Skateboards on Bicycles

I like to ride my bike to where I'm skating. Public transport can be a toil, and when driving I tend to become zoned-out (what we would call 'glaikit' in Scotland) or frustrated; on my bike I tend to arrive warmed-up, alert and ready for some FUCKING ACTION. 

But there is the problem of carrying a board on a bike. I have a backpack that I can strap a board to, but backpacks lead to a sweaty back, and my saddle was getting torn up by my griptape scraping aganist it. Bungee pannier straps leave your board flopping around behind ye. So I got my sewing machine, some velcro and denim, and stitched up this thing to strap my skateboard to my pannier rack. It is a fabric wallet that enfolds the deck, with velcro straps attached to hold the board firm across the top of my pannier rack. It works really well.

Skateboard pannier carrier. The central panel is reinforced with a piece of heavyweight cardboard

Skateboard in pannier carrier

Skateboard strapped to bike pannier, like a sexy skateboard spoiler

I only ride short distances to go skate - 20 kms is about as much as I can take before I burn through so much energy that the skate becomes pointless. But here is a great wee film of a human-powered bicycle/skate tour of the length of New Zealand from John Rattray's excellent blog.

Matt Hensley Krooked Deck

If skateboarding starts to get tiresome, two things that can help revitalise it are a new board, and skateboarding more. I got a new deck - a Krooked Matt Hensley guest board. Krooked is Mark Gonzales' company - they make short runs of boards with Gonz graphics - it's naive art, baby! I really like this company, and I am happy to skate on a board bearing Gonz artwork. He is one of my all-time favourite dudes, let alone all-time favourite skaters. I like that this board is not a full-cover base print; the graphic screams off the sweet pink woodstain background.

This deck is a bit bigger than I normally ride (8.25") , and I've paired it with softer wheels (92A Pink P-52 wheels) for rough streets, ditches and parks. But the wheels are still only 52mm, the board isn't so big that you can't flip or ollie it, and the wheels still have a bit of slide to them. It feels different and it's fun to skate - 92A wheels induce a curiously nostalgic muscle-memory of set-ups from the late 1980s. I've been skating a lot since I got it a week or so ago, and am back in love with skating again.

Krooked ad

new wave wheels

Top Graphic - note limited edition numbering

grip it and rip it

gripped it and ripped it

Bondi Skatepark

Bondi is an eastern suburb of Sydney with an extremely popular surf beach. The area was named after the surf community was deeply affected by the death of beloved AC/DC singer Bon Scott in February of 1980. For weeks, traumatised surfers aimlessly wandered the length of their beach lamenting the loss of the talismanic singer, repeating, "Bon die, Bon die, Bon die." These words became associated with the place, and the place became associated with the mighty surfers of Australia courageously staring melanoma in the face and saying "bring it on!"

Bondi is also celebrated as one of the planet's number one places for scoping on hot babes, but as my visit coincides with a biting autumn wind, the beach is very quiet. I have lived in Sydney for over 2 years but this is the first time I have ever been here - my Scottish skin is vampirically susceptible to sunlight, and I prefer quieter beaches, like Vaucluse. I do not like the Baywatch vibe, and I find myself becoming fixated with male body hair when I go to places like this. When did chest-waxing become so prevalent and acceptable? Is it acceptable, or is it every bare-chested beach bunny's dirty little shame, carried out in secret in a locked bathroom with watering eyes and suppressed yelps of pain? I mock their hairless Bieber tits.

I ride my bike there, and it's a fine ride apart from briefly finding myself in the midst of 60km-per-hour traffic in a multi-lane road. The ride is just under 19km. The skatepark overlooks the beach, and it's a bit of a fishbowl - passersby stand and gawp as they lick ice cream and shout the names of tricks learned from playing Tony Hawk Playstation games.

The park is dominated by the bowl. It is a deep scary thing, famously the venue of the annual Bowl-A-Rama contest. I lower myself into the shallow end and do a couple of kickturns, but I will never be a bowl skater. The 'street' course is very tight; there's some ledges and stuff that I can't figure out how to get at. The section with the flat bank hips and bowled-out corners is fun.

Bondi skatepark

Bondi bowl - handrail bg gives scale

I'm dehydrated and have a sore tummy stomach ache, so I ride south to see my beloved wife and the band Dusker recording in Coogee. As I ride, I notice a pile of books at the roadside and find this lovely Faber paperback. It includes a fantastic MR James chiller, and a story by Saki, who I have never read before, but whose former home, marked by a plaque, I used to pass as I walked to a previous job in London.

a spook-takular find

Dusker are recording in Studio Zapata. I rock out to some Bart-beats as I lock my bike to a tree outside. Apparently Sleepy Jackson recorded their album Lovers in here. Have you listened to that lately? What a great record. I'm listening to it now.

Dusker in the studio

On my way home I do not get lost - Sydney, I own you now - and stop for wedding-flavoured blueberry cheesecake and coffee at Chocoreve patisserie in Stanmore, where our wedding cake was made. What the hell, here's a picture of our wedding cake. It was baked blueberry cheesecake on the bottom, alcohol and chocolate cake on the top. Birds made by tha D-double-E. The wee bird me's even got a wee skateboard.

Cake is important

Freewheelin'

I first became aware of fixed gear bikes when I met some friends for a picnic on Hampstead Heath. I was on my Raleigh 3-speed, and they were on fixies. We decided to go to a pub, and my suggestion of The Flask was declined with the explanation that they couldn't go there because it was up a steep hill that they couldn't ascend on their single speed bikes. 

My first experience of fixies, then, was a negative one - of bikes that are restrictive in their use. Like moccasins worn without socks or dreadlocks in fair, straight hair,  the effort and discomfort required to project the aesthetic overwhelms the aesthetic itself, and suggests affectation. I would regularly get stuck behind a fixie going down Dartmouth Park Hill on my ride to work. I love to freewheel down a hill. It's often reward for a hard uphill climb; I even love the rattling whirr of a freewheel mechanism as a bike coasts down a hill. But the fixie-rider must pedal like billy-o to descend a hill, his limited speed forcing me to keep my hand clamped around my brakes, unable to enjoy a glorious coast down a long steep hill.

Before mechanised gears, racing bicycles had different ratio gears on either side of their rear wheel, and racing cyclists would dismount to remove their wheels and change gearing for different sections of a course. There is no optimal single-speed gearing for variable conditions; if you ride a bike with a single speed, you will transfer less of your energy into motion. Why make life difficult for yourself?

The answer to this is that fixed gear cycling is said to increase feedback on tyre grip and of the road in general, and create an "almost mystical connection between a fixed-gear cyclist and bicycle." This has led to fixie riders replacing their saddles with dildos to promote a deeper experience of the city streets beneath them (this is not intended to be a factual statement).


I guess it's obvious by now that I don't wish to offer a fair and balanced account of fixies. On a logical level I appreciate that anyone on a bike, fixed or not, is doing something positive for themselves and their cities. But I find it enjoyable to foster a dislike for an erstwhile harmless phenomenon (one day I'm going to get around to writing about extreme razor scooters).

Here is a typical fixie-rider in Sydney. Fucking cool, right? He demonstrates 4 stupid things about fixies:

1. No helmet. Helmets are mandatory in Australia, but it's common to see fixie riders without them. They often wear those little peaked bike caps instead. Perhaps this person rides so infrequently that he is prepared to risk police fines rather than shell out for a helmet. Or perhaps he would rather take a fine than wear a dorky helmet over his dreads. I've heard theories that it is more dangerous to wear a helmet, as cars tend to give less room to cyclists they perceive as less vulnerable, but it seems preferable to wear a helmet rather than get a fine and a bollocking from a cyclist-hating cop.

2. Cards in spokes. Riding a fixed gear bike with some cards in the spokes qualifies you for membership of an urban subculture called Bicycle Culture. What is awesome about Bicycle Culture is that you don't need to be skilled in any way other than an ability to ride a bike - it's not like skateboarding where you need to spend a few years actually learning an ability - you can bypass this entirely and jump straight into some urban cool by acquiring a fixie and putting some cards in your spokes. You might also want to replace the front wheel of your fixie with a mag wheel. There are some magazines that you can buy that will help you be a member of Bicycle Culture.

3. Riding on the pavement (rather than the road). If you ride a fixie, you are going to get peeled out on by cyclists with geared bikes, because you are less able to transfer your energy into speed and so will be slower. But you can avoid this if you ride on the pavement and ignore road rules. I am perhaps naive in thinking that if cyclists want to be safe and taken seriously on the street, they need to observe the same rules as road traffic. Speak to any non-cyclist and they will list anecdotes about cyclists behaving hazardously. They see one cyclist breaking a rule, and infer that all cyclists break the rules. This is like saying that all drivers are drunken, fly-tipping perpetrators of murderous hit and runs - it's wrong to infer generality from a few noticeable occurences. But one cyclist breaking a rule does harm to us all. Because fixies take more effort to get up to speed from a standing start at traffic lights and junctions, it encourages riders to blast through those junctions, and perpetuate this antagonism between cyclists, pedestrians and other road users.

4. No bar tape. This must be awful when it's cold. Combine bare drop bars with woolen gloves for a mouthful of headset. Looks great, though.




DISCLAIMER: None of the above applies to any of my friends, or to John Cardiel. I just realised that a photo I had posted here was of a bike that belongs to a friend. I have removed the photo, and I hope I didn't hurt his feelings.