Red Hook Crit in London

A few photos from Red Hook Crit in London

Will riding for Pedlas

Waiting...

East London Fixed

Will and Matt

ARTCRANK London 2012: 7th-30th September 2012

Coming at ya!

**Second Showing Added: ARTCRANK London will have an encore showing at Look Mum No Hands from Sunday, September 16 – Sunday, September 30 2012! **

ARTCRANK returns to London with fresh poster artwork from 27 UK artists. The limited-edition, handmade posters are available for £30 each.

Look Mum No Hands is a bike cafe at:
49 Old Street
EC1V 9HX 
London

Locking Updated

Gone are the days when we could secure our bikes with one D-lock and a cable around the wheels - especially if you are in the Dalston (east London) area. Dalston, in the past year, has become quite known about its bike thieves. Just to make sure you are getting the point:
DO NOT USE CABLES / CABLE LOCKS ! The evil bike thieves just cut them, even on busy roads.

So, the best way to lock your bike in Dalston would be to use a good D-lock around a bike rack, the frame and the back wheel; and a different lock around the bike rack, the frame and front wheel. (and if you have a third lock, then throw it in the picture too, just for luck). Dalston sucks.

...And never lock on a pole....

do not lock on poles! no! bad idea!

Critical Mass 25th June 2010, London

People and their bicycles gathered at Southbank for critical mass; lovely warm afternoon, the occassional cheer and whistle adding to the anticipation of a friendly ride.

The ride headed north over Waterloo bridge, through The  strand, and  passed by Parliament square to wave to the people at the Democracy Village: the atmosphere was positive and buzzing as the cyclists cheered the campers on who  are still there after 2 months; the campers returned the cheers and the critical mass headed to visit Buckingham palace waving to the Queen.

During critical mass, some aggressive taxi drivers screamed and rammed at cyclists going by, despite critical mass being simply some people on bicycles...


Things went stressful, when police vans surrounded the mass just by Herbal Hill; seconds before they arrived, a police van dropped a policeman who started running through the cyclists- when the police man ran out of stamina, he stopped and within seconds the 30 vans appeared.  No one was hurt during that.

I had a brief conversation with one of the policemen:
Me: What happened? what's all this about?
PM (policeman): When one of our men is in danger we come out.
Me: who's in danger what happened?
PM: well, if one of us is hurt we come out.
Me: one of you got hurt? how?
PM: [no reply]
Me: well i hope your friend is OK
PM: thanks have a good weekend
Me: Have a good weekend too
At this time a young man added: What happened is, a cyclist got hit by a taxi driver but of course the police is letting the taxi driver off and is after the cyclist.

The police stayed surrounding the mass for some time, and the road was blocked. They then asked the cyclists to start riding again and the mass ended up at The Foundry  which is being squatted after the council closed it  to make way for a brand new “art hotel”.

 REPORTS ON JUNE'S CRITICAL MASS:
"One arrest with loads of cops and several drivers trying to physically intimidate corkers by nosing into them with horns blazing. "

"drivers deliberately ramming cyclists. I saw one woman cyclist knocked to the ground by a taxi. but the police don't seem at all interested in such things."

More pics here .

East London Commonwealth Games: Bike Polo

Bike Polo was one of the main features at the East London Festival, and after enjoying the European Bike polo tournament last summer, we thought it was an opportunity to watch the amazing poloists again.  The location of the tournament was great as it was hosted in the Spitalfield market which meant combining most of my favorite activities: coffee drinking, bicycles, and wandering around spitalfields/brick lane.

The day started with a short 10 minute fixie ride to Brick Lane Coffee where we lazily sat on the comfy sofa soaking up the sunshine while  sipping  banana frappe. At around 1:30ish, we headed down to watch a few polo matches with a mission to find one of the forum guys who was willing to trade his BLB saddle for my specialized one. The mission seemed slightly impossible when one of the fixed gear forum girls described my boy as a youngish polo guy with a beard; she smiled with that smile full of knowledge "yeah, i know most of these polo guys  are bearded" My kind helper, passed my mission message to a friend of hers and slowly i created a descriptive image of the boy - and to my surprise i was able to find him and the successful trade of saddles brought my lo-pro project one step forward! success!

Back to the polo game, we saw La Schmoove, Malice, 14Co, and Zombie along with some hard shots that made the ball bounce and go off court and the ref having to run around the stalls to find it.

An unplanned highlight was our recruit into Carrom (a tabletop game) and the discovery of my unknown talent of flicking!see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrom

The Carrom scores will remain secret but here are the
Bike Polo results:

Quarter Finals 

14 Co 3 - 1 Zombie
Malice 4 - 3 La Schmoove
Three Beards 5 - 4 ELKS
Cosmic 5 - 1 Rotten Apples
Semi Finals
Malice 3 - 1 14 Co 

Cosmic 4 - 1 Three Beards
Finals

Cosmic 3 - 2 Malice