Style, Coffee and our own postage stamp

Style Over Speed, once again, once again.


Preparing to merge into traffic with her morning coffee and Nihola cargo bike.

A propos the recent post about the postage stamp featuring iconic cycle chic, we figured we'd join the philately club and issue our own postage stamp.


It's a completely valid US postage stamp, featuring our own iconic Cycle Chic image and it's available for purchase in a variety of denominations from Zazzle.

Cool Copencouples

Use your time waiting for red lights wisely. Hugging and kissing, for example.


Watching the Tour of Denmark pelaton roll past requires Copencoolness.


A couple can always bring a friend along.

We Are Red, We Are White, We Are Danish Dynamite

The title is the text in a football song from the 1980's which still lives on. Red and white being the colours of the Danish flag - the oldest national flag in the world, actually. Legend will have it that it fell from the sky during the Battle of Lyndanisse where the Danes were battling the Estonians. King Valdemar II the Victorious grasped the flag and showed it to the troops, giving them renewed vigour to continue, and win, the battle.

One wonders what would have happened if a gust blew the flag over to the Estonians. Or what if the flag was just a fancy kite some kid was flying nearby and the string broke. Whatever. Here's another Cycle Chic version of red and white. No less poetic but it's much more fact than fiction.

Two Danish icons. The cycling girl and the bicycle pictogram.

Cycle Chic Stamp

There's little doubt that we take the Cycling Girl seriously as a Danish icon. Here's a Danish stamp from 1975 celebrating the launch of the United Nations' Decade for Women. 1975 was also the International Woman's Year. See... it's not just us.

Thanks to Lefa, who blogged about the stamp here, with more info about the Decade for Women.


And here's my favourite statue in Copenhagen. The Cycling Girl high about the city.

Dogs on Bikes

As Copenhagen's resident bicycle anthropologist for the past three years, I've seemed to have acquired the ability to spot subtle changes on the bicycle landscape. Some are easy to determine and even to explain, but this one is tricky.

Copenhageners have transported pets by bicycles since the bicycle was invented. It's nothing new. However this summer I seem to be seeing a lot more dogs on bicycles. I haven't been able to find any reference to an increase in sales of dogs and the Paris Hilton-inspired 'accessory dog' trend died off a year or so ago so I can't really explain it.

Which doesn't make it any less aesthetic to look at.

Here you can play Find the Dog.


And here are a couple of shots from Amsterdam from our Amsterdam Cycle Chic set.

Three Red Bicycles and a Musing

Nothing quite like red bicycles, is there? Strange, that.

One of the books I'm reading at the moment is Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes. It is an autobiographical work about the author's fear of death, which has nothing at all to do with bicycles or streetstyle. Nevertheless, one passage in the book struck home one of the sub-conscious reasons for continuing to produce this blog featuring the beautiful citizens of Copenhagen on their bicycles.

Barnes experienced a fear of flying for a period in his mid-twenties but he cured himself of it, quite unexpectedly, at Athens airport. He was a day early for a flight home to the UK and he camped out in the airport.

"To kill time, I went up on to the viewing roof of the terminal building. From there, I watched plane after plane take off, plane after plane land. Some of them probably belonged to dodgy airlines and were crewed by drunks; but none of them crashed. And this visual, rather than statistical, demonstration of the safety of flying convinced me."

There is little statistical proof that cycling is dangerous anywhere in the world, which is brilliant. But perhaps the visual demonstration of the beauty and safety of cycling that is this blog will convince readers, wherever they may live, that cycling is a normal, potentially gorgeous and safe form of transport. The 'Style over speed' motto coined here on the blog is, if you think about it, a fine traffic safety slogan.

New Kids on the Cycle Chic Block

The latest addition to the Copycats and Collaborators list is 416 Cycle Style a.k.a. Toronto Bike Chic.


And Barcelona Cycle Chic. This blog was started by a friend of mine who features in this earlier post.

Four Copenhageners and a Film

Four Copenhageners, one of them canine. His name is Skipper.

And here's a little film starring Skipper:

Harry, from Larry vs Harry cargo bikes, was test-dogging a dog box on the Bullitt cargo bike. Skipper loved it, by all accounts.

An Australian Cyclist

This lovely and stylish cyclist is Sue, from New South Wales, Australia. She always rides her bicycle and loves it.

What's more, Sue has become an inspiration to cyclists everywhere.

An Average Copenhagen Wednesday

Here's a little film I made on an average Wednesday afternoon in Copenhagen. I just stuck the camera on a bike next to the bike lanes, in two positions, for about 30 minutes each and just let it roll.

As you can see, the bicycles come in waves, just like other traffic, whenever the lights change at the intersection. This stretch of bike lane is the busiest in the western world, with between 30,000-35,000 cyclists a day.

Rainyhagen Days

There's nothing quite like posting shots from a Rainyhagen on a day with brilliant sunshine and optimal beach weather like today.


The oh so blue bicycle lanes of Copenhagen - avec parapluie.

On a more serious-ish note, Copenhagenize.com has a piece about a new traffic safety campaign from the Danish Road Safety Council [Rådet for Større Færdselsikkerhed].

Watching the World Go By

Copenhagen has just hosted the World OutGames - the largest sport and art festival for gay and lesbians - the LGBT community as it's called. It lasted a week and there were around 5000 guests in Copenhagen. What a party. There were serious sports events and crazy ones, too, as well as a host of cultural events. Non-stop. 24-7.



It all peaked at a parade through the city on the penultimate day and I went down with the kids to have a look and to walk along with the masses towards the City Hall Square.

People lined the streets along the whole festive route and, not surprisingly, bicycles were involved.


The whole affair puts a new meaning on this classic tourism poster from the 1940's, back when gay meant something quite different.


A few days later, after things had quietened down, there was still ample opportunity to watch the world go by on the City Hall Square. From the foreground: An elderly chap on his standard-issue electric scooter, the Fruit Bike selling fresh fruit cups, the Paradis ice cream bike and, in the background, a long row of cycle taxis.

Left to Right Motion

Just another summer's day in Copenhagen.

Orange cruisers are cool cruisers.

The Nippon Nordic Alliance

Denmark and Japan, despite their cultural and geographic differences, have so much in common. Both cultures appreciate fine style, design and minimalism combined with practical usage. Here's a fine marriage of Denmark and Japan. A Velorbis Scrap Deluxe in action in Tokyo.

Ditto. This time in Shibuya Crossing.

And a Christiania Bike navigating the Shibuya Crossing.

Yellow Stripes

Yellow.

Stripes.