3 March 2008: Cycling Troubadours

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Jack Thurston

The fourteenth and final show in the current season features an extended interview with Jimmy and Triin aka Too Dumb To Die, cycling jazz troubadours, back from a year and a half touring South East Asia with the Cyclowns Circus. The show also features Martin Low of Westminster City Council describing the Sustrans Connect2 project to build a cycle-friendly bridge across the railway in north Bayswater.

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.

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25 February 2008: Will Vélib work in London?

Posted on February 27, 2008 by Jack Thurston

Velib Kieron Yates and Matt Tempest report from Paris on the VÃ©lib 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?

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Photo by Deep Blue

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18 February 2008: Hanging with the Trixie Chix

Posted on February 19, 2008 by Jack Thurston

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…

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11 February 2007: Love

Posted on February 11, 2008 by Jack Thurston

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!

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4 February 2008: Reclaim the Street(maps)

Posted on February 4, 2008 by Jack Thurston

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

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28 January 2008: Transition Town Bicycling

Posted on January 28, 2008 by Jack Thurston

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…..”

email to bikeshow@gmail.com

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21 January 2008: Hidden Treasure

Posted on January 21, 2008 by Jack Thurston

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 has 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.