After The Snow - Awaiting the Summer

After the snowstorm yesterday, which was unexpected and a bit late in the season, all eyes are now on spring and summer. I'm looking forward to it. Here's some photos from summer, from last year.

And this photo - below - is by far the most popular in the Copenhagen Cycle Chic archives. I've entered it in a competition over at JPG MAGAZINE - cast a vote for it - and bike culture - if you have the time. It's in the Human Impact category. Can't argue with bikes making impact on humans. And certain cyclists making impact on others.

The funny thing about this shot was that I was out riding to the supermarket with Wifealiciousness. We were at a red light and she elbowed me and said, "Camera... get your camera out..." I did, just in time.

The very best advocate for cycle chic swept past.

Red Ride in Hood

Red Ride in Hood, originally uploaded by [Zakkaliciousness].

Geddit?
You can't see the snow in the above shot but...

Here's the Boy Wonder on the pavement, with cyclists riding past.

I'm sure there is a statistic fall in the number of cyclists on the bike lanes in Copenhagen when it snowstorms, but there were still loads and loads of bikes heading home in the evening.

A little snow doesn't stop very many people. The snowstorm was sudden and unexpected so our bike lane snowploughs weren't out yet, but all you have to do is ride straight, anyway, which is easy even in the snow. You just slow down and take it easy when turning and approaching intersections, but there really isn't any good excuse for not riding.

The Boy went to bed with fingers crossed for snow enough to go sledding tomorrow.

Guest Photo: Kofu, Japan

"Surely there must be one place left to put my bike?", originally uploaded by beeldmark.

And then the same chap, beeldmark, has a mirror shot of the one below, this one taken in Japan. Wonderful shot.

Guest Photo: Utrecht

"I'm sure I put my bike here somewhere?", originally uploaded by beeldmark.

I've been looking to take this kind of shot here in Copenhagen for ages. And then I found this great photo on Flickr, taken in Utrecht, by beeldmark.

Says it all about established bike culture, really. The pros far outweigh the cons. The main con, according to Copenhagen cyclists, is bike parking. We have a number of double decker systems, but it is hard to control the massive number of bikes.

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.