Two wheels good

It's the last Friday of the month tomorrow, meaning it's Bike Friday and Critical Mass, more about which you can read in this previous post.

To get you in the mood for a day on two wheels, I thought I'd share some cool cycling sites I've had the pleasure of acquainting myself with in recent months, plus this photo taken on a recent trip to Belfast.


First is Mancunion bicycle-based art project Papergirl Manchester (@PapergirlMCR) that's been bubbling away over the summer and building up to a special exhibition at Soup Kitchen starting on 1 October. Also on a creative tip is Messenger Town, which describes itself as "the journal of cyclogeography" and has loads of interesting snaps by bike couriers all over the shop (recently featuring our very own Rainy City along with our equivalent across the Pond, Seattle).

And it's not all about getting down and dirty with the grease monkeys, my fashionista friends, or kitting yourself out top to toe in nasty hi-vis. If you happen to be in the Big Smoke, VeLo Loves The City has some damn handy links, from bike shops and cafes, to other bike bloggers and handy bag stockists (you can also follow them on Twitter at @VeLoLovesCity). For more on cycling with style, check out the likes of London Cycle Chic (@LondonCycleChic) and US-based Chic Cyclists.

Now, this is brilliant. You never know when it's going to happen, or where, or indeed why, but every cyclist knows that at some point (and usually quite often), they will get grief from a motorist or be pissed off by a pedestrian. Dawn (@dawnhfoster) at A Hundred And One Wankers feels your pain, and is encouraging everyone to name and shame the worst offenders through the medium of the Worldwide Wankers map. I feel this might come in handy at some point...

...in the meantime, why not join the Contemporary Cartography Bicycle Tour, which coincides with the publication of the new art map of Manchester and Manchester Weekender. It sets off from Whitworth Art Gallery next Saturday at 11am. Art and cycling: we like.

Saddle up and ride em cowboy

This weekend, it's all about cycling. Well, every day is about cycling for me, but I do like to encourage other people to get on their bike (to coin a phrase), and sometimes they're not all that keen to do this if they're not being accompanied by other people on two wheels. Something to do with safety in numbers, I guess. (As perfectly illustrated by this photograph of two matching bikes I spotted in the Northern Quarter on Tuesday evening. Neat.)

So this weekend in Manchester there are quite a few excuses to dust off your velo and pump up your tyres pump up your tyres pump up your tyres - dance dance. (Uh, sorry, don't know what happened there.)


Kicking things off is the regular Bike Friday ride into town tomorrow morning, with led groups departing various points at 8am and all converging at Exchange Square for a coffee and a chat with folk from other parts of the rainy city. A couple of months ago, I tried to join the gang leaving from Chorlton Library, but I was, as usual, fashionably late and they'd set off just before I rolled up so I was always lagging behind by about 200 metres (this was back in Celia's day, just prior to retirement on her 30th birthday). Bike Friday is part of the Love Your Bike initative run by Manchester Friends Of The Earth, and the lovely Graeme told me all about the project at the "bike fair" on Albert Square on Bike To Work Day back in June. So I'm telling you. Full details on all the start points etc are here.

If, like me, you find 8am a tad too uncouth, tomorrow evening sees the monthly Critical Mass organised by I Bike Manchester (@ibikemcr on Twitter) and the inimitable Nes Bear (who posts updates on the Facebook page Manchester Critical Mass). Hoards of cyclists of all shapes and sizes, ages and backgrounds, and with all kinds of bikes (foldies, fixies, recumbents, post office, Dutch, cruisers, BMXes, mountain, racers, road, shoppers, step-through, sit-up-and-beg...) meet at Central Library from 6pm and go on an amble around town from about 6.30pm. The pace is pretty slow (all the better for not spilling beer all over my new steed, Hettie, and her marvellous spring-into-action basket) and, while the ad hoc route is often out to Platt Fields or Whitworth Park or Alexandra Park, it's not what you'd call strenuous. It's a really great way to meet fellow cyclists, promote cycling to the good people of Manchester and reclaim the streets in a friendly and non-agressive way.

On Sunday, the streets are being reclaimed using rather more organised methods as the Skyride returns for a second year. Starting at 10am, you can see the 12km (really?) route here. Lots of people took part last year, and there's plenty of "family fun" to be had, and while I'm a bit disturbed by the involvement of such a giant organisation as Murdoch's Sky, these events do raise the profile of cycling and the GB cycling team does need sponsorship. Gah.

Open day

So I was just bumbling around the internet looking for the opening hours of Manchester Craft & Design Centre and perusing the info on Debbie Smyth's awesome-looking Threadbare exhibition there as I'm aiming to fit it into the jam-packed W&F calendar, when, lo! I saw mention of this new Curated Place blog, which in itself is a work of interest and perhaps even beauty.

Tootling on through the recent posts, I saw that Andy Brydon, who is behind the CP curtain working the levers and pulleys, includes snaps of the Open City Manchester show I graced the launch of last night with my presence. (Blimey, these sentences are complicated in their structure, aren't they, readers? I must apologise: I have both a hangover and a disgustingly tight deadline to meet with the said hangover, and it's driven me to distraction somewhat.)


Anyway, the show is worth nipping to see, with all the pictures taken by amateur photographers who participated in the first Open City photography day on 23 May 2010, led by five professional Manchester-baed snappers Aidan O’Rourke, Andrew Brooks, Len Grant, Paul Herrmann and Mark Page. While some of the shots are a little on the cliched side and others felt somewhat staged, there are a number of surprising compositions and some interesting techniques. The number here is by Sue Langford, who I consequently bumped into at The Hillary Step as myself and Mr W&F gradually made the long way home from town with a flat bicycle tyre. (We had already stopped at The Whalley, which was full of scarily medicated patrons all sat at separate tables. It was like One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest meets Night Of The Living Dead. Suffice to say, we didn't stay for a second drink.) I hope Sue doesn't mind me featuring her work - we were chatting about it last night (I like the font; she told me it's on a lock gate just up from Dukes 92), but I will make sure I ask her for permission post haste.

Cityco's Open City Manchester is downstairs in the Triangle shopping centre and runs from today to 29 July, and is open daily 10am–6pm. You can also peruse the photos in the show on this here Flickr site. There are two further upcoming Open City photography days on Saturday 17 July and on Sunday 22 August, both from 2–4pm. It's £10 to take part - book by emailing Mark Page via info@manchesterphotography.com.

Picture credit: Sue Langford, all rights reserved

Read me!

My good friend over at Manchester Libraries (@MancLibraries) spotted me cycling my lovely new Dutch-style steed, Hettie (as she has finally been christened), through the leafy Range this morning, and it prompted her to get in touch via the Twittervine.

She thought I might like to draw your attention, dear readers, to a book-winning contest. It's a monthly fixture and details for the July competition, which closes on Sunday, can be found upon the Manchester Lit List blog. This, as you well know, is a fine online establishment to which your trusty narrator has contributed on more than one occasion.

Up for grabs at this very moment is The Wonder, by Diana Evans. I have to admit I've not actually read it, but Ms Evans is the proud owner of a Betty Trask Award, so it must be good - after all, fellow Manchester Blog Awards winner Jenn Ashworth (check out her brand spanking new website here) is up for this glittering prize with her debut novel A Kind Of Intimacy (pictured).


Once you've won Diana's book and read it, you can chat to her through the ether on 12 August via ReadersPlace, which is pretty nifty. It seems quite a good site, too. Good luck, my lovelies.

Let's study guide

I like Trof, I really do. I like all three of them, actually, but especially the one in Fallowfield as it's just near the Loop and handy when on a thirsty bike ride. I like that one in particular because it has its own-brand cider and lager, both of which are good and cheap, and it's all small and, er, intimate. I also like the whole thing going on with the "quirky decor" (as they would say in the old-fashioned press) and the funny little drawings with speech bubbles on the menus and the fact that the people who go in there don't mind in the slightest acting a bit weird, like using plastic cutlery they brought with them or talking into a mobile phone as if it were a tricorder (do you think that should take a cap - is it a trademark in the imaginary future?).


So I was in Trof Fallowfield, self-proclaimed "eating and drinking palace" (I remember when it was a really crummy second-hand bike shop), just having "the one" (which - whaddya know? - before long became "the four"), and, while I was waiting at the bar for my drinks to be poured, noticed the cute little sign flagging up the tips jar. I can't remember the exact wording but it was saying something like: give us some money "and then later lets go dancing".

I know, I'm sorry, I can't help it - I got out my Biro (that, I know, is capped up) and drew on an apostrophe, just like that; as if I owned the place. It was in the same style (blobby) and colour (black) as the writing, mind: I'm all for style. The girl behind the bar looked at me, perhaps not surprisingly, accusingly. "Just making it grammatical," I said perkily. God, I'd not even touched the fizzy pop by then, either. Do I need to be put down before I turn into Lynne Truss or can I still be rehabilitated before I go too far?

Two wheels good

Went to Critical Mass last night, so, as some kind of tenuous
link, here's a nice picture of me and one of my four bikes,
enjoying the evening sun on the front lawn of Dunham Massey
out in deepest, darkest Cheshire.


(And yes, I too had noticed that I'm a shadow of my former self.)