Take from the Rich, Give to the Poor

A spot of retro Sherwood-Forest-Taking-from-the-rich-giving-to-the-poor Cycle Chic is this competition entry from the UK for the Robin Hood Tax.

In Vino Veritas - Bicycle Poetry

After posting the previous translated text from 1934, I remembered some footage I have from a summer street party a couple of years ago. My friend Henrik grabbed my camera and was walking around interviewing people, asking them "What's the best thing about the bicycle?"

He filmed one chap, rather late in the evening with all the inebriation that involves, and the result is one I've never quite forgotten. A chap fires off a volley of urban poetry completely from the hip. In vino veritas indeed.

He starts in English and then hops over into Danish at 0:48 in the film. Poetry/urban ramblings are difficult to translate, but I gave it a shot, below. It reminded me of Storm P.'s irony.

Actually, it's Jørgen Leth meets Storm P. in a smoke-filled bar over several bottles of wine. (A cultural reference for the Danes...) It's much better in Danish, this vowel movement. The flow is pure and unrestricted. It's quite fantastic.

Anyway: Danish monologue translated from 0:48:

"It's... it's Copenhagen.

People are so fantastically ridiculous when it comes to bicycles that they don't have any identity about it. But nevertheless they are so subconsciously graceful with their bicycles that they don't understand what they're doing when they do it and these days they've become so agressive on their bicycles because they can't afford that car - all to do with finances and stocks - and they actually understand Copenhagen without actually understanding, 100%, what they're doing.

Because Copenhagen is a happy city. In Copenhagen there is tolerance. And in Copenhagen there are cool people. That's what Copenhagen is all about. In Copenhagen we have a surplus so that even when there's cloud cover we don't get clouded by it. We cover our women, we have children but we stay the same because we ride bicycles. And bicycles are wheels, tires, rubber. It keeps us in contact with the ground, keeps us grounded. There's actually a shred of truth to it. I mean... how can you get angry with a cyclist? He's riding a bicycle! So there's a limit. There's nothing that can boil over or under... he's cycling.

So there is actually an aim – not aiming high or low – he's riding a bicycle. And cycling is fantastic. It's all about him and there's a reason he does it. It's not something poor prostitutes do, or something kids born later than their siblings do or something people in the future do... it's all about riding a bicycle."

Beautiful...

"Yeah, I doubt it. I had a televison named after me. It should have been a bicycle.
(pause)
The bicycle exists between us. Period."

New Communique from PDOT

The People's Department of Transport in Portland - PDOT - have issued Communique #4.

A.U.T.O.

Don't know how this one slipped past my radar. Brilliance from Streetfilms.org. Meet Veronica Moss, lobbyist from A.U.T.O. - Automobile Users Trade Organization. If she was Danish she'd work for the Road Safety Council [Rodet for Sikker Panik].

Toronto's Rob Ford Hates Bicycles

Um. Yeah. Okay... there are quite of few things that I could write. I think I'll just let Councillor Rob Ford from Etobicoke North in Toronto (Slogan: Working for the People) do it all on his own.

The man is, apparently, running for Mayor. Dark days for the development of Toronto as a more livable city - using the bicycle as a tool to that end - if the likes of this chap get into power.

Talk about ignoring the bull.

Thanks to Kevin for the link.

Bicycle Parking at the Beach - The Movie

It's a simple little video. We were on our way home from the beach and Felix and I had been talking about filming and various techniques like keeping the camera steady and what a panning shot is. So he got the camera while sitting in the cargo box of the Bullitt and he filmed all the bicycles at the beach while we were heading home. Practicing holding the camera steady and panning the camera back and forth. I wasn't planning on editing it, but it's a fine little film from the 8 year old Boy Wonder.

On a hot weekend day this beach - Amager Strandpark - is packed with Copenhageners enjoying the summer. There are tens of thousands of bikes. In the racks (there's parking for 5000 bikes on the 4 km stretch of beach) but largely just parked in the sand or leaning against sand dunes.

This stretch we rode is only about 1/15th of the length of the pathway so you can imagine how many more bicycles went unrecorded.

Here's an earlier post about bicycles at the beach. There are loads more films on the Copenhagenize Channel on Vimeo.

North American Eyes on Copenhagen

Not much to say about this. Brilliant work from Clarence at StreetFilms.org.

Let his film inspire.

North American traffic planners and bicycle advocates talk about their impressions of the world's cycling capital: Copenhagen.

Moving House by Bicycle in Barcelona

When I was at the 3rd Bicycle Congress in Lleida, Catalonia a couple of months back, my friend Jordi told me about how he moved flats in Barcelona using bicycles - and a group of friends. He's now sent me the film about the experience and it's quite cool.

They went back and forth across half of Barcelona and were quite knackered but they had a great day. Super inspiration for using pedal-power in urban centres.

Bicicletas de carga
Vanapedal.es

Direction: Luisa Ojeda
Editor: Cristina Carrasco
Producers: Jordi Manuel Galí / Maria Luisa Ojeda / Luisa Ojeda

The Hardest Working Man in Bicycle Show Business

Clarence from Streetfilms.org. Never a moment without a camera. Constantly on the move looking for something to shoot. Always jovial and quick to laugh. Tireless in his pursuit of material.

Ladies and Gentlemen...

The Hardest Working Man in Bicycle Show Business.

Bike Parade Pisses off the Locals

One of the extra-curricular events at last week's Velo-City 2010 conference was a 'Bicycle Parade' through the streets of the capital. There were about 1500 participants, most of them delegates from around the world at the conference.

Selling the idea of a bike parade to Copenhageners is tough. Very few would show up for a vacuum cleaner event. Nevertheless, it was a lovely ride in the bright sunshine - at an incredibly slow pace compared to the rides I've been on in Japan, Budapest, San Francisco or even La Rochelle.

I've got loads of photos to upload but above is a teaser from Clarence of Streetfilms, who had a ball in Copenhagen during the conference.

There was loads of music and chats with good friends. This bicycle ride thing is rather foreign in Copenhagen. During the activism of the 1970's and 1980's there were massive rides by citizens demanding safe infrastructure but it's been awhile.

I was looking forward to seeing how Copenhageners reacted to a large, slow-moving group of people on bicycles blocking the early evening traffic.

There were people who stopped to look at the spectacle, but most of them were on foot or leaning out of windows. They were smiling, as a rule.

If you looked at the traffic - bicycle and motorized - it was a different story. Many participants noticed how people were pissed off at having the streets blocked. Car horns honked and sour faces peered out from inside windscreens.

Even the two-wheeled traffic was annoyed at the hindrance. It got to a point that several of us rolled past warning them that it could take 10-15 minutes for the parade to pass. This information was usually greeted with a 'tsk' or a muttered swear word as they turned their bicycles around to look for alternative routes.

I enjoyed the ride but it's clear that blocking the streets with a bicycle parade didn't appeal to those who were trying to get somewhere else. An interesting anthopological observation from mainstream bicycle culture.

Copenhagen Bicycle Superhighways

Here's a film from Current.com about the new bicycle superhighways being built here in Copenhagen.

Last winter I rode around with the lads from Trunk Films - it was bloody cold that day. -5 and with the windchill we hovered around -20. Beautifully filmed, despite the frozen cameraman fingers!

Playmobil Cycle Moods from Madrid

This is just brilliant. Well done, Jerónimo, from Madridcyclechic! Great music, great mood. Please blog/tweet this onwards onto the playmobil superbicycle highway (aka internet)

Copenhagen is Getting Ready

Yes, indeed. Copenhagen is getting ready to welcome the world to Velo-City Global 2010 bicycle conference later this month.


Here's the trailer for the event, featuring my boy Felix.

Thinking Differently & Leaders/Followers

A couple of great talks from TED.com featuring Derek Sivers. In relation to both our popular post by sociologist Dave Horton about Making Cycling Strange and to Brian Glover's observations about “Why do you choose to do something that, in the eyes of 95% of your society, marks you as a freak and a loser?” - this talk by Silvers offers up something for you and your personal meta-universe to chew on. Fortunately, urban cycling is much easier to tackle than Japanese addresses and Chinese doctors.



And here's a great talk by Sivers about How to Start a Movement. Again, fortunately, starting a movement like the Cycle Chic movement or even the concept of Copenhagenize (whatever that is) is considerably more straightforward than a lone goofy dancer on a hill. Even though cyclists in many countries are regarded as such. :-)

2MileChallenge.com

Cool graphics in this little advert for 2MileChallenge.com.

South African Bicycle Portraits

Fantastic film about the making of a book about everyday cyclists in South Africa.

The Safety Gang!

It's time to dive headfirst into a shallow pool of Safety! Yay!

The Secret Lives of Bicycles

Wonderful, if not a little odd, film about the secret lives of bicycles. From, quelle surpris alors, the Netherlands.

thanks to spacemodular for the link.

Greece Bicycle Demonstrations

Athens - 8000 participants.

I recieved an update from a Greek friend and reader - Theodore - who reported on this year's bicycle rides in Athens and many other cities around Greece.

Nothing has changed since last year (except that more people are using bicycles), so here we are again, asking for bicycle routes, the right to carry bicycles on the subway and trains, more sidewalks for pedestrians, etc.

Here's a link to a Greek website about the ride in Athens.


Thessaloniki

Here's a link to coverage from other Greek cities, including Thessaloniki, above.


Here's a short YouTube clip from the ride in Patras.


I got this off the website last year. Lovely to see some Copenhagen Blue inspiring Greece.

The Green Machine, by Iain Boal - All 5 Episodes

I blogged episode one a few days ago, and here's the complete set of episodes for your internet convenience. I recommend watching them all. Fascinating stuff.

All together they are about 1 hour in length, divided into five segments.












I had the pleasure of attending - and filming - a brilliant lecture by one of the planet's foremost bicycle historians, Iain Boal. Everytime I am in his company I learn outrageous amounts about the history of the bicycle. He was invited by Copenhagen Museum in conjunction with their current exhibition Copenhagen by Bicycle. His lecture was based on a lifetime of research and thought but also in his new book, out this fall (2010) called The Green Machine - A Brief, illustrated history of the bicycle in a planetary perspective.

As Iain says at the beginning of episode one:
"The real history of the bicycle is more interesting than the mythification. Frankly, things are too serious. We have to have a grown-up history of cycling and of the bicycle. I'm going to upset some purists, but that's okay. I've upset myself."

THE GREEN MACHINE : A BRIEF, ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE BICYCLE IN PLANETARY PERSPECTIVE
Iain Boal will present a new illustrated history of cycling, one designed for the 21st century and its interwoven crises. Drawing upon the artifacts of cycling history currently on display in the City Museum of Copenhagen, Professor Boal will trace the heterogeneous origins of the bicycle, busting some Eurocentric myths along the way. It is a fresh story that celebrates the bicycle's freewheeling sociability and the part that human-powered mobility must play in the human settlements of the future, but refuses to be blind any longer to the bicycle's entanglement with capitalist modernity's brutal labor process or its complicity with the automobilism that has paved the planet, rendered cities unconvivial, and now threatens the biosphere itself.

Iain Boal is an Irish social historian, resident in California since 1985. He is associated with Retort, a group of writers, artisans and artists based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is affiliated with the Geography Department and the Institute of International Studies at UC Berkeley, and the Community Studies Department at UC Santa Cruz. In 2005/6 he was a Guggenheim Fellow in Science and Technology. He co-edited Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information, City Lights Press,1995, and was one of the authors of Retort's Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War (Verso, 2006). The Green Machine will be published by Notting Hill Editions, London, in the fall of 2010.