Category Archives: Podcast

Bart Kyzar: Man on a Mission

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The messenger bag is one of the defining elements of the “new urban bike culture” and Bart Kyzar has been making bombproof bags for bicyclists since the mid-1990s, first with Chrome and now with Mission Workshop, based in San Francisco.

Last summer Mission Workshop opened a new store at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane. While riding through the sunny streets of London, Bart tells how he and a couple of friends started making messenger bags while living in a warehouse in Boulder, Colorado, how rising osteopathy bills led to a fundamental rethink of traditional messenger bag design and why Mission Workshop is proud of its tiny niche in the US military industrial complex.

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A Christmas Stocking: Apprenticeships, L’Eroica and MyBikeLane.com

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eroica-bigIn the last show before Christmas, Jacqui Shannon reports on new opportunities for paid bike mechanic apprenticeships and Matt Sparkes files a report from Italy on L’Eroica, the annual vintage cyclosportive (pictured, left).

Civic hackers Greg Whalin and Richard Pope talk about MyBikeLane.com, Greg’s website for crowd-sourcing bicycle lane violations.

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Four Great Lives in Cycling: Kuklos, Robinson, Mustoe, Fignon

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Studio discussion of four great lives in cycling: Kuklos, the prolific journalist who documented British cycling scene in the first half of the twentieth century; Brian Robinson (pictured, above), the first Brit to win stages in the Tour de France; intrepid cycle tourist Anne Mustoe; and Laurent Fignon, perhaps the last truly great French professional bike racer.

Expert guests are Graeme Fife, author of a newly published biography of Brian Robinson, and Tim Dawson, columnist on the Sunday Times and editor of the Cycling Books website. Plus a chance to win a set of Gavin Turk Les Bikes de Bois Rond postcards. Answers by email to bikeshow@resonancefm.com.

Further reading:

Of Wrigging – Kuklos. A 1927 essay taking on John Ruskin’s opposition to cycling.

Brian Robison: A Pioneer – Graeme Fife (Mousehold Press, 2010)

A Bike Ride – Anne Mustoe (Virgin Books, 1991)

We Were Young and Carefree – Autobiography of Laurent Fignon (Yellow Jersey Press, 2010)

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Season opener: Knutsford Great Race and all the fun of the Cycle Show 2010

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Window shopping at the Cycle Show 2010 taking in the latest offerings from Brooks (saddles), Bisignals (lights), Bike Dock (storage), Carradice (bags), Schmidt Maschinenbau (dynamo lights) and the Moulton Bicycle Company. Matt Sparkes reports from the once-a-decade Knutsford Great Race, where upwards of 80 competitors raced their ‘ordinaries’ (penny farthings or high-wheelers) in a deadly serious 3 hour time trial.

Photo credit: Knutsford Great Race

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Ron Cooper on Ron Cooper

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Ron Cooper is a legend in frame-building. He started as a fifteen-year-old apprentice with A.S. Gillott, and his frames have come to define the very best of the British lightweight style. He talks about the early days learning from master frame-builders like Jim Collier and Bill Philbrook, his own racing career and his commercial success in the US in the 1970s. Along the way he explains the technique and motivation needed to hand build more than 7,000 racing frames. Having turned 79 in June this year, Ron Cooper is still building three mornings a week.

Look out for the cover story in Rouleur 19 on Ron Cooper, with photos (including the above) by Nadav Kander.

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Looking back at Le Tour and ahead to ‘Bicycle Thieves’

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Lionel Birnie of Cycling Weekly shares his best moments of this year’s sensational Tour De France. Plus we look ahead to Bicycle Thieves, which combines theatre and BMXing on the streets of London, as part of the InTransit festival. Book tickets for just £4 here or by calling 0845 230 9769.

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Talking Le Tour with Paul Fournel

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paul_fournelAn extended, hour long edition of the show featuring French writer, poet, cyclist and cultural ambassador Paul Fournel (pictured). We stroll from the French House in Soho to the Rapha Cycle Club in Clerkenwell, to visit an exhibition of a hundred years of racing bicycles. The exhibition runs for two more weeks and is well worth a visit. Paul Fournel’s book Besoin de Vélo is one of the loveliest pieces of writing about cycling and is available in English translation as Need for the Bike. If you buy it after clicking through on the link, Resonance FM gets a few pennies. Rob Ainsley of the Real Cycling blog reports on the launch of London’s two new cycle superhighways.

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