Interview with David Arthur, senior engineer at Gates Corporation, and Michael Bonney of Orange Bikes.

25-minute video news show broadcast via Cycling.tv at Interbike, Las Vegas, 2007. Host: Carlton Reid. Guests: David Bernstein of The Fredcast, Uwe Weissflog; Interbike's European PR officer; John Denson and Allen Richburg MD of Serfas. Topics: the growing popularity of urban cycling in the US and the UK, plus the Serfas electronic saddle testing units for bike shops.

Mick Jagger's bike. Disco Stu. Charge's Trainspotting-style kitchenette. Best British bike show for years. Here's a tiny (!) selection of 78 pix.

After the end of Outdoor Demo Day Two at Interbike I hitched a lift back to Vegas with German bike designer Marcus Storck. While his SUV was getting a flat fixed, I grabbed an interview. There's all the expected bits about high modulus carbon fibre, but I most loved Herr Storck's family background. The Storck family have long been steeped in bike culture...

Orange & Gates Corp.

Spot and Gates. Belt drives for bikes. See BikeBiz.com.

In 2006, the design competition Reinventing the Bike Shed commissioned a video short on how bike thieves operate. This animated short was placed on the competition website in Real format but here it is in MP4 format.

The short was produced by design and research company Bold Creative of London.

Greg Villalobos, Creative Director of Bold Creative, said: "We managed to track down a thief willing to spill the beans and set an animated illustration to his words."

http://www.reinventingthebikeshed.com/

http://www.boldcreative.co.uk

"I abhor the Barrattification of Britain, this defacing of green and brownfield sites by identikit boxes...Let’s plan new-builds with variation, greenery, ecology and community in mind."
WAYNE HEMINGWAY
The Independent, April 2001


Following the publication of this article, property development company George Wimpey called Wayne Hemingway's bluff. Would he and his wife Gerardine, the other half of iconic 1980s clothing brand Red or Dead, help design a new housing development in Gateshead? 

The Staiths South Bank was the result. It's Britain's biggest HomeZone and it now has a bike pool facility for residents.  

HomeZones aim to promote a more balanced relationship between pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles. Rather than prioritising cars, they encourage environments where the spaces between the houses are safe for children to play and for adults to meet their neighbours.


George Wimpey North East is hoping to boost the number of residents who cycle with the introduction of the Cycle@Staiths Initiative, launched on Wednesday by Hemingway. This is a pool of ten bikes for residents’ use. The bikes are free to use. Every household has also been supplied with a £57.50 Halfords voucher to spend on bike kit.

The Paul Hogan Show was aired in the mid-1980s. This clip features a woman cyclist in tight shorts distracting blokes in a sub-Benny Hill-style. Trivia: the woman who gets earth in her bag is Jason Donovan's mum.

A TV debate on the latest Tour de France debacle. This debate was shown on the France24 English-language news channel, Thursday 26th July.

www.france24.com

Andrea Sanke, France24

Andreas Evagora, deputy head of news, Eurosport, Paris

Philip Turle, journalist, Radio France 1

Carlton Reid, editor, BikeBiz.com

Danny Nelisson, former Tour de France rider, Eurosport Benelux commentator

Every cyclist needs to eat. And lots, too. But, for some, this can sometimes come with a weight penalty...Watch this animated short from 13-year old Shadow Scythe, the son of The Fat Cyclist. www.fatcyclist.com

Is this the weirdest moment of the '07 Tour so far? A weighty Golden Labrador waddles in front of T-Mobile's Marcus Burghardt. Upon impact the rider's wheel folds, and the dog walks away, nonplussed. It happened on Stage Nine and is worth watching again and again.

From London to Rugby by train; Warwickshire by bicycle, May 1955. This British Transport Films 15-minute short is snapshot of a different England. CTC members go on group rides via a 'cyclists' special' train.

What a lovely bloke!

Just before the jersey ceremony after the London prologue, my kids caught up with the Tour director and asked him for his autograph.

He could have refused. He could have called security. He could have signed, but vacantly, robot-like. Instead, he took the time to get down to the kids' level, asked them their names, personalised the signatures, and chatted about his own young daughter. I was impressed.

It was the mutual admiration society as the English fashion designer met the Scottish pro cyclist before the London prologue of the 2007 Tour de France.

Paul Smith is hugely into cycling and his company recently partnered with Rapha to produce an ultra-expensive merino wool jersey to celebrate the Grand Depart from Londres.

Incidentally, following David Millar’s long breakaway during yesterday’s London-to-Canterbury stage it turns out the planet will be the richer. The Saunier Duval-Prodir team has pledged to plant trees in Mali: one tree per escape-kilometer. Millar therefore earned 150 trees for Africa yesterday.

‘The voice of cycling’ can be seen on this (shonky) video shot at County Hall, London, on Thursday 5th July.

Sorry about the sound quality and the lack of a light: the digital recorder and the spotlight died on me as I was about to do the interview.

Phil Liggett was one of the guests at the opening of photographer Graham Watson’s exhibition of Tour photographs. The great and the good of cycling were there. So was Pat McQuaid of the UCI.

I asked Phil about his tip for the ‘GC’ winner (GC = general classification, ie yellow jersey). I also asked for Phil’s thought’s on a lack of a No. 1 dossard. Floyd Landis has almost been written out of the Tour’s history books, and Phil’s not impressed…

There will be more Quickrelease.tv video podcasts of the Tour de France in London over the next few days, thanks to the support of Ultimatepursuits.co.uk.

As mentioned previously, Hovis has ponied up £1.5m to sponsor the London Freewheel ride. In the 1990s the bread brand supported the National Byway with £500,000. But the support goes back further... 

In 1900 Hovis produced a cycling map series at a scale of 5 miles to 1 inch. The maps were published by G Philip and Son, for the Hovis Bread Flour Co, Macclesfield, Cheshire, and the co-sponsor was the Cycling Components Mfring Co, Birmingham. This series continued for 25+ years.

In 1973, Hovis returned to its roots with what became one of the all-time classic TV adverts, a delivery boy freewheeling down a cobbled northern hill.

In fact, the ad was shot on Gold Hill of Shaftesbury, Dorset. The director was (Sir) Ridley Scott. He later went on to direct Bladerunner, Alien, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator.

However, the Geordie director's first film was 'Boy and Bicycle' (1965), starring Scott's father and Tony Scott, his brother. This was shot on a budget of £65 using a 16mm cine-camera, borrowed from the Royal College of Art in London, where Scott was a student.

The film follows a boy as he decides to play truant and visits various locations around a northern seaside town on his bicycle. The film was on YoueTube last year but has been taken down for copyright reasons. It can be found on the DVD of Scott's first commercial movie, The Duellists.

Scott's bike advert was once voted the favourite advertisement of all time.

The original boy on the bike, Carl Barlow, then 13, is now a 48-year-old fireman.

He said: "It was pure fate that I got the part as the Hovis boy. I was down to the last three, and it turned out that one of the two boys couldn't ride a bike, and the other wouldn't cut his hair into the pudding bowl style - it was the Seventies after all. As the only boy who could ride a bike and would cut his hair, I got the part."

The ad is also famous for its soundtrack. In Britain at least, Dvorak's 'New World' symphony - rearranged for brass - says 'Hovis' and 'good, plain Northern values.'

Like many classic adverts of the 1970s, the Hovis 'Bike' advert was produced by iconic advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners.

VIDEO: Aquarel pompier soaks the crowds. For Apple TV and iPods.

The riders in the Tour de France whizz past at speed. But it's a spectacle all day long and it starts with the passing of the 'caravane publicitaire', a collection of 220 promo vehicles from which 11 million freebies will be disgorged

The publicity caravan is a mobile carnival, with dancers, 12-ft motorised tea-pots and Aquarel 'firemen' who hose the crowd with high-pressure jets of cold water. London has never seen anything like it!

Here's what will be handed out over the three weeks of Le Tour:

1 million bottles of Aquarel water
1 million Haribo sweets
600,000 Bouygues Telecom CDs
500,000 SeaFrance pens
400,000 Pik’Croq and Vache Qui Rit samples
300,000 Etap Hotel luminous key rings
200,000 Caisse d’Epargne key rings
15,000 Transport for London bracelets

Some of the products – such as the TfL bracelets – are specific to London, and not all of the France-specific freebies will be seen in London.

Many of the vehicles and promotional floats are supplied by Ideactif, France’s leading 'experiential' agency. The agency has just opened an office in London.

Ideactif has designed and will be operating experiential road shows for nine brands in this year's caravane publicitaire.

"Each brand’s experiential event will take place on spectacular and interactive vehicles with theatrical and magical characters and sets," says Marine de Mascarel, UK sales executive for Ideactif.

The Ideactif brands are: Nestlé Aquarel, Caisse d’Epargne, Vache Qui Rit/Laughing Cow, Nesquick, Transport For London, SeaFrance, Etap Hotel-Accor, Bouygues Telecom and Haribo.

http://www.ideactif.co.uk

The washing/lubing video produced for Weldtite is the most popular of the Quickrelease.tv videos on YouTube. It's had nearly 20,000 views. By popular demand here is the Apple TV version of the video. All the 'basic bicycle maintenance' videos can be found at http://uk.youtube.com/group/bicyclemaintenance

There's a lo-res clip of this trailer on YouTube, posted by MGM, but here's a more hi-res version. Watch out for more clips from the movie on Quickrelease.tv

CELLPHONE VERSION: Last year the CTC Charitible Trust won a grant of £295,000 from Defra's Tomorrow's Climate Today's Challenge programme to produce and distribute a cinema advert extoling the virtues of cycling as a means to tackle climage change.

The 60-second ad will have its premiere at a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London on Monday 18th June. The ad will be followed by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

'Cycle Hero' will be shown in cinemas across the UK from June 30th for six weeks, reaching an estimated audience of over 3 million people.

There's lots of background info on the advert at CycleHero.com.

The advert stars American actress Genevieve Love Lake as the Cycle Hero. She lives, works and cycles in London.

She said: "I am a keen cyclist and it was great to film the cycling scenes along with the other stars of the ad and the hundreds of cycling extras. As a model and actress I like to keep fit, so knowing I can count calories while counting carbon helps me feel a whole lot better. Knowing that simple - and fun - things like cycling can really make a difference in tackling global warming is so cool."

Last year the CTC Charitible Trust won a grant of £295,000 from Defra’s Tomorrow’s Climate Today’s Challenge programme to produce and distribute a cinema advert extoling the virtues of cycling as a means to tackle climage change.

The 60-second ad will have its premiere at a special screening at the Prince Charles Cinema, Leicester Square, London on Monday 18th June. The ad will be followed by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

'Cycle Hero' will be shown in cinemas across the UK from June 30th for six weeks, reaching an estimated audience of over 3 million people.

There's lots of background info on the advert at CycleHero.com.

The advert stars American actress Genevieve Love Lake as the Cycle Hero. She lives, works and cycles in London.

She said: "I am a keen cyclist and it was great to film the cycling scenes along with the other stars of the ad and the hundreds of cycling extras. As a model and actress I like to keep fit, so knowing I can count calories while counting carbon helps me feel a whole lot better. Knowing that simple - and fun - things like cycling can really make a difference in tackling global warming is so cool."

Thomas Edison, the American inventor and businessman who developed key devices such as the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb*, also worked on an early motion picture camera, the Kinetograph.

More than 300 of his early films survive, starting with a camera test dated to 1891. The clip above of a trick cyclist riding a fixed wheel bike was shot in 1899 by the Edison Manufacturing Co. It's also the first moving pictures of a ‘BMX bar-spin’.

This is a longer version of the YouTube clip embedded on http://www.Quickrelease.tv . It includes a second helping of the 1899 clip, set to 'No cure' by Pain Factor, available from http://www.magnatune.com

* Joseph Swann of Newcastle on Tyne, my home town, invented the first light bulb. Edison patented his a year after Swann and had to later withdraw his US patent.

PODCAST SPONSOR: Condor Cycles, London, http://www.condorcycles.com

This video short from Quickrelease.tv is on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79cmQlACL6s but download this 3GP version for use on mobile phones and PDAs.

THE POWER OF BICYCLES is a short film that tells the World Bicycle Relief story and highlights the work being done in the African nation of Zambia to put 26,000 bicycles in the hands of volunteer, community-based HIV/AIDS care workers.

This is the promo video shown at the official launch of the Grand Depart 2007 which took place on 9th February 2006.

The short movie was produced for Transport for London.

With the Tour de France due to kick off in London in just a few weeks, here's a re-issue of the Quickrelease.tv podcast from the official press launch of the Grand Depart 2007.

The piece was originally broadcast on 9th February 2006 (with a slightly different intro). The podcast features interviews of Phil Liggett; author and rock legend Johnny Green; Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman; CTC chair Kevin Mayne, and a bunch of bike journalists.

The National Cycling Forum - organised by Cycling England - took place in London on 15th May.

Speakers in this audio include:

Gary Shipp, Bike It officer
Roger Geffen, campaings manager for CTC
Christian Wolmar, Cycling England board member and transoirt journalist
John Mills, Coaching, Education and Development Director of British Cycling
Colin Langdo, MD of Cycling Solutions, a cycle training provider on Merseyside

Here are some 'rushes' from the IMAX movie with the production name of 'Brainpower' but which morphed into 'Wired to Win' when it was released to IMAX cinemas last year.

The re-naming – and extensive reshooting of scenes – was to accommodate the removal of Tyler Hamilton from the movie. At the time he was embroiled in a drugs hearing, which he later lost.

The rushes footage contains movie editing timecodes and an original score. More info at http://quickrelease.tv/?p=64

Here's the Quickrelease.tv video from the Nissan Qashqai Urban Challenge Freeride Event held on 4-5th May in Newcastle upon Tyne.

The two-day event was won by Darren 'Bearclaw' Berrecloth of Canada. He won 8000 Euros in the process and will be buying a boat with his winnings.

Twenty five invited riders took part in the event - including Kyle Strait, Andreu Lacondeguy, Gee Atherton (who knew he could 360?) and Christopher Hatton – and there were an estimated 10,000 spectators thronging Times Square, the central piazza at the Centre for Life.

Check out the video for Hatton's attempted 360-tailwhip off of the drop, and his run down the ramp, nearly wiping me out...

Berrecloth won by spinning off the start ramp, tailwhipping the step-up and doing a 360 off the satellite dish straight into a 360-table off the final ramp, close to the double-helix statue.

1. Darren Berrecloth
2. Paul Basagoitia
3. Kyle Strait
4. Ben Boyko
5. Christopher Hatton
6. Grant Fielder
7. Amir Kabbani
8. Greg Watts
9. Gee Atherton
10.Andreu Lacondeguy
11.Brandon Semenuk
12.Lance McDermott

This is a hi-res, iPod-friendly version of a 15-minute movie that's available on www.cycling.nl

The film features lots of happy cyclists from the Netherlands, Denmark and Colombia, and shows how creating a bicycle-friendly city is the civilised thing to do.

Scripted by Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá and the poster-child for city-wide bicycle advocacy, the movie was produced by the Netherlands-based Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-CE).

It was made in 2004 and received a financial contribution from the Dutch Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS). Shimano sponsored the CD distribution of the movie. These CDs are handed out at global cycle campaigning events.

www.Quickrelease.tv received permission to broadcast the film from I-CE.

The Guardian's cycling correspondent MATT SEATON gave the keynote speech at 'Marketing and Promoting Cycling', a conference at the University of Bolton on 3rd April 2007. What are Seaton's views on Tory leader David Cameron and jumping red lights? FROM http://www.quickrelease.tv (more) 

Tour de France commentator Phil Liggett says he’s skeptical about the whole Floyd Landis doping scandal. There are anomalies, he says, and the French lab at the centre of the scandal is not “scrupulous�. First broadcast 15th August 2006.

There will be lots of audio and video podcasts here soon.