Look Behind You

Glance backwards. Summer still lingers but with every autumn leaf that falls, she gets farther away. Good thing we have photographs to remember her by.

CPH Cycle Chic in A-dam

This is Marc from Amsterdamize who was so sweet to show Copenhagen Cycle Chic around Amsterdam this summer. We can't wait to drink him under the table if he ever dares to show up here in CPH...

A series of Amsterdam beauties:














To say whether Amsterdam or Copenhagen is the most cycle chic city is like having to choose between salty licorice and chocolate... (very difficult for a Dane, actually!)

But then, if you can combine the two (CPH & A-dam cycle chic), why bother?

Here's a video Marc shot while biking Velomama (aka Marie) around town. We're discussing the differences between Amsterdam and Copenhagen's bike culture - for instance the use of panniers and boxes vs. baskets, the use of bike locks and the extend of traffic regulation in the two cities...

German Cycle Chic

Due to travel, computer problems and lots of work (yeah ok it's no excuse!), Velomama has been away from the blog for a while - physically, if not mentally!

This summer, Velomama went around Europe with an InterRail pass. It gives you free travel by train all over Europe for a given period of time and is good value for money if you have the time to spend hours and hours in trains! (Very environmentally friendly & slow travel-like).

First stop was Gera in Eastern Germany, where my good mate Sam Hopkins was artist-in-residence. Here on his bike with girlfriend Nina on the pedals.



Then on a train to Hamburg, where cycle chics crowded the area outside the Central Station..



Stay tuned for more pics from Amsterdam, Marseille and Serbia...

It's good to be back!
Love, Velomama

Jazzed Up

Town is buzzing with the yearly Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Everyone is out on their bikes, shopping a bit of bebop, avantgarde and New Orleans... 900 concerts all in all. Yes, that's a lot.

Rückenfigur Redux

For a long while the visual style of this blog was dictated by 'Rückenfigur', or 'back figure'. Shooting people from the back. It's been a while since I've taken any like this, as even fine visual concepts have to evolve. But here are a few from the other day.

There were a couple of reasons for this 'rückenfigur' angle. As mentioned previously we are, by and large, on our bikes while we shoot. Waiting for the light to change, flying along the bike lanes. It's a practical issue, really. It's a tad difficult to take photos backwards while riding a bike.


Apart from that, we fancy the aesthetic value of the shots of peoples' backs and there are two specific artistic inspirations for this.

One is the aforementioned 'Rückenfigur'. It's a concept often related to romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and aims to make visible what the person featured is looking at. We're sharing their view, as it were. There's a cool Flickr group dedicated to it.

The other one originates with the Chinese poet Zhu Ziqing and his poem 'Seeing Father From The Back' from 1925. There is a term in Chinese called 'Backsight', meaning basically the same thing as 'rückenfigur'. There is also a cool Flickr group on this angle.

The very first Cycle Chic photo was unplanned and a lucky coincedence in a sea of street photography.

But it launched a visual style and a subject matter and this blog.

This and That From Today and Yesterday

Flip Flop-o-rama

Yesterday, Sunday, we headed out to a beach bar on the outer harbour to hang with friends and eat brunch, play beach volley/football and soak up the sunshine - 25 degrees. This has nothing at all to do with bikes as we took the harbour taxi across to the beach bar.

Yes, I have a point. I think. On the way home, as we walked to the metro station from the harbour, Wifealiciousness and I discussed how many people merely wear flip flops in the summer while riding their bikes. Sure enough, as we looked around, they were everywhere. Fair enough, it was a hot Sunday afternoon and most of the city was heading home from the many beaches around Copenhagen - as you can see in these photos - but flip flops are the casual and comfortable end of the cycling footwear scale in the Copenhagen Summer.








Copenhagenize.com Update
Today, over at Copenhagenize.com, we have a post about how IKEA Denmark are launching a free bike & trailer scheme, with Velorbis bikes, so that Danes can get their IKEA stuff home from the so-called 'Big Box Districts' outside of the city. IKEA found out that roughly 20% of their customers in Denmark make the trip to their stores by bike. The new scheme is set to increase that number.

See a fantastic video with John Pucher about how to increase the number of bikes in North American cities, based on experiences here in Europe.

Read about the Dreams on Wheels exhibition about Danish bike culture that just opened in Australia and that will be travelling the world over the next year - complete with photos from this blog.

See how Copenhageners both get their goods to a flea market and how they get stuff they buy home. Hint: Bikes are involved.