Saint Petersburg in the Sun

I was in Saint Petersburg last week for a great conference. We went for a bike ride and then spotted these cool locals just rolling around the city in the sun, enjoying a bike ride in style.


St P has a long way to go to be a cool, bicycle-friendly city, but things are getting better.

Claris Color Rate

Beautiful, soulful music video for Claris Color Rate. So Cycle Chic that it makes our heads hurt.

Baskat

Back in August we blogged about finally, finally getting a shot of a cat in a bicycle basket. Something that was sorely missing from our archives. Marc at Amsterdamize found this shot today, from the Iron Pony First blog, out of Russia.

Wonderful shot! They found this kitten and then found a good home for it, transporting it to the place like this.

Cycle Chic Global: St. Petersburg

Cycle Chic in Saint Petersburg, Russia from spitsbergen on Flickr.

Cycle Chic goodness from the Cycle Chic™ Flickr group.

St Copenburg / St Petershagen

The Dreams on Wheels exhibition in St. Petersburg was held in a cool old industrial building, home to Loft Project Etagi. A multi-floor, post-soviet building with a host of exhibitions. Super cool place.

The Royal Danish Consulate General, who brought the exhibition, and me, to the city also presented the city with 15 Copenhagen city bikes as a starter's pistol for a bike share programme. One of the bikes will be given to the Governor of the city and another is earmarked for the Russian president, Medvedev.

There were plans for a bike ride through the city with police escort, with just under a thousand people scheduled to show up but, in the best tradition of Russian bureaucracy, the City cancelled it at the last minute. The Russian president was in town. Which kind of trumps all other activities. The bike ride has now been rescheduled for this Sunday.

We still have a great time. I spoke about Danish bicycle culture and everyone tried out the bikes.

Here's hoping for a cracking turnout on the ride this Sunday.




I won't be there, unfortunately, but I certainly have great memories of the city from my visit.

Going Strong in St. Petersburg

It's brilliant that the banner of this worldwide boom in cycling is often carried by young people reembracing the bicycle in our cities, but it's just as lovely to see older people enjoying independent urban mobility on two wheels. I caught a few in motion in St. Petersburg.

St. Petersburg Bicycle Nights

The life of bicycles in St. Petersburg explodes at night. During the day the city is a hellhole of Soviet traffic planning, but in the summer evenings, after the suburbans have driven their cars out to pasture, the bicycles really come out to play.

Above, classic Cycle Chic and, as an added bonus, rollerskate chic.

The weather was warm and lovely on the Friday evening I was there and what I found amazing was not just the number of bicycles but the number of people, in general, who spill out into the streets and keep them filled all night long. In front of the Winter Palace, on the massive square, there were groups of bike gangs, scooter gangs, rollerskate gangs and motorbike gangs, all hanging out and trying stunts and being sociable.


The bicycle was used in all the same ways as it is elsewhere, which was wonderful to behold. Friends riding together, couples doubling from one bar to the next, you name it.


There were many groups of four or five friends on a variety of bicycles, enjoying the summer nights and the freedom that the bicycle provides.





Here's a couple riding along the river, heading for what appeared to be the Main Event on Friday night in the city. At 01:26 in the morning the drawbridges on the river were scheduled to go up, in order to allow the big ships to enter and leave the port. Amazingly, there were thousands and thousands of people lining the river, waiting for it to happen. There were cheers when the bridges started to rise. Dozens and dozens of small boats bobbed on the river, as well, filled with summer revellers. Even though they didn't need a raised drawbridge to get past the bridge, when the bridges started rising, they all sped towards it and, symbolically, passed under.


It was wild to see so many people out on the streets at that time of night. The city was truly Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde. On summer nights the people reclaim it as their own. All night long.

St. Petersburg Cycle Chic

Just returned from a killer weekend in Saint Petersburg. Goodness me, that is a city that knows how to party.

I was invited by the Royal Danish Consulate General for the opening of the Dreams on Wheels exhibition. This is the first of a series of three or four posts about St. Petersburg Cycle Chic.

These shots are from the streets of the city, showing the blossoming bicycle culture. Dottie, from Let's Go Ride a Bike, let me know that Trisha was there last year and we were interested to see if there is an increase in the number of bicycles in the city.

By all accounts, things are heading in the right direction. And then some.


Four bicycles all at once! Wonderful to see.

Bike boys cruisin'.

Sunset Ride.

I saw many more bikes than I was expecting and certainly more upright bikes than I would have hoped. Choppers and BMX's are quite popular in Russia and the mountain bike, dwindling in numbers among urban cyclists in the rest of the world, lives on in Eastern European and Russian cities. Simply because there is a lack of choice at bike shops, from what the locals tell me in every city in the region.

There is no bicycle infrastructure to speak of. I certainly never saw any on the streets. There were many bicycles in the traffic and many rolled casually along the sidewalks at a pedestrian pace.




Cool cat from a Reggae Bicycle Club.

Russian Cycle Chic & Australian Rant

Welcome to Monday. Welcome to Cycle Chic, Russian Style. From the groovy Afisha.ru website.
Katya, 23 years
She bought a cheap toy bicycle by Stels, painted it and named it Joddy.


Masha, 23 years
She bought it for exactly one and a half thousand rubles. She uses the basket for books and all kinds of fruits and vegetables. She tried to carry her dog, Otiko, in it but he likes to run alongside. She notices that car drivers pass her winking and smiling more often than boys on the street. She dreams of a retro bike cruiser with a feminine frame.

And yes, Cycle Chic is itching to get back to Moscow.


On the other side of the globe, in Melbourne, a journalist is quite fed up with lycra and 'cyclists'. She just wishes she could cycle to work without having to put up with the 'hobby' cyclists:

I cycle to work on my poverty-pack hybrid in my work clothes, cruising along at a leisurely pace as the lycra brigade whizzes past with audible groans of disgust at my clear lack of cycling style.

If I dare get in their way with a wobbly start at the lights, the verbal abuse would make your hair curl.

I just smile politely and totter along like a happy little tortoise, invariably catching up to the lycra brigade at the many sets of lights between home and office.

But for maximum effect you really have to read her whole article right here. She certainly doesn't cut any corners but she is witty and sharp about it.

Interestingly, this is something we here at Cycle Chic are noticing more and more in the chatter on the internet. A kind of backlash by people who cycle in regular clothes on normal clothes against the fetish cyclists in their 'gear' who tend, in certain regions, to dominate the public image of 'cyclists'. And, in a way, shouldn't it be the general public who dominate the scene as it is them who are re-mainstreaming cycling after a break of 40 odd years? Nothing wrong with anyone who fancies joining a cycling club or anything like that. But cycling has always been a democratic pursuit and it is for the people at large - for the benefit of society.

Read more about how this is just History Repeating Itself on our sister site, Copenhagenize.com.

Copenhagen Cycle Chic Goes To Moscow

Moscow was mad crazy. The business end of the stick was lecturing at the conference in conjunction with the Dreams on Wheels Exhibition and the Instants of Architecture, followed by a meeting with the Moscow Duma, or City Council. It was all part of Danish Day at ARCH Moscow ’09, Central House of Artists.

I lectured about Marketing the Bicycle to the Sub-Conscious Environmentalists, with emphasis on the necessity of selling cycling as sexy, cool and something with status. Making it a 'hero brand'.

After that, it was Cycle Chic Party Time. At a cool little gallery 'Mel', a cycle chic bash was arranged by the Royal Danish Embassy, Theory & Practice and streetstyle site Lookatme.ru. We met up and went for a bike ride with a hundred or so Muscovites on their bikes. Crazy cool.

Then there was a party. It... um... kind of lasted 48 hours, but what the hell. Moscow knows how to party.

It's a tough job being the Daddy of the Cycle Chic Movement, but hey... somebody has to do it.
Thanks to the Moscow DJ Poko Cox for his track which I used in the music video.

After having lectured about marketing cycling, I was presented with this poster for a local bike rental company. Totally 80's kitsch, on purpose of course. Making cycling look cool, funky and sexy. Well done.


It was brilliant to see how everyone was so geared for the conference and the party. There is really a need for the bicycle in Moscow. The number of cars in the city has exploded over the past 15 years. It was my fourth visit to the city and I lived there for a month or so back in 1990. It's a different world now. The city is choking on automobile culture. Fortunately there are many people who are working to turn the tide.

At the party I met Peter who announced that he would start Moscow Cycle Chic. He did so the very next day. So welcome to the family, Moscow!

Thanks to Richard and Galina at the Royal Danish Embassy, Askar & Valentina and the others from Theory & Practice and the good people at Lookatme.ru. Not to mention all the cool Muscovites I met along the way.

I shall return.

Russian Cycle Chic in Europe

One of our readers, Elizabeth from Moscow, sent us a smashing series of photos of herself, taken by her husband on their travels around Europe. Travels which invariably involve bicycling around the cities they visit. Elizabeth is a musician and she has a website here.

We're grateful for the chance to post the photos here! Thanks, Elizabeth!