China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Today was also the opening of the Joyride art exhibition organized by the bicycle film festival (BFF). It was extremely crowded.

It was so full that I could not see the art work. But maybe it was not the art but actually the free beers that attracted so many people.

It was great to see my friend Anna Grace Carter from Beijing.

Outside of the exhibition was some portable pole dancing going on.A guy had a tricycle with 2 hot girls dancing on the back.

Then I went to the BFF 10th Anniversary Dinner.

Everybody came from the art exhibition and was already drunk with all the free beers. When we arrived at the dinner venue we were not allowed to go to the main area and sit down, we had to wait and have more free drinks like wine and beer. Then finally an hour later we could sit down. The starter was already standing on the tables and it was welk lettuce with some beans on top. There was also some viscose soup that we poured into the tea cups but it was not delicious.

Then the BFF NYC organizers did a small speech and toast.

Then they asked the organizers of all the other places in USA and around the world to come up on stage.

The whole time the free drinks continued and even champagne (well sparkling wine) was added. But it took forever for the „main course“to arrive. This what we got at about 11:30pm.

It was dried polenta with some peas. Maybe I should have told them that I can eat also non-vegan. The invite had said you should notify them if you need vegan food but this tiny amount of food was all vegan and not the right thing for hungry and drunk cyclists. I could not believe that there was no more food. When people started knocking over wine bottles, lifting up chairs and making ape like screams, jumping on the tables and then insulting each other I decided it was time to go and have some food somewhere else. From my Chinese perspective this was a very horrible dinner as there was hardly any food. But I think the Americans were all very happy to get completely wasted for free. In China there would have been an excellent dinner with all the food being on the tables latest by 9:45pm also with free beer and rice schnapps. People would stand up and go to the different tables and cheer with those friends and make each other finish the tiny glasses in one sip, but all happy together rather than against each other. I probably have lived too long in China making me be really shocked by this American way.

Again a beautiful day. I am so happy I have a bike and can cycle through Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The bicycle paths are nicely marked.

It is great that they have installed bicycle paths on all the bridges to Brooklyn. I took the Manhattan bridge and this is the view towards northern Brooklyn and Queens.

I am so amazed to see so many people on bikes. And I do not mean like professional cyclists. No it seems that a lot of people in New York use the bicycle in daily life. Also I was happy to see the amount of girls and woman cycling.

I was also happy to see a huge amount of people wear a helmet. It is not mandatory in New York (but it is in New Jersey where my friend got a ticket for cycling without a helmet).

And many bikes have these huge baskets on the front. That makes it really practical for carryingstuff or groceries.

I met the actor and director Kris Chung who I know from Beijing in Brooklyn for lunch. It is nice how many of my Beijing friends now live in NYC. Also Elisa is now in New York. And funny enough she was taking care of a bicycle painting exhibition from Taliah Lempert called „The Right Bike for the Right Situation“

„Taliah Lempert paints bikes and transforms something so prevalent as to be almost totally unremarkable – there are an estimated 1.1 billion in the world –into sumptuous and forthright yet veiled portraits of these ubiquitous two-wheeled mechanisms. Of the object itself, the bike, and by extension, its owner. The bicycle is everywhere, the readymade that inspired the readymade. It is a tool, a work of art, a gratifying and enjoyable rolling machine depicted in two-dimensions, lushly, lovingly rendered and suffused with vibrant reds, oranges, greens, pinks, and blues. A beast of burden, an omnipresent contraption ridden in every country in the world by all walks of life, the bike equalizes. These paintings lure the viewer into looking at bicycles in a way they never have before while simultaneously bringing home the crucial importance and widespread influence of these widespread things in our lives. A machine, standardized, but with an infinite variety of delineations: big, small, tall, fast, slow, double, kid’s, fixed, gears, cruiser, and so on and so on. Brakes, tiers, spokes, headsets, seats. Lempert’s thoughts on her favored subject are both straightforward and worth quoting: “Bicycles are important, beautiful, and worth a close look. Most bikes I paint are, or have been, used daily for transportation, recreation, messenger work and/or for racing. I paint bikes that are part of someone’s life, or have been, or are intended to be. The bike they ride around, race, present themselves with. How they chose it, how they use it and how they care for it. How each bike looks, develops because of a person, says a lot.”

„The world opens up. Moving through the neighborhoods, the sites and people on the way. Fast, often faster, than any other way around town and always more fun. Watching the city lights while rolling over the bridge. The right bike for the right situation. Worn when ridden, locked, or crashed. Grimy, sometimes cleaned, sometimes not. Finding the frame in a basement, fixing it, some brazing, a new tube, stripped and painted. Do it up with style and parts gathered. In Lempert’s paintings the vessel of motion is paradoxically shown at rest, the dormant features of a kinetic machine painted from observation caught at standstill. Blending saturated Bay Area-hued lyrical abstraction in her backgrounds with acute attention to detail in the foreground representation, Lempert channels Manet, Hopper, Hockney, and Warhol on the way to charting her own singular course. That is, intimations of Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park” series in the abstract setting and George Stubbs sans steeds and Thiebuad without pies in the front with a dollop of pop while completely transcending those lodestars to achieve anatomically correct, poetical, and ravishing portraits of pedal-powered workhorses.“

This exhibition was presented with the cooperation and support of the Tinneny family and Macro-Sea and it was held in the Elk Gallery in Brooklyn. I really loved the idea that it was a“ride-in“gallery, so youcould cycle up to each painting. It is the bicycle version of a drive-in.

Then I continued to cycle through Brooklyn.

I stopped by to an institute for pop-action and aerial disciplines (that Kris showed me a flier of) to sign up for a class, but the next one was only on Sunday.

Then i went back to Manhattan using the Williamsburg bridge.