In Memory

Today I was really saddened to hear that Terry Lowe, Momentum's Vancouver/Victoria Editor, has passed away. Terry was one of the founders of Velopalooza, Van's awesome celebration of all things bike. I didn't know Terry very well, but I do know the impact he had at Momentum and the greater cycling community of Vancouver. Thank you Terry! It's passionate cyclists like you who help make it a friendlier world for all of us to bike in.

Tomorrow's Velopaloza "Freeze Your Bike Off Ride" is in his memory.

You will be missed Terry. See you at the big Critical Mass in the sky. xo

HIGHSCHOOOOOOOL!!!!!

niamh?!

ICYCLE 2011!

Want to make some scary looking tires and still fall off your bike with the entire bike community cheering you on? Yeah you do. Want to cuddle in the bleachers with hot todies and make some new friends? Heck yes!

Then come out to Dufferin Grove on Sat, Feb 12th from 6-9 pm for ICYCLE the annual Toronto ice race! Afterwards, party/fundraiser is going down at Bike Pirates with a pwyc at the door. All proceeds are going to Peter McKenzie - the cyclist who was hit on the Bloor viaduct just before Christmas.

FYI. If you want to race and need some extra traction, Bike Pirates is also going to be hosting a tire studding workshop in the next few weeks. Otherwise, you can race in the rubber class (shown below) as the last race of the night. The real question is which nightshade is going to sacrifice her body and pride for the cause this year?

Come and race, or just come and watch! It's going to be great either way.

(photos by Victor Gedris - check out the rest of his set from the 2010 race here!)

Ginger Bread Man Race

Last night Vancouver was full of bike related awesomeness. Bad Party put on an alley cat that involved getting a decoration for a ginger bread man at every stop and the race route around Van looked like a Ginger Bread Man. I was at a check point with Dustin from Prohab, Cody and Darcy (who are just total babes). We were handing out shots of hot spiced whiskey. Needless to say this was the PERFECT type of stop for us, as we were all about quality contolling the whiskey. Needless to say my night kinda looked like the above photo. God bless and keep Saturdays.


My bike locked up on the street was way to bring attention to the corner. Yelling "CHECK POINT" at racers when they passed by worked the most. Randomly yelling "CHECK POINT" at any cyclist going by was also fun.


Cody and I at the check point.


We made the racers stand on a post and do a shot Karate Kid stance styles.

After that there was the Gastown Gold Sprints at Malone's. My friend Jessie Winter took some rad shots of the spins!


jessewinterphotography.com

Great job last night Vancouver, tres fun!

Sew Fresh, Sew Real (A Valentines Workshop)

Finally, the poetry of hip hop meets the delicate art of embroidery. Choose your sweetheart's favorite hip hop lyric and impress him or her with your new crewel-work embroidery skills! Learn the chain stitch, stem stitch, french knotting and button edging stitch while you craft a timeless, thoughtful gift.

VALENTINES DAY HIP HOP EMBROIDERY WORKSHOP
Friday Feb 11th
1207 Bloor St. W
3-6pm
$25~ ($20 for returning students, $40 for both workshops)
Price includes refreshments. 19+



It's a whirl of twirling girls, a burlesque/boylesque bevy of broads, a craft for laughs with a bias-trimmed finish! From February to Febru-arty, it's time to Craft-Paste your way to your own pair of hand-made Craft-PASTIES!

VALENTINES PASTY MAKING WORKSHOP
Friday Feb 11th
1207 Bloor St. W
6-9pm
$25~ ($20 for returning students, $40 for both workshops)
Price includes refreshments. 19+




Class sizes are limited and fill quickly. Act fast if you want a spot!
Please rsvp to themakeden@hotmail.com to reserve your space.

www.themakeden.blogspot.com

PHASE ONE.

I love how on a day I was forced to take transit with a flat rear wheel - it still ended with four of my favourite ladies, putting all of our creative & technical & ridiculous heads together. We're working on some big collaborations this year.... aside from new jackets. Just you wait. Saturday we break out the big guns (read: power tools).

Joule Unlimited - A Game Changer?

The Globe published an article yesterday about a company called 'Joule Unlimited', a company which claims to be able to produce ethanol and other hydrocarbon based fuels using only sunlight, water and CO2. They also claim to be able to produce it for $30~ a barrel - a big drop from the current, and wildly fluctuating prices seen at the gas station right now.

The prospect of unlimited cheap fuel is obviously, as John Kerry has called the new technology, a 'game changer'. That might even be an understatement. A stable gas price would also stabilize the cost of everything else, from food to computer chips, since the cost of transporting everything would be reliable. Western countries would be able to end their dependance on Middle Eastern oil (and the wars that accompany that dependance), anti-US sentiments would soften abroad and the world would be a safer place for it, offshore drilling and the high risks and oil spills that accompany it would be unnecessary, and the waste CO2 produced by large manufacturing plants would suddenly become a commodity. Sounds too good to be true, right? It's too early to say wether this is the golden goose of fossil fuels - sorry, 'solar fuels', as they are calling it but it can't hurt to dream.

Cynical me - the first thought that popped into my head was 'Haliburton will never let that happen!' and then 'Does this mean we'll be driving cars forever - and is that a good thing?'. Well, maybe. If it's ethanol that they're producing, it might be, since ethanol is cleaner to burn than regular crude oil. But if it's regular oil they're producing, it wouldn't do much in terms of reducing CO2 in the atmosphere, unless they could also use the same technology for carbon capture - a technology which British billionare Richard Branson has offered a 25 million dollar prize for. So it remains to be seen how committed they are to the environment.

So supposing they are committed (and they might be - apparently the founder of Joule Unlimited is also the man who founded the Human Genome project). Awesome. Then this might really be the discovery of our generation. And we'll all live forever wearing jet packs and eating astronaut ice cream.

But (I told you I was cynical) I don't imagine oil companies or oil producing countries will be happy about this. And while that thought tickles me pink, I'm ever so curious to see how strong their reaction is... I'm plenty sure the Dick Cheneys of our time won't go without a fight... So stay tuned, sportsfans. These are interesting times.

NYE PART II: Midnight!!!

After getting in touch with our inner urban campers, we biked up to Danger Palace III for Midnight! (Video of Namtron doubling with Mzungu on the way there DOES exist) Meg Oh! was there on video chat from Vancouver to ring in the New Year with us, as we made a new years resolution to rock even harder in 2011 than we did in 2010...

MEG'S NEW RIDE!

Swoon! Check out Meg’s amazing new ride from the Mission Bicycle Company in San Fran.

After some debate she chose this gorgeous colour combo that just screams meg-OH! Apparently, us Nightshades are collectively no help AT ALL, to someone seeking advice on new bike aesthetics. Its like we’re all strong willed artists and designers or something.

Good thing she followed her own heart in the end, cause this baby’s a beaut! Although, Patty’s suggestion still wins my vote....

ARTCRANK.

We think it's time this came to Toronto.

VELODROME!

In late December, I had my velodrome cherry popped at the Saputo Burnaby4, a world class velodrome race. I wrote something about it for Momentum Magazine.

Here are some crowd shots that didn't make the cut on the website. Enjoy.



Pedal marks on the shoes and a race stripe down your butt show street cred.



Kevin shows his messenger styles, and this babe had a naked Heidi Klum on his chest.



Best handle bar mustache at the event. This man in orange had incredible poise.

SUM SUM SUMMA.

It's been snowing pretty steadily for the last few days. And while it may look really pretty through closed windows - I'm already tired of the ice and salt and cold. Tired of freezing gears, rusted chains, or the already minimal space for bikes on the road reducing even further.

Cleaning up files on my computer this morning, I stumbled across these shots of us by friend & fellow cyclist, John Lee from last summer. What I wouldn't give for a backyard barbeque right now. Just a few more months right?

Until then.. anyone wanna build a snow fort on my front lawn? We can drink hot chocolate with whiskey and cheer on anyone still riding in this awful weather.

The Cyclist

MOTHERLOAD.

So the seafoam gods were smiling on us this week, when we found 20+ yards of seafoam satin, second hand at value village. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! SO MUCH SEAFOAM.

Vintage fabrics are always a good find for the eco friendly designer - but vintage fabric in copious amounts AND in our gang colour is a RIDICULOUSLY OUT OF CONTROL AMAZING find.

New jackets here we come!

Bike Babe - In a Helmet? (Finally!)

I just found these pics over at Fuccit, a hilarious blog from the Netherlands that has a confrontational/devil may care modus operandi that you can read here. They're basically a bunch of ex-bicycle messengers who still play bike polo and think it's lame to hate on people for dressing like messengers. There's also a suspicious amount of 'Almost' bike porn on the site that makes me think that it's not really a blog about bikes at all. But anyways.

The Messenger vs. Fakenger divide reminds me a little bit of the 'design' vs. 'communications' rivalry that always went on in the Ryerson Fashion Department when I was there. There were elements of snobbery on both sides:

Designers: "You don't ACTUALLY know how to sew or make anything."
Commies: "Yeah? Well I'll just outsource it to China. At least I'll get paid more than you will"

And so on... even though, at the end of the day, we all work in the same business, like the same things and have alot of the same friends. Same goes for messengers and 'fakengers' as they are apparently called (although I've never heard the term before). They all play in the same polo league, ride in the same alley cats and love their fixed gear bikes. It would make sense that they would all be friends, but of course it never seems to work out that way.
What do you think of Messengers Vs. Fakengers?

NYE 2011 - Part One; Urban Fire Pit

Thanks to the balmy weather and the foresight of our friend Natalie, we were able to host a campfire at Dufferin Grove park on New Years Eve. It only costs $20~ for a one night permit for a campfire at Dufferin Grove - which, according to their website is alot less than other parks in the city. The thinking goes that if there are lots of people having campfires in the park at night, the park will ultimately be a much safer place for everyone . They also have farmers markets, year round Friday night suppers for only $7~, and skating during the winter.

I like the way the smoke looks in the pictures after the fire went out, and how it makes the lights kind of blurry in the background...

DNS IN ICELAND.

Success... it means different things to different people. Some people think it's about having the right job/shoes/hair/boyfriend. To me it's about having time to spend with my friends - especially other Nightshades. Like Namtron here. She's a fighter, but also a lover. Especially on a daytrip to Iceland - they really know how to spend the day at the spa...

TEAM NIGHTSHADES.

Last week, we had our annual DNS slumber party. Past years have involved initiating new Nightshades, or just Kevin Bacon. But this year was set apart by tiny seafoam hats sewn by Namtron & Meg-O, and amazing golden polo mallets Big Red threw together over the holidays for everyone. Watch out welcome wednesdays.

Despite an delerious en masse drive to the airport at 5 am (so Niamh could catch her flight back to Vancouver), it was nice to have mostly everyone together. Meg, being the great sport that she is, even hung out on skype for a good two hours.

... and apparently everyone unintentionally wore matching socks. Not that we're into matching or anything.

GREAT WHITE NORTH.

hey there canada.

TEASE.

DNS BOOK CLUB: KENK!

We all lived in Toronto during the reign of the Bicycle Clinic bike thefts, (including one of my own). We all watched the Igor Kenk saga unfold in the bike community, in the papers, and on the other side of Trinity Bellwoods park. So my interest was peaked when the graphic novel KENK was published earlier last year.

I'd been meaning to read it for a while. So after showing alongside Illustrator Nick Marinkovich in NYC last summer, I bought my own copy. And I'm so glad I did. (Unfortunately it got swallowed into the caverns of Irene's apartment for the last 6 months. But, happily on new years day over eggs florentine & warm weather, we were reunited).

I finished in in less than two days.

For those of you who have ever had your bike stolen - Or ride in general, regardless of location - Or simply enjoy a fascinating depiction of an interesting individual, in a book with impeccable timing - Or appreciate stunning artwork, which i could only describe as the lovechild of Jackson Pollock and Jamie Reid...

KENK is most definitely worth a read.

Below is one of my favourite excerpts. It's just too great not to share.