The always amazing Lee Basford is behind the fantastic video produced for the Tokyo stop of the “Rapha Rides” project (taking place in 20 cities around the world). Not only is it a beautiful look at taking in Tokyo by bike, it also features one of my design heroes (Groovisions). On the negative side, this really made me miss Tokyo, and especially being able to bike through the city on a daily basis. Via Canvas.
Spoon & Tamago highlights the beautiful bike work of Nobuyuki Tani, and ex-Sony designer who ditched it all to concentrate on bikes — he also makes custom jobs, like the bike that was used in the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service movie.
The latest post on State of Tokyo is about PauseDraw, which I shared last week, but here’s another recent post on the site that shows off the fantastic looking Brotures Harajuku bike shop. Tokyo definitely has some awesome bike shops, which often feel like mini-museums when you visit them.
Here’s a fantastic photo story for the Rapha website by Tokyo-based photographer Lee Basford (who’s done a lot of cycling-related photography in the past, and whose work I love) covering Rapha’s Supercross series in Nobeyama. Striking shots. Found via Canvas.
As I mentioned when I wrote about it at SNOW Magazine, this past Friday night I headed out to Koenji to catch the reception of Antonin Gaultier’s “2005-2010: Collected Archives” show. It was held at Alin Huma’s F de C Tokyo multi-purpose space, and it was my first visit there. I had a really nice time, and the crowd was great — was good to finally meet Alex of so+ba, although I hope I didn’t freak him out too much with my Uwe Boll stories — but what made the evening even better is that I decided to go there by bicycle, from Ikebukuro. I’ll say that the ride back when it suddently got really cold with high winds wasn’t as fun as the way there, but it still felt good (I haven’t really been cycling regularly of late).
The photo above popped up on Facebook, and was taken by Yann Le Goec. That’s me in the space, with my back to the camera, talking to Alin.
Even though I was planning on going, I missed out on Paper Sky‘s “Bicycle Club” event this past Saturday at the farmer’s market in front of the UN University, but the magazine’s Lucas Badtke-Berkow has posted a few photos from the day, both for the bicycle event and the booth the magazine had at the market. Above on the right, Lucas and his carrots!
Wanted to post this a while back and for some reason didn’t get around to it, but really enjoyed Tim Rudder’s report on the cycling trip he took to Nikko (from Tokyo and back).
The new issue of Paper Sky (31) is a special one, marking a major renewal for the magazine. The most obvious change is the cover design, but you’ll find English content creeping back into the magazine as well — for now, mostly with intro paragraphs to each article, but Cameron Allan McKean‘s article on sento bathing in Tokyo is published entirely in English.
The Paper Sky website is also about to get a major revamp, and is set to launch within a week or two. The new site will now have a strong English component, of which I’ll be a contributor (but more on that once the site launches).
The other day I had the great pleasure of finally meeting the magazine’s founder, Lucas Badtke-Berkow, who also founded the original — and truly great — TOKION. Seems like this should have happened ages ago, and it was great to have a nice long chat with Lucas about where Knee High Media has been, where it’s heading, and on the state of print media in general. After checking out the KHM office in Shibuya, we ended up getting coffee at this amazing little retro cafe nearby, which I hate that I can’t remember the name (but I’ll be going there again).
Above, the label for Lucas’ new Luke’s Carrots line of organic products — I had a taste of the carrot jam, which was delicious. You can currently buy it at the weekend farmer’s market in front of the UN University in Aoyama, where he and his wife are manning a booth this month. Next weekend they’ll also be offering free rides on some very cool bicycles, as part of the new Paper Sky Bicycle Club.
Update: The cafe’s name is Aoyama Ichibankan, and here’s a map that shows the location. Make sure to get the honey toast!
Tim Rudder took the afternoon to draw a girl on a fixed gear bike, and walks us through the process.
CNNGo has a piece up looking at some of Tokyo’s best bike shops. Pictured above, WBASE Harajuku.