The 2012 messenger championships in Chicago

Augie Montes by Christopher Dilts

Interview by John Greenfield

[This piece also runs at momentumplanet.com.]

Every year hundreds of bike couriers from around the globe descend on a different city for the Cycle Messenger World Championships, with races, arts events and parties celebrating one of the toughest, most enjoyable jobs around. This yhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifear the 19th annual worlds take place in Warsaw on July 27-31 (www.warsawcarkillers.org); next year Chicago does the honors (www.chicagocmwc.com).

Augie Montes, an eleven-year veteran of the delivery biz who spearheaded the 2008 North American Cycle Courier Championships [NACCC] in Chicago, talked with me about the recent championships in Tokyo and Panajachel, Guatemala, and filled us in on the Windy City’s plans for hosting the worlds in 2012.

Fellow green transportation journalist Steven Vance (stevencanplan.com) and I recently launched Grid, a new blog about walking, biking and transit in Chicago and beyond. Read the rest of this story at gridchicago.com.

Bicycling in Tokyo

By John Greenfield

[A version of this article also runs in the current Momentum magazine, www.momentumplanet.com.]

Biking in Tokyo is not as bad as you’d think. Yes, it’s an extremely hectic, densely packed place - the metro area being roughly the population of California squeezed into the area of Hawaii. But when I visited this winter I found the world’s most populous mega-city to be a surprisingly comfortable and friendly place to pedal.

The Tokyo transportation mix includes lots of everything. Sure, the streets are clogged with cars, but there’s also a terrific metro system that’s ubiquitous, fast, clean and gaijin (“foreigner”) – friendly with signage and announcements in English as well as Japanese. And when the simultaneous four-way “pedestrian scramble” walk signals activate next to busy Shibuya Station, the resulting swarm would warm the heart of any ped planner.

There’s also tons of Jitensha (“bicycles”), evidenced by vast bike lots at suburban train stations, Kasai Station’s Cycle Tree, an automated underground parking system with space for 6,480 vehicles, and the dozen or so bicycles parked curbside on every other block. Thanks to the city’s low theft rate, most people simply put down the kickstand and free-lock.

Bike parking lot at Shin Zushi station

Mama-chari (“Mama bikes”) rule the streets, or rather sidewalks, of Tokyo. These sensible commuter cycles are usually one- or three-speeds, fully accessorized and often equipped with a shopping basket in front and a child seat in back. In the temperate winter weather, young adults on mama-chari [this is the plural form] sporting smart Anglophile fashions – men in Burberry jackets, slacks and scarves, women in peacoats, skirts and knee-high boots – are a common sight.

Wanting to get in on the action, I hired a 6-speed cruiser for $9 US a day from Tokyo Rent A Bike, near Nakameguro Station. It’s generally legal to ride on the wide sidewalks, and this is where you see most cyclists rolling at slow speeds. But I found slaloming around pedestrians to be stressful, so I soon took to the streets.

Cars drive on the left side of the road in Japan and, recalling a UK vacation where my dad destroyed several mailboxes while learning to drive on the left, I worried I’d make a deadly mistake. But bicycling in the street felt surprisingly safe, the main difference being left turns were now easier to execute than right turns. And motorists drove at moderate speeds and with courtesy – I heard almost no horns.

Navigation was the biggest challenge since there’s no grid, many streets are unnamed, and buildings are identified by seemingly random block numbers rather than street addresses. Using a street atlas, I located a few of the many bike stores recommended by friends from Chicago. They came to Tokyo in September for the Cycle Messenger World Championships, which drew hundreds of couriers from around the globe.


F.I.G. Bike near Harajuku Station is a spacious store selling multicolored fixies and BMX bicycles, plus stylish city bikes like the Vivo Bellisimo and UTB Picnic. Downstairs there’s cool clothing by the local brand PEdAL.E.D., wallets made from recycled inner tubes and leather messenger bags with magnetic closures.

A few blocks north of Shibuya Station, W-BASE and Carnival occupy the first and second floors of the same building. These tiny shops can build the custom track bike of your dreams. W-BASE is especially densely packed with flashy frames and parts, including BMX gear. When I visited, a cluster of polo mallets leaned against a wall and a sphere of old inner tubers sat on the floor like a huge ball of yarn.

Staff of W-Base - Yohei Hanazawa on left

Manager Yohei Hanazawa helped organize the messenger championships here. Besides the usual checkpoint races simulating courier work, the champs featured track competitions on the Keiokaku Velodrome, home to the famous Keirin sprints and located near Keio-Tamagawa Station. “The messenger championships were awesome,” Hanazawa said. “I’ve gone to other cities for the championships and this time the world came to Tokyo. It was a great party – I didn’t sleep for a week.”

Other shops fixed-gear fans will want to check out include Blue Lug, Sexon Super Peace, Juice, Dreamworks and Beans. For relaxing times, sip a Suntory at Kinfolk Lounge, run by California expats who also build custom track bikes. The tiny, cozy bar features cocktails like the Ginger Mint Mojito, and classic Keirin frames hanging from the rafters.

My most memorable Tokyo bike experience was joining the Half-Fast Cycling club on a cruise from the Roppongi district to Odaiba, a man-made island in Tokyo Harbor with a replica of the Statue of Liberty, an onsen (“hot spring”) in a phony Edo-era village, and a giant robot sculpture.

Half-Fast Cycling club (photo by Mike Sims-Williams)

Ride leader Mike Sims-Williams, a Brit, insisted the raison d’etre of the club is getting together to drink beer. “We’re not about efficiency, we’re about camaraderie,” he says. “People ask why we cycle from one beer vending machine to another. It’s because it’s faster than walking.”

We spun for about ten miles down broad boulevards, through narrow, old-timey lanes and over bridges to the island, where we stopped for drinks at an outdoor café with palm trees and reggae music. Sipping a Kirin, Kanako Maeda, said she’s enjoyed the moderate speeds and friendly vibes on Half-Fast rides – with one exception. “Once, a woman stopped suddenly in front of me and when I hit my brakes a big man flipped over me,” she said. “He ran over my back but I wasn’t hurt too badly.”

(Photo by Mike Sims-Williams)

On the way home we stopped at a park and did spontaneous laps around a circular fountain – bikes on the outside riding clockwise, bikes on the inside riding counter-clockwise. It was a good metaphor for cycling in Tokyo: chaos, orchestrated.

www.tokyorentabike.com
www.figbike.com
www.dept.jp
www.carnivaltokyo.com
www.w-base.com
www.wegotways.com/kinfolk
www.halfastcycling.com

Kinfolk lounge and bicycle company, Tokyo

By John Greenfield

[This article also runs in Urban Velo magazine, www.urbanvelo.com.]

If you want to visit Kinfolk, a cozy, atmospheric cocktail bar with vintage keirin (Japanese track racing) frames hanging from the rafters, be sure to print out a map of its exact location. In February, three weeks before the Sendai earthquake devastated northern Japan, my buddy T.C. and I visited the country for a few days. After spending an afternoon at Tokyo’s Tachikawa Velodrome, a gambling venue where old men in parkas studied racing forms and smoked as racers whizzed by in a rainbow blur, we decided to drop by Kinfolk for a drink.


Finding addresses in Tokyo is tricky, so when got to the Nakameguro neighborhood it took a lot of wandering around and asking “Keenfolk bah wa doko deska?” until we stumbled upon the tiny, second-story lounge on a quiet back street. With old-school Japanese woodwork, comfy couches, candlelight and tasty libations, it was definitely somewhere I wanted to spend some time. It’s run by Ways and Means, a collective of expats who also build custom track bikes as the Kinfolk Bicycle Company. Co-owner and bartender John Beullens filled me in on the history of the bar, Ways and Means’ current projects, and what it’s like mixing mojitos for Japanese gangsters.


Who’s involved with We Got Ways and how did you wind up opening this place?

It’s me, Ryan Carney, Maceo Eagle and Salah Mason. Me and Maceo, we’ve been friends for a long time, and Maceo grew up with Ryan and Salah in Washington State. I’m originally from Sidney, Australia, and I’ve been living in Japan since 1999. Round about that same time Maceo was coming over from New York and doing graphic design work and graffiti art. We were both skateboarding a fair bit at the time so that’s how we met.

As we got older we both stopped skateboarding and started getting into track bikes. We were buying secondhand track bikes in Japan and selling them Stateside. Maceo was coming over three or four times a year for work, doing a clothing brand over here. Every time he visited he would buy all these track bikes, as many as he could take back with him on the plane.

We’d go out to all these bike stores in the suburbs that were run by old men. At lot of them were the builders’ stores where they had all the old keirin frames that weren’t really for sale. But we’d go in and talk to them for long enough and we’d be like, “Come on, how much are the bikes going for?”

In 2008 Maceo and Ryan were visiting some builders with the idea of setting up a bicycle brand that would be designed by Maceo and Salah and made in Japan by these old men. At the same time I was getting the keys for this place. The whole time I’ve been in Japan I’ve worked at bars, cafes and restaurants and I knew from experience, having run my own bar before, that doing it by myself was really hard work. Maceo and Ryan were coming to Japan a lot so it made sense that they’d help out with the bar whenever they could.


So they still live in the U.S?

Well Ryan has been living here for the past year, year-and-a-half, and Maceo and Salah both live in the States but visit fairly frequently.

Why did you come up with the name Kinfolk?

The guys in the States came up with that. It was either that or Maceo’s old graffiti crew name which was Lit Fuse. But I thought about what it would be like for a Japanese person to say and a lot of Japanese people can’t pronounce “L” or “F.” So I was thinking Lit Fuse would be hard for them to pronounce.

I guess for a bar name Kinfolk sounds a little more welcoming than Lit Fuse. What all does Ways & Means do besides the bar and the bikes?

Salah and Maceo do web design and graphic design work. We also do a lot of tie-ins with other companies. Last year we did a project with Nike where we created a one-off bicycle for a famous Japanese messenger called Shino.

Was it a pain in the ass to open a bar in Tokyo?

No, a lot of it comes down to connections, knowing the right people and timing. Knowing the language helps because all my day-to-day administration and ordering alcohol, taxes, all that stuff’s in Japanese. So that’s probably a hassle if you don’t know Japanese but generally it’s a lot easier than setting up a bar in America, which we’re trying to do right now. We just signed a lease on a building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. [They held an opening party at the space, called Kinfolk Studios, on February 25.] In New York especially there’s so much red tape involved in getting a liquor license and getting your space up to code.

What kind of frames does Kinfolk Bicycle Company make?

We make two types of frames. One is a keirin-inspired track frame. The builder we use built bikes for keirin racers for about 30 years. So he uses the same geometry that he used when he was building the bikes for keirin. The other type of frame is a custom-made, steel road frame.


What’s special about keirin frames?

They’re steel, whereas a lot of bikes ridden on velodromes around the world are made of high-tech material like carbon fiber. But in Japan, as you’ve seen today, track racing is a gambling thing more than anything else, so they have regulations that the bicycles have to be built in a certain way so that no rider gets a performance advantage. Everyone’s riding a similar bike.

What’s the bar’s signature cocktail?

Our ginger-mint mojito is very popular. I used to work in this really high-end cocktail lounge where there were yakuza [Japanese Mafia] guys coming in. And this one guy would always order a mojito and specifically ask that there be ginger in the mojito. And I tried it and it was good so figured I should bring it down here when I opened this place. It goes well with Japanese ginger ale, which is really gingery, and a little bit spicy.

John Beullens

Every have any problems with the yakuza guys?

No, no, they’re fine. They don’t really pay any attention to Westerners. They’re in a whole different stratosphere. We’re not really worth their time.

So what were things like here when Tokyo hosted the Cycle Messenger World Championships?

It was crazy. There were messengers sleeping in hammocks made of tarpaulins, homeless people hammocks, in the park across the street. It was rainy season, September 2009, and it was pissing down rain. There were gangs of messengers and other cyclists riding around town from one convenience store to the next buying beer.

And then during the actual messenger world cup, which was out on Odaiba [a man-made island in Tokyo Harbor], in a big car park, that was pretty crazy too. Luckily there was a convenience store near where one of the tightest turns in the racecourse was, so everyone could just sit there and drink all day.

Where’s your favorite place to ride around Tokyo?

I really like Meiji Jingu Park which is in between the Harajuku and Roppongi districts. It’s a sporting area with baseball fields and soccer fields and tennis courts and there’s a lot of trees and roads that go around those sports facilities, so it’s really nice place to cruise around. I also like going through the Shibuya neighborhood late at night because the place is completely lit up with neon signs reflecting off the pavement. At three o’clock in the morning there’s hardly anyone around and you can just kind of fly through.

In general, how is it riding a bike around Tokyo?

It’s really safe, it’s good. Everyone’s very conscious about the fact that people are riding bikes on the street. You do have to look out for taxis but I guess you could say that about any country. The only thing is taxis here have doors that open automatically, so there could be nobody in the back of a taxi and suddenly a rear door could swing open for a passenger to get in, and you could ride into it.



What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened at Kinfolk?

All the furnishings are hung pretty low - you’ve got to duck everywhere. So we have a lot of tall guys that hit their heads multiple times when they’re in here drinking. And the more they drink, the more they hit their heads and the less it seems to hurt.