It’s amazing what people will make websites about, isn’t it?
The other day, I discovered a Copenhagen-based “fashion” photoblog called Cycle Chic, devoted to pictures of people on bicycles. Apparently, it’s the work of passionate cycling advocate Mikael Colville-Andersen, also founder of the urban planning consultancy Copenhagenize, which stresses the value of cycling and pedestrian facilities in cities (see also the Copenhagenize blog).
Many of the photographs are rather good.
And even the more mundane ones are often quite appealing because… well, Denmark boasts an above-average concentration of beautiful women.
A recent post, though, has made me glad to be avoiding the northern European winter. Beijing gets fiercely cold, but it’s mostly very dry. Those shots of the snow in Copenhagen look thoroughly miserable.
Cycle Chic has achieved quite a high profile - written up in The Guardian, and supposedly named one of The Times’s '100 Best Blogs Worldwide'.
4 comments:
It's a shame it's too late for China. Oh well, give them another 100 years to catch up and revert back to healthier and more environmentally friendly lifestyles. I expect by then we'll have moved on to polluting Mars or the moon anyway.
It's astonishing - and depressing - how much bicycle use has declined, just in the 8 or 9 years I've been here. I suspect we've passed the point where there are more cars than bicycles now.
I wrote my comment earlier a bit too hastily I think, I was also in a bit of a mood at the time and reading it back it sounds it. While the trend of bikes is true in China my general point was that everything tends to go and come around again eventually including lifestyles and their impacts. Wealth and the eventual impending subsequent lack of it seems to be the main reason for this. They were discussing food culture on the radio, specifically wild food from foraging & gathering which has recently become fashionable again. Go back about 100 years and it was commonplace and economic downturns have lead to its re-emergence. OK, so we're not starving and having to live off scraps from the land (it's more to do with fashion, people don't want to be seen as poor but when some people started gathering again to save money it became popular with chefs too) but food as well as transport have an impact on the environment so it's interesting to see these patterns and speculate on their causes. The Chinese and their bikes is an obvious case of a change in wealth but I can see the bike having a renaissance there eventually perhaps due to a dip in wealth but also due to other reasons such as nostalgia, fashion and changing attitudes to self and surroundings.
My pal The Choirboy also recommends this blog about 'bicycle fashion'.
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