Burning Guido Fawkes

...the tweedy way!

The Guido Fawkes' Bonfire Tweed Ride was a rousing success last Saturday. Thirty tweedy lads and lassies made it all the way down to Bubbly Dynamics outside Bridgeport. Special thanks to Viscount Wallace for organizing the route and Clan Lloyd for hosting the bonfire. Folks had suggested a November ride so we could wear the full tweed monty without sweating our arses off. But true to style, the weather was unseasonably warm ... perhaps we'll do our next ride in March to force a thaw!

Me & Viscount Wallace
by Heather

Me & Bob
by Allan

A lot of civilians took favorable note of our procession. This from Chainlink Chicago:

This afternoon my friend and I were sitting in a window seat at the Irkosium Cafe on Clark and Foster when my friend said: "Look, there's a guy on a bike who's dressed like Sherlock Holmes!" Before I could turn my head to look he said, "Wow, there's another one." Then the whole posse cycling by.

"Oh, that's a tweed ride," I told him.

"A what?" he asked.

He was impressed that I knew what it was all about.

You all looked very natty biking down Clark Street.

Lovely Lauren certainly thought
it was pithy success
by Aaron

Our honoured guest!
(thanks to Allan)

Burning the bastard!
by Sarah

The fall

20 years ago
today

the joke's (still) on you
Uncle Joe!

(Stalin is captured in this photograph by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Vlasik, the Soviet dictator's bodyguard. Vlasik's off-the-record photos of Stalin caused a sensation in the early 1960s when an enterprising Soviet journalist spirited some out, selling them to newspapers and magazines worldwide.)

and our piece of the wall
in Lincoln Square

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive,
but to be young was very heaven.

William Wordsworth
on the French Revolution

Chicago seen

really seen
by Vivian Maier

She looks rather dour, this French immigrant who came to the States sometime before WWII. After a brief stint in The Big Apple, she settled in Oak Park, working as a nanny for a solidly Windy City, suburban family. Her immigrant story would've remained rather ordinary if it weren't for her photographic work (consisting of 20,000 negatives and about a thousand rolls of undeveloped film with 12-14 images on each) and John Maloof who bought it at a local estate sale. You can see here what he's gleaned from the vast collection. And you can read the story here of his attempts to meet her; she died days before he finally discovered her whereabouts, and then his efforts to discover who she actually was.

Though her life's details are spare, I think you can get a sense for Vivian from the sheer humanity (and sometimes humor) of her photography. It also reminds me that once upon a time, not all that long ago, The City of Big Shoulders was mostly working class folks little more than a generation removed from The Old Country.

She definitely had the eye for the great contradictions of our Prairie Metropolis. The photos of monumental buildings always include the human beings they supposedly served. More often then not, the foucs is tight, filling the scene with on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950s and 1960s: the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops.

It's a shame her artistry lived in obscurity. When I showed Vivian's photos to a co-worker here at Bickerdike, she mentioned that they would have made wonderful visuals for Studs Terkel's Division Street. As he wrote,

The nomadic, transient nature of contemporary life has made diffusion the order – or disorder – of the city….I guess I was seeking some balance in the wildlife of the city as Rachel Carson sought it in nature.

Bicycle wheels

by
Ugly Kid Joe

Life is to be lived on the positive tip
Never lose the ground
You never gonna slip
If you never lose the ground Always draw the line
Never wear the frown

Should've got myself some bicycle wheels
Should've got myself some bicycle wheels
Should've got myself some bicycle wheels

On the wings of steel
There's dinosaur's in countries
Everyone that I've seen
There's dinosaur's in countries
If you know what I mean
I always keep a watch on the ever changing future

Doing what I want
And you could do what suits you
I said throw your hands in the air
I like to see your armpit hair
Throw your hands in the air
I like to see your armpit hair

Life is to be lived on the positive tip
I'll never lose the ground
You know I'm never gonna slip
Never gonna slip, cause I never lose the ground
Always draw the line
You know I never wear the frown

Shrine of the Vélotariat

blessing the bike

On 2 November, The Oregonian reported that St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in downtown Portland has

become the nation's first church with a permanent indoor shrine honoring the Madonna del Ghisallo, who is the patron saint of cyclists. An entire section of the 80-year-old wood-and-stone sanctuary will be set aside for bike commuters to contemplate their travels and remember those who have died while cycling.

A painting of the Madonna del Ghisallo (above) by local artist Martin Wolfe will hang above bike parking and a nave where travelers can light candles or sit in reflection.

On the road

with the original
Working Bikes

I was just listening to Bob Edward's Weekend on Chicago Public Radio Sunday morning. He did a piece on Charles Kuralt's famous TV essays, interviewing his cameraman, Izzy Bleckman. And he mentioned Jethro Mann who back in the early 80s had started fixing bikes for the kids of his town, Belmont, NC. He told Kuralt that it hurt him to grow up without bikes. So he started a bike lending library. His garage was filled with wrecked bikes. The kids were careful to return the bikes every evening, about suppertime. Then he would work on them, sometimes until one or two o'clock in the morning.

Everything you wanted to know about Cricket

...but were afraid
to rap!

Thanks to San Francisco Tweed, here's the latest track from a new album from the chap-hop sensation. On the mean streets and cricket pitches of Surrey, Mr. B, the Gentleman Rhymer, reveals the strength of his cricket knowledge.