Cycle Chic Global Round-up 2008

Photo from Vélo Vogue / San Francisco
Perhaps it's the same where you are. There are a million tv shows in late December about the year past. Sports, news, celebrities, you name it.

So why not a little round up of Cycle Chic. It's been an amazing year [and a half or so] and the Cycle Chic craze has spawned many a blog/website. It's been fun to watch it grow and expand and capture the imagination of people all over the world. We have a list on the right column cheekily titled Collaborators and Copycats wherein we present to you, the reader, a rundown of the viral development of the concept. I figured I'd present some of them here.

Out of San Francisco one of the must-sees on the Cycle Chic circuit is Vélo Vogue. Lovely girls who got it all figured out and do well to present the bicycle culture and cycle chic in their cool city.

Photo from Girls & Bicycles / Edmonton, Canada
What I love about the flourishing Cycle Chic 'movement' is that it pops up in unusual places. Like Edmonton. Okay, if you're in Edmonton, it's probably not an unusual place, but hey. Girls & Bicycles is one girl's blog about 'Advocating Beautiful Girls on Bicycles in a City Addicted to Cars'. A bold undertaking and we salute it!

Photo from Lodz Cycle Chic / Poland
Another cycle chic pearl is from Poland. Lodz Cycle Chic presents the cyclists in their city brilliantly. The blog is in Polish, but images are universal. There is talk of opening a Cycle Chic café - I'll be earning 20% of all profit... :-) okay... maybe a free coffee next time I'm in town.

Photo from Cicloeleganza
After a few email discussions with a friend in Italy, we decided that Cicloeleganza was the appropriate Italian translation of Cycle Chic/Vélo Vogue. Didn't take long before someone started up a website with our word. Cicloeleganza focuses on chic Italian cyclists and their bicycles.

Amsterdamize.com needs little introduction. If you haven't seen it, for some strange reason, be sure to check out Marc's site.

This could be a very long post, so I'll speed it up a bit. Bicycle Pirate in Australia is one of the best representations of the cycle chic ideal. My Hyggelig in Minneapolis is an all round lovely place to visit and features much chic content. Out of Paris is the brilliant cartoon series Bike In the City about the character Lea and her love of her town and the blossoming bike culture. San francisco is also home to Bikes and the City, another blog close to our hearts.

You can't really get around Cycle Chic in London. They started as a blog but soon branched out into being a shop selling accessories and bicycles. It kind of goes against our motto here at Cycle Chic that all you need is a bike and that specialised 'gear', no matter how pretty and lovely, overcomplicates the simplicity of cycling but at the end of the day it helps strengthen the Cycle Chic concept.

Urban Cycle Chic, out of the UK is another blog worth checking out and gentleman cyclists have both Tweed.cc and The Cycling Gentleman for inspiration in delicious dapperness.

Stateside there is the very coolRighteous Metal Broad, the very lovely Sweet Georgia Brown and the how-to guide called, not surprisingly, How To Ride Your Bike in Style

Momentum Magazine, out of Canada, have an ever-increasing focus on cycle chic. Once they shake off their sub-cultural tendencies they'll really rock and roll.

Other blogs and sites include Sydney Body Art Ride, Chic Cyclist in Boston, Riding Pretty in California and The Hague Cycle Chic.

A number of blogs focus on bikes/advocacy more than true Cycle Chic but get a mention here. Such as Montreal Cykler, Drunk and In Charge of a Bicycle, Sacramento 'Cycle Chic', Cycle Chic NY and Toronto Bike Chic.

Then you have the proliferation of Flickr groups. The dapper and elegant king of them all all is Vélocouture. True cycle chic perfection.

Some other groups - some nice and some of questionable quality - include Velovixens, Girls on Wheels, Hot Girls on Bicycles 18+, Women and the Wheel and... um... Bicycles and Underwear.