Bottles And Chains

The Melbourne City Council is proposing to redevelop Swanston St – and 7 proposals are on the table. One of these options is banning bicycles in Swanston St – and making it a car and delivery vehicle thoroughfare. This option wasn’t discussed as part of the Council’s consultation process, and seems to be a last-minute attempt to rush through a ban on bikes on Swanston.

One of the things I love about Melbourne, having moved here last year from Hobart, is the number of bike lanes here, and the number of people who ride bicycles as their primary mode of transport. It’s awesome to see people riding past in the morning on their way to work instead of banked up in their cars stressing out. Way more people ride to work here than in Hobart, and I figure a big part of that is having cycle lanes almost everywhere so you don’t have to battle cars the whole time.

Swanston St is Australia’s busiest cycleway. It seems totally ridiculous to me to be discouraging bicycles in the city by removing bicycle access in the CBD and instead catering for cars and delivery vehicles. In a time where we’re seeing the early effects of climate change hitting us already, we shouldn’t be rewarding people for driving cars – we should be encouraging more people to ride their bikes.

So, I’ve filled out the submission form. I hope you can all join me in taking 2 minutes to have a say on the redevelopment on Swanston St.

Have a read about the proposals on the Bicycle Victoria website here
Have your say on the Council submission form here

It’s free, it has great photos, interesting and entertaining reading and if you subscribe it plops into your letter box every couple of month.

For those with too much spare time check out the back issues too.

8am. Sunday Morning. Eastside, Alice Springs.

Post boozy Saturday night, Benny rolls out his singlespeed for the first of the ASCC short-track race series. The 12km singletrack course snakes around the very rocky hills above Alice.. all techy and pea-gravel sketchy-ness, ..so NOT the course for a fuzzy headed BnC’er, especially one with poor tech skills at the best of times. So what happens? With his brain function at minimal output, choosing rational lines through the never-ending rockgarden is simply not possible. Instead, Benny takes his 80mm of travel and just plows through EVERYTHING in his path and amazingly finishes in 3rd place! How? I don’t know.

Some respectibility returns to BnC. BOOZE brought back.

Kids, drink beer, it makes you ride better.

I love a good Riot. Being tear gassed in Bolivia, seeing dynamite thrown about by angy farmers and thinking how it good it would be to be back in London smashing shit up. Then i came across this. Not naming names but if he was there you can bet there were a whole bunch of of kids i used to work with doing the same.

Gasmasks and Balaclavas anyone?

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‘bike builds shouldn’t be about discreetly color matching your low flange hubs to your panties’

The Coach, Autumn, 2009.

It doesn’t always have to be about bikes…

One For The Shoeshine Man

The balance is preserved by the snails climbing the
Santa Monica cliffs;
the luck is in walking down Western Avenue
and having the girls in a massage
parlor holler at you, “Hello Sweetie!”
the miracle is having 5 women in love
with you at the age of 55,
and the goodness is that you are only able
to love one of them.
the gift is having a daughter more gentle
than you are, whose laughter is finer
than yours.
the peace comes from driving a
blue 1967 Volks through the streets like a
teenager, radio tuned to The Host Who Loves You
Most, feeling the sun, feeling the solid hum
of the rebuilt motor
as you needle through traffic.
the grace is being able to like rock music,
symphony music, jazz . . .
anything that contains the original energy of
joy.

and the probability that returns
is the deep blue low
yourself flat upon yourself
within the guillotine walls
angry at the sound of the phone
or anybody’s footsteps passing;
but the other probability–
the lilting high that always follows–
makes the girl at the checkstand in the
supermarket look like
Marilyn
like Jackie before they got her Harvard lover
like the girl in high school that we
all followed home.

there is that which helps you believe
in something else besides death:
somebody in a car approaching
on a street too narrow,
and he or she pulls aside to let you
by, or the old fighter Beau Jack
shining shoes
after blowing the entire bankroll
on parties
on women
on parasites,
humming, breathing on the leather,
working the rag
looking up and saying:
“what the hell, I had it for
while. that beats the
other.”

I am bitter sometimes
but the taste has often been
sweet. it’s only that I’ve
feared to say it. it’s like
when your woman says,
“tell me you love me,” and
you can’t.

if you see me grinning from
my blue Volks
running a yellow light
driving straight into the sun
I will be locked in the
arms of a
crazy life
thinking of trapeze artists
of midgets with big cigars
of a Russian winter in the early 40’s
of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil
of an old waitress bringing me an extra
cup of coffee and laughing
as she does so.

the best of you
I like more than you think.
the others don’t count
except that they have fingers and heads
and some of them eyes
and most of them legs
and all of them
good and bad dreams
and way to go.

justice is everywhere and it’s working
and the machine guns and frogs
and the hedges will tell you
so.

Charles Bukowski

Watch out for the road safety expert in his hummer!

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2009/03/30/64051_tasmania-news.html

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