Tag: fixie

Theatre Thursday: West Side innit


“It’s crazy how fast time goes by when you’re having a good time. Usually, you already have some sort of expectations before starting a trip; about places you may visit, or experiences you might live. But truth is, that the journey itself is full of surprises. It’s the people you meet along the way who make the difference. People you can share your passion with, who turn unknown places into a second home.The number of special moments we have lived along the journey have by far exceeded our initial expectations. It has been an unforgettable experience, that pushes us to keep on traveling, doing what we care about most.”

Credits:
– MARCO GASSER (film, direction & edit)
– FABIO GASSER (film, direction & edit)
– DANI MELO (artwork)

Crew:
– JUAN GUADALAJARA (founder)
– JUANMA POZO (founder)
– DANI MELO (art director)
– URI BORDES (ceo)
– XAVI FUENTES (roadtrip crew)
– RUBÉN GARCÍA (roadtrip crew)

Cairo’s hipster bike shop hoping to start a (bike) revolution


from the Guardian:

Chaotic traffic, no cycle lanes, smog, potholes … Cairo’s not known for its cycling for good reason, but the owners of the city’s first custom bike shop think it’s time for that to change

Ain Bicycles, Cairo
Kareem Abdullah and Dirk Wanrooij of Ain Bicycles ride two of their custom bikes in Cairo. Photograph: Patrick Kingsley

The city of Cairo and the hipster bicycle have not historically found common purpose. Due to Cairo’s gridlocked traffic, heat, potholes, smog, and a near-total absence of both lane discipline and cycling infrastructure, very few commute by bike here. Endemic harassment puts off female cyclists. In general, it’s probably the last place most people would want to sell stylish, custom-made bicycles.

Fortunately, Kareem Abdullah and Dirk Wanrooij are not most people. They’re the founders and sole mechanics of Ain Bicycles, a new shop that makes bespoke commuter bikes. They reckon they’re the first to do what they do in Egypt – “maybe even north-east Africa”, Wanrooij laughs – and no one’s yet told them they’re wrong.

“Other bicycle shops in Egypt are mainly just businesses,” argues Abdullah, whereas he and Wanrooij say they want to actively “enhance Egyptians’ perception of cycling”. To promote it as a means of transport.

Culturally, they know they may be several light-years ahead of the curve. Egypt is “a country where a bicycle is nothing more than a toy,” Abdullah explains, and where cycling has a social stigma. The cyclists who do brave the city’s messy streets tend to be deliverymen doing their neighbourhood rounds on flat-tyres and rusting frames. For the few middle-class Cairenes who do own a bike, cycling is mostly for leisure, early on a quiet weekend morning.

That mindset is what the pair want to change with their range of brightly-coloured, single-speed bicycles, which they hope will show that cycling can be a classy means of getting around town.

“In order to get people on a bike, they need to look good,” says Wanrooij, a Dutchman who moved to Cairo in 2009. “So we’ve basically combined the practicality of the bicycles with good-looking design, in order to get people to ride their bikes more often.”

Cycling is sometimes faster than driving, he tells people, particularly during traffic jams, and it’s not quite as dangerous as it might seem. Partly because the roads are so unpredictable, drivers are used to braking at short notice. And bit by bit, customers are increasingly convinced: orders have spiked from about three or four a month during the summer to 20 in October.

Ain Bicycles has an unusual workshop – a ground-floor flat with wooden floors that doubles as Abdullah’s brother’s art-studio. Their bikes share the space with various cardboard cut-outs, a budgie, and a slightly aggressive ginger cat called Caramiso.

But so far, the arrangement seems to work: the pair make 10 stock bikes a month, each designed differently, to give customers an idea of the range on offer. Individual clients (who, for full disclosure, include your correspondent) can then ask to customise each bike according to their needs, or get one made from scratch. The only constant is that all of Ain’s creations are single-speed, with Dutch-style coaster brakes. Prices start at 1,250 Egyptian pounds (just over £100) and end at around 2,650 (£235) – expensive for Egypt, but a bargain compared to what you’d pay elsewhere.

Some of the parts are ordered from the Netherlands and Germany, while the leather seats and handles are made at a tannery down by the pyramids. Their frames are mainly sourced locally, though when one unusually tall customer came knocking, they ordered an oversized version from Holland. “To my knowledge,” says Wanrooij, “it’s the only one this tall in Egypt.”

Both Wanrooij and Abdullah started off in other jobs. Abdullah originally worked in import-export, but took a mechanics course in Canada after realising that the city lacked “a proper decent bicycle shop where they do proper repairs”. Wanrooij always promised a friend he’d build them a bike, but as a journalist he never had the time.

Ain Bicycles, Cairo
‘In order to get people on a bike, they need to look good.’ One of Ain Bicycles’ custom models. Photograph: Ain Bicycles

“It never really happened until I met Kareem, and we made a bike for that friend. Then there was another friend who wanted a bike, and then another friend and from there it developed into a business.”

In one of his first acts as president, Egypt’s new strongman, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, made a show earlier this year of cycling through Cairo with hundreds of young army officers. He said it was a bid to discourage car usage, which is a huge drain on government resources because of the fuel subsidies provided to drivers.

But the spectacle was little more than a PR exercise, with nothing subsequently done to make life safer for cyclists. For now, Wanrooij says the only people who can really change the culture are the cyclists themselves.

“The challenges of cycling in Cairo are manyfold,” he says. “But the only solution for all these challenges is to dive right into them.”

‘My bike was stolen but i got it back’ Story from GearJunkie


I like this story

It was a Sunday night in Minneapolis. 40 riders set out on an urban course, an alleycat race. It’s a monthly must-attend event for me, the underground No Name Alleycat Series, held every first Sunday night of the month.

Well, tonight I rode in the No Name — 25+ miles of city streets, stop and go, navigating checkpoint to checkpoint on a scavenger hunt — and then I came into the end, the finish at a bar in the heart of the town.

track bike.jpg
Stolen on 11/02/14

I run inside to hand in my manifest sheet. My answers are scrawled in red marker. I’m happy with a solid finish.

Then back outside. My bike is gone! My heart sinks. I was inside for just a couple minutes, but a thief took the cue and rode away.

“Where’s my bike? Did you see anyone?” I ask frantically to two guys standing and smoking on the sidewalk.

“Oh, that was your bike?” one said.

“Yes. Where’d it go, who took it?”

“Some guy… some guy who rode that way.”

He points east down Franklin Avenue, a choked urban street that runs across town. I squint and look blocks ahead, the faint traces of a blinking red light (my bike’s taillight?) rolling away.

I take off running. My bike shoes clomp on cement. I chase the red blink ahead, slowly getting away.

Breathing hard. Feet screaming from running in tight, cleated shoes. But finally I catch the light. NOT my bike. It’s a dude in a wheelchair rolling away, a blinker on the back of his rig.

Defeated, I run back to the bar. Same fellas still outside smoking.

“Did you see who took it?” I plead. They seem hesitant, and then offer a vague description and point east again.

Another alleycat rider rolls up to the bar. “Can I borrow your bike, someone just stole mine.”

I hop on the borrowed ride and pedal east again, my LED helmet light on full blast. I scan each bike on the sidewalk. I look down alleys.

At a grocery store I stop to look at a rack of bikes. Mine is no where around.

It’s been 10 minutes. Losing hope. I ride and scan, hoping the bike has been ditched. It’s a track bike, fixed-gear and brakeless — not an easy bike to steal and pedal away with unless you know how to ride it.

I’m mad at the thief and mad at myself for not locking it up. The bike is a custom build, a model I’ve shaped over the years to fit me and my style.

That day, I’d just put on new pedals. It’s going to be a huge loss, and I feel in the melodrama of the moment that the bike is going to be hard to replace.

In a daze. I’m rolling on the dark city street. A few turns, another few blocks, aimless scanning. I give up.

I pedal back to the bar. Then, someone is yelling: “Your bike!”

The smoking fellas are pointing across the street. I roll over to a group of bikers unlocking their rides, shouting, “Do you see my bike?”

They are confused. Wrong group. I look back to the bar. “It’s here,” the smokers shout.

tc stolen bikes page.jpg
Twin Cities Stolen Bikes page put out the alert

My bike is back, returned by the thief. Outside the bar are a few friends from the race. “We sent a couple guys out to look for your bike,” they tell me.

As I was away the alleycat racers had mobilized and were in the vicinity searching. A Facebook alert on the Twin Cities Stolen Bikes page had been released within minutes of the theft.

I gripped my bike’s handlebars and looked at the frame. “Where’d it come from? How’d it get back?”

The smoking fellas were suddenly gone. One was hiking west on the sidewalk. We caught up. He soon admitted, vaguely, that he’d taken the bike, but he was getting out of there before we called the cops.

High fives. Huge relief. A weird and erratic chase that led to no where but somehow netted my bike’s return.

The guy walking west and away from the bar? He said he’d taken it on a joy ride as “a joke.” Not funny for me. A lie also, I suspect.

What happened? I never got a full answer. My guess is that the bike was hidden near the bar, never taken very far away. It was returned after the smokers and their bud realized we were determined to get the bike back.

I said thanks to all my friends who’d jumped up to help. Then I needed to head home. A few blocks away, smiling huge and flush with emotion or adrenaline from the search, I noticed the bike was tracking strange.

The handlebars were off-kilter, twisted a few degrees on the stem. I dismounted and looked at it head-on. There’d been a crash, or the bike had been thrown down hard. I suspect the joy-rider had been kicked off by the pedals after trying to coast on the fixed-gear.

I got out my tool and loosened the stem. Adjusted the handlebar back into place. Cars were racing by on the street a few feet away. Lights blinked and glowed, signs and street lamps and brakes, stretching away into the dark of a city night. I clipped in and rode home. Next time — even if away for a minute — I’ll use my lock.