TfL promo vids: Bare-headed, or thin film on top?

We spotted this TfL film crew at work yesterday, filming a lass on a hire bike trundling up and down Cycle Superhighway 3 on Narrow St.

The British film industry may be worried by budget cuts at the moment, but TfL is doing its best to rescue things single-handed, with their five lively new films promoting cycling.

Each features a different type of London cyclist, covering the whole range of Londoners that matter: two TV celebrities, two more attractive young white women, and a diversity-box-ticking young chap called Mohamed. No older, or otherwise ugly, people, obviously. Not in the target demographic, no doubt.

Still, to my mind it's good to see that only two of the protagonists are wearing helmets. This lack of lids worried BBC Tranport Correspondent Tom Edwards in his recent blog, though.

Evidently the Beeb guys are a nervous lot when it comes to headgear - and their impartiality snaps faster than a non-Snell standard helmet. For example, the BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less last Friday (listenable again until Friday 3 September) 'covered' the helmet debate.

(It surely didn't make best use of researcher Ian Walker, and then allowed the pro-helmet Angela Lee to assert opinions backed by no statistics whatever - which seems curious for a programme on statistics. Overall it was flimsy, full of holes, and gave little worthwhile coverage. Which is probably appropriate for an item on helmets.)

But the presenter couldn't help but sign off saying how he wears a helmet. (Tock, tock, as he taps his helmet, ooh, that's good use of the radio medium you see, they're trained professionals, you know.) The Beeb hackette writing the BBC website article about the same programme couldn't resist putting her oar in too, saying she always wears a helmet.

Of course, it's very unlikely that a BBC programme is likely to cause damage to your laptop or radio, when you lash out in anger at them during another superficial item on cycle helmets that uses anecdote and opinion as 'evidence'. But just in case, it's a good idea to take precautions. Protect the laptop or radio with some sort of cover. Can't do any harm, can it? I think that's the point the programme was making anyway.

So I'm pleased to see TfL is not capitulating to the helmet correctness lobby.

If they could broaden out from their emphasis on bright young people though I'd be even pleaseder. An attractive young woman on a bike is a pleasant sight. But a healthy cycling culture needs more than flowing-haired models pedalling small dogs in baskets. It needs schoolkids, and pensioners, and business suits, and dumpy tired-looking middle-aged people too.

Speaking of which, if TfL needs another extra, I've a bit of time available right now.

Project, dear boy: Bike-powered cinema in Brixton

There was bike-powered cinema in Brixton last night. The slightly weird French animation Belleville Rendezvous, which involves dystopic racing cyclists forced to work bike generators, was shown in Windrush Square.

And, appropriately, it was powered by cyclists forced to work bike generators. When someone had had enough and stopped pedalling, they had to be replaced by someone else, or the film would stop.

It was a Lambeth Council initiative for Bike Week, and was there to raise awareness of energy use etc.



All good fun; but the only awareness it raised in me was that (a) it started 45 minutes late and (b) a mud-coloured brick wall (on the side of a terrace displaying a historic Bovril advert) isn't the best medium for projecting a film.

You couldn't really see much, to be honest, and the barely audible soundtrack didn't offer any clues. Maybe the cyclists weren't pedalling hard enough.

Still, the audience of perhaps a hundred or so, enjoying the grassy warmth in T-shirts and summer frocks, seemed pretty laid back about it. Must be something in that Brixton air.

Auteur bike: Virtual London rides at Spitalfields

There's an amusing bike installation at Spitalfields Market this week, from Friday 23 to Friday 30 April, 10am–6pm every day.

Local(Eyes) is a bicycle mounted to a generator in front of a film projection of various cycle trips round the East End (right). The faster you cycle, the faster you 'travel' through the cinematic landscape.

The artist behind it is Mila Lipowicz, a real cyclist currently living in Greenwich. She films some of her London journeys using a special wearable hard disc camera which gives particularly smooth video results.


The film in the picture at the top takes you alongside the canal running south towards Limehouse Basin. The real thing is on the right.

(A recent City Hall exhibition on Cycle Superhighways used the same idea, except that where this film is documentary, City Hall's was romantic fiction.)

Films of old London: but where's the bikes?

In the old days, central London's streets were full of bicycles, with traffic nothing like as scary as today... weren't they? Not according to the films of old London street scenes from 1896, 1903 and 1927 on London Screen Archive's YouTube channel.

In fact, what's striking is exactly how few cyclists there are, and how clogged and chaotic the streets look. Mind you, cycling doesn't look an attractive prospect in the horse-drawn era; I thought exhaust fumes were bad enough...

On Blackfriars Bridge in 1896, for example (above) - at the height of the cycling boom - there's only one cyclist to be seen.

In Old London Street Scenes from 1903, the streets look frighteningly busy, and totally cyclist-free, except for a couple of daring chaps just by Parliament Square.


The longest and most enjoyable film, despite its arf-arf intertitles, is Open Road (1927), thrillingly in colour (right). It shows some streets (going into Hyde Park, for instance) comically empty of motor vehicles compared to today.

But while there are a few more cyclists in evidence here, despite the tramlines, it's still not that many. My cyclist count is London Bridge 1; scene with copper directing traffic 1; Whitehall 2; Hyde Park Gate 1; Marble Arch 1; Petticoat Lane 0; Albert Embankment 0. (Or as TfL would have counted it had they been around then, London Bridge 435, Whitehall 924...)

Petticoat Lane was clearly too crowded to take a bike down. Evidently there was nothing to do on a Sunday in London in 1927 as a man except put on a cap and stand around looking gormless in the market with ten thousand other men while your wife cooked the roast.

Someone with a little bit of time, money and talent, which rules me out on three counts, could make a modern-day equivalent of all these scenes. It would be fascinating to compare.

Of course, some things haven't changed. Westminster had no cycle parking then either.

Bicycle films

Here, for no particular reason, is a list of my favourite bicycle-related films.

Sliding Dawes
Gumball Raleigh
National Lampoon's Airnimal House
Ridgeback Mountain
The Gary Fisher King

Bring Me the Headset of Alfredo Garcia
Full Metal High-Visibility Jacket
Who Aluminium-Framed Roger Rabbit?
The Texas Chain Tool Massacre
Bike Lane on Elm Street
Chafing Saddles
Miller's Toucan Crossing
Reservoir Cogs
Braking Away
Cool Handlebars Luke
Bloody Taxi Driver
Return of the Pink Pannier
The Brick Lane Bicycle Thieves
Lord of the Chainrings
Gone with the Headwind
Jurassic Cycle Park

Can you do even worse than that? I look forward to seeing your suggestions. For the benefit of the dozier readers of the Guardian bike blog, these are not real film titles. They are slightly altered versions of real film titles which have had a word or words changed or added in order to make a reference to some aspect of cycles or cycling, for amusing effect. Hope that's clear.

Snow in May? Must be Dr Who

I know we should expect a few weeks of rain. It's Bank Holiday month and the test match season has started. But snow, in May?

We were a bit taken aback on Friday night, going along Cook's Road near the Elephant and Castle, to see one of the council-block plazas covered with a localised Snow Event. A localised Christmas Event, in fact: the balconies and shopfronts were festooned with coloured lights and illuminated Santas.

Ah. Filming, of course: make-believe December in May, for a yuletide Dr Who special. The floodlights were still on, and technical crew were standing around smoking and telling locals that oh they couldn't possibly reveal anything about David Tennant's replacement it's all a secret we can't tell you anything blah blah blah when actually no-one had asked. There was no evidence of constructive activity, so we thought they must still be filming, but in fact they'd finished for the week.

The Tardis was there and we had a peek. It was smaller inside than I expected, somehow.

I nipped back next morning to take a snap (right). They were clearing up the sn... er, the cotton wool. A local man, thinking I must be an official because of my high-vis jacket, demanded to know when all this would be cleared up. Oh, I said, we have to jetwash away what's left, and then we're turning it into a rainforest for the next Bond film.

Video of today's Kagel performance

Very nice little vid of today's Kagel performance on the Guardian website at http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/mar/05/bicycle-bell-orchestra, fronted by lapsed oboist Helen Pidd. Chapeaux, Hélène.

I'm not identifiable in it, for which I am profoundly grateful.