Copenhagen Life Cycles

What I love about this shot - and many aspects of bike culture in Copenhagen - is that it is quite timeless. This could be my mum in 1948 or my wife in 2008. It's neither, but you know what I mean... a Copenhagen life cycle.

I'd been toying with this idea for a while and finally found time for it:

It's available as a poster on our little online boutique. In all it's full-size glory it measures 87.5 cm x 62.5 cm [that's 35 x 25 inches, apparently]. It's available in a small poster size, too.

I call it Copenhagen Life Cycles. Loads of moments of clarity from the bike lanes of Copenhagen. Here's a little slice of detail:

Guest Photos: Graz, Austria

Thanks to my man G.fried in Graz for these great guest photos of cycle chic in Graz. Looks like springtime has hit Austria. Thanks for sending the photos along to us. And for plugging The Styrian Bicycle Summit, which Graz is hosting on 17.04 to 18.04.2008.

Style Over Speed

The guy on the left is my hero.
Wearing his regular clothes, sitting up and enjoying the ride, not trying to break any records. Just getting on with it. A true role model for The New Age of Urban Cycling.


Two Copenhageners cross Knippels Bridge, as Copenhageners have done since this 'new' bridge was opened in 1937.


Yet another Copenhagen Supermum.

Guest Photo: Toyko, Japan

Beauty on wheels, originally uploaded by Magnumpi.

If there is one city that gives Copenhagen a run for its money with regards to bike culture and cycle chic, it has to be Tokyo. Or any other Japanese city for that matter.

Photo by Magnumpi over at Flickr. Taken in the Ueno district of Tokyo.

I love Tokyo like I love few other cities. I figure I'll make guest photos from Tokyo a regular feature.

If you're reading this, then that means you're probably not taking part in the growing boycott of Danish goods because of certain cartoons of a certain historical, religious figure.

So thanks for that.

Guest Photos: Barcelona Bicing

El primer día de Bicing, originally uploaded by Alícia.

A funktastic insight into Barcelona's Bicing bike share programme.
The photo was taken by Alícia on Flickr and shows two cycle chicsters trying out the Bicing bike on the first day.

There are many wonderful reasons to love city bikes and bike sharing programmes. Here at Copenhagen Cycle Chic we're particularly thrilled with one specific reason. People borrow the bikes in their regular clothes - preferably chic. You don't see anyone slapping on the lycra and all the other gear to head down to the city bike racks. Normal people riding bikes in normal clothes. That's one massive step towards normalising urban cycling.

After exploring the Bicing in Barcelona for this post, I realised that there are so many bike sharing programmes around Europe. I didn't realise there were so many. The big cities get the big press coverage, but there are over 100 cities in Europe with bike share progrommes, according to the very fine Bike-Sharing Blog. From Sevilla to Trondheim. From Dublin to Prague.

Rainy Season

I was on my way to the post office yesterday and saw yet another funky, colourful raincoat brightening up the wet bike lane. Complete with a bandana as a scarf. Has the peasant chic look returned?


She walked a bit, then stopped to chat. Walked on a bit, stopped again. Must have been a good conversation.

I was heading to the library that day. It may be interesting to know that an important part of our concept with this blog is that we only take photos when we ourselves are heading somewhere on our bikes. Virtually every shot is taken while we are going to work, the supermarket, the post office, a bar, what have you. We don't make any effort to go out looking for shots. This serves to underline how chictastic the bike lanes of Copenhagen are, as well as how many bikes there are here.

If you know Copenhagen, you can almost figure out where I go for meetings or which route Aaron takes to work.


Some of you may have noticed we have set up an online boutique. So many of you have asked for t-shirts, posters of some of the photos and stickers that we whipped up some designs.

We chose Café Press because they have a bigger selection of goods but also because they are located in the States. Most of our readers are from 'over there' so it is easier for them to order stuff. And for our readers in the EU the dollar is so fantastically low that the prices are lower than if we opened an online boutique 'over here'. The low dollar also means we don't earn that much but if it buys us a café latte once in a while, we're happy.

For those of you who have ordered stickers, we would LOVE to see photos of them on your bikes or your lamppost or wherever you stick them. Photos of cycle chic t-shirts, too!

If you have any requests for prints/posters or would like a certain design on a t-shirt not in the boutique, we're happy to take requests.


A sudden and intense hail slash sleet storm swept through town yesterday. Here's some Copenhagen cyclists just getting on with it.


And when the wind chill takes the temperature down to freezing, it's important to dress warmly. Like this Copenhagener. She's wearing gloves.

Roller & Coaster + Guest Photo From Lyon + Revolutionary La Rochelle

Gliding effortlessly towards the light, timing the change to green perfectly.

Once in awhile - not often enough for our liking - we discover a blog filled to the brim with fantastic wit and irony. In this case it's the Stuff White People Like Blog. At #61 - Bicycles. It's all brilliant satire, but I'm especially fond of this:

"... they love expensive Road Bikes and the accompanying spandex uniforms. This enables them to ride long distances and wear really tight clothes without any social stigmas. These types of riders will spend upwards of $5,000 on a bicycle and up to $400 on accessories, but will not ride to work. Perhaps because they cannot wear the spandex. It is important that you never question why someone needs a $5000 bicycle since the answer is always “performance."

A guest photo rolled into the inbox this morning:

I just stumbled upon Copenhagen Cycle Chic and I thought I'd send a couple of pics of my sweetheart looking bike-chic during our year using the Vélo'V bike-share program in Lyon, France. She finds the shots on your blog to be quite the inspiration, as do I, of course!, and is curious as to whether she is cycle-chic-worthy.

Sad to say, I send these pics to you from the cold climate of Edmonton in northern Alberta, Canada. Not one of the most bike-friendly towns....
Keep up the marvelous work! Matt.

Thanks to you and your sweetheart for thinking of us. There is no question in our minds that she qualifies for the much respected and sought after accolade of 'cycle chic'.

Matt's email reminded us of Lyon's bike share programme, Vélo'V. While much is written about the capital cities who have implemented bike sharing, like Paris, Barcelona and - coming soon - London, there are many cities in Europe that are already rolling. Lyon being one of them. It's a fair sized city, with almost 2 million inhabitants.


With all the hype about urban bike sharing, let's send a warm thought to the forgotten city that started it all, shall we? La Rochelle, on the French Atlantic coast [and favourite summer holiday destination for Wifealiciousness and I] had a legendary mayor back in the 1970's. He was quite the urban planning revolutionary. Inspired by Copenhagen, he created pedestrian streets in the city centre and, in 1974, he started a bike share programme.

He bought a load of yellow bikes and slapped them into racks by the harbour. The original idea was merely "take one, use it, bring it back." These days you can borrow them free for two hours if you leave some ID.

The programme never had, and still doesn't have, a fancy marketing name like ByCyklen, Velib, VeloV, SEVici or Bicing, which is probably why nobody knows about it. But La Rochelle was the first, so hats off to them.

Let's wrap todays cyclobabble with another photo of Copenhagen Cycle Chic, shall we?
Another fine example of matching your clothes with your bike.

Copenhagen Musical Bikes

A girl and her cello, originally uploaded by Rune Johnsson.

A splendid photo by fellow Copenhagener Rune. The photo is copyrighted.
I was organising my folders containing cycle chic photos and I saw a little theme. Copenhageners transport their musical instruments by bike. I thought of Rune's photo above and then found some more.

Guitarists cycling along the harbour in the sunset.

Posted before, but appropriate again.

I'd seen this chap below a few times around town on his converted Long John. Took me ages to figure out what he rigged it for. Then I saw him one day carrying a massive bass, leaning against the front rails. In the photo on the right, I'm guessing that it's a horn instrument or a violin being transported through the sleetstorm.


The aforementioned cello and musician in a different season.

Spring Has Sprung

When the sun shines this bright in late-winter, and spring is showing her beauty, everything gets topsy-turvy in Copenhagen.

I had a view errands to run around town and it was gorgeous today. No gloves were needed in the bright sunshine.

It seems to be a common sight on the bike lanes. Copenhagen women rummaging in their handbags in their baskets while stopped at a red light. If I had my bag in front of me on my bike, I'd probably rummage through it, too.

A spot of cycle chic featuring the opposite sex. By request. We aim to please. But we're keeping the photos small... :-)



And you haven't already, please consider voting for Cycle Chic over at JPG magazine, where I have a photo entered in some kind of competition. I think.

Friends Forever [and a podcast]

There are many, many ways to describe in photos the casualness of Copenhagen's bike culture. We try to do it everyday on this blog. Once in awhile we take a photo that sums it up just a bit more effectively than normal.

Two friends on a bike. Riding slowly along the bike lane. Weaving back and forth but not enough to prevent other bikes from passing. Just one friend doubling the other. Destination unknown and quite possibly unimportant. A moment of quiet togetherness, friendship.

It's not always this poetic on the bike lanes, but fortunately it happens often enough. Biking in Couples is an integral part of urban bike culture.

Yesterday I was interviewed about this blog by the good people at the groovy KommunicationsCast - a weekly podcast about communication and media in Denmark. Since weekend activities are dictated by the whims of our children, I found myself in a wind-blown parking lot near the Eksperimentarium - a science museum for kids - when they called me on my mobile at the arranged time. Ironically, there was nary a cycle in sight.

This bit of press news is probably as useless as a wearing cricket pads to a bar mitzvah to the vast majority of you, since it is in Danish. But for those who are familiar with the suave, gutteral tongue of the Danes, you can either hear the podcast on their website, or you can download it from there.

While we'll always recommend you hear the whole cool show - every week - the interview about Copenhagen Cycle Chic can be found at about 34:00 minutes in the 44 minute long podcast.

Thanks to Mikkel and Katrine for the chance to spout off nonsense to thousands of listeners... .-)

Street Fashion Aarhus - Gademode.dk

We read about this wonderful streetstyle blog in the Sunday paper. Gademode.dk [Street Fashion, translated] is a streetstyle blog from Denmark's second city, Aarhus.

Since we get so many fashion-oriented visitors, we figured that we'd plug a groovy site that you normally wouldn't get to see. It's all capital cities out there in streetstyle-website-land.

Inevitably there are some photos on their cool site featuring bikes. This is Denmark, after all. They're the most appropriate choice of images with which to plug the site.

Elevation Nation

Click on the photo to see it larger over at Flickr.
"It's all so modest, gentle, dreamy. One is in a new, floating situation and it feels as though you're halfway to becoming a spirit that is about to leave the surface of the earth.

One can see over everyones' heads and because of that one is lifted up in an mood of calm and romantic elevation."
Johannes Wulff -'Paa cykle' - 1930

As ever, it's the comments and the emails we get that make it all worthwhile. We're loving this little community and the people we've met. We've included a number of our favourite bits of feedback in this post. Just simple comments on a post like this one are so wonderful to read:

"Hurray! As one who rides her bike to work in Houston wearing dresses, black suede boots and anything else imaginable, I salute you. Thank you for showing that riding a bike to work doesn't have to be a big deal."

We're not saying that the ONLY way to ride is in stylish clothes - some people prefer it differently - but there are so many people out there who WANT to ride in normal clothes and if we can inspire that, we're content. Thanks for being here, whoever you are.


Another study in that fascinating moment when a cyclist pushes off, propels themself forward, gaining momentum enough to settle into the saddle, feet seeking out the pedals instinctively, accelerating away.

Here's another Acceleration Moment.

And as we can see the cyclist above has been shopping, we remembered this post over at our sister blog about how Cyclists are Better Shoppers than Motorists. Worth a read.

Wifealiciousness and the New Bike

Wifealiciousness was itching to get out and ride her new bike for the first time yesterday. We bought it last December but she hasn't had the chance to ride since our newborn daughter prefers napping in the pram. Today was the day to mount the 'Victoria'.

Being pregnant doesn't stop a Copenhagen woman from riding, however, as Wifealiciousness can attest to.

Sit Up and Beg

"One sits on it either straight-backed, as though at a festive dinner party, or hunched painfully forward, as though one just failed an exam. All according to the situation, your inclination or your inborn characteristics."
Johannes Wulff 'Paa cykle' 1930

Now I'm all in favour of the aesthetic pleasures of a 'sit up and beg' bicycle. Nothing beats it, in my opinion. That's how I prefer to ride. The Copenhagener above takes the passion to a whole new level on her 8-ball bike. And she makes it work. Funky style and cheeky attitude.

Guest Photos Amsterdam, Vietnam and... Hackney!?

This great little website is often linked to. A tourist took 82 photos in 73 minutes on a square in Amsterdam. He was amazed at all the bikes.

Our reader, Matt, sent us this photo of Cycle Chic from Vietnam:
"I snapped this on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) Vietnam, in the spring of 2005. It's a reminder that many people are CycleChic because other options are few. True flower power here! Thanks for all your great photos. Matt."
And thanks to you, Matt, for your wonderfully colourful photo.

There are two phrases that, until now, have never been uttered in the same breath in the history of man. "Hackney Council" and "Cycle Chic". The East London Borough put on a "Heels & Wheels" fashion show in the historic flower market, touting the bicycle as a fashion accessory.

Councillor Alan Laing, Hackney Council’s Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods said:
“It’s fantastic to see so many people turn out to support the Councils’ efforts to promote cycling as a sustainable form of transportation. We hope the Wheels and Heels event demonstrated our commitment to achieving a greater uptake of cycling, particularly amongst young women, by showing how practical and fashionable it can be as well a being a great way to stay fit and get around.”

The Cycle Chic message is spreading like a flowing summer's dress caught in a gust of wind. Yes, I actually just wrote that... :-)
Here's Hackney Council's cycling website. A fine initiative, we say.