London Police criminalize Critical Mass

Over in merry ol' England the police have decided to criminalize bicyclists who gather for monthly "Critical Mass" meetings. Read more below.

The trial of the nine cyclists prosecuted after last July's Critical Mass ride ended last Friday, with five found guilty after a trial that dragged on for 10 days over a three-week period.

The sentences handed down were relatively minor – most of the defendants received nine-month conditional discharges and were required to pay £300 costs – and the rate of successful prosecution is low considering 182 were initially arrested on the opening night of the Olympic Games.

But the fact remains that the Metropolitan police apparently found a group of cyclists such a threat that they effectively criminalised riding a bicycle north of the river Thames for the night. What is believed to be one of the biggest mass arrests in recent history targeted a peaceful group deemed dangerous solely because they gathered to ride together in large numbers.

The Met chose to heavily police the ride on the basis that they considered it to threaten "serious disruption" to the community and the successful prosecutions were for breaches of an order made under section 12 of the Public Order Act. Despite 18 years of experience of dealing with Critical Mass, the in-depth knowledge that presumably must have come with trying to ban it in 2005 and plenty of advance reconnaissance from the infamous forward intelligence teams, the Metropolitan police singularly failed to demonstrate any understanding of the ride's dynamic.

The policing of the ride was farcical, with the rolling roadblocks at most of the major Thames crossings in central London causing far more disruption to traffic than Critical Mass could ever have hoped to, even if that had been the intention. Given that Critical Mass has been happening on a monthly basis in London since 1995, the Met had five years to consider how to deal with the ride on the night – and mishandled it in a spectacular fashion.

Either we have to work on the assumption that a sophisticated police force completely fails to understand the leaderless consensual model Critical Mass follows, or we are forced to accept the much more unpleasant possibility that they understand very well what Critical Mass is and what it represents and chose to act in such a way that allowed them to criminalise recreational cyclists. It appears to me that the Met is keen to frame the ride as a protest; their own report on the incident describes the ride in these terms, and they have had some level of success in selling this representation to the media.

While this suspicion directed towards public gatherings, and the imposition of the section 12 order that it resulted in, undoubtedly represents an affront to the right to free assembly and free association, the most worrying aspect of the policing of the ride on the night was that it was directed towards an explicitly apolitical social event. Not only must protests be constrained, but any large public gathering is de facto considered a protest.

The police report contains various other inaccuracies; to suggest that "the procession usually attracts approximately 100 cyclists" and that the July ride was exceptionally large is ridiculous – as the Met is well aware, the ride regularly attracts up to 1,000 cyclists during the summer months and has been doing so for years. Playing up to Olympic exceptionalism should have been beneath our police force.

The legality of Critical Mass in London depends on being a "public procession" which is "commonly or customarily held", and since their defeat in the House of Lords in 2008, the Met should know better than anyone else that Critical Mass is not a protest and should not be policed as such. In fact, it is not unreasonable to suggest that it is in the interest of the Met to radicalise the ride; if, as has been suggested, this month's meet-up explicitly protests the guilty verdict, it plays into a vicious spiral of reactionary policing and protest that might eventually allow them to get the ban they failed to secure five years ago.

Unfortunately, this official disposition towards cycling is not limited to the Metropolitan police's overreaction to a monthly fun ride around London. The Met's attitude towards Critical Mass represents in microcosm the profound disinterest in engaging with cycling that permeates all of our public institutions.

It is readily apparent that they did not consider it to be in their interest to engage with cyclists on their own terms. Similarly, the lip service paid towards the development of a proper cycling infrastructure in this country demonstrates that our public bodies readily grasp the PR value of claiming to be bike friendly but have no real interest in following through and promoting schemes that have any significant benefit to cyclists. The £62m set aside by government for the development of bike infrastructure borders on the insulting when the figure is contextualised; as critics have pointed out, it's a sum equal to the cost of building a mere two miles of motorway.

While five relatively minor non-custodial sentences for the unfortunate few that the Met decide to prosecute may not seem like a big deal in itself – the complete lack of any mainstream media coverage of the trial is testament to the fact that it is not deemed to be of interest to the general public – the precedent that it sets and the attitudes that it reveals make this a deeply worrying outcome.

Beeyond a Bike

The girl in this video was trained by the same bicycle mechanic as I was.

To learn more about her Beeyond a Bike program visit http://www.indiegogo.com/beeyondabike

Hub City Cycles is Hiring

Hub City Cycles Community Co-op in Nanaimo is currently looking to hire someone as a Bicycle Mechanic in the spring of 2013. Possibly more than 1 person.

Preferably someone who has some experience working in a bike shop as a mechanic and even more preferably someone who has graduated from a bike mechanic training institute such as the Quadra Bike School. If you had some experience teaching (people how to fix their own bikes) that would also be great. All of this is on their wish list and would be great to have, but not essential.
 
If interested visit http://www.hubcitycycles.ca/?p=1387 to learn more.

Bicycles as Art

Making art out of bicycles is nothing new for bicycle mechanics - but it can be very interesting. Here are some images of bicycle art I've collected.

Bicycle Sidecars

Need some extra carrying capacity on your bicycle? Maybe enough to take a whole extra person with you?

Basically what happened was I was watching a Japanese Anime called "Bamboo Blade" and one of the characters had a bicycle with a sidecar and I thought "Hmm... sidecar eh..." so I tried looking for that online.

Not many people have made a proper sidecar for a bicycle. Oh sure, there are children's sidecars and there are some custom made jobs like the one on the right here...

There is the Smike company in Switzerland which does mass produce, but to my knowledge they don't ship to North America. There are probably also some companies in China / Vietnam which also make sidecars for the local market. (Below you can see an example of a Smike bike with built in detachable sidecar.)

But nobody in North America mass produces them for adults. Its all children's sidecars / custom jobs. Even found one made for carrying pets.

I even asked a friend if he knew of any companies in North America that made bicycle sidecars. The closest thing he could find that was somewhat mass produced was Xtracycle's SideCar... and it is really more for carrying large boxes / groceries, etc.

Still, its worth noting. Check out the video below.


And further below here are some more photos of bicycle sidecars, custom or for kids, plus one motorcycle sidecar at the bottom which I have included just because it was so amazingly decorative.

Winter Bike Parking

If you store your bicycle outside in the winter, preferably in your backyard where it is marginally safer from thieves, you may want to consider some protection for your bicycle.

By Smokey Dymny of the Quadra Bicycle Mechanic School

 Yes, it’s winter in Canada and many cyclists don’t seem to have places to park their steed (bike) in a warm, sheltered spot. Instead they are locked to those ugly post-and-ring affairs, which we told the Toronto City Council long ago, weren’t very good for bikes. The edges of those cast aluminum rings are sharp enough to scratch the bike’s paint, AND more importantly, aluminum is a brittle metal, so these rings can be cracked with a two by four piece of wood – so your bike is not exactly safe if left overnight.

Which is why you see some of these rings have now been doubled in thickness to prevent such easy breakage.

Some smart civic employee decided that expensive, brittle aluminum should be made twice as expensive to solve the theft problem. So now, if you have a short U-lock, you know, the one that’s not too heavy to carry around on your belt loops, you can’t get it to fit the extra fat post and ring parking device.

I’ve always admired the City of Vancouver for it’s enlightened approach to bike parking. Their parking racks are diverse, that is they have different designs in different places. They are made of steel tubing which is: round (doesn’t scratch your bike), strong, can’t be broken, and powder coated in different colours to make them attractive. They must have actually asked cyclists how to design those racks.

But, I digress. Let’s get back to winter in Toronto.

You’ve left your bicycle locked to a post-and-ring device and then it snows. The City gets the road ploughed. Store owners shovel their sidewalk. And all that white stuff has ended up piled right where? You guessed it. Right where all the bikes are locked. So now you may not be riding because the bike lanes are also NOT cleared, so you leave your poor bike there, half buried in snow, for weeks or months. The part that is buried, is the most vulnerable. Your drive train. Chain, cogs, chainrings, and derailleurs, if you have them. And if you didn’t oil these VERY well before the snow fell they are all now rusting under a layer of snow and ice. By spring you will be replacing your drivetrain.

Flash! Why not protect your ride with a bicycle cover.

There come for cheap ($12) or a little more if you want better protection. And they keep the elements off your bike. The best ones also have wire threads imbedded in the polypropylene material so that it can’t be easily torn off your bike when you’ve put your lock through it. You may have to lock your bike to a fence when you park at home, and to something else when you ride to school or work. But now you can take your protection with you.

And I assure you that the cover is cheaper than a new drivetrain will be come next spring. So try it!

Bicimáquinas from Guatemala

What are Bicimáquinas?

Bicimáquinas are a series of pedal-powered machines commonly found in Guatemala where they have a shortage of electricity in many isolated areas. Their solution has been to attach their machines to bicycles in order to assist them with a variety of jobs in the home, on the farm, on the road and in small businesses.

Each bicimáquina is handmade in workshops using a combination of old bikes, concrete, wood, and metal. You can see many examples of such original designs that have proven to be both functional and economical on the website http://mayapedal.org/machines.en which lists a variety of fact sheets and instructions for their more popular designs.

They're certainly one way to have fun with your mechanical skills if you have spare bicycle parts laying around.

Example: Bicycle Mill/Corn Thesher

This bicycle machine has been adapted to fit a hand powered grinding mill or a corn thresher. The Mill function has the capacity to mill 3 lbs. per minute of any type of grain. The most common uses are for milling yellow maize, soya beans, and coffee. Huzzah!

The Thresher is used post-harvest and easily degrains 12 to 15 quintales (1 quintal = 100 lbs.) per day and requires only one person to operate the machine.

Below: A Washing Machine and a Food Blender.