Sunday 10th - Festival - Newtown - Cycle Chic - BLING!!!!

We're rolling out the bike bling again this Sunday for our favourite festival of the year!
You'll find us near the bike valet parking in the Bike Boulevard - or maybe we'll find you first?

No parked bike is safe from the guerrilla recycled bling.....

Expect to see us roving the kids area too on the hunt for blingtastic Cycle Chic Kids!

Newtown Memorial Rest Park from 9am on Sunday 10th November - see you there.

Festival Dreads

Sydney Festival opening night was brilliant - so many people on the streets and hundreds of bikes in valet parking - ah summer......

Will Self - On Your Bike!

Kinda love Brit author Will Self's sardonic wit and no surprise he's a bike lover too.   He (and other similarly obsessed lovers of the bicycle) spoke at the brilliant Intelligence Squared cycling festival in London last week.

Great stuff.

Get Your Craft On Cycle Chic Kids!

Just one more sleep to go to the much anticipated WOOP Rolling Festival on Bourke Street and we're excited!

We have piles of wonderful recycled craft generously donated by Reverse Garbage and Opera Australia.

Gorgeous lucky dip giveaways for all crafty kids thanks to supporters Gazelle Australia & CycleStyle and a FETE STALL!
(It's my first fete stall, forgive me for my joy!)

     

Our team of BRILLIANT Crafty Upcyclers will be on hand to help you make art out of your bikes and then on to the beautiful cycle way you go!

It's going to be a gorgeous day - stop by and say hi (even you big kids) and grab some ribbon for your handlebars.... go on you know you want to :-)

We'll be in Wimbo Park on Bourke Street (opposite Devonshire Street) between 11-3 on Sunday 15th!

Cycle Chic Kids are go!!

Cycle Chic Kids Do WOOP!

It's been a long time coming but the kids are ready to roll again!

We're very pleased to be presenting the next Cycle Chic Kids event as part of the wonderful WOOP! Rolling Bourke Street Festival Extravaganza on Sunday May 15.

This well-overdue celebration of the Bourke Street Cycle Way is morphing in to a fabulous community festival with all sorts of things planned - live entertainment, a vintage bike exhibit, kids activities, street entertainers, bikes and MORE BIKES and a mega raffle to raise money for the Cancer Council NSW initiative "Do Your Thing."

Events will stretch the length of the Cycle Way from Waterloo to Woolloomooloo and riders are encouraged to ride the loop and show the local businesses (and Sydney!) some bicycle love.  It's time.

Cycle Chic will be situated in Wimbo Park (opposite Devonshire Street) from 11am-3pm, along with Bourke Street Public School and their sausage sizzle.

We are inviting all children (and their carers) to bring their bikes and join in the craft fun with us and our team of wonderfully creative upcyclers.  We'll provide all manner of recycled bits and bobs for you to play with (feel free to bring some bits from your craft box too) and we'll help you to turn your bikes into art!

Have a look at the last event to see what sort of fun we had and then why not finish the day with a ride along the new safe Cycle Way en famille??

We'll be posting more details over the next few weeks but please spread the word to the parents and children in your lives and hop over to like our Facebook page and the WOOP! page to keep up to date with all the details as they unfold.

Cycle Chic Kids Are Go!

Itty Bitty City - How Children See Our Cities

At yesterday's Art Adventure launch for Art Month Sydney, children were invited to create their own Itty Bitty City and the results were fantastic.

This particular scene caught my attention - just think, if children were in charge of our urban design what utopia there would be.  Roads with nothing but bicycles and ice cream vans and is that a small rooftop bar I see????

Brilliant!

Cycle Chic Sundays Does the Moonlight Cinema

Time to get the New Year off to a rolling Cycle Chic start......

WHAT:     An evening viewing of that all time chic film classic Breakfast at Tiffany's
WHO:       Anyone who would like to lounge around on a balmy Sydney summer evening under the stars.
               Vintage Audrey/George chic if you so desire....
WHERE:   Moonlight Cinema, Centennial Park (entry via the Woollahra Gates off Oxford Street)
WHEN:     Meet at the gates at 7pm

NB: This film may sell out so it is advisable to pre-book.  Tickets can be purchased from Moonlight Cinema online and bean beds are available for hire at the cinema.

For anyone who has never been to Moonlight Cinema, it is wonderful.  If you haven't seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, well now is your chance.  The films start at sundown and there is a licensed bar and food available.  It is also BYO so feel free to bring your favorite beverage and picnic food - anyone else think a Martini sounds like a good idea?  Blankets and rugs of course go without saying.

This is really just a good excuse to catch up and plan some fun events for the New Year so I'd love to see you all and some new faces too.
As we all seem to ride from the various corners of Sydney perhaps some of you will join up and ride to the park together?  Leave a message on the facebook invite page when you RSVP if you'd like company on your ride and we'll see who we can hook up.  You can also leave a message here or email me.

I'm checking with them to see about bicycle parking too so will post an update on the facebook page.

January is a busy old month in Sydney with the Festval and Flickerfest so expect more rides through the month.  Let me know if you're planning to be anywhere that needs a visit by Cycle Chic!

Hope to see you all on the 9th - don't forget to get your tickets soon to avoid disaster and RSVP!

Calling all Cycle Chic Kids - Bling Your Bike at the Newtown Festival!

Ok so there are a lot of bikes in Newtown, that's a fact. So at next Sunday's Festival, we expect to see some serious cycle chic.
The Festival is one of Sydney's largest and longest running free community festivals and will be a day full of the usual community shenanigans. World music, great food, an Eco Zone, the wonderful Great Aussie Clothes Swap, stalls, bicycle valet parking with free tune-ups, kids activities and.....no wait, kids activities?

Now there is something pretty cool happening for our little bicycle warriors at the Newtown Festival this year. Something that I have a very keen interest in, being mother to a mini bicycle maniac.
Kids are not only being encouraged to ride to the festival, brilliant in itself, but they are also being invited to decorate their bikes for the inaugural "Bling Your Bike" competition.

Open to kids of Primary School age, all they have to do is go bananas with the recycling and get crafty with their bikes, ride up to the festival and register and then join the parade through the park. The City of Sydney's Bicycle Ambassadors will judge the best bikes, there will be cool prizes and proud parents.

Kids love bikes, especially Cycle Chic Kids (as Mikael's son Felix from Copenhagen Cycle Chic proves) and they should be riding and having fun.  We were all kids once and we remember what it was like. So if you have small people, help them funk up their bike, pimp yours while you're at it and head on down to the festival next Sunday.  We'll be there with bells on.


The festival is on November 14 from 9.30-5.30 at Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, Australia Street, Newtown.
Festival details here and full kids competition details here.

Cargo Bike Fiesta!

Ok so fiesta may be a slight exaggeration but within a few days I have seen more cargo bikes than I can poke a stick at!
Sydney has not fully embraced the cargo or freight bike yet but slowly, as with our developing bicycle culture, times are changing.

First there was this beautiful white Bullitt cargo bike up in Bondi, my sources say it's been seen around a lot lately so I'm hoping for a glimpse of the owner soon.

This weekend also sees the end of the two week long Sydney Design Festival and incorporated into that was the Live Futures 2020 Festival, a curated weekend of events and workshops aimed at opening discussions and changing the way we live.

Those forward thinking folks at sustainability resource centre The Watershed in Newtown were there to lend a hand by schlepping equipment around in their two freight bikes.  Their Gazelle Cabby and Xtracycle will form part of the proposed "library" of transport bikes due to open for public use in the next few months.
The Watershed is a joint initiative of the City of Sydney and Marrickville Councils and is yet another great way that Sydney is supporting sustainable environments within the urban community.

I caught up with Mithra and Andrew from The Watershed as they took the Gazelle for a spin - oh and my Felix is also a BIG fan....