forgottenwritings

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Places I call home. Shanghai & Riga. Tutorial

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Golden Week is almost over, but it’s been a tough “holiday”. The weather is downright awful.

Tutorial

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A concert experience I wrote after attending one of my favorite band’s concert in New York during summer holidays. Pictures taken from thefourohfive.com and bowerypresents.com.

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Tutorial

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Shanghai Quanjia Alleycat

      Alleycat (nothing to do with kitties) is a bicycle race originally organized by and for bike messengers in big cities like Toronto and New York, where participants are given checkpoints that need to be visited at random spots of the city. In Shanghai there are no messengers, but it is chaotic and dangerous enough to be qualified to organize an alleycat race! 

     Although alleycat races are unofficial, the organizer Peter Dixie put a lot of effort into organizing this year’s race. Apparently it took him 2 years to find all the checkpoints, because it wasn’t a simple Quanjia hunting scheme: the task was finding sketchy, fake Family Marts around less visited parts of Shanghai. 

     The race took place on April 26th, with the Shanghai Zoo as the starting point and the Irish pub Tipsy Fiddler as the finish. The participants could choose whether they wanted to race with the big boys/girls (60 km route) or stay basic (30 km). The winners got prizes from our friendly neighborhood sponsors like the racing team Inferist, architectural photography firm Lotan, food joints Brut Cake Cafe, Pie Society, bar Craft, and a bike shop Hypergrace. 

     All together 40 people signed up for the race, but as Peter said “11 finished, 9 within the time limit, 6 getting all the checkpoints correct”, that is slightly surprising considering that fixed gear culture in Shanghai is indeed slowly fading, but has considerable amount of loyal riders and trend followers. However, the number of quitters is understandable since not many people were that familiar with the concept of alleycat racing before signing up. The important thing is seeing the eagerness and interest, there is hope for a bigger turnout for the next race. 

     The idea of the Shanghai Family Mart alleycat was born when Peter got his first fixed gear bicycle in Shanghai and took part in Kings of Night alleycat. KON organized three races beginning in 2015, but these were discontinued due to unwillingness of official sponsors to support an unsanctioned race and just plain difficulty of expanding such an event, therefore Peter was eager to find more elaborate ways to get yourself killed than riding a track bike on Shanghai streets with the average speed of 30 km per hour again, which is doing exactly that while competing. Just kidding, it’s all good fun, just be careful, wear a helmet, bring loads of bike lights and look twice before jumping that red light! The route for the next alleycat is already brewing in Peter’s head so be sure to start spinning those wheels in preparation.

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Business card style banners for a friend who does dreadlocks in Shanghai. (people with dreadlocks vectors found in google images)

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Minimal DJ set poster done for my friend as practice. Goat head vector found in google images (cannot find the link anymore :/)