I just found a video of last year’s performance at the Ditan Park book festival. I did bike tricks for the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper. It is uploaded to 56.com. Please have a look at the video here. The Chinese commentator is funny.
德国工程师伊泉女士的自行车车技
Yes, here it is: The first bicycle shop in China focused on fixed gear bikes! The logo is a green banana and the name is NATOOKE
This store is dedicated to urban cycling. You will not find a bike with gears in this shop, so no road bikes nor any mountain bikes. All bicycles are single speed and mainly have a fixed back wheel, meaning no ability to coast. Like the bikes used in the velodrome these are track bikes with horizontal dropouts in the back end of the frame to be able to adjust the chain tension. This is extremely suitable for cycling in the flat and nicely paved Beijing urban city. The shop has all the different parts required to build up a fixed gear bike like the fixed gear hubs, flipflop hubs, cogs, lock rings, rims, tires, seat posts, saddles, stems, handle bars, handle bar grips, chains, cranks, chain rings, pedals, cages, toe clips, straps… Each customer can chose what brand, what style and which color he prefers so that we can put together that one-of-a-kind unique bike.
This shop also has a huge selection on urban cycling accessories, like T-shirts, lights, bags, reflective bag covers, anti-pollution masks and other things related to cycling in the metropolitan areas.
The NATOOKE store is even more unique: It is the world’s first shop dedicated to fixed gear bikes and juggling equipment! You can find anything here around the topic of juggling: Different sizes, weights and colors of juggling balls, glow balls, contact balls, acrylics, juggling rings, juggling clubs, devil sticks, diabolos, poi, fire juggling equipment, staff, yo-yos, frisbees, rola bolas (also known as balancing boards) and many more fun toys to play with. This is the best juggling equipment that you can get in all of China. It is mainly imported from Europe.
This fixed gear bike and juggling store is located in the center of Beijing city in the trendy new hutong called Wudaoying. That is right next to the North Second Ring Road just West of the famous Lama Temple. There are 2 subway lines that have a station here as well as many bus lines. So if you do not yet have a bike you can easily come by using public transport. Here is a map of the location of the NATOOKE shop indicated by the small green banana:
My friend Xiao Lu dropped by the shop today. He had the typical fixed gear injury a few weeks ago: Two of his fingers got squished between the chain and the cog while he was helping a friend fix his flat rear tire. But he was lucky none got really chopped off. He showed me his new fixed gear bike. Unfortunately he cannot really ride it as his fingers need to heal first.
In the evening Jess and her 3 band members had again a concert in Yugong Yishan. Jess was playing some of her new songs that her and the band are currently recording for her new upcoming songwriter CD. Fede did some glowball juggling during one of the songs. My small camera is not good enough to take pictures in such low light environments.
On the All-China Sports Federation website there was an article posted about my performance for the China Fitness Day. Here is the original article on sport.org.cn. In the original article my name is wrong, they wrote 依泉 instead of my real name 伊泉.
德国车手献技奥体中心 呼吁运动重建自行车王国
http://www.sports.cn/ 2009-08-08 17:13:00 华奥星空 李潇
华奥星空北京8月8日电(记者一索)“2001年第一次来北京的时候，这里确实是我所听说的‘自行车王国’的样子，而现在太多的人选择了汽车，既不健身也不环保，也许两年后或用不了多长时间，我在北京再也看不到自行车了。”33岁的德国人伊泉在国家奥体中心的“全民嘉年华”现场对本网记者说。
伊泉本名Ines Brunn，在北京雍和宫附近经营着一家自行车行。13岁接触自行车运动的她在两，三年后便入选了专业队并成为了德国自行车国家队的一员。虽然来到中国已有五年时间，十几年的专业训练依然让伊泉保持着对自行车运动的激情与热爱。在今天奥体中心的“全民健身嘉年华”活动中，她应北京自行车运动协会邀请前来表演车技。头顶倒立，前轮腾空旋转，背身倒骑。。。一个个杂技般的车上动作让围观的群众不断拍手称奇。
时常参加中国公路自行车比赛的她如今虽然只是玩票性质，却每天坚持着运动。伊泉说：“我每天在市内都要骑50公里以上，如果在八达岭长城，怀柔，昌平郊区就会骑到100公里左右。”为了让更多的人喜爱上自行车运动，伊泉放弃了今天老山的比赛来到了嘉年华现场。
对于全民健身日的设立，伊泉表示十分赞同，她笑称欧美人很多人都不运动，德国人可能比美国人好点，有些会去爬山，但还是有很多人由于缺乏运动养起了啤酒肚。
对于北京曾经被称作“自行车王国”，伊泉表示她在来中国之前就对此有所了解也曾在8年前来北京时为所看到的脚踏车大潮所痴迷，然而今天越来越多的汽车占据了城市令她感到沮丧。“开车的人太多了，他们甚至开到非机动车道里对着我不停的按喇叭。你知道，现在气温这么高和开车开空调都有关系。”
去年的北京奥运会，伊泉作为体育迷也亲身去参观了14个大项的比赛，包括跳水，游泳，体操，排球，当然还有她最喜爱的自行车。
2007年，伊泉和一个朋友共同创立了“北京死飞自行车俱乐部”，对于这个奇怪的俱乐部名称，伊泉解释说，一般人骑的是飞轮自行车，而他们选择的是轮子和脚踏板固定的单车，如果要骑行脚必须一直进行蹬踏动作。
从两年前只有两个人的组织发展至今有了60多人的规模，伊泉希望越来越多的人可以重新选择自行车出行，选择健康生活方式。
Today is the National Fitness Day in China. And that is just on the 1 year anniversary for the Opening of the Beijing Olympics. So there was a „Fitness of the Nation Carnival 2009“ at the National Olympic Sports Center in Beijing. I was asked to come and do my trick bike performance. Unfortunately in the morning just on the way there it stared to have a major thunderstorm. The whole area was soaked.
It did stop raining but I still had no hope that it would ever dry for me to be able to safely perform my bike tricks.
My friends from the Haidian bicycling group were there. We took some pictures while waiting for the place to get drier. They had brought a bike trainer as well as a bike roller. The bike roller was quite dangerous as everything was wet.
Eventually it did get drier and the performances started. I liked the dragon diabolos. After them it was my turn to perform with my trick bike. I uploaded many pictures to a webalbum.
Outside Beijing in Shunyi area between the never ending construction sites of new multi villa compounds a mall complex for brands had their grand opening. Fede and me were booked as performing artists to entertain the visitors with juggling tricks, slapstick, unicycling and bike tricks.
Jess and some other musicians were booked to play jazz music for the VIP guests. Jess received professional make-up and hair-do by the stylists of the models.
The Chinese fashion world seems strange to me. The models must be considered beautiful and handsome by somebody, or? I still wonder who likes their „fashion“ clothes like for example the horrible cream colored skirt with black dots of the model on the left side of the picture. Or their ugly shoes that they have problems walking in. I might just not understand Chinese fashion.
The place was quite crowded and it was fun to do some bike tricks there.
Jess looked amazing in that silk cocktail dress and with a real flower in her hair.
Afterwards back in the city I met visiting friends in an outdoor „beer garden“ style venue. It was the first time I got some mosquitoe bites this summer. But as always they were gone right away.
Tonight we had the weekly Beijing Jugglers meeting in Yugong Yishan. It was special because Jess Meider and Fede Moro practiced their joint performance: Jess playing the guitar and singing her own beautiful „Moon Song“ while Fede has a crystal ball to do contact juggling to the music. It looks just like the moon.
Today I went to the Ritan Park rock climbing wall. It was astonishingly empty for a Saturday late afternoon. Maybe this is due to the hot and humid weather. It was great not to have to wait in line to climb a route. And there were hardly any mosquitoes, not like in the past years.
This evening was the Beijing Burners Without Borders event called DESERT DANCE organized by Greening the Beige. It was a mix of art and music to raise environmental awareness. There was a belly dancer
Jess Meider played her songwriter songs in unusual positions while Federico performed contact juggling.
The whole venue was extremely beautiful. It is a privately owned renovated former temple. Really amazing.
It is nice to be back in Beijing, meet some of my Beijing friends and have dinner in a Xinjiang restaurant. And it was cool that Jess Meider had a special concert today in the Yugong Yishan club. She was accompanied by Sarah (background vocals) and Zack (bongos) as well as Zacks‘ brother (standing bass) and Marie-Claude (accordion). It was a great mix. And my friend Fede performed during the Moon Song with his crystal ball.
So this is why I am here in Spain: The main Gala Show of the European Juggling Convention 2009. Today I first had my own private rehearsal time on stage, then we had the complete run through the show and after that 2 shows with full halls. It was a very long and intense day.
In Vitoria there is a special festival at which they have a puppet go from one tower in the city via a wire to the next tower. As we are at a juggling and unicycling convention they had that puppet made out of balloons and made him riding a unicycling and juggling balls.
Also the tower was made out of balloons. At the beginning of each show they had this puppet fly over the audience from the city tower to the stage.
For both shows the huge Mendizorrotza hall was full
The European Juggling Convention 2009 Gran Gala Show consisted of the following performing artists:
Jens Sigsgaard and his modern body beat and contact juggling
Florent Lestage and his modern double devil stick performance
Jeanine Ebnoether and her modern beautiful body rolling contact juggling choreography. It was nice to have another woman perform in the show. And she did it so elegantly and smooth it was a pleasure to watch.
Kagu is a child juggling balls
Matias did a modern dance with a single wheel similar to the German wheel (Rhoenrad)
Mikel did contact juggling with clubs
Duo DeFracto did a great modern, minimalistic and funny ball choreography. It was so well timed and performed.
Sergey Junior (looking now much older than the pictures on his website) is a 4th generation circus artist juggling rings and flying objects
Grisha Lovygin had a well choreographed ball juggling show but unfortunately I do not have a picture of him
And yes, I was part of the program with my trick bike show. It was nice to perform on such a huge stage with so many famous performers in front of a very knowledgeable audience that appreciated my skills, went mad and then into standing ovations. It was an extraordinary feeling! Here is a picture of my performance at EJC 2009 Gala Show taken from the photos.albapasser.de website (thank you for the picture):
I am waiting to see a video of the show. I hope the organization team will put one together. And our MC for the show was Loco Brusca
And this was the artists green room where we had baguette and cheese. Everybody was exhausted but satisfied after the show.
