West 5 Cycles
Cycling, fixed-gear bike building and life on two wheels onlyArchive for Video
Creative and unusual bike designs
Everytime there is a bike show somewhere in the world, I scan the photos posted of latest designs manufacturers are bringing out and can’t help but feel a little tinge of disappointment. Bikes still look like bikes and albeit some innovation is taking place with materials, and the drive train – it’s still nothing Earth shattering really. If you read cycling magazines it certainly looks like the only people out there seriously experimenting with bike design are the folks involved in Human Powered Vehicles (HPVs), whose trikes, recumbents and strange contraptions are re-defining what a mode of transport powered by humans is all about.
Fear not though, apparently there is a huge subculture of weird and wonderful experiments around the humble bicycle. If you decide to disregard the UCI definition that a bicycle has to have a frame made up of two triangles forming a paralellogram, suddenly the world is your oyster. Toxel.com has a wonderful collection of innovative and some plain crazy ideas around bicycles – why can’t we have more craziness like this to lighten up some bike shows!
Get on the good foot - but which one?
Fixie tricks
See riding fixed is not just a good work out and very cool, but it also allows you to do wheelies and stunts that none of your freewheeling mates could even dream of. Think I’m kidding? Check this video
More excellent and inspiring videos here - check out my favourite one, simply called Fixed, starring London’s very own Super Ted
A video of the golden era of bicycle innovation
Bicycles haven’t always been the size and shape we have grown accustomed to these days, in fact in the 1930s and 1940s a lot of experimentation took place to explore different solutions, recumbents, unicycles, tricycles, tandems, new ways of racing and even bicycles powered by rowing rather than pedalling. Sound too good to be true? Here’s a wonderful film, unfortunately not in English, which showcases this golden era of innovation of human-powered transportation.
