Beers for Bikes–An Epic Party and Benefit for SL Bicycle Collective

Join your friends down at Epic on the 23rd, 825 South State Street, for an outdoor beer tasting and fundraiser for the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective.

A $10 donation goes directly to our friends at the Bicycle Collective. You’ll be able to try samples of many of Epic’s beers for a $1 token, as well as sample food from Sun & Moon Café, Poplar Street Pub, Vinto and Cali’s Natural Foods. Listen to guest DJ’s spin mix tape mash ups. Ride your bike to the party, join in the Epic Bike Parade and valet park with the Bicycle Collective.

Tasting beer in October, what a way to spend your day. The 23rd, 1-8 PM, suckas!

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Bicycle Film Festival!

The BFF is at the Post Theater this Friday Oct 1st and Saturday Oct 2nd.

Hope to see you all there! 

We need volunteers still so give me a call at 801-931-0895 if you can help out.

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Excellent Tallbike Joust Photos

Full gamut of great photos of the event from Erik Seo here. Erik, you're invited to all bike events here on out! :)

There's a black and white picture of Mark and a crowd shot slashed across the frame in high-contrast white that both kill me. Such good stuff.

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Techtastic Alleycat

An alleycat of skill and poise, Sunday, September 26 · 2:00pm - 5:00pm Meet at the Flagpole at the Center of President's Circle, U of U campus. Read on below!

This isn't your normal "day in the life of a messenger" alleycat. This alleycat not only focuses on finding the best route and riding it quickly... at every stop you will have to perform a feat on your bike. Depending on how well you perform it, you will get none, some, or a lot of minutes off of your final time.

The challenges won't be dangerous or even that hard, everyone will be able to do them, but they will be awkward and reward those with bike handling skills.

I'm also looking for volunteers to be at each stop and "judge." So if that sounds like fun to you just send me a message or call me.

Bring a bag, and money for an entry fee. The fee is still undetermined, but will be no more than $5.

As per usual in my events. The cash goes straight back to the fasted/most skilled riders in male and female categories. Equally to the girls and the guys.

Invite your friends!
Chris

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Bicycle Film Festival in Salt Lake!

Looks like a REALLY cool program this year, set aside some time and get a ticket reserved for the programs! 5-10 PM October 2nd, 2010:
CHECKIT

Here's Lucas Brunelle's Line of Sight Preview.

He's a great guy. When I met him in Vegas he was talking about 'straightline' touring on a roadbike, where you ride in a given direction and jump over things, climb fences, mountains, whatever to get to your destination, riding when you can. Sounds mental.

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Salt Lake Silver!

Becka Roolf, SLC Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator has elaborated on the event on the 25th, apparently it's going down because we, Salt lake, have achieved Silver Status as a Bicycle Friendly Community! That sounds awesome, and definitely something to come out in force for. Here's the full breakdown on the upcoming event/ride with the mayor:

Saturday - Sept. 25
We'll start with a ribbon cutting by Mayor Becker on the new Main St. bike lanes, ride the bike lanes and the new South Temple green shared lanes, then end at the bicycle transit center where there will be an award ceremony (for the city), prizes (for attendees), food, and a grand opening.

Gather: 9:45 am @ 2000 South Main St.
Ride: 4 miles to the Transit Center
Celebrate: Ribbon Cutting, Award, Grand Opening, Prizes, Food
Support: Mayor Becker, UTA, and SLC leaders in their initiatives to make things better for bicycles.

Thanks Zed for the flier too!

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OMG Bike racks on Frontrunner!?!?!

Good job Salt Lake City! We're doing it! 

(Now let's do this on trax!)

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A Call To Arms!

Do you like porn? Do you also like bikes? Tired of having to use two sources to get your fill? Then read on!

What you need is Bike Porn!

As I'm sure most of you know Bike Porn rolled through Salt Lake last year around this time where it was welcomed with open arms, but this year it seems that these arms of (semi-graphic) love have disappeared! What the hell Salt Lake?!

So how does this apply to you? In every way imaginable! YOU are the reason Bike Porn does or does not expose itself here in the mecca of mormon!

Go (now!) to bikeporntour.blogspot.com (soon to be BikeSmut.com) and express your love for bikes and gratuitous nudity!!

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Whose air? Our Air!

Gettin' that word out!

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SLC BICYCLE FRIENDLY COMMUNITY RIDE

I don't know about you, but I've been looking for who to properly thank for the new sharrows and bike lanes that have been popping up all around the city in the last month. I love these lanes, they change the whole attitude of cars behind me in skinny, tricky areas from whiny impatience to acceptance of the legitimacy of my presence. Here's our chance to ask all about them and roll with the mayor over all the green lanes!:

Saturday September 25
9:45 am
2000 South Main Street

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10/10/10

A day of action must be organized!! Climate activists at 350.org know hat 10 10 10 is too great of a date to waste, so across the universe they're organizing actions to reduce CO2 emissions. Amanda Fay Blackmore , amndfyblckore20@hotmail.com, a local artist and enthusiast, is looking for help in creating a local action on that day. So get in touch and help her out! Anything we can do to get the general awareness of the severity of climate change is a good thing, so let your creativity soar.

Here's a little pan-lingual animation from the group with oddly snappy music:

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James Miska's adventures.

You may or may not know him, but James Miska is a great person. He's currently undertaking a high quality bicycle tour down the easty coasty, playing music along the way for fun and profit. I wanted to include a little letter here in it's entirety so ya'll can see the joy in this sort of adventure.

"On this, the Autumn 2010 East Coast Music-On-Bikes Tour from Vermont to Virginia, Matt Laser and I have biked our instrument-toting, gear-laden, two-wheeled asses to Torrington, Connecticut!
We started our ride in Northfield, VT and arrived here today at noon. We left at noon on Friday, September 10th, and 6 in the evening, and got here today at 12 noon. I just checked and it's been a 240 mile ride in 3 and a half days! We're very proud of ourselves.
We spent 3 lovely days on Scrugg Farm in the arboreal hills outside Northfield, VT, at the end of a dead-end road, with our friend Leah, who lives in a bus parked in a permanently indefinite locale on a hill behind the main homestead. It was the most paradisial place in a non-typically paradisial place I could imagine. (As in, no palm trees, rough winters, etc.) Patty and Scott, the caretakers of the land, are lovely old folks that treated us like their own kids right off the bat. Patty taught us to can and pickle beets and carrots! The beets had been picked from their garden and were the size of engorged grapefruits. Hung out with cute and playful dogs, played music together, and ate wonderful foods (usually containing a pickled or canned food from the previous year). We made everyone cinnamon mint tea and poured honey whiskey, supplied as part of a parting gift from Amber, in it for the autumnal night times. For those of you that think autumn begins September 20th, allow me to politely rectify your imagination and proclaim to you that the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont follows no such rule. It has started while the rest of the country isn't looking. The leaves here have begun to suffer from imbalance, brought on by old age, and so everywhere you look, they are falling. Discoloration is also becoming a widespread epidemic. I don't know what to do, but, for the sight of myself, I'm beside myself. It's so beautiful up here. And I haven't even caught the worst of it yet, or so I'm told.
We met Mary our first night, biking up to Montpelier, literally yelling at us from the side of the road to come stay at her place when we get there! Who was this crazy lady, you may ask? Well, just a sweetheart who, 7 years ago, had been blessed with enough pleasant interactions on her own bike trip with her husband and daughter, from Seattle to Montpelier, that she felt that it was the right time to shower 7 years of pent up generosity down upon us, the unlikely wayfarers, with freight trains for bikes.
She and her husband Jon, also her bike-mate, treated us to a lovely homegrown meal and beer and wine and brownies and a sweet acoustic jam session! Jon and Mary, are, respectively, great banjo and upright bass players. We were certainly lucky to have been passed on the road at 7 in the evening by this kind lady, and to have met them the way we did. We traded stories deep into the evening, eating late like the Spanish.
We busked at the Montpelier Farmer's Market the next morning and made a quick $20 and left town with treats. We've biked through sun, slept through rain, hustled through cold, suffered headcolds, ate cold pizza, biking between 65 and 70 miles each of these past 3 days, through parts of Vermont radiating with postcard-worthy imagery. And that's just the imagery! Scents and sounds and sensations of such spectacular scale, that I despair at the drought of definitive descriptives. They have been Delicious! And I'm sorry but that's all you get.
We have also, with the advent of Connecticut in our trajectory, encountered the fabled skiddishness and mistrusting nature of folk "from back east". Not to a painful extent yet. But we did get denied on the spot from filling our water bottles at a gas station. How silly...
I am very excited for days to come. We're only half way through our first week, after all. Internet communication is predicted to be scattered showers, but mostly dry. So another update may be far away.
I love you all though, however it is that I know you, and you should well know it or else you wouldn't be receiving this!
Also, if you care to forward this to others that you know that I know (and also love), feel free, and better yet, give me their email address since I probably don't have it.
Yours, from the road,
James Robert Miska..

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All Bikes on Deck! Face off Urban Gallery Event this weekend.

Calling streetcrawlers and light-jumpers of every two wheeled variety! The 337 Project is putting on a second year of its very rad insta-mural competition known as the Urban Gallery Face Off, and we need help gettin' the word out. So here's the deal:
Bike on over to the Salt Lake Art Center and pick up some fliers to distro. Whomever puts out the most fliers between now and Friday can win some cool stuff, including a $30 gift at Squatters Pub, some sweet t-shirts, and the highly coveted Art Center Membership :). More info below.
So, details.
-The event spans Friday and Saturday, starting at noon on Friday, and the art center is closed Monday. so realistically you have 3 days to flier it up. Tuesday would be the best day cos then the fliers have more expooosure.
-Please be responsible with the number of fliers you take, so that you don't bite off more than you can chew.
-Travelling in groups is totally acceptable.
-Place the fliers in legal places that are responsible and visible, being considerate of other events you might be sharing space with.
-When placing the fliers, be kind to the shops and employees that help you put them up, always asking permission unless it's hella-obvious you have it.
-Bring your own tape and pins? :) Thanks.
-The prizes will be awarded largely on the honors system, but keep in mind a list of places you pasted them in case I get suspicious.
-On friday, post your totals in the comments section of this post.

Thanks, good luck, and have fun! Hope you go to the event as well, it should be a great time.

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Somebody Buy This

I'm Totally Serious

No, really, check out the awesomeness:

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MIDNIGHT MASS!!!!

That's right folks, I don't have to work until 3am anymore on Fridays, which means I'm coming to mass. Don't know if it's still going on, but it sure better be tomorrow! Meet at the Gallivan at midnight if you wanna ride!

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Mariokart Bike Lanes

Eh? Eh?

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Counting Bike Traffic in SLC

Kristi Clark is heading up a bike count in Salt Lake for the National Bicycle/Pedestrian Documentation project! They'll be counting all the bikes that go by between specific spots on September 14-16 (Tuesday through Thursday) 5-7 pm and Sept. 18-19 (Saturday and Sunday) noon-2 pm. She needs volunteers! Here's what you can do: Click here to see all the spots needed, and choose a couple at which to help out. Then sign up using this google doc!

OR, just bike back and forth between the area that you think could use the most bike amenities added on all your different bikes. Jus' sayin.

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