Hello Chicago

I am bringing FH to Chicago for the first time ever! This weekend at the Renegade Craft Fair on Division St between Damen & Paulina. Booth 118. Sat & Sun, 11am - 7pm. We will be sharing a booth with Kozie Prery cycling caps so it looks like our booth might be a one stop shop, huh?

Reload's Maypril Fools Race

R.E.Load Bags is at it again with their annual April Fools Race (this year it is in May, hence the name change...) Since their hiatus last year the plans have all come together. Come on out, this scavenger type ride/race (it is not really a race as much it is FUN) is so great. It typically brings about 300 people. Registration is at Penn Treaty Park at noon. $10 to enter and gets you a t-shirt. Lots of prizes to be won!

Moving out of the Piazza by the end of the month

and in with Reload Bags at 310 N. 11th St. 2nd Floor.

Come celebrate the first day of spring!

Art Rush at CMWC Tokyo

Maybe you've heard that CMWC festivities will be tearing it up in Tokyo this September? A new feature of this year's extended championship, Art Rush, requires some planning. Which is why we're telling you all about it NOW.

Art rush hopes to integrate art and messenger culture. It's a contest for art that messengers will wear while they compete. The messenger riding will become a moving piece of art.

The medium? The ever-friendly, athletic favorite: a t-shirt. Each submission much be an actual t shirt, of course, as the riders themselves will hand select one to wear while they race. The t-shirt should serve as the canvas, but beyond that the possibilities are open to all variety of media, except maybe Etch a Sketch. Stitch it, draw it, print it, paint it! You're creative! You figure it out. It's a great way for people unable to travel to Tokyo to still participate in the event.

Your submission will not be returned to you after the competition wraps, as your work will be transported across the globe, worn by a competitor even after the race is over. A way of connecting people across the world through a love of bikes and art and comraderie. Their website whispers, Your artwork will be running through streets, somewhere in the world.

Organizers plan to display artist profiles and submissions, as well as the recipient of each shirt, on their website.

Yuki has all the details, but you can also head over to Art Rush for more information. The only cost to enter is the price of shipping your shirt to Japan, and the longer you allow for that part, the cheaper it will be! All submissions must be shipped by September 7, 2009.

Do it! This is your time to shine!

Bicycle Film Fest NYC

Hey New York, we will be slinging some FH goods up in the Lower East Side for the BFF block party tomorrow (if we don't get rained out that is). Come say hi. There will be all kinds of stuff going on throughout the day and weekend, which started on Wednesday I believe. Visit www.bicyclefilmfestival.com for more info and to purchase tickets.

As a side note, I really like the "BFF" costumes in this photograph. They remind me of a job I did for Ley Royal Scam, a former band my friend Teeter of 31 Corn Lane used to be in.

Congrat-U-Ma-Lations

To Bilenky Cycleworks, our hometown framebuilding outfit! They won best tandem last weekend at the NAHBS in Indianapolis. If there were ONE prize worth winning, best tandem is probably it. In my mind, the gold medal of gold medals. Those bicycles built-for-two are just the most fun.



And such a lovely shade of red...

Gerik Is Our Buddy and He Likes To Draw

Gerik does all kinds of drawings, usually good ones, and he just started a smart little blog to keep track. It's more functional than your everyday, ordinary blog because it's called Caption Please. The comments are the captions, get it?




We like them, untitled or titled.

Blinky Bilenky

Yes, yes, its that time of year again. Better get working on some of that homemade egg nog, whiskey and all, because you'll want to be good and ready to sit out in that cold junkyard up in Olney come Sunday to watch a good clean race around some pretty dirty roughage. What could be better to mentally prepare you for all the mild manners of the holidays? Nothing, really. So grab your favorite long johns, some festive brunchtime beverages and head thee to the Bethlehem of Philadelphia, cycle speaking, to catch some action that Santa probably wouldn't attempt in that billowy old sleigh. Sure to be holly jolly sort of holiday.

My Plaid Pony

Following our credo for reuse and penchant for refuse, the ladies of FH sport a good number of vintage ensembles. We all know it's possible to find crazy awesome scores in the bargain bin at Village Thrift in Jersey, but sometimes we all deserve to go into a Vintage store and emerge with a vintage bathing suit in a nice color that actually fits, off the rack. And our very favorite outlet for vintage shopping in Philadelphia is hands down the closet at Plaid Pony, the garage turned living space and vintage depot. Lara, the proprieter of Plaid Pony, converted the auto shop a while back and now their house may as well be plucked from the pages of your favorite magazine. It's seriously that perfect.



From the collection of toasters wallpapering an entire surface of their kitchen to the furniture harvested from a closing mental facility, the place breathes modernism and thoughtful design, creating the perfect gallery for the treasures that Lara collects. How do I know all this? Funny you should ask. Last year Carrie gave me a gift certificate for Christmas and though Lara does most of her vintage business on the internet or through consignment at stores in the area, I managed to get the VIP tour and treatment with my friend Sue one day last spring.





The space has no traditional storefront, but several rooms of the house have been devoted to the business she runs through her website, one for priced items, one for backup, one for housewares and bits and one for decorations and actually doing business in. The former three are packed, packed! full of stuff. If you need further baiting just go look at her website, and imagine that quality of stock but multiply it times at ten. The girl has a treasure TROVE.

Normally, to access Lara's collection, you'd have to go through the website or schedule an appointment, but this weekend is the third annual holiday open house she holds so that everyone gets VIP treatment. Saturday and Sunday this weekend you can go and see her beautiful house and her expansive collection of vintage in person. Hers is one for the ages, I promise you, so if you can manage to hoof it up to Fishtown this weekend, you won't be sorry. A rare glimpse awaits you.

Happy Thanksgiving, etc.

However you find yourself today, in a crowd of people, at a family sit-down, on your ownsome, outdoors, near a hearth, pot-luck style, turkey oriented, tofurkey oriented, stuffed to the brink, politely still hungry, drowsy, captivated, cooking, indulging, drinking, abstaining, friendly, family, north, south, east, west, in the city or the country...



Hope this Thanksgiving holiday is a happy one for you.

sending our love your way,
Fabric Horse.

Take A Hike

Literally! See how handy the superhero is on outdoor adventures? This is just one instance on a perfectly leisurely hike with my friend Halimah through my local Redwood Regional:





There's a spot for your hydration of choice, your GORP, your compass, your firstaid kit, and you could even tie a longsleeve throught the lock holster if you wanted to. So much less sweaty than a backpack (we did a side-by-side comparison and it was pretty much a landslide victory). And may this be a public service announcement for your local underutilized national and regional parks: Go to them! They are beautiful and it is October! You won't be sorry.

Velo+City

Thursday night I caught the opening of an exhibit at the Lisa M. Reisman Gallery called Velo + City: The Social History of the Bicycle. This thing was very well publicized (I caught glimpses of flyers in several of my favorite places) and with such a catchy title, how could I refuse?



Now as sort of a nerd, I really love exhibits in "art" galleries that include history lessons or scientific fact or any sort of decidedly non-art context. I think the two genres of information, art and history--though not that combination of the two, art history--when presented together can create a deeper, more comprehensive experience than either taken alone. Not for all art shows, of course, but for many, like this one, it really does the trick. For the show was composed of prints and posters for bicycle companies, rare ones, some worth several thousands of dollars. They were brightly colored and usually involving beautiful ladies, illustrated in the style of art nouveau and screened by hand. And while the posters stand sturdily on their own the addition of the social history, as told through placards littered throughout the posters themselves, really makes it more an exhibit and less a catalogue of prints. The prints then represent distinct eras within a chronology that, though missing examples from several crucial periods, tells the story of the beloved bicycle over the last century and a half. And I don't mean to spoil any of it for you, but the tale from start to finish is all romance.


Marque George Richard/Cycles & Automobiles, 1899

The opening was really well attended! We rolled up to a crowd spilling out into a tiny tiny block of South Rittenhouse Square Street, messengers and old timers and afficionados and hippy do-gooder types all mixed in together. There was lots of food, delicious madeleines and tasty beer. There was a delightfully extraordinary band playing music that made you feel like it might not be 2008. It might by 1908. And they also gave out favors! Blinky Lights!

As I mentioned, women were prominently featured in several of the ads. I learned that in the early days of the bicycle, the independence it afforded young ladies combined with its early reputation for being a bit pornographic made it a tough sell to women in general. A deluge of advertising illuminating the virtue and femininity of the machine resulted, and by the turn of the century women comprised 1/3 of the market for bicycles. That's the only history you're gettting for free! Go see the rest of it for yourself. Up for another month, Tuesday through Sunday from 10-7.

Tandemonium 2008

What could possibly beat the heat this time of year? What's worth sitting in an hour of traffic on Friday at rush hour in a hot car with sad air conditioning? You probably already guessed it: A trip to the Trexlertown Velodrome for the annual tandem track racing event Tandemonium. Um, can I just say...



and





The race featured the USAC Tandem Sprint Nationals and included riders from all over the world. A series of sprints, followed by one knock down drag out (thank goodness, not literally) go of all eleven teams on the track at once. And in the end, Argentina took it. Crowd favorites also included Gomez and Gomez, a brothers team from Pasadena, CA and a father son duo from King of Prussia. Sadly, no ladies competed on tandems, though there were a couple intermittent rounds of solo riding sprints for both men and women.



Fancy Wheels, too.

Yo Memorial Day!

Hope you all are well fed, well slept and rosy cheeked after such a beautiful holiday weekend. I must say mine involved ice cream, a party, bike rides, barbeque, a photographic adventure and a Phillies game. A girl sure can't complain.

In that vein, Happy Almost Over Memorial Day weekend to you and yours.