The Bicycle Warriors Issue #37

These girls may look tough, but most of them admitted that if their bikes were stolen they'd still cry. More evidence to prove, there's nothing quite like the love between a girl and her cycle.

By Katie Heath
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 10:23am

Lorin Daniels, 19
Phoenix, Arizona

Occupation: nursing student at Arizona State University
Make of bike: Takara Tribute
Customized? “It’s been completely overhauled since I got it for free on Craig’s List. I painted it old-school emerald green — the same metal flake they used on drag racecars from the ‘60s — and mixed huge green sparkles into the clear coat.”
Getting involved: “I’m chairman of the support group for cyclists who are constantly called ‘Lance Armstrong’ by frat boys in SUVs.”
Biggest annoyance about drivers: “When you get someone’s lung butter (aka spit) on you from their car window. The desert really makes your throat dry and builds that stuff up to a premium consistency.”

Emilina Dissette (aka Agent Pulse), 26
Portland, Oregon

Occupation: “When I’m not in school for music, I work in the food industry to save money to travel south into Latin America for the winter.”
Make of bike: “I’m part of an all-female mini-bike dance team called the Sprockettes. We dance with various brands of mini bicycles that we’ve painted hot pink and black. We design them differently based on our agent names and attitudes. We add pegs for tricks and dancing and alter rims for fire and other kinds of props.”
How do you reduce your carbon footprint? “The Sprockettes haul all our equipment — which includes a sound system, lights, props, and minis — on two chariots for performances. Also, our first tour last year was on a school bus converted to run on veggie oil.” (More info at sprockettes.org.)

Alona Lerman, 29
Memphis, Tennessee

What’s wrong with this picture? “It’s a re-enactment of my bike accident that had happened a couple of days earlier,” Lerman says. “I was being cocky, thinking that I could carry my friend Patrick – who is a good eight or nine inches taller and 40 pounds heavier than me – on the back of my rack. I figured it was only three to four blocks. After wobbling a bit, I completely crashed out and had to go to the hospital. I’m fine now. My bike was stolen two days later at the festival. Double ouch. So I grabbed my friend Tim, who had also just been in an accident, to pose with me using his bike.”

The VeloVixens
Victoria, British Columbia

Members: Justine Murphy (“Mean Justine”), Ali Donnelly (“V.V. Donnelly”), Kyla Hubbard (“Cyclona Spoke”), Triane Tambay (“Metal Cowgirl”), Annie Banks (“Axel Annie”), Jenny George (“Furious George”), Adele Woodyard (“Ninja Ginja”), Cordelia Horsburgh (“Marinona Campagnola”)
Occupation: “We’re a group of artisans, photographers, bike mechanics, and educators.”
Make of bike: “Fixed gears, road and mountain bikes, and anything we can get our hands on.”
Defining “bike gang”: A bike gang can really be as simple as a small group of friends going for a ride all the way down to a massive bike posse that is known all throughout the North American bike scene. Our gang is a group of socially conscious, action-orientated bike kids who take a participatory role in our culture. We walk the talk.”
Typical performance? “Storytelling-street-theater-meets-bike-propelled performance party. We do tricks like a grade-seven talent show.”
URL: myspace.com/velovixens

Laura Fletcher, 24
London

Occupation: Works for the cycling clothing company Rapha and also produces the London Bicycle Film Festival (bicyclefilmfestival.com)
Make of bike: Orbit
Customized? “Built entirely by hand.” She started with the frame and fork and rebuilt it to suit city riding. The city bike contains half new parts and half found parts from swap meets.
Best place to pop a wheelie with friends: “Bike Polo,” a beer-infused event where cyclists meet in an enclosed basketball court to play the ball-and-mallet sport while riding a bike. Biggest annoyance about drivers: “They don’t recognize how easy it is to hurt a cyclist. They sit in their protective cases and threaten us while we’re doing something better for the world.”
Favorite movie about bikes: Quicksilver is a classic. Kevin Bacon as a bike messenger — what could be better?”
Smooth move: “I have this amazing trick. It’s called ‘falling off.’ It happens quite a lot.”

Cyclecide Bike Rodeo
Ladies Auxillary
San Francisco

Members: (Pictured) Summer Burkes, Linda Lagunas, Kaytea Petro, August Wood, Dannygirl Waters, Dani Fruehe, (Not pictured) Renessa Lopez, Lorianne Huft-Swain, Rose Harden, Penny Rucker, Katy Bell, Amy Troutman, Erin Perusse, Ratgirl Brugman
Occupation: “We’re a group of artists, carnies, crafters, and freelance workers. You have to hustle to make ends meet and to get time off to travel, but it’s worth it when the bus pulls out of the junkyard for tour and you’re on it.
What to expect from a traveling carnival bike show: “We have about eight pedal-powered rides running simultaneously, a band called Los Baños playing mariachi punk vamps, skits that involve food, fire and bike mosh pits.”
On the road: “We fix flats, set up rides, help refurbish bikes, and have been known to cook a pot of spaghetti on a bus stove going 50 miles per hour on the freeway .”
Make of bike: “We make a lot of our rides, tall bikes, and choppers out of old cruiser frames and car parts. Most of them are scavenged from the junkyard, found, or donated — all through a process we call ‘obtainium.’ Every bike is altered, hand-painted, and decorated. We christen them with names like the Chupacabra or the Mexican Canadian.”
Customized? “Our bikes are meant to be thrashed. They all start out pretty at the beginning of the season and come back completely destroyed. But isn’t that the point?”
Party trick: “Balancing a 12-pack of beer and two bags of groceries on a bike.”
URL:cyclecide.com

Jen Duane, 28
Columbus, Ohio

Occupation: Engineer at an environmental consulting firm and also a student of art and dance
Bike-friendly: “I volunteer as co-chair for Consider Biking, a Columbus-based nonprofit bike advocacy group.”
Make of bike: Trek Elance
Customized? “Every 4th of July, Columbus hosts a ‘Doo Dah Parade,’” a 25-year-old pastime that celebrates lunacy and liberty by encouraging absurd costumes and political spoofs. “This year Consider Biking, my bike advocacy group, went with the theme ‘alternative fuel.’ People wore T-shirts with images of food or hung beer cans on their handlebars to demonstrate what fueled them to ride their bikes. I decorated my bike based on the scraper-style bike originating from San Francisco. The scraper bike normally involves intricately wrapping foil around the spokes of the wheels but has evolved to involve colorful bits of paper or fabric.”
Best place for bikes and people in Columbus? “Tip Top! It’s a bar and restaurant that’s got mad Ohio spirit. It offers a ‘two-wheel discount’ ($1 PBRs) and features a bike-powered film series.” (p2cycles.com)

Leah Todd, 26
Brooklyn, New York

Occupation: audio visual technician for the Rubin Museum of Art
Make of bike: Bianchi Trofeo
Customized? “Does crashing and banging it up count?”
Why she’s awesome: Todd’s the coordinator of Safe Walk, a free service initiated by RightRides for Women’s Safety. Safe Walk aims to decrease street harassment by organizing teams of volunteers on bikes to escort anyone home who does not wish to walk alone. Every Friday night, Safe Walk operates from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m., assisting solo night owls in Brooklyn neighborhoods. Visit rightrides.org for more information or call 1.866.977.WALK to meet up with a Safe Rides volunteer.
That’s not all: Todd also works for the NYC Street Memorial Project , an organization that creates “ghost bikes” to memorialize cyclists and pedestrians who were killed on NYC streets. Appearing in more than 35 international cities, ghost bikes are painted entirely white and then chained to a street sign near the crash site. Attached with a small plaque, ghost bikes function as quiet reminders of past tragedies. More info at ghostbikes.org.

Lesley Wells, 24
New Orleans

Occupation: photography graduate student at the University of New Orleans
Make of bike: Univega Nuovo Sport
Customized? “I stripped the old paint off, covered the bike in Mod Podge, and découpaged old engineering blueprints I found at the Rankin Steel Mill outside of Pittsburgh. The blueprints are from the ‘60s and had a lot of water damage, which added some nice marks and blotches. I tried to line up certain images and words with different parts of the bike as I went along. Having a bike with wet blueprints kind of went along with the city.”

Fix Without Dix
Oakland, California

Members: Courtney, Kate, Steph, Becca, Samalama, Alicia (aka Baby Jesus), Nicole, Becca (Part Deux), Zoey, Meredith, Meribeth, Marin, Neise, Anna Banana, and Vickie.
Make of bike: “Some amazing Broakland Fixies and vintage road bikes. We like to refer to ourselves as ‘Roads Without Choads.’ It’s not the bike, it’s the babe.”
Best place for bikes and people? “Lanesplitter Pizza, Mama Buzz Café, and The Ruby Room always have a pretty crowded bike rack and a ton of amazing people around.”
If someone stole your bike, what’s the first thing you would say? “They’d say ‘Damn! Who are all these girls attacking me?!’ The fists would pummel.”
URL:myspace.com/fixwithoutdix

—

GET YOUR OWN RECYCLED WHEELS
These non-profits salvage old bikes from local dumps and fix them up at affordable prices.

Chicago: Working Bikes (workingbikes.org)
Boston: Bikes not Bombs (bikesnotbombs.org)
Seattle: Bike Works (bikeworks.org)