This is the story of the day I spent following ( on a bike) a very inspiring politician around the streets of Yarra city, which is part of Melbourne.
Jackie has been part of a push which has seen Yarra city climb to the highest rate of bike commuting of anywhere in Australia.
Jackie Fristacky’s story might look like just another movie on YouTube. But actually it’s a very special tool for change, at least potentially.
What you can do, if you like it, is to find out who is sympathetic to bikes as transport on your own local council, and then send that person this video.
If you get a response, follow it up. See if they’d like to be in contact with Jackie Fristacky and Yarra council to find out more.
We can grow bike use together in ways like this. It’s fun.
Just like it’s fun riding a bike as transport, so much fun it should be illegal.
These are not my councillors, not yours either, but they do look receptive, don’t they?
You might be surprised to find your timing is spot on when it comes to your council and bikes. The world is changing and the only way to know, is to pay a visit.
So, here’s the secret weapon, the Fristacky file.
Let me know how you go with Jackie’s story.
People might want to know more as to why Yarra city council is doing so well. Jackie Fristacky has sent myself and David Hembrow, some more detail.
She says; There are a range of reasons why Yarra has a high cycling mode share.
1, Location close to key destinations such as CBD (1-2kms away to 5kms away at the extreme), employment and local activity centres;
2. Yarra being 19 sq kms, and only a few kms. from CBD, so distances all easily cyclable;
3 Relatively flat terrain;
4. Hoddle grid street pattern (rectangular blocks) makes cycling easy;
5. High youth population, including students, given proximity to many tertiary educational institutions (University of Melbourne, RMIT, Australian Catholic University, and city campuses of Monash University, Vitoria University and others);
6 Demographic is diverse with high proportion of professionals (higher incomes), and students and public housing (low incomes); both demographics cycle;
7. cycling as an egalitarian and independent mode, suits the Yarra demographic;
8. Traffic Congestion is common. So it is far more effective to cycle – being faster and door to door;
9. 20% of households do not have a car, compared with Melbourne average of 10%;
10. 73,000 residents; and 8,700 businesses in Yarra, employing some 60,000 people. Yarra is the largest source of employment outside the CBD.
11. Some large businesses, like the CUB, have large secure bike cages for staff. Many employers are starting to encourage their staff to cycle to work with good parking and other facilities.
Under the State planning scheme, these have become mandatory for larger new developments, but this is effecting existing businesses too.
At meetings with planners, we take every opportunity to point out that more bikes are sold than cars, especially in Yarra, so where are residents/workers going to put their bikes?
We say that if they don’t want them in corridors and on balconies where they can cause trip hazards and WorkCare claims, then they need to plan better storage places;
13. Yarra inherited a good cycle path to the CBD (Canning Street) but this has been supplemented by bike paths on virtually all roads in Yarra due to policy change directing this;
13. Role models of Mayor and councillors on bikes, and senior staff including Directors on bikes;
14. PR with press features on cycling and facilities;
15. Many local workers like to attend a bar or the like after work and having a car hampers them with restricted parking
Cr Jackie M Fristacky
Councillor for Nicholls Ward, City of Yarra
jackie.fristacky@yarracity.vic.gov.au
Phone: 0412 597 794
And here’s a companion story, another busy professional who, not only uses a bike on the job but, like Jackie, has interesting ideas about how bikes can make our lives better.
This is Ian Charlton, The Doctor on a Bike. Seeing patients, Ian prefers to prescribe a bike than a pill.
Indeed, Ian believes that if we were to increase our exercise through cycling and walking, we could get off those lifestyle pills so many us now take.
He’s got me off. A year ago I was taking six pills. Now, I take one.
P.S The three men in suits are actually Montreal council people riding the new Bixi bikes around that city. Montreal is a case of city council making a huge difference in the cycling culture of a city.
I’ve had this little film The Waltz of the Bikes in mind ever since I looked through the one tape that Violeta sent me of a sunny day’s shooting on the streets of Amsterdam.
I’d asked her to just watch bikes, the variety of riders, the flow and curve of them. But nothing prepared me for the ballet she sent me on the tiny tape.
I knew that these were the perfect images to prompt you to see yourself on such bikes, but how to do them justice?
Since then, about two months ago, I’ve been nibbling at the footage, using a few shots here and there, mustering my courage to do justice to the whole feast. The best use so far was probably in;Talking to David Hembrow
Usually, I rely on a strong story telling voice to pull you into my short offerings, but this time I knew it had to be music, and music which would make the pictures dance.
Then, The Blue Danube came to me, and I began playing the images in my head to the music but cutting nothing, fearing it would not work as my imagining said it must.
Also, I was fearing it would not build, but just be more of the same, round and round like a wheel.
Then finally, yesterday, wedged between Xmas and new year, the sky pouring unseasonable rain on us, I began The Waltz of the Bikes. Cutting, showing it to Katya and cutting some more.
Try this Vimeo version first. The YouTube upload (below) is stopping as starting.
Violeta Brana-Lafourcade has not seen her material so shaped as yet, she is off with her family on a boat, but I am happy. Indeed, I look at the waltz again and again.
It has always fascinated me how disparate shots can hint at stories in the lives of people I’ll never meet, who may never know they were filmed.
The women chatting, two pairs, two conversations, glimpsed and gone.
The two guys with guitars, one like a gun turret on a pocket battleship, the other, an unwieldy parcel.
The couple dinking, he riding and she on the back in her turquoise skirt.
But then she parks the bike, clearly hers. The shot continues beyond what you see, as they unlock a shop, maybe it was theirs.
There’s the mum who gives into buying an ice-cream for her blonded pillion rider, her son for sure.
Long legs texting who?.
The men in power clothes, one cresting, and the tiny white dog who zips past, used to riding in the basket.
The grumpy look of the pink shirted man is good too, for surely all is not fine just because the sun is shining in the city of canals.
Towards the end had to come the father and his moppet. She’s in her baby shades, waiting as he secures the cargo bike, the family SUV.
Behind, if you look closely, two men eye a poster of another man, a naked torso.
The last flurry of the music, ( two minutes of the waltz are cut out under the jingle of a bell) just had to go with the flurry of the hurrying woman’s summer dress.
Then the way for the power glide of a rather imposing personage in white, down the long leafy canal.
If any of these riders see this, thank you, and if you contact me, there’s DVD for you.
Meanwhile, the message for Australia is this; let’s at least admit to ourselves that this is how riding in a city, even our city, could be.
It could leisurely too, the Dutch are no less happy no less prosperous for taking their travel slowly.
And it could be, without the danger gear that more and more we wear, the helmets and the day-glo vests, confessing we are in hostile territory. Why should it be here and not there?
If we slowed our traffic, if we impressed on motorists that if they hit something smaller than themselves, they are to blame (that’s the Dutch rule) and if we ride regally like this, seeing and been seen, then this waltz could be us as well.
But then, we’d have to celebrate that we do want this and not always and only the cultish adversarial side of cycling, as is now the case, the glorying in the fight.
(“Share the road, Damn you!” reads a T shirt in Canada infected with the same virus)
(sharethedamnroad.com)
Racing, speed, the high performance bikes which cost a fortune, the Tour De Francing, all of that is fun, challenging and noble in it’s own way.
But it’s no longer the whole story. Ad it should not take all the oxygen to leave this other possibility, this simpler more join-able biking stifled, breathless, marginal.
When, Australian Cyclist recently wrote about Copenhagen as Pedal Paradise, which is very true, they primarily interviewed Mikael Colville-Andersen
You’ve perhaps met Mikael here, for Violeta filmed him too, (The Guy from Cycle Chic and; Talking to Mikael).
Robin Barton of Australian Cyclist was right to pick Mikael to talk to, but it was not so fine to reduce his famous photos of beauty on the bike to almost thumbnails.
All the beauty of the those famous photos in Copenhangen Cycle chic was lost, and moreover, you’d have to look very closely to see no one was wearing helmets.
There is something going on here, something a bit awkward.
How about we get over our helmet modesty, as if to show rider fully un-helmeted was to show them nude.
I have been reading Australian Cyclist for only a year but I have yet to see a photo of a gloriously un-helmed rider. Might it might put ideas in our heads? Is that the worry?
It’s always pics like this. Now I’m sure these ladies love their lids, but how about not shying away from the rest of the world?
(Australian cyclist)
Whilst helmets might have seemed like a good idea here at the time, virtually no one has followed our lead overseas, in making them compulsory for adults, and and some of those places which have, are now in second thoughts.. (See Israel below ) for adults,
People likeMilkael have very strong opinions as to how counter productive helmets are.
It is not right to make him the core of an article in Australian Cyclist and avoid his views , passing over the dramatic lack of helmets there with this offhand remark: “with cyclists feeling so safe on the streets, so safe in fact that most don’t wear helmets…”
The truth to report to that is that Mikael is very disappointed and frustrated that official bodies in Denmark have been using a fear campaign to provoke helmet use in a country where before there was none, and that that fear campaign is working somewhat, to the detriment of cycling. So he feels.
(German helmet promotion)
For as is proven again and again, when you push fear to sell helmets, you do sell helmets, but you also convince many people to stop riding.
It’s no coincidence that since Australian put it’s helmet laws into effect ….
…they have actually become the world’s fattest country, a higher percentage of obese people than even America has.
So, you can either promote helmets and kill off cycling, or promote cycling and reap the health benefits, and extend the lives of your citizens. You have the choice but you can’t do both. “
The Australian Cyclist can disagree with that polarity, but it should report what the man, the most respected blogger on cycling in the world, believes.
As for Israel. They brought in compulsory helmets for adult cyclists just a a year ago.
Now, they are having second thoughts. Why?
(photo borrowed from Copenhangenize.com)
It’s nothing to do with the fact that helmets actually offer very little protection, and in some circumstances, are actually dangerous in that they can result in brain damage through twisting shock.
No, it’s for other unexpected, reasons which might just provoke a rethink here as well.
The big news, the sensation in urban biking is how bike share schemes like the Velibs in Paris and the Bixis in Montreal are sweeping the world.
Cities, their citizens, and their visitors, love the the easy access bikes scattered all over the city, bikes which you don’t have to own or store, but just use and leave.
(My friend, James Schwartz on a Bixi)
The success of Bike Share is massive , despite vandalism….
….as it benefits each host city in terms of less traffic , less greenhouse gasses and the upward tourist dollar. becomes more and more irresistable.
But Tel Aviv quickly realized that that the 2000 bikes slated for that city, can’t be deployed because of their new helmet law.
They’d made themselves a catch 22, since there is no way to dispense a tested, sanitized helmet on the street, along with the bike.
Here is what Mikael has just reported on his blog, Copenhagenize.com, reporting Israeli sources.
The bill, sponsored by MK Sheli Yehimovich (Labor) repeals part of the Helmet Law which was passed last year.
Instead of requiring a helmet for intra-city riding, Yehimovich’s bill would leave that decision up to the adult rider. Children, those riding off-road or those biking between cities would still be required to wear a helmet.
“Riding a bike in communities and especially in cities, significantly reduces traffic congestion, parking difficulties, air pollution and accidents.
Requiring helmets drove many people away from their bikes and back to their cars because of the hassle of wearing a helmet and carrying it around,” the MK said in a statement.
“In Paris and other European cities, there are wonderful programs which provide bikes for transport and no one requires a helmet there.
Tel Aviv has also signed a contract to station 2,000 bikes around the city but the project has been held up because of the Helmet Law.
Moreover, the law is unenforceable and the police have said they do not plan to even attempt to enforce it,” she added.
Mikael ends. “The bill hasn’t passed just yet. There are three votes in the Knesset to come. Nevertheless there are signs that rationality is returning to our species.”
Australian cycling, a mono culture. Let’s expand horizons.
There are some great bike blogs in this world, and it’s on these blogs that the best information is being exchanged, good stuff about how to grow urban cycling in our needy times.
Needy from a public health point of view, (we are a very fat nation, Australia) and needy from a climate change point of view. We are a spendthrift nation, too.
Our carbon footprint, each of us, is over 20 tons. We go everywhere in our cars, even the shortest trip has us reaching for the keys.
I say that our cars are not a life style choice as we suppose, but a lifesteal choice. Each unnecessary trip in a car steals an exercise opportunity
Many blogs contribute to this semi underground debate on urban biking Two have come to fascinate me.
Those of Mikael Colville-Andersen in Copenhagen, (copenhagninze.com) and that of David Hembrow in Holland. (A view from the cycle path)
David is actually a Brit. who moved to the Netherlands with his family for the better bike infrastructure, which he now enjoys and makes wicker bike baskets too.
If David has a fault, it’s his constant posting of the Dutch as such paragons of bike lane building, etc. It makes you just feel like giving up in a country like Australia.
I’ve told David this, but he can’t stop. How could you in a country with 29,000 kms. of cycle paths? It’s sickening.
Anyway, my wish is to interview all the great bike bloggers of the world. With no grants, that’s a probably an impossible dream.
In the meantime, I’ve been using a young videographer, Violeta Brana-Lafourcade, who’s super economical, to go places for me, and to film interviews, which she’s done with flair.
Two with Mikael have already been posted. The Guy from Cycle Chic and; Talking to Mikael.
Now, here’s what Violeta sent me on David Hembrow. I hope you like; Talking to David Henbrow. Do leave a comment. It’s mainly about Sit-up bikes which I see as the key to change here.
Thousand will say the type of bike does not matter much, but are they right? Here’s David.
After, making this film, I sent to it David Hembrow with a question which I would have liked Violeta to ask him if I’d thought of it before her visit.
David, Do you think that the sit-up bike sets up a different “conversation” with other road users as compared with the bent over position favored here?
I think the sit-up is friendlier, that one can make eye contact more easily, and that it’s more apt to be friendly.
That is why I’m pushing hard for people here to think about this posture as not only as safer and more comfortable, but as sending a different message, creating a different climate on the roads. What do think?
David has just replied.
Mike, I think the sit up position is a little more friendly, but it’s only a
part of the difference between cycling in the Netherlands vs. elsewhere.
People are friendly to you here whatever you ride. Dutch cycling isn’t only about sit up bikes. There are also far more dropped handlebar racing bikes and mountain bikes over here than anywhere else, as well as recumbents and velomobiles, and anything else. It really doesn’t matter much what you ride, people will still smile.
One of the things I first noticed about the Netherlands is that people
smile an awful lot more than they do in the UK. On the streets in the
UK you’d think upturned edges of mouths had been banned by royal
decree, but not here. No, people look like they’re actually enjoying
life.
This goes for drivers as much as for cyclists. Drivers give way to you
when they should… and when they shouldn’t. One person holding up
another doesn’t result in car horns blasting and waving of fists out
of the window. The whole situation is de-stressed.
I think a lot of it comes down to road design. Conflict is engineered
out of Dutch roads, particularly at junctions. However, it’s also down
to the amazing social developments in this country.
I think I’ve said before that cycling is just one part of it. The rate of cycling is closely tied with the other things. There is very much a social
contract here.
While in Britain these days it seems to have become
remarkably socially acceptable to drive dangerously around children,
in this country you don’t expect other people to put your children in
danger when they are on the roads.
The sit up position on a bike is better for most people most of the
time simply because it’s comfortable, and very much a hop-on / hop-off
position.
However, the position is not the only benefit of such bikes.
The fully equipped nature of them makes a huge difference too. Quite
apart from being suited to carry lots of stuff, the enclosed chain and
brakes and very puncture resistant tyres are something which I really can’t emphasize enough.
These are bicycle features which everyone takes for granted on a car.
I don’t think anyone would put up with a car which got punctures every
few hundred kilometers, needed brake maintenance as often as that and which required regular gear box maintenance such as re-oiling after
every drive.
Not having to do these things makes all the difference
between a vehicle which you can rely on and a toy.
Tyres such as the Schwalbe Marathon Plus simply don’t puncture. They
are heavy due to a centimeter thick anti puncture layer, which also
makes them slower than racing bike tyres.
However, while they don’t offer speed they do offer utter reliability. There’s nothing slower or less useful than a bike with a puncture. My family’s bikes all have these tyres.
An exposed chain on a bike is much like having a car gear box with
exposed cogs, and the oil getting washed off and replaced by dust and
mud every time you drive.
If cars were built like that you’d have to clean and re-lube the gearbox after each drive, and regularly have to replace parts due to wear.
It’s the same with bikes without a full chain-guard. Enclosing the chain completely changes this. You oil it perhaps once a year, and rarely replace other drive chain components.
The bike can be used with salt on the roads and sit out in all weather
without the chain rusting.
Hub brakes offer a similar level of improved reliability. They last
the lifetime of the bike without adjustment. You simply never have to
replace parts.
On the other hand, the normal rim brakes used on bikes
wear down their pads over just a few thousand km, and also wear down the wheels themselves. That they’re lower in weight is important in competition, but otherwise not.
These things reduce maintenance to near zero and push reliability
right up to the level of a car, and that to me is much more important
than merely sitting up right.
In the past, I tried adapting bikes simply to have a more upright
posture. It’s not a waste of time to try, however the frames are
typically built too long to be completely successful, and you still
have the problems of exposed chains and the wrong types of brakes.
Just to adjust the handlebar position you need to following parts: new
stem (for shorter reach), new handlebars, new cable outers and inners.
Possibly new grips, and maybe new shifters depending on the
arrangement on your existing bike. Also maybe new brake levers
(compatible with whatever type of brake you have).
BTW, the Marathon Plus tyre is available in Australia. It’s very very
popular here due to being the leader so far as never getting a
puncture is concerned:
Oh, and what I will say is that these town bikes are remarkably social
bikes. It’s quite normal for all age groups to transport others on the
rear racks, and teenagers sometimes travel three to a bike. You can’t
do that with a dropped handlebar racer.
BTW, the rear racks on proper Dutch bikes are really robust. They’re
not those skinny 10 kg rated things which you see elsewhere, but
robust chunks of real, heavy, steel which you can definitely transport
an adult on top of !
This is our second interview with Mikael Colville-Andersen.
I asked my friend, Violeta Brana Lafourcade, a videographer, to go to Copenhagen to see if she could get an interview with the famous Danish blogger. See his blog
Here’s Violeta
Photo by Julio Martínez Aniceto
Interestingly, Mikael got chided for his stylish glasses in the previous movie Violeta and I posted of him. The Guy from Cycle Chic.
This is the first film with Mikael. The second, Talking with Mikael, is below
Violeta seems to like equally fashionable specs. But she was only glimpsed in our first movie, no charming glasses visible, and so copped no heat.
I think they both look great, personally.
I was excoriated too in that review. My narration style was described as coming from to a sort of “leering guy”
You’ll note, there’s no narration in this movie. Just a co incidence, I assure you!
Mikael says things here which can be useful to those of us fighting battles for better urban cycling in far worse conditions than Copenhagen.
He offers telling arguments to use on politicians, and pays compliments to the humour with which the Dutch promote their superb cycling culture.
You’ll see a thanks to David Hembrow, whose blog, View from the Cycle path, is a wealth of information about what makes Dutch bike culture so effective and safe, Infrastructure, says David..
Here’s David on a bike path near Assen where he lives.This pic best sells the joys of sit-up cycling, the theme of this blog.
Mikael ends the film clip on a theme with which David would completely agree, the foolishness of heavy helmet promotion.
Helmet laws tend to allow disinterested Governments to stay away from where the real cycle safety is (abeit expensively) and that’s under the wheels, not on the head.
The sooner we can get our elected officials over their helmetoid fixatis, the better.
In Holland , there’s not a helmet in sight on anyone, even on kids, and yet the cycle injury rate is the lowest in the world.
Denmark by contrast, is creeping into helmet land, something Mikael feels is a mistake
Picking up on what Mikael says, We should offer a deal to our Australian politicians , a deal and a challenge.
You build the bike ways, preferably separated, and we’ll make sure they are ridden to achieve the savings Mikael identifies.
Moreover, we’ll reduce the 58 billion you’ll spend on obesity each year.
Lastly, the fiasco at Copenahagen shows that climate change can’t be achieved top down.
As James Schwartz aptly put it on his blog, Urban Country in a Canadian image, you have the captain of the hockey team making decisions, calling plays, but it’s the guys on the ice who make the game.
We are the guys on the ice. Climate change happens or doesn’t happen because of us.
There is no better way to engage a population in the drama, the crisis of climate change , than to start with their transport habits.
As we all know from our personal lives, so much transport is pure restlessness, that endless searching, foraging, which characterizes us humans.
Place the bike front and center, with pleasant paths to ride on, and it will be astonishing how that restlessness gets soaked up in moving around in the most pleasant and healthy way.
Once, in days past people strolled the boulevards to see and be seen, to take the air, to exercise, rain or shine. (painting by Gustave Caillebotte)
Then, came the car. For a while it was open and people still waved, had the wind in their faces, were part of the scene.
But cars became faster and more enclosed, the emphasis shifted to the machine and not the people.
Waving and greeting, the admiring pause, the word or two, all were gone.
Bring back the bike not just for utility, but as the vehicle of the promenade, and so much will be better. You’ll see!
I’ve just been down to Melbourne to make a film which will be called; Councillor on a bike.
You seemed to like Doctor on a Bike, and so when I saw Councillor Jackie Fristacky in action at a Bike Futures Conference recently, I thought, there’s a lady worth a movie.
She rides a bike of course, her main way of getting around the City of Yarra where she used to be mayor, and is now councillor.
Here, I’m trying to keep up with her as she dashes cross -country to a meeting. I’m shooting, hand held, from my own bike whose front tyre is about to go flat.
Her’s is a municipality which has the highest bike usage by people going to work of any place in Australia, a pretty amazing 9%
This success in getting people to ride bikes as transport is not all due to Jackie of course, but she has been a driving force.
I hope you’ll find the way she’s promoting urban cycling, is, well, inspirational. I did.
And she’s doing so in a nation which is a tough nut to crack when it comes to getting people out of their cars and onto two wheels,
This trip to Melbourne had it’s awful moments. Much as I love taking this Countrylink train which ambles across the land at a lovely leisurely speed, I hate having to take my bike apart to get it on board with me, and this I had to do on the way back to Sydney, always have to do, in fact.
Yes, in what must be just about world’s worst practice, they make you disassemble your bike and box it. Here’s a trembling pic of my bike in pieces, trembling with fury, that is.
Every time I do it, there’s something wrong with the bike afterwards
I hope to have Jackie’s film cut this week.
In the meantime, I’ll tell you of my stop over in Kiama on the way home, where I attended a seminar put in by weight loss Guru, Jon Gabriel. You’ve probably seen the before…
and after pics.
I was not initially there for the message, but rather to see how Jon worked the crowd, thinking I could learn something useful for promoting cycling.
But I was impressed enough by the message and the faith of his audience in his methods, he was very gentle with a lot of very fat people, that I stayed to believe somewhat, and, as well, to came away with something to apply to my bike story.
Basically, Jon argues that we gain weight because our bodies are protecting us from famines we’ve constantly experienced as a species way back in our pre history.
This famine threat is even now remembered and acted upon by our animal brains whether appropriate or not.
Diets thus can never work because they merely convince that animal brain that a new famine has indeed arrived, and everything must be done, not only to keep the weight, but to add to it.
Your only hope is to get a message through to this Nervous Nellie animal brain of yours , that, Hey, it’s OK, brain! There’s no famine. Loosen and lighten up too!.
How do you communicate with this primitive part of yourself? By firmly visualizing how you want the animal brain to see you, and then let it then act accordingly to make that image come true.
Exercise, he stressed, is of course good, but atypically, he recommends having short sharp bursts of extreme effort, sprinkled into your routine.
Why? Because this replicates flight from predators, he argues, telling the animal brain that it’s time to flee, that it’s good to be able to run fast, ride fast, etc.
Flee or be eaten, animal brain!
So now, I’ll plan my leisurely bike rides interspersed with sprints, just like Jon himself as he recounted when he out-rode a dog, intent on tearing out his heel tendon.
He spoke further of visualization techniques. For that audience of course, it was in terms of seeing themselves as their once slender selves.
But I suddenly thought that maybe I could use that same idea to promote urban cycling.
Few Australians mentally picture themselves hopping on a bike to go to the shops.
Like a pop up ad on your computer screen, when you think shopping, a car image pops up, does it not? This car image blocks all other visualizations.
How to replace that pop-up car image with a bike? Firstly, a useful mantra. You car is not a lifestyle choice, but a lifesteal choice.
This is because every time you use that car when a bike would do, you steal an exercise opportunity from yourself.
You also put yourself on the path to those six pills a day in later years. (See the movie on this blog; Doctor on a bike)
The flipside manta is; A bike is a two wheeled gym
You can build your bike visualization using images from photographers who prove how beautiful and flattering cycling can be.
This is key since looking good is a core need for all of us. Photographers like Mikael Colville-Andersen and lars T. Danielsen give us a useful gift.
So, maybe we can get you to visualize yourself on one of those Danish bikes you see here. Try it!
Mikael Colville-Andersen has many more photos like this on his famous blog, Copenhagen Cycle Chic.
You are looking superb, as if the bike was just invented to show off a svelte human form like yours to the greatest advantage.
Visualize yourself as were your great grandmothers and grandfathers
Practice bike visualization. If you are not svelte yet, then you maybe prompted, in wanting to cycle, to make your own arrangements.
I’m not making a plug for the Gabriel method, by the way, and haven’t asked permission to use these photos of him.
Kiama , by the way, south of Sydney is a superb small town. Set on a beautiful bay and craggy coast, it has had the sense to keep some of it’s older stately buildings like the post office.
and this row of cottages.
On Manning street, I found a sculpture which strangely thrilled me. As I approached the curve of metal, (they call it the wave) I saw it was covered with etched writing, readable at some angles.
It turned out to be a tribute to a man called Joseph Weston (?), a town father, and journalist in the 19th century.
From what I could read, the text being a tribute by a friend of the period, Watson had been a very fine man, devoted to public service for his adopted town of Kiama. (He’d come from England on a sailing ship)
It made me think, this sculpture in it’s simplicity and beauty, of how important it is to celebrate people of modest honesty, unlike the crooks who so often slither into power these days and on whom so much ink is spilled.
The artist , I remember the name, Vivienne Lowe, so impressed I was
By the way, I must thank James Schwartz for all the help he’s given me, unstintingly, to change this blog over from one that no one could find to what it now is, delightfully findable.
James blogs from Toronto under the name, Urban Country, I have a link on the side.
I happened to use a photo sourced from Google photos of James on a Bike-Share bike, in Montreal, I think. James got in touch and since then, we’ve shared ideas and he’s helped me a lot. Here’s the photo I used by chance.
James has just told me that he was in Montreal with just the clothes of his back, pretty much. He’d canoed there from Toronto, which has to be around 600 kms. Phew!
I’ve just finished editing the film you find below. A young filmmaker friend of mine, Violeta Brana-Lafourcade went to Copenhagen recently to interview for this blog, the famous Mikael Colville-Andersen.
Mikael is a film maker by background whose life, chance has turned in a different direction.
The uploading of a photo of his several years ago onto Flicker, a mysterious snap of a long skirted biker in high heels (she was waiting for the lights to change) catapulted him into a a new life.
The wild response prompted the creation of the blog, Copenhagen Cycle Chic, dedicated to the discovery that not only are bikes beautiful, but they present those who ride them as very beautiful as well.
Whilst the word, Chic, suggests fashion, even the fashion industry, catwalks, etc. Mikael’s observed cycle world is peopled by riders who wear their own clothes, who are not posing, who are unselfconscious in their gliding beauty.
There is no promotion of special cycling clothes here, indeed his cycle chic is all about avoiding the the usual uniforms of cycling, the tight lycra, the space age helmets.
It’s all, by contrast, about just getting on a bike, any old bike, and just riding it because that’s the the most sensible way to get from A to B. The attractiveness is the byproduct.
As my blog name suggests, I put special emphasis on the type of bike one rides, the sit-up bike and the posture it produces.
It’s no accident that almost every photo on Cycle chic has its rider proudly and serenely upright as if to say, I’m at the peak of this way of being, and I’ve nothing to do with cyclists hunched over their machines for speed.
Cycling is a broad church, everyone keeps reminding me. True enough, but here in Australia, the congregation has warped itself a certain way, and I find nothing wrong with suggesting some balance.
It so happens that this coincides with the bursting on the scene of a video from Britain which explores beauty on bikes. It’s release is imminent
We have only seen the trailer of Beauty and the Bike, as yet but everyone is rightly tantalized. Here it is.
I plan to explore this same theme here; why are young women not riding bikes?
On a smaller scale, but following the same idea, I hope to recruit a group of young women, probably around 15-16, who’ve never been interested in using bikes for transport, and find out why.
Then, having nailed down the reasons for their disinterest, we’ll get them on some stately sit-up bikes, dressed as they want to be seen, and we’ll have them riding around, savoring this new experience, and seeing if their attitudes change.
We will have a problem, Jill Charlton and I, which the British film makers did not have.
There, the girls could legally ride without helmets. Since helmets, we predict will turn out to be part of the problem, my daughter recently got on a bike after many years when I stopped the helmet nagging…..
….we’ll have to find a way to have our girls ride hair free as well.
Anticipating that problem, we’ll find an off road location which looks like normal streets, but to which the helmet law does not apply, probably the grounds of a University. There, we’ll do our test rides.
Anyone who’d like to help with this project, please contact this blog.
And if you think we’re thus promoting dangerous behavior, consider that the safest cycling takes place in those countries with the least helmet use, a paradox which it takes some time to delve, but which deserves debate it has yet to get.
See another film on this blog; Doctor on a Bike
See also the films on the charming Sue Abbott, who has chosen to confront the law.
If you looked at our recent film, Doctor on a bike, you might have noticed that it ended with a women, a mother of two young girls, riding on a famous sort of cargo bike invented in Copenhagen, called a Christiania.
That material was shot for this blog by Genevieve Bailey and Henrik Nordstrom.
Gen. is a bold young documentary film maker who wrote to me out of the blue about a year ago, (She’d loved one of my movies as a kid) and has since become a friend, as has Henrik.
When she told me they’d be in Copenhagen soon, I asked them to shoot some material for me. Now, as well as filming the woman in purple, I found that Gen had also interviewed her. Sadly, we don’t know the name of this interviewee.
I don’t know why the bike carries a woman’s name either. Is Christiania a real person who got someone to build her the first bike like this? Does anyone know the story?
David Hembrow (View from the Cycle Path) has just told me the name comes from Christiania, an alternative community in Copenhagen.
I’m feeling stupid. I’ve been there, and was worriedly watching my teenage daughter the whole time as she chatted with strange types, strange to me, not her.
Christiania’s are very popular in Denmark. even though expensive, both for ferrying kids and for shopping. David Hembrow also points out that similar cargo bikes are common all over Europe, especially in Holland.
We haven’t got round to such bikes here in Australia yet. Ar least, I’ve never seen one on the roads. There is one type for sale here that I know of, made by Gazelle, a very elegant machine, costing around $4000 Aus.
I’ve just been corrected by Peter. Christiania bikes are available from PSBikes in Collingwood, Melbourne
http://www.psbikes.com.au/model.html
In any case, we have to consolidate the idea that bikes are practical transport for a human, before we start loading them down or filling them up with stuff.
It’s very interesting that this Christiania rider in the clip below, does not own a car. Also, the problem of bike theft in the city, which she candidly discusses, is fascinating. The thieves seem very persistent there, even with burly bikes like these.
Dr. Ian Charlton and I made this film over the weekend.
I think it’s probably our most important video in terms of what he and I feel about the future of urban utility cycling in in Australia.
Ian’s main interest is in the obesity epidemic we face. How to get people exercising more, using public transport more so as to avoid obesity and all the life style diseases which go with it.
Here’s our film
We face a challenge. How to shift our cycling culture from the present leisure and sport based culture, to one that makes more use of bikes as transport. There is some utility use, here, but it’s nothing like in Europe.
For starters, our everyday getting around bikes probably need to be a different sort of bike, not flat bar road bikes , not racers, but the classic sit up type of bike which you see all over Europe.
Next , we need different rules for these slower, safer, bikes so that the Bike Share schemes can work here. These are now sweeping the world, like Velibs in Paris and Bixis in Montreal.
At the moment, Bike Share is blocked here by our compulsory helmet laws since it’s impossible to economically rent a tested, sterilized, helmet along with these bikes on the street.
If we want Bike Share, seems like our laws must change.
Last Saturday, I happened on a wonderful community market at MacMasters beach.
A lady at the fish shop had told me about it, and remembering what a charming spot it is, with its modest little community hall, we could not resist going along, Katya and I, and me taking my E bike with me.
Here’s the view down on the little hall from the road.
Can anyone imagine a scene more charming than this? Or how about looking back at the stalls in the trees?
Ah, the delight of dappled light on a sunny Saturday morning, with nice people all around. Of course the lady who’d done a bike painting caught my eye first.
She had placed it in front of the Wagstaff hall in her picture, (the nicest community hall on the Central Coast) but had seen the bike elsewhere, just the sort of bike I favor, sit-ups. Well painted too, no?
Katya was off looking at books which I never got round to doing, and buying jams.
I had a mission of sorts. I set up my E bike under a tree in front of the Band, and then went for a wander.
They was playing jaunty Dixiland stuff, just right for the time and place.
I have a pod on the back of the bike, and in it , some pamphlets about this sort of E bike, in case anyone was interested.
About this turquoise pod, hand made out of fiberglass, I like to say; my car knows it place, on the back of the bike!
My sign, lettered for the occasion, makes a bunch of modest claims about E bikes.
Soon, a fella did stop for a sticky beak. He turned out to be a bloke called Max, from Sydney who has a relative living up here.
A marvelous Saturday morning type of chap, was Max! He went for a wobbly ride whilst I wandered around.
I had to explain I was not selling electric bikes, just an enthusiastic advocate.
Here’s these bikes in action and me tricked into a stunt.
What a typical Aussie posture, I thought, that bloke there, talking to the Sheila . Make a good painting, they would, half listening to the Dixieland but in their own world too
She turned out to be his Missus. More about them later.
Then, there was the little girl who was wondering how the Wheel of Fortune worked. Having fun spinning the lucky mermaid.
And the dapper bloke who’s painting was good for a laugh. He was fun.
He called it; Grandma’s last smoke, It showed an unrepentant Gran enjoying a last puff before she kicks the bucket.
The smell of sizzling sausages filled the air as they usually do on such occasions, but , happily, we were both able to resist them
I met a nice old bloke who’s look intrigued me, a bushie type, he seemed.
His name is Les Waddington, he’s 88,and he’d just bought a painting from the lady who did the bike.
Les, it tuned out, much admired my beloved Uncle, Francis Sutton, the environmentalist who died this year at 97 . Here’s dear old Frankie Boy
Francis was way ahead of his time, proposing in the early seventies, that we shouldn’t be wasting our sewerage by piping it into the sea .
I made a film about him called: The Man Who Can’t Stop, and f0llowed his story as saving water became a lifelong challenge for him.
Thinking of Francis, who Katya and I both loved so dearly, and then meeting a stranger, Les, who’d admired him too, was a strange thrill of the six degrees type.
Katya and I suddenly had this flash of being suspended in a moment of perfect contentment, in our little world, so green, so tranquil.
Doesn’t she look contented? And me, in my converted helmet?
We are realize how much we like things in moderation. How much we love funky little community halls like MacMasters, stalls with not much on offer , just a patient little chap, waiting to be of assistance.
We went to see Mike Moore’s new film a few days ago, Capitalism, a Love Story.
Katya was shocked that we were the only two in the theatre. We both felt Mike nailed the greed behind so much capitalism, very effectively.
Speaking of small, Nina’s little shop, is something to visit before Nina is gone. Sadly, she’s selling up. I made this movie last Xmas as an Xmas surprise for Nina.
Back to Mike Moore and Capitalism. I feel a theory coming on. I don’t think the “ism” of capitalism is the core problem. As Katya said coming out, things were just as bad under the other big “ism ” communism, when she was growing up in Moscow.
No, our underlying human problem, is our addiction to excess. We adore excess, even as we know it’s bad for us and the planet.
Excess is everywhere, almost equally, even though the US has for long been a sort of excess theme park, and is both loved and hated for being just that.
But it’s here too. The mainstream media live off local excess, often the greed of some rascals in the business world, or Pollies on the take.
So, I’m hoping to get around to doing a Mike More type film which will be about excess.
But by contrast, it will be and must be, made for virtually nothing. Excess pinned to the mat by moderation, the the goal.
I might call it. Saving the world, The Cheap as Chips way. We’ll plunder the internet, youtube, etc. to make this movie . They will be our cornucopias , the excess we draw upon .
I was daydreaming as the jaunty music played on towards noon.
The squatting bloke, Ian, is a horticulturalist, he told me, and his wife is something to do with nature and balance.
We might do a small project together. I would like to see my bike burdened with trees as a green delivery vehicle, for example.
Like those bikes which won the war for the Vietnamese on the Ho Chi Minh trail, years ago. They are thinking about it.
Ian would provide the trees and I, the bike.
The other exciting thing to come out of our morning at MacMasters, was to hear from Barbara Wills about their dream of a building bike path south from MacMasters through the Buddi National Park.
How good would that be , eh?
And on shady bushland trails too!
I volunteered to make a film to promote their idea.
I’ve walked the famous Abel Tasman track at the top of the NZ’s North Island a couple of years ago, and wondered how come the Kiwis get all the foreign visitors, when we have a coastline just as spectacular to offer?
And you know, what we both have to give, us Antipodeans is wild places. The bush, the sea, and silence, or gentle wave lap, all of that is never far way.
This post is some personal reminiscences about living in Montreal and my delight to discover the Bix bike share scheme which has been such a hit there this last summer.
Even though I lived in Montreal for a good part of my life, indeed from 1965 to 1995, I never thought of Montreal as a bike city, I have to say.
Some friends rode bikes in summer, Martin, Dorothy and Marie, for instance.
I took little notice, apart from a few nice glides along the Lachine canal on a Sunday or two. I cant even remember owning a bike though Katya says I did.
It was in Montreal that our Ellen was born
Montreal is an apartment city and many of the triplexes have steep exterior stairs.
Getting a bike up to your apt. especially in winter when those stars are slippery, is, let’s say, discouraging.
I also have to confess that, though my friend, Martin Duckworth told me on several occasions about Bicycle Bob, the amazing Bob Silverman, I paid little attention to that interesting character either.
Journalist Josh Freed, in a 2007 article, called Bicycle Bob the Johnny Appleseed of cycling.
Yet the American apple tree planter was less colorfully extreme, I suspect than Bob Silverman.
For example, in the 1970’s he and his guerilla band lay down one afternoon in a Montreal intersection in rush hour traffic, covered in ketchup blood, to protest the mayhem caused by cars on bikes and pedestrians .
On another occasion , Bicycle Bob dressed as Moses, tried to part the vast St Lawrence river which runs past the city, so that cyclists could escape the unfriendly (for bikes) island on which Montreal sits.
Bob must be getting on now, but also taking pleasure from what’s happening with bikes today, because, I guess, it all starts with him.
I miss Montreal, miss friends, the things I used to do and those I didn’t do also, like ride a bike.
I was busy making movies. It never occurred to me, when I writing the scripts for the family feature films I made with legendary producer, Rock Demers to make bikes a part of the plot, even though many of our characters did rush about on two wheels when they needed to.
Here are some of the faces from one of the movies which preoccupied me.
It pleases me a lot that these faces would be well remembered by the many Quebecers now riding on Bixis, (see below)
They are the stars of Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler. In French it was; Les Adventuriers Du Timbre Perdu, and in both languages, a hit, even without bikes.
I saw no magic in bikes in those days. The young heroes we put on the screen, moved magically around the world in another way, on postage stamps, willing prisoners in the little pictures.
Tommy Tricker was our rascal.
So, it comes as a great surprise to me that Montreal is now one of the leading bike cities in the world. Indeed, probably the leader in north America though Portland, Oregon, has had that title for some time and still holds it in some respects.
Montreal now streaks ahead due to the brilliant street bike rental system it has created with a sit-and-beg type bike called; the Bixi.
5000 Bixis have just finished their first summer in the city. And, as if by magic, these sturdy but fun bikes, have rolled Montreal into a new reality.
(I don’t know who took these photos. Hope you don’t mind.)
The stats are impressive. Firstly, the whole shebang all was put together in record time
There have been approx. 400 pick up and drop off stations around the city. In some places, they are so numerous, that you can see one of the solar powered docking stations from another.
Apparently, the planners knew that the scheme wouldn’t work unless the bikes are literally everywhere and getting one, was seen as, “no problema ”
Bixi now has 8419 members. Those are the locals who’ve paid an annual fee and have unlimited access to the bikes.
Visitors swipe a credit card . For them, the first half hour is free, and many of the million borrowings this summer, were for a half hour or less, and so free. What an encouragement to try using a bike as transport, eh?
The name Bixi comes from putting bike and taxi together, and indeed, they are decongesting the city of both taxis and cars.
It’s impressive that these Bixis have kept almost a million kilos of green house gasses out of the atmosphere, according to their controllers.
This first season saw approximately 3.5 million kilometers ridden on Bixis.
It’s very weird for me to see these streets I know so well with this curious new public furniture on them.
What does it do to the head, I wonder, to have a constant visual reminder of this other way of getting around, not only reminder, but easy access as well.
Surely bikes, esp. these often derided sit-up bikes, have made a stratospheric leap in status?
No wonder that over 100 cities around the world have made inquiries, that London already has its 6000 Bixis. Boston is on the brink of getting 3000 , and Melbourne has just signed a contract for 600.
Hm, 600 only? Didn’t I read that these schemes won’ t work unless the bikes are everywhere?
Here’s a related movie made by the famous, Streetsblog, blog It’s a happy birthday to the mother-ship of bike share schemes, the Velib system in Paris.
20,000 or is it, 30,000 Velibs are now on Paris streets. This film also argues that you have to swamp a city with bikes for Bike Share to work.
Otherwise, it’s a novelty tourists might try out as an attraction, but no local would rely on. This film on Velibs addresses another mystery as well. How are these bikes paid for?
Why do locals love these systems? It’s a no brainer, actually.
Here’s a bike you don’t have to take care of. (Bikes do get punctures frequently you know, and those gears are always out of adjustment, aren’t they? )
Secondly, you don’t have to worry about it being stolen, the bike owner’s nightmare. Thirdly, you don’t have to carry it up all those stairs to your apartment, nor store it through a cold winter. It’s a dream situation .
A dream for vandals and the disaffected too, apparently, with 80% of Velibs already trashed and replaced.
Montreal has not had that problem… yet. Montrealers are immensely proud of their bikes and the new identity they bring to the city. They hope things won’t turn destructive like that, there.
The Bixis cost approx. $2000 each. That’s ten million dollars in bikes on the streets. Wow!
They are managed and paid for by the city, through Montreal’s parking authority, not by street advertising rights, as in Paris.
Andre Lavalle, the Montreal city politician behind the Bixi success, opined that the city parking people had the infrastructure and know-how to run this thing.
I should not have been surprised to hear that Montreal had become bike famous almost overnight because it’ s a city famous for its flair. When they do something, they do it with style.
I remember Expo ‘67, the Worlds Fair which was predicted to be a flop so late it was in the building, and yet it was launched on time as one of the most thrilling displays of human creativity and good vibes, ever seen on the planet. That was Montreal at is best. It’s a summer I’ll never forget. I was working for the NFB, then.
Here’s the US pavilion at the famous fair, a Buckmaster Fuller dome.
Expo 67 was supposed only to last a summer, but so good was it, that the summer fair went on for years after as Terre des Hommes, with the temporary pavilions somehow lasting long past their use-by date.
So, Bixi is in that same tradition. It will be a great surprise if it turns out to be a passing fad.
All over the world cities are just getting on with Bike Share, not waiting for foreign experts, not agonizing, just doing it.
In this video, Spain, which does not have a strong bike culture, we see Bicing taking off in Barcelona.
Note the commentator reports that in one year, the number of cyclists has doubled. Many people are riding for the first time, and the city, hitherto almost without bike paths, is now building 160 kms. of them
He concludes, “we could wait 20 years or do it all in a shorter time.”
Australian cities wont be able to hold out for long against this seduction, the benefits are too compelling.
Indeed, Melbourne and Brisbane have signed small, cautious contracts, too small to work, say some experts.
But, as previous posts have pointed out, we are hamstrung by our very atypical helmet laws. You see no helmets in the Paris video, the Bixi material, nor on the Bicing users in Barcelona.
It first struck me how far behind we are, when I took a camera with a friend when cycling around Sydney one beautiful day, and saw only 6 other bikes in as many hours. Compare this with the Barcelona images.
I think bike share will be the truth teller for our helmets laws, a sort of touchtone. It may go like this.
I understand that only about 10% of Montreal rider wear helmets. If it turns out that even with the larger numbers on bikes in Montreal this last summer, (moreover riders who ere less experienced, plus tourists who didn’t know the city and it’s traffic)
If even with all of that, the injury rate is not significantly up on last year, then it will strongly suggest that our helmet laws, and the constant fear-based promotion of helmets, may have been bogeyman talk.
