows make brilliant vignettes on FIDM’s 5th floor. By Dagmar Winston
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“ I used to look at spreadsheets everyday before coming to FIDM and now I’m allowed to be creative and work on amazing projects such as styling the Michael Jackson -- Peter Lam, Visual Communications Grad and Stylist.
ach quarter at fashion school, FIDM, located in downtown Los Angeles, the 5th floor is
host to a variety of window displays created by the Visual Communication students. Each semester they are given a theme and told to run with it. The results, quite often, are spectacular. This semester’s theme is nature and instructor Katherine LoPresti instructed students to build their window displays with “as much organic materials as possible.”
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY BENSON
2014
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TRAVEL
WHEN IN
rome
Rome is unique in having a sovereign state located entirely within its city limits, the Vatican City. The Vatican is an enclave of Rome and a sovereign possession of the Holy See, the supreme government of the Roman Catholic Church. Rome hosts foreign embassies to both Italy and the Holy See, although frequently the same ambassador is accredited to both. ome is the capital of Italy and also of the Prov-
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ince of Rome and of the region of Lazio. With 2.7
The Colosseum is an elliptical amphitheatre in the centre of the city of Rome, Italy. it was the largest amphitheatre of the Roman Empire.
million residents in 1,285.3 km2 (496.3 sq mi), it is also the country’s largest and most popu-
lated comune and fourth-most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The urban area of Rome extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of around 3.8 million. Between 3.2 and 4.2 million people live in Rome metropolitan area. The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber within Lazio (Latium). The Vatican City is an independent country within the city boundaries of Rome, the only example of a country within a city existing.
where is rome ?
Rome can’t be toured in a day, either. The city feels like the exhibit halls of a giant outdoor museum, a real-life collage of piazzas, open-air markets, and mind-boggling historic sites. Toss a coin into the Trevi Fountain, drop your jaw at the Colosseum and the Pantheon, and fuel up on cappuccino for an afternoon of shopping at the Campo de’Fiori or Via Veneto. Dig into a plate of fresh pasta, some succulent fried artichokes, or a tender oxtail stew for one of the best meals of your life.
Michelangelo’s David The statue of David portrays the ancient hero who killed the fierce opponent Goliath by using a simple slingshot.
The Arch of Constantine is a triumphal arch in Rome, sDedicated in 315, it is the latest of the existing triumphal arches in Rome. 10
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGELA LEAVITT
Style is mainly a matter of existence
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VICTORIA PENDELTON Olympic Track Cyclist Champion Fashion Model Pendelton showed promise at 13 and was spotted three years
later by the assistant national track coach, Marshal Thomas. She wanted to concentrate on her education at Fearnhill School in Letchworth Garden City, and later a degree in Sport and Exercise Science by Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. She enjoyed some success on the track as a student before graduating and becoming a full-time cyclist.
BY ANGELA LEAVITT PHOTOGRAPHED BY VICORIAPENDELTONCOLUK 12
Victoria Pendleton on the cover of Fabulous Magazine. By admin Published: September 11, 2012.
P
endelton retired as reigning world sprint champion, and after winning gold in the Olympic keirin. But, Kira Cochrane discovers, her time in the saddle was often fraught, she used to self harm and she had a serious falling out with British Cycling. According to Victoria Pendleton, British Cycling has already sold off her bike. Some staff members will probably never speak to her again. She suspects they will be relieved not to have to deal with her any more. She tells me all this with a twinkly, tinkling laugh, the kind people adopt when they are trying especially hard not to sound bitter. The words ring in my head as I hang up the phone after our second conversation. I feel unexpectedly gutted. I had anticipated writing a fairly straightforward story about a champion – a complicated champion, yes, but one who had experienced familiar ebbs of struggle and glory on the way to Olympic gold at Beijing, followed by those wild, psychological battles in London, where she won gold in the keirin, silver in the sprint. Instead, the tale of Queen Vic feels much darker. Pendleton is immensely friendly when we meet at the St Pancras Renaissance hotel, London, with an openness people probably either find brilliant or totally unnerving. She is renowned for being nakedly emotional, sobbing when she loses – sobbing when she wins. “I’m someone who wears their heart on their sleeve,” she says. “I find it hard to act other than the way I feel.”
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Photography by Jason Castillo
What comes across from the start is her quest for approval, specifically from men. The more desperate she has been to achieve this, the more it seems to have pushed people away. We talk about her earliest memory, and she says it is probably of watching her father race. Max Pendleton was a star amateur cyclist when she was growing up, and the book begins with him riding away from her up a hill, as she struggles to catch him, with the words "he doesn't love me, he doesn't love me," beating through her head. Her other earliest memory is of being on the back of a yellow tricycle, ridden by her father, alongside her twin brother Alex. When they were four, Alex was pricked by a wild rose thorn that caused blood poisoning; he then had leukaemia. The illness came on suddenly, she says, and she remembers the moment he was rushed to hospital with perfect clarity. Was she worried? "I was very worried." She began praying intently. Alex recovered, but their parents continued to watch him carefully; Pendleton writes that she sometimes “had to fight to get noticed as much”, although life was pretty rosy beyond that. She began cycling at six then racing with Alex, aged nine. For years he would usually beat her. But Pendleton pursued cycling anyway, because she just “wanted to be good at something,” she says, with a note of desperation. “I was just, like, all I want to do is be really good at something. Really, really good at something, so people are vaguely impressed by me.”
Photography shared listal.com
Photography by Greg Williams
Photography by Sara Lee
By her mid-teens she was beating Alex, and when they were 15, he gave up cycling, as their older sister Nicola had before. She uses an interesting phrase to describe this, writing that Alex "saw his chance and took it", as if he was escaping a kidnapping. Did she wish she had given up then, too? "At times I felt like, 'Ah, I wish I'd been first to get out,' and then I was like: 'No, but those two would have both quit anyway, and Dad would be left with no one to cycle with.'" Couldn't he have cycled alone? She laughs. "Yeah, I know! He had lots of friends to cycle with anyway." But there was no giving up. She felt responsible for her father's mood. Did the pressure bother her? "Oh gosh, yeah." If she was invited out on a Saturday night by friends, it meant she wouldn't be properly rested for cycling, and she would "be filled with guilt," she says. "Should I go, shouldn't I go? I really want to, but no. I'll go with Dad, and I'll go to the race, because that's more important, keeping him happy, than it is keeping [a friend] happy, and yourself happy ... You know, I didn't have to do it. If I'd had the strength of character to say, 'Actually, no, I'm not going this weekend,' I would have done. But I didn't."
Photography by totalwomenscycling.com
When she was 16, the national track team noticed Pendleton’s talent, and she was invited to Manchester to ride at the velodrome. But she wasn’t set on pursuing a track career yet. One of her most interesting qualities is her ambivalence about cycling. Where most champions seem powered by a blinkered obsession, she is much more clear-eyed. For instance, she fully recognises that sport is essentially entertainment, and finds this comforting. “When you’re in that bubble, training in that environment, with all those personalities who want you to win so desperately ... You think it’s life or death. It feels like if you don’t win you’re going to be hung, drawn and quartered.” But she remembers watching track cycling on television last year, “and I was like, this is the most ridiculous sport on earth. Riding around a wooden bowl, with a bike with no brakes ... And it was just like …” She takes a big sigh. “Aaaaaah, it doesn’t mean I don’t -Victoria Pendleton take the training incredibly seriously. But at the end of the day, it’s just a bike race.” Even though I love winning . It is the best high to know that you did your best and it paid off. I love the feeling of passing someone who wants so desperatly to win themselves.
When you’re in that bubble, training in that environment, with all those personalities who want you to win so desperately ... You think it’s life or death. It feels like if you don’t win you’re going to be hung, drawn and quartered.
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I’ve stopped googling myself ... people are too nasty -Victoria Pendleton
Pantene. Together with the photographer Alexi Lubomirski we realized a photoshoot with world champion track cyclist Victoria Pendleton and olympic champion
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Photography by Tom Perry
Has she had any reactions to the book yet from the team? "No, I don't imagine they'd speak to me any more, anyway, to be honest. I'm not imagining I'll have much contact with them. As it is, they've sold my bike already." She is close friends with some of the team, but there are certain key members, "who I am sure will be very happy not to have to deal with me ever again, and I think they'd probably be quite open about expressing that too. And I don't blame them, because if I've hurt them with my actions, I can't change it. It's something I'm going to have to live with, and I'm sorry it caused people such distress. But I'm in love with Scott, and I wouldn't change that. I'm very happy with him.” She is "pretty worried" about the book coming out, she says. "Because I have been fairly open and honest about a lot of issues – but I haven't told any lies … I was worried about British Cycling being annoyed that I've kind of, well, not talked them down, but haven't necessarily portrayed them in a glowing light ... For so many years I've had to talk about how amazing the programme is, and how well supported I am, and at times I haven't really felt 100% supported by that, but it's my job, it's what I have to say. And I'm still performing, so people are like – well, why are you still producing gold medals then, if it's so bad? It makes for a very difficult situation, and I don't want to be coming across as the whingy whiner, but I'm the only one to complain, so no one else has a problem. "”I don’t think that I’m a particularly complicated person to work with,” she says. “But I’m not a robot. And if they’ve learned anything, I hope they’ve learned that they need to approach working with the girls in the team a little bit more sensitively than they have in the past. Because if everything I’ve been through has done that then it’s been a success. And it would be nice that it’s been worth it in the long run, because I do feel that somewhere that a lot of sports, and my sport in particular, fall short is the level of support for the men and the women is so different. They seem to know what men need, but they don’t really seem to understand how to get the best out of the women.”It can’t help that so few of the senior staff are women. “There’s nobody with any power, female,” she replies bluntly. “And they need that, in my opinion. They seem to know what men need, but they don’t really seem to understand how to get the best out of the women.”It can’t help that so few of the senior staff are women. They seem to know what men need, but they don’t really seem to understand how to get the best out of the women.”It can’t help that so few of the senior staff
Pendleton is such a mixture of parts; a rock and indie kid, with a Smashing Pumpkins lyric tattooed on her wrist, who also revels in fashion. She says it’s going to be liberating, to do whatever she wants, “and not feel responsible! The only person I’m going to let down is me, if I don’t do very well at my next job. I’m just going to have a whole year of trying new stuff." She plans to marry Gardner in 2013, and after that she'll start thinking about a serious career choice. "I've always had this one thing overriding my lifestyle since I was nine. I have never missed a racing season since 1989. Having a year to make up for all that commitment is not unreasonable." She loved her Olympics experience this year, despite the disappointment of disqualification in the team sprint, and relegation in the first race of the individual sprint final too. When she won gold in the keirin, she says she felt: "Oh, I'm so happy right now. This is amazing. I sung the national anthem, because I would anyway, but it was the only thing that stopped me from blubbering completely on the podium". This hadn’t come across so strongly -Victoria Pendleton at our first meeting. At that stage I had only been given the first half of her autobiography, Between the Lines, written with Guardian sports interviewer Donald McRae. This covered some difficulties in her path to Olympic success, but nothing too extreme or extraordinary. This book talks about her journey to stardum and fame and all the hard work that took her to get there. It would have been so easy to leave the self-harm material out of the book. It’s not as if she’s short of drama. But she says she wanted to send a message to other people that you could have problems like these, get past them, and succeed.They seem to know what men need, but they don’t really seem to understand how to get the best out of the women.”It can’t help that so few of the senior staff are women. They seem to know what men need, but they don’t really seem to understand how to get the best out of the women.”It can’t help that so few of the senior staff are women. “I’m not the perfect model of what an athlete should be, mentally or physically,” she says, “but I’ve worked very hard to be as close to that as I possibly can, and it’s taken time, effort and practice. It’s not something that comes naturally, I wasn’t born with it ... If you’re willing to work, you can be better. The more you cycle the better you become; there is no secret to you. You just got to put the time in and ride, ride ride. You can be the best, there’s nothing stopping you.” The question is, would you want
I’m not the perfect model of what an athlete should be, mentally or physically ... If you’re willing to work, you can be better. You can be the best, there’s nothing stopping you.
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Richard
Avedon A Portrait of an Artist Fahey Klein presents a major retrospective of the photographers work.
By Kelly Smith
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All
photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” – Richard Avedon
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hat do Jean Genet, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne have in common? They were a few of the many personalities caught on film by photographer Richard Avedon. For more than fifty years, Richard Avedon’s portraits have filled the pages of the country’s finest magazines. His stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects’ characters has made him one of the premier American portrait photographers. Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject.
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If
each photograph steals a
bit of the soul, isn't it possible that I give up pieces of mine every time I take a picture?” –
Richard Avedon
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Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans. Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943, Baldwin and Avedon were friends and collaborators for more than thirty years. For all of the 1970s and 1980s Avedon continued working for Vogue magazine, where he would take some of the most famous portraits of the decades. In 1992 he became the first staff photographer for The New Yorker, and two years later the Whitney Museum brought together fifty years of his work in the retrospective, “Richard Avedon: Evidence”. He was voted one of the ten greatest photographers in the world by Popular Photography magazine, and in 1989 received an honorary doctorate from the Royal College of Art in London. Today, his pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. Avedon died on October 1st, 2004. As Avedon’s notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disciplines. Avedon’s ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits. More than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs.
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hroughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both. Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943,
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velovixen.com
We love Velo Vixen – a leading online store for classy women’s cycling clothing and accessories – and so does one of our Calendar Girls! So we were really pleased to be able to share the love with our Zero Calorie Advent Calendar followers too.
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finish line
Reasons to Buy BikeShop
from a
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First of all, bicycles are packed into a box by people who are under the assumption a professional will be assembling it. Then the packages are handled in shipping by countless people who have no idea or just don’t care about the contents of the box.
Most bike shops help their customers with picking out the right bike for the style of riding they plan to do and properly fit them to it.
Bike shops usually stock a wide range of accessories and clothing. The staff can help you find what you need and make recommendation based on the style of riding you plan to do. Most bike shops will include some free service for a period of time after the purchase of the bike. This typically consists of minor tune-ups or fit adjustments. It is recommended to take your bike into the shop for minor adjustments a couple of weeks after purchase because new cables tend to stretch during initial use causing a change in behavior to the shifting and braking mechanisms.
Last but not least, bike shops need your support.
Most of us are doing what we do because we have a passion and love for bicycling and we are not getting rich. We want to see more people riding and want them to enjoy their bicycle riding experience as much as we do. Bicycle shops are often a gathering place where people come together to hang out and chat amongst each other about anything and everything. Bike shops are unique from each other. Having one in your neighborhood gives the community a valuable resource and adds charm that will draw visitors from other places boosting your local economy.
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