One of the advantages of being off air for a while is more time to get out and about, for instance, a quick trip sous la Manche to watch the 2008 Paris-Roubaix, the Queen of the Classics. Just shy of 260 kilometers, with around 55 kilometers over the brutal pavé (cobblestone farm tracks) of northern France. Camera: Andy Curry, William Greswell.
And a few stills:
If all this makes you want to test yourself on the toughest single day course in cycle racing, the Paris-Roubaix cyclo-sportive on 8 June is still accepting entries.
Thanks to everyone who’s helped make The Bike Show this season, in particular reporters Kieron Yates and Amy Cooper and the fabulous engineers at Resonance FM. Thanks for listening! The Bike Show will be back in a couple of months.
Kieron Yates and Matt Tempest report from Paris on the Vélib bike hire system that has brough 20,000 bicycles to the streets and transformed the French capital overnight into a cycling metropolis. Can it work in London?
Jack Thurston is away and in his place Amy Cooper presents a show devoted to the swashbuckling Trixie Chix, London’s female fixed wheel freestylers. Will Amy and her sit-up-and-beg town bike cut the mustard with the trackstanding, bike polo playing, long skidding, backwards circling Trixies? Find out…
In a special Valentine’s Day edition, sultry Southwark Cyclist Miss Alex Crawford explains why cycling is so good for flirting while love goddess Venus Kamura tells of the fifth annual Reclaim Love ‘happening’ on Saturday 16 February at the Eros Statue on Piccadilly Circus. Over the past few days, all across the bicycling world, there has been an outpouring of love for the inspirational Sheldon Brown who sadly died last weekend. We play a song by Oysterband, Sheldon’s all time favourite band. Plus a heads up for Wheels and Heels, a lovely bicycle fashion show on the evening of the 14th, at Columbia Road from 6pm and a chance to party ’til the break of dawn with the swashbuckling Trixie Chix, on Friday 15th February way up there in Dalston, northeast London. No excuse not to get loved up one way or another this week. Whew!
Earlier this evening I learned with great sadness that Sheldon Brown, the mighty, generous and wonderfully eccentric cyclist and repository of so much bicycle knowledge, has died. On behalf of everyone who helps to make The Bike Show, I extend our deepest sympathies to Sheldon’s family and friends.
Despite being a regular visitor to his encyclopedic website, I never had the pleasure of meeting the man, although he did twice appear on The Bike Show. Kieron Yates met and interviewed him for the show on the joys of fixed wheel touring and I made a rather primitive remix of Sheldon’s own homage to classic English three speed bicycles. Sheldon was usually quick on the uptake with new technologies and back in 2005 he made a few podcasts of his own.
In the fullness of time, The Bike Show will produce a proper tribute to Sheldon. If you want to your own memories and thoughts about the great man to be part of that show, then you can leave a video, audio or written tribute using the Comment link at the bottom of this post. It should work with any computer webcam/microphone and there is a preview available before you press ’send’. Tell the listeners of The Bike Show what Sheldon meant to you and to your life on two wheels.
Private companies and revenue-hungry government agencies have always had a stranglehold on the world’s best maps, until the arrival of Open Street Map, a volunteer-driven effort akin to Wikipedia for mapping and cartography. OSM offers endless customisation possibilities, is entirely open source and in many parts of the world is rivaling the best online and paper maps. OSM’er Andy Allan explains how he’s been adding information relevant to cyclists and explains how anyone can contribute to the project. George Coulouris and Jean Dollimore give a guided tour of Camden Cyclists’ collaborative online cycle route planning tool.
Date for the diary:
Bicycology evening of bike films, vegan pancakes and discussion of plans for a cooperative bike workshop and ‘radical bike group’.
Wednesday 6 February, 7.30pm
L.A.R.C (London Action Resource Centre)
62 Fieldgate Street, London E1
Totnes in South Devon is where the rapidly growing ‘transition town’ movement all began. Transition towns are a response to the problem of resource depletion, peak oil and climate change and embrace the practical and more esoteric aspects of changing lifestyles and mindsets. Totnes and the surrounding countryside - like many rural areas - remain heavily reliant on car travel. What can be done to get more people on bicycles in the countryside? Is cycling a viable rural alternative to the internal combustion engine? For more on Transition Towns, listen to the latest episode of Resonance FM’s Low Carbon Show. Plus Eric Gauster of Cycle Training UK on some great value bike maintenance classes for Londoners. We give away a place on either a basic or intermediate class to the listener who best completes the following sentence:
“I want to go on a bicycle maintenance course because…..”
Paul Wonnacott has been buying, repairing and selling on used bicycles in the English countryside for almost thirty years. In an extended interview he looks back at the changes he’s observed in the bicycle manufacturing industry (most of them bad) and grapples with a hoarder’s inner demon as he watches his huge stock literally pile up and up. Also mentioned in the show is the Waterfront London exhibition and series of breakfast talks at New London Architecture on Store Street, the Italian writer Ugo Riccarelli in conversation with journalist Richard Williams on the occasion of the publication of the English edition of Coppi’s Angel on 30 January at the Italian Cultural Institute. And the deadline for submissions to the 2008 Bicycle Film Festival is looming: 19 February.
Southwark Council plans to ban cyclists from a key stretch of the Thames Path, which runs along the south bank of the Thames, alongside the Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre. Jack Thurston canvases the (mixed) opinions of passersby and rapidly discovers that no one has been consulted about this proposed new byelaw. Koy Thomson, director of the London Cycling Campaign shares his perspective on the plans and argues for shared space. Amy Cooper reports on cycle training with Patrick Field and a new year’s wish list of cycle-friendly policies for the next Mayor of London.
For more on the draft byelaw banning cycling on the Thames Path, visit Southwark Cyclists’ website. To make your views known to the two Southwark Councillors responsible for this policy area, you can email them directly:
It might be a good idea to forward or cc any emails you send on this to the redoubtable Barry Mason of Southwark Cyclists, who is leading the campaign against the byelaw:
The closing of one year and start of another is the time where many of us resolve to turn over a new leaf, change our life or otherwise embark on a virtuous but most probably doomed attempt at self-improvement. London cyclist and underground bicycle advocate Amy Cooper joins Jack Thurston in the studio for a look at many and varied two wheeled new year’s resolutions. Also in this week’s show is a look at the Sustrans Connect2 ‘rails to trails’ project in South Bermondsey with Barry Mason of Southwark Cyclists.
To: Matthew Parris, The Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1XY
Dear Matthew Parris,
I am writing in response to your article “What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?” (The Times, 27 December 2007).
Whatever it is you’ve got against people who ride bicycles, to suggest that they deserve decapitation with piano wire is to step far over the often thin line that separates the wittily wicked from the plain nasty. Imagine an article that takes issue with Halloween in which the writer ‘jokes’ about giving trick or treating kids sweets laced with strychnine. Or piece against the war in Iraq that says British and American soldiers blown up by suicide bombers have received their just deserts.
The idea of cyclists meeting violent deaths on the road might make you chuckle, but I find it harder to see the funny side. Maybe it is because I know that every time I get on my bicycle I do face a small though very real risk of meeting a violent death myself. Maybe it is passing the spots where others have been killed, marked by floral tributes, bleached and withered by the sun and the rain. In London, where I live, around a dozen to twenty cyclists are killed each year, mostly in collisions with lorries turning left that have failed to see the cyclist on their inside. Earlier this month a woman by the name of Kate Charles was crushed under the wheels of a Tesco lorry in Brixton. In cases where the driver is found guilty of negligent or reckless driving, the punishment is invariably slight: a few points on the license, perhaps a short ban or a fine of a few hundred pounds. Custodial sentences are rare.
Indifference to the death and serious injury of people riding bicycles is commonplace and spiteful articles such as yours that seek to dehumanize people on bicycles only exacerbate the problem. There is a hidden assumption that people on bicycles are somehow ‘asking for trouble’, just as women rape victims are said to have asked for it if they were wearing a short skirt at the time of the attack. As for your idea that cyclists are all smug, self-righteous, self-satisfied, insolent jerks, I have no idea what your evidence is, since most of the cyclists I know are charming, cheerful and considerate souls (and that extends to not dropping litter, although there will always be a few exceptions). If you think about it, the very act of taking to the road without a two-ton box of steel to protect you means that you are trusting enough to put your life in the hands of others, and you have sufficient faith in humanity to believe that they will not run you down. I am sure your own antipathy an acute case of Freudian projection, with a side order of envy each time a bicycle glides past while you’re stuck in a traffic jam.
Normally I would not write letter like this in response to yet another unthinking newspaper diatribe against people who ride bicycles. Over the year, the best of your writing has been distinguished by its humanity, thoughtfulness and rationality. That’s why this particular column was such a surprise. Perhaps you were short of ideas in the last few days before Christmas and having seen the growing popularity of cycling thought that a bit of low rent contrarian invective would fill some space. Or maybe you just wanted to provoke a reaction.
Having risen to the bait, I’d like to make you a proposal. I present The Bike Show, a weekly radio programme on cycling, art and society that is broadcast on London’s experimental art radio station Resonance 104.4fm. The show features ‘rolling interviews’ with artists, writers, poets, scientists, philosophers and others, all of whom share the belief that, as John F. Kennedy put it, “nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride”. Someone once said that journalists should write about what they know. In that spirit, may I invite you out on a gentle afternoon ride (town or country) so you can find out what all the fuss is about. I’ll even lend you my spare machine. How about that for turning the other cheek?
Yours sincerely,
Jack Thurston
Presenter
The Bike Show
Update - 30 December 2007
I had assumed that piano wire decapitation was pure fantasy on the part of Parris. Turns out that it’s not. Chapeau to Treadly and me for compiling a list of real life incidents that I have reproduced below:
Does the coming of Olympics in 2012 spell disaster for cycle sport in London or will it bring much needed regeneration of a neglected part of the city? A ride with Patrick Field around the perimeter fence of the construction site in north east London and an interview with Michael Humphreys, chair of the Eastway Users Group, on the destruction of the popular Eastway road, mountain bike and cyclo-cross circuits, the interim facilities and plans for the legacy Velopark on the Olympics site.
The Bike Show will be off air until Monday 7th January 2008, when Resonance FM resumes its live broadcast schedule after the Christmas break. Chapeau and Bonne Route for 2008!
Reigning Rollapaluza champion and two-time ‘Raphapaluza’ winner Simon Jackson gives his tips on how to win at the frenzied sport of static bike racing. Plus a preview of the upcoming ITV comedy-drama series Bike Squad (aka “The Bill on bikes”) with Robert Collins of the Daily Telegraph.
Get down to the Bicycology film night on Thursday 13 December at the RampArt Social Centre, London E1 and of course to Rollapaluza IX-mas at the Waterloo Action Centre, 14 Baylis Road, London SE1.
The vulgar spectacle and regressive tax on the poor and the hopeless that is the UK’s National Lottery, is giving away £50 million of its ill-gotten loot to one of four ‘worthy causes’, to be decided by a popular vote in which everyone in the UK can take part. The poll closes on 10 December.
One of four projects in the running is Sustrans, the excellent charity which makes bike paths and other good things in the cause of sustainable transport. If it wins the vote, Sustrans would spend the money on Connect2:
“A UK-wide project that aims to improve local travel in 79 communities by creating new walking and cycling routes for the local journeys we all make every day. By building bridges and crossings over busy roads, rivers and railway lines, Connect2 will get people to the places they want to go. Each crossing will link to a network of walking and cycling routes, taking you to your schools, shops, work and green spaces. Connect2 will also bring people closer together, making journeys quicker and more convenient and leaving more time to spend with family and friends.”
After the jump is a rather tacky video that explains all about it. Anyway, as the Chicago mob bosses used to say, vote early and vote often. By phone on 0870 24 24 602 (calls cost 10p from a landline, maybe a shade more from a mobile) or online. [Read more →]
Over the past five years a craze for riding bicycles with only one gear and no freewheel has taken off, in New York, London, Sydney and cities all around the world. We take a long hard look at the merits and excesses of the scene. Featuring an extended interview with the mystery man behind the Bike Snob NYC blog, Roxy Erickson of London’s Trixie Chix and Gabriel Nogueira, one of the prime movers in the small but growing fixed wheel crowd in Curitiba, southern Brazil.
A Christmas books special with guests George Theohari (author of the newly published Cyclist’s Companion), Guy Andrews (editor of Rouleur) and Graeme Fife (among the UK’s leading cycle writer whose memoirs were published this year). Includes readings from Tim Krabbé’s The Rider, Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men On The Bummel, Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Graeme Fife’s play Jam. Plus we give away a copy of the latest edition of Graeme Fife’s Tour De France: the history, the legend, the riders and a copy of the beautiful Rouleur Annual 2007. Competitions are now closed, with the winners Derek in Peterborough (Merckx won the world champs four times: three as a pro and once as an amateur) and Nouman in East London (Bertrand Russell collided with George Bernard Shaw). Well done to both!
Everyone is guessing wrong for the Rouleur Annual quiz question, so there’s a clue after the jump. [Read more →]
The Bike Show: 26 November 2007: Christmas books special [30:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup
The Bike Show returns for its winter season with guest in the studio Buffalo Bill reporting on this year’s Cycle Messenger World Championship in Dublin and Kieron Yates on taking part in the epic and grueling 1200 kilometer non-stop race from Paris to Brest and back.
After a long late summer and autumn break, The Bike Show returns to the airwaves on 19 November at 6.30pm. It’s good to be back. Read about the upcoming season after the jump. [Read more →]
The sport of polo originated some two thousand years ago on the plains of Persia and it is today the preserve of the Royal family, Saudi princes, trust fund layabouts and the international jet set. [Read more →]
The first Catford Cycling Club ‘Hill Climb’ was held at Westerham Hill on August 20th 1887. The 112th edition will take place on Yorks Hill in Kent, on Sunday 21st October at 11am. The race is run as a time trial with riders starting at one minute intervals to race just 707 yards, which in parts includes a gradient of 1 in 4. The top riders will cover this distance in less than two minutes, although The Bike Show correspondents may take rather longer. Entries close on 10 October and it costs £6 to enter. Therese Bjorn at Rapha is organizing a group ride down from central London, to tire out the competition. Full details below the fold. See you on the parcours! [Read more →]
Earlier today the American Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Floyd Landis’s positive doping test and awarded a two year ban, which will mean Landis will be able to compete again in 2009. Spain’s Oscar Pereiro was declared the winner of the 2006 Tour de France. “You never want to win a competition like that but after a year and a half I’m just glad it’s over,” said Pereiro.
Having spent the summer moving microphones, mixing desks, transmitters and an antenna to new and improved studios, Resonance is back live on the air from noon on Sunday 23 September. (The Bike Show will return a little later in the year.)
Resonance FM is having an “open day” from 4pm to 6.30pm on Sunday 23 September. A tour of the new studio will take approximately seven minutes. Later that day there will be a RELAUNCH PARTY at the Roxy Bar and Screen, 128-132 Borough High Street, from 7.00pm
Jack Thurston, presenter of the Bike Show, will lead a celebratory ride the short distance from the site of the old studios at 9 Denmark Street, just off Charing Cross Road to the new studio at Borough High Street. The ride will leave at 4.30pm and take a scenic route through the City which will be dead quiet on a Sunday afternoon.
The new studio is located about thirty seconds from Borough underground station. 144 Borough High Street, r/o Willcox House, London SE1 1LB. MAP.
Access is through the black iron gates to the right of Willcox House.
In a feature on why radio turns us on, the Guardian’s Zoe Williams listed The Bike Show alongside five other ‘gems on the airwaves’, including the legendary Hancock’s Half Hour and the Sony-award winning The Verb. Ms Williams is a certified London cyclist, so let’s hope it’s only a matter of time before she’s agrees to be a guest on the show.
Resonance FM is moving to new and better studios! This is great news, but it means the station is suspending all live broadcasts until the move is complete (sometime in August). Instead it will be broadcasting repeats from the past five years of art radio.
The Bike Show will return in due course, later in the year, though there may be a special podcast-only preview of the Symphony for Singing Bicycles, which was an outstanding success last weekend. Some photos are already beginning to appear online. And there’s short audio clips here here. Until then, enjoy Le Tour and let’s hope the summer appears before it’s too late.
Join us for Tour de France festivities in sunny Waterloo on Friday and Saturday of Le Grand Départ in London. The Bike Show is teaming up with Scooterworks for a two-day bonanza of bicycles, music and fun. [Read more →]
Have you ever dreamt of playing in a symphony? Have you heard of the early-20th-century-futurists favoring the street over the canvas or the stage? Maybe Godfried-Willem Raes’s 2nd Symphony could be your chance. And, it isn’t even very difficult: join the symphony with your bicycle. We carefully prepare and tune your instrument; you and bicycle orchestra ride in a long row at a regular pace; the last cyclist overtakes the whole group. The Symphony will delight in a wonderful and exciting way.
The Bike Show is organising a performance of Godfried-Willem Raes’s (pictured, right) second symphony for ’singing bicycles’. It will take place on the morning of Saturday 7 July on London’s South Bank. This is first day of racing of the Tour De France’s Grand Depart in London, and the Symphony will almost certainly be the most eccentric contribution to a weekend of cycling in the capital. [Read more →]
In conversation with Julian Bray, a journalist and rider with the Rapha Condor team. Julian came to competitive cycling after falling in love with the continental tradition of the cyclosportive: mass-participation road races of historic or cultural significance, such as the annual Etape du Tour and the Gran Fondo Campagnolo. We discuss the appeal of cyclosportives, the practical issues of how to rider one and Julian gives his impression of the London-Canterbury ‘British Etape’ cyclosportive and his all-time Top 5 events. Also in the show a chance to win one of three copies of a new DVD about the route of the 2007 Etape and two tickets to a talk at London’s Design Museum by the curator of a new exhibition about fixed wheel bicycles. [Read more →]
Preview of a new exhibition of stunning photographs by internationally acclaimed photojournalist Stefan Vanfleteren that capture the essence of Flemish cycle racing. Interviews with Vanfleteren and with British former world champion Tony Doyle and three times Paris-Roubaix winner Johan Museeuw aka ‘The Lion of Flanders’. Live music from the sensational Orchestre International du Vetex. If you can’t make it to London to see the exhibition, some of the photos appear in the current issue of Rouleur magazine and a book is also available.
T’ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it. Andrea Casalotti of Velorution and Jean-Marie Orhan (Frenchman-about-town and founding member of the Tweed Cycling Club) offer sartorial advice to urban cyclists. Tribute is paid to the stylish riders of the golden era of professional bicycle racing, including a pilgrimage up Le Mont Ventoux to the spot where stylish British cycling world champion Tom Simpson collapsed and died in the 1967 Tour. Philippe Bordas, former cycling reporter for the L’Équipe newspaper, laments the new era of blood doping that has replaced heroic athlete-artists with boring man-machines.
Upcoming events: Pret À Rouler fashion show on Thursday 21 June. Rapha’s Smithfield Nocturne on Saturday 23 June, featuring an elite criterium race, ‘Le Mans start’ folding bicycle race and bike messenger mashup. Plus Continental Drift DJs.
Alongside articles on bikes at Burning Man, Cherokee spoke cards and a penny farthing race, the summer edition of the excellent Momentum Magazine features an interview with Jack Thurston, presenter of the Bike Show. Momentum (the magazine for self-propelled people) comes out of Vancouver in Canada but is read around the world. It is free in both its paper form and as a download. Chapeau to Momentum!
The Bike Show this week has a distinctly Mediterranean and gastronomic feel. Kieron Yates reports from northern Italy, the world capital of the Slow Food movement, on a ’slow bicycle’ ride along the length of the River Po (for more on ABICI bikes, look here) Meanwhile, Jack Thurston is joined by William Greswell in the sunny south of France, relaxing in Aix-en-Provence while considering an imminent attempt at the fearful Mont Ventoux. Plus new statistics on the dangers to cyclists from bendy buses and a heads up for Rolling to the Stones, a night rider to Stonehenge on the night of the Summer Solstice, 20-21 June.
Bike Show presenter Jack Thurston is a founding member of the Tweed Cycling Club. Several members of the Club feature in a photo story in the summer edition of The Chap magazine, out on June 8th. [Read more →]
The Bike Show visits Paris’s 11th Fête du Vélo. Among the subjects discussed are Paris’s growing love affair with the Brompton folding bicycle, how Cannondale are marketing the latest urban bikes in France, a new puncture proof Dutch tyre and Les Dérailleurs, France’s gay and lesbian friendly cycle touring club. We also discuss unicycling with Mike Ray from South Dakota, who owns not one but five of the contraptions. He explains how unicyclists have escaped the circus for the rough-riding world of singletrack. Plus congratulations to the CTC and others whose campaign against anti-cyclist revisions to the UK highway code has forced the government to back down.
This week features a ride in the hills of north Kent hills with writer, broadcaster and cyclist Graeme Fife. Graeme is the author of several of the best English language books about cycling and Le Tour de France. His new book has just been published. It’s a very personal memoir entitled The Beautiful Machine: A life in cycling from Tour de France to Cinder Hill.
The Bike Show returns to Essex and Martin Newell, writer, poet, musician and horticultural assassin, for another helping of Spoke N Word. This year’s programme features a new route from Wivenhoe to Bentley Green, reported to be the largest village green in England. We cross fields, pass through woodland and finish on a series of quiet country lanes. Rain threatens but Martin is equipped with a waterproof poetry kit.
In the studio is Andy Cox, with the latest developments on the UK premier of the Symphony for Singing Bicycles, set for Saturday 7 July. Got a dynamo? Want to take part? We need up to 24 riders, so please get in touch via bikeshow(at)gmail(dot)com.
Spoke N Word runs until 1 July, every Saturday and Sunday, with cycle rides on Sun 27 May, Sat 2 June, Sun 3 June, Sun 17 June, Sun 1 July. Tickets from £7 bookable at the Colchester Arts Centre on 01206 500 900.
Returning for the summer season, The Bike Show turns to the trials of US cycling star Floyd Landis, whose sensational victory in the 2006 Tour de France was thrown into doubt after he failed a test for the banned drug testosterone. We also hear an extended talk on road danger in a global context by Dr Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine. Dr Roberts was addressing an event organised by Road Peace, the UK national charity for road crash victims. See also Moving Target Zine for excellent coverage of road danger issues London cyclists, plus top tips for all you fakengers out there. The ‘def track’ is by ex-bike messenger MC Abdominal who has given up being a courier in order to rap about being one. Is he serious??
To follow the latest twist and turns of the Floyd Landis doping affair, I recommend Trust But Verify, whose authors, devoted fans of Landis, have digested an ungodly amount about the science and law of anti-doping in cycling, and present their coverage in an honest, straightforward way. Cycling Post maintains a Landis Dossier.
The launch of Graeme Fife’s new book, The Beautiful Machine, is at Velorution on Thursday evening, 17 May.
The fourteenth and final show in the current season features an extended interview with Jimmy and Triin aka 
3 March 2008: Cycling Troubadours [30:00m]: 
Kieron Yates and Matt Tempest report from Paris on the Vélib bike hire system that has brough 20,000 bicycles to the streets and transformed the French capital overnight into a cycling metropolis. Can it work in London?
Southwark Council plans to ban cyclists from a key stretch of the Thames Path, which runs along the south bank of the Thames, alongside the Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre. Jack Thurston canvases the (mixed) opinions of passersby and rapidly discovers that no one has been consulted about this proposed new byelaw. Koy Thomson, director of the 
Over the past five years a 
The Bike Show visits Paris’s 11th Fête du Vélo. Among the subjects discussed are Paris’s growing love affair with the Brompton folding bicycle, how Cannondale are marketing the latest urban bikes in France, a new puncture proof Dutch tyre and Les Dérailleurs, France’s gay and lesbian friendly cycle touring club. We also discuss unicycling with Mike Ray from South Dakota, who owns not one but five of the contraptions. He explains how unicyclists have escaped the circus for the rough-riding world of singletrack. Plus congratulations to the CTC and others whose campaign against anti-cyclist revisions to the UK highway code has forced the government to back down. 
The Bike Show returns to Essex and 