Monthly Archives: June 2012

Bike X Designer (ii)

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As a follow up to my first post on collaborations between bikes and designers, this is another showcase of bikes and designers collaborating to produce art.

“A group of 20 young Slovenian artists have come together to rework 10 old bicycles in a span of 10 days.

Titled ‘Making of Orto Bikes’, each artist has given a tattered bike a new lease of life by injecting color and creativity into it, thereby transforming each bike into a beautiful piece of artwork.”

Here are some samples of the reworked pieces of art!

 

Bicycle Film Festival

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*A celebration of bicycles through film, art, and music

I found this by trawling through the internet and it’s amazing the new things I find each and every day relating to bicycles. In my honest opinion I would have never thought that a bicycle film festival would ever exist or even do well; but this event has actually been going on strong since 2001! (Great job guys!) Perhaps where I come from, the bike culture just isn’t very strong.

Anyway, if you happen to be in New York, the event starts TODAY! So hurry get your weekend passes through their website! (The image banner at the top is hyper-linked to the website for your convenience)

So according to their About page, “Brendt Barbur, Founding Festival Director, was compelled to start the Bicycle Film Festival when he was hit by a bus while riding his bike in New York City.  He insisted on turning his negative experience into a positive one.”

The base audience is composed mainly of young, trend-setting city-dwellers who love and identify with film, art, music, and sports (pretty evident in the image above).

“The BFF has exceeded expectations. It is able to draw more and more attendees from year to year. Every year we sell out screenings throughout the world. We screen films from established artists to emerging filmmakers who have a shared passion for bicycles.”

They have even had a very successful press record having had more than 50 articles written about them in top magazines and newspapers like Urban, Vanity Fair, Pedal, and Vogue.

This year they will be featuring in 24 different cities around the world including London, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Vienna, and Athens.

IN ADDITION, they have also diversified to produce rock shows that celebrate the bike and the festival. Awesome!

Build Your Own Bike (ii)

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About two weeks ago I wrote a post about a company in the States that offers a bike frame building course. (You can read about that here.) Back then I thought that this was a rare and novel form of education that was not offered anywhere else but today I’ve found another company (also in the States) that offers this course!

The name of the company is Yamaguchi Bicycles. According to their website, “every Yamaguchi bicycle is personally hand-built by Koichi Yamaguchi who gained his mastery of the craft during the years spent as Master frame builder for the legendary “3 Rensho” company in Japan. Koichi began working with the US Cycling Federation as National Team Mechanic in 1988, and, in 1989, he began making prototype frames for the US National Team and became the lone official framebuilder of the United States Olympic Cycling Team.”

That’s one heck of a celebrated bike framebuilder if you ask me!

So I was actually looking at Yamaguchi bikes because I was interested in their track bikes but here’s where things got interesting (and also why I am writing this post now). I noticed a side tab named “Framebuilding School“. FRAMEBUILDING SCHOOL BY A MASTER FRAMEBUILDER! This couldn’t get any better.

Comparing this course with the one I found before by antmikebike, the cost is lower and the duration of the cost is shorter.

Yamaguchi Framebuilding School charges $2,700 and lasts for two weeks; a fraction of the price of antbikemike’s at $30,000 and also four weeks shorter than antbikemike’s six weeks course. I am not very well versed with the terminologies of the course manual so I can’t tell for sure if they cover the same topics and skillsets. But based on price and duration, I can only assume that Yamaguchi’s course is either less comprehensive; or more efficient than antbikemike’s.

Anyway, the given topics covered are as follows:

  • Body measurement
  • Frame Geometry
  • Tubing Selection
  • Tube Mitering
  • Tool Selection & Use
  • Jig Setup & Use
  • Equipment Setup
  • Tube Prep
  • Brazing (Lug and lug less)
  • Build frame & fork
  • Finish Work

Yamaguchi only teaches three students at a time and the next available time slot is 5-16 November 2012. So what you waiting for!

And now for some images of Yamaguchi’s work for your viewing pleasure: