For the BRIGHTON BIKE FEST (April 16th-22nd), we’ll be hosting the London to Brighton ride!
Friday the 20th at 9:30am
Ride should be ~6 hours
We’ll link up with Critical Mass once we get down to Brighton
Leaving from 56a:
56a Crampton St
London SE17 3AE
Bring water, clothes for cold or wet weather, and a comfy bike with some gears to go up the hill before Brighton!
A big up to all who came and made it a ride to remember! Some photos from the ride are below:
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for everytime i hear them say
get the fuck out of the way
i will defend my right of way
that heap of steel i’m gonna slay
i’ll thrash you i’ll bash you
i’ll kick in your doors
break out your windows
and scratch your paint
apologize for oil wars
apologize for polluting my air
in some cases cars are ok
but when i’m on the street
you’re all my enemies
The London Bike Kitchen, an “open DIY workshop” in Hoxton, has just opened shop! Bike kitchens started out in California (see here (SF) and here (LA)) as a place where cyclists can learn how to repair their bikes, while providing community and youth programs, space for women and trans folk, and a place for reuse and recycling. They typically run by charging a small membership/stand-use fee. Other similar places in the UK for Pedaller’s Arms in Leeds and the Birmingham Bike Foundry. Though not specifically of the ‘bike kitchen’ ethos, they charge a small amount to go towards tools, parts, mechanics and space to better the local and cycling community.
"I went to the London Bike Kitchen with a clunker and came out with this!"
The London Bike Kitchen is located at 28 Whitmore Rd N1 5QA.
Alssoooo….we’d like to mention that our wrenchin’ mates at Peckham Social Centre also now have a bike repair space open on Sunday afternoon from 3-7pm! The social centre is at 97 peckham road, se15.
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56a was made possible through squatting, so today’s eviction of the Orange Fence squat on Colvestone Crescent in Dalston, Hackney feels like the end of a London borough once diverse – including numerous squats providing an example of alternative, creative , rent-free living. The area is being taken over by property developers, thanks in most part to the 2012 Olympics; driving up rent and property in an age of austerity. What has London got to give us that we can’t give to each other?
“Fight them by meeting with friends, not to consume or produce, but to enjoy friendship and you will have triumphed (at least for a moment) over the most pernicious conspiracy in EuroAmerican society today — the conspiracy to turn you into a living corpse galvanized by prosthesis and the terror of scarcity …
… to turn you into a spook haunting your own brain.” — Hakim Bey
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“This Home Is Not For Sale”
Hello,
After working on bikes during a busy, and mild, winter season we are finally back!! It’s been a good winter: from being featured on the bike show, we received a donation of an awning that now keeps us and our outside tools dry from the rain! We also got some new lights for working outside, and had a workshop weekend of skill sharing our knowledge of internal hubs, disc brakes, etc over lots of tea and yummy meals together.
——-
This interview of independent bike mechanics features Johnnie Olivan of Rejuiced Bikes in Portland, OR! WOAH! In a nutshell, Johnnie recycles old bikes and bike parts and welds them together (hear about welding and Schwinn’s at 13:50) to create a bicycle with a (more) utilitarian function and keep the aesthetics at the same time; such as rain collecting, recycling, or aiding the handicapped. So rad! And so DIY!
“And there’s people since that are making old bike railers out of old bike parts. I mean, it’s happening, you know. And I’m not the first I think, but I just definitely know that people around me are doing exactly what I’m doing. And maybe they’re not doing the exact same thing but it’s so freakin’ cool to build something and ride it around town and have it serve a function.”
“When we were travelling [in Spain and Holland] it was all about, you know, tuning our bikes up and…I don’t really know. I just always went to the bike because when you go somewhere, when you move somewhere, it’s always like ‘I gotta get a license in this state,’ ya know, ‘I gotta get this in this state,’ and what’s easier than just getting on your bike?
The 2nd interview is me following Johnnie around as he shows me the different bikes.
Pics below include bikes that collect water (H2O flow), school bike, bike rescue bike (now a farmer’s market bike with a foldable umbrella), media quadricycle, waste bike (Trashy Trike)
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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFWea3Eu97E&w=560&h=349]
Also, L visited Revolution Cycles in Madison, WI. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to get an interview from this (especially since it was a politically hot summer up in Madison), but is sharing some of the bike hot photos.
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“They can build golden cages for us all to live in. They can make beds of silk, cuddle us in sheets soft and thin. Dress us in a tender caress, comb our hair with care and lift us from the dirty soil. Soothe us with delicate oil. They can cook us tasty meals, sugar and salt, but cannot make our hunger for real freedom halt. Go ahead, make a wall to divide us, it won’t keep us apart. Try to teach us biased history, we’ll swear to never forget. Firm hands pour cups of hemlock, but can’t force us to drink. They may control our space and time, but never how we think. Let every wasted seed of desire become a beautiful flower. Watch it unfold hour by hour, rise higher and higher. We pay for lives with our deaths, everything in between should be free.” – Lack, ‘The Gay Revolutions’
“The bicycle doesn’t have to be a mysterious machine.”
Hello and welcome to episode 3 of independent bike mechanic interviews. The focus is now on the vibrant cycling city of Portland (damn straight!: around 6 percent of it’s citizens commute by bicycle – the highest in the US), where L interviewed five different groups/people involved in cycling culture.
First off is the Bike Farm, a “non-profit, volunteer-run bicycle maintenance collective .” It should be noted that The Bike Farm isn’t the only independent, collectively run, branded-awesome bikespace in town. There are others like the Community Cycling Center, Bicycle Repair Collective, North Portland Bike Works, Citybikes, etc…, but due to time constraints and the huge explosion of bike-related businesses in Portland since L last visited two years ago, the Bike Farm gets dibs! Also, the Bike Farm gets the first go because the atmosphere, organisational structure, and politics seemed a lot like 56a:
“We’re a resource for tools and parts where people can come and work on their own bikes and the volunteers, to the extent that some of us have some mechanical experience are here to point you in the right direction, to identify what needs to be done, and figure out how to do it.”
L also fronts some questions regarding gender and sexism in the bikeworld.
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More reading:
The concept of a “bike kitchen”
An article about The Bike Farm, from bikeportland.org.
The Bike Farm is located at 305 NE Wygant, Portland OR 97211. Thanks Shannon and Russ for your time!
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Last week the Bike Room took a little field trip down to Bristol for the second nation-wide bicycle gathering (first one was in Manchester) . Following up on the first gathering last March, this was a meeting for organizers of bicycle-based projects across the UK. London was well represented, with four of us in attendance from the Bike Room and one person from Cycle Training UK; other organizations included Cranks in Brighton, Pedaller’s Arms in Leeds, and the multi-cited Bicycology and Spokeswomen. The Kebele social center and Bristol Bike Project hosted the event, setting the bar high for future gatherings with amazing food and accommodation. They have our great thanks.
As a mechanic at the Bike Room, I was thrilled to see so many people excited about social projects involving bicycles. There are inevitably moments in organizing such a project when a person loses steam, dealing with inconsiderate patrons or failing to see any sort of large-scale system change. This bicycle gathering was a chance for me to be reinvigorated, partly for sharing and discovering practical strategies, but more so for being surrounded by so many inspired and inspiring people.
Workshops covered all manner of bicycle-related subjects, as organizers came from projects with widely varying missions. Several projects were based around helping people fix their own bikes, like the Bike Room, but others included cycle training, bicycle politics, a women’s bicycle mechanic network and youth mechanicship. Perhaps the most unique project to present a workshop was one that dealt exclusively with adaptive cycles for the disabled, a community that is often neglected among cyclists.
The next gathering will be held in Leeds in the spring, and the Bike Room will of course be in attendance. Again, our heartfelt thanks go out to the organizers of the gathering in Bristol and all of the participants. It’s not often a chance comes along to be so reflective which engaging with so many interesting people.
Tom Martin
Bikeroom volunteer
