The Right to Cycle

From June 26th to the 30th I was fortunate enough to attend the keynote sessions of Velo-City 2012 held here in Vancouver, BC.

For three days I was truly blew me away. There is a steep hill to climb and a lot of work to be done to make the rest of the world like Copenhagen, but with such brilliant and hard working professionals dedicated to this task, it's going to happen and it's going to be amazing.

I love Notable Quoteables, so took some of the best from the international speakers and submitted them Toronto's lovely Biking Toronto and Australia's Treadlie.  Broken down into four parts, (seriously so much good came out of those presenters) they are meant to inspire and inform. Follow the links wiki-styles and dive deep into the world of cycling politics and infrastructure.

“Creating cycle friendly cities. It’s child’s play.”
Dr. Paul Tranter- Associate Professor in Geography, University of New South Wales

This year the European Cycling Federation and Velo-City presented The Charter of Vancouver, which is a call to the UN and all nations to acknowledge the right for children to cycle. Biking improves so many aspects of a child's life; their health, independence, personal mobility, cleaner enviornment, and the list goes on and on.... You can read the notes from the Children's Keynote in Part 4 of the Biking TO segment. 



The closing of the conference called for all to sign the charter in suport. I was a privileged to ad my name, and signed on behalf of the Deadly Nightshades. It's not just NGO's who are working to make this world a better place to live and bike, us #girlbikegangs have a role too.

1Love.

xo

The Suburbs

Recently Arcade Fire kicked some serious butt in the name of Montreal and grabbed the Grammy for best album for the Suburbs. My roommate and I have been busting a gut over this website, Who is Arcade Fire, a tumbler site dedicated purely to the reaction of some people on the internet who have never heard of this gold and platnium record group.

Comments like "It's a weird world we live in when someone called Arcade Fire can win a Grammy n Jusin Bieber doesn't!" and "WHO DA FUUUKKK IS DA ARCADE FAYA??? NEVA HUURD OF DOS CHEATAS. WHO R DAY? SUM SORTA VIDYA GAME? I'M GOOD WIT REDDDED REDEMPTUN THX VRY MUCH!!!" will keep you entertained and bewildered for days.

If you haven't seen the amazing video for Arcade Fire's video The Suburbs, it's filled with bikes, teenage love and NWO creepiness. It's a Spike Jones production, naturally.



Who else did time in the suburbs?

I did, in a few different spots in the GTA. Seeing forests and farm fields getting swallowed by highways and ant farm housing, along with the boredom of working soulless mall jobs could be a big reason for my current views on life. At a Sierra Youth Coalition national congress, a meeting and brainstorming session for all university groups, a regional director in a speech said: "I come from the suburbs, I think a lot of us do. I think the suburbs are a big reason why were are all here."

Ain't it the truth...

Poleriders Were Inspired by the Deadly Nightshades?!

It's true. Even we had a hard time believing it, but we went over our tapes from New York with a fine tooth comb and found a quick - not to mention totally unnoticed at the time I taped it - off-camera sound bite from Andrew Katzander (this guy) claiming that the Deadly Nightshades were an inspiration for him when he started Poleriders...

For those of you who have never heard of the Poleriders, they're a team of poledancing babes who dance in costume (not naked), on a bicycle propelled platform with pole attached. Hilarious.

The video is posted here - notice the slightly sinister laugh at 0:22!!!