Halloween Critical Mass

“Happy Halloween” shouted Spoke Kat to over 250 people to launch this year’s Halloween Critical Mass. Hundreds of people in fancy dress, on bikes, taking over the city on a bizarrely warm evening. What fun!

Mass finished at a local pub, which we’d warned in advance and had hired extra staff just for us. We’d also asked them to ensure there was no cars in the carpark, to make room for a special performance!

The Spokes medley! 4 of our best routines, with an interlude from the Spokey Blokeys! It’s been 2 tough months of serious rehearsals to get us, and the blokeys, ready for this. We even got DJ CC to come to 2 rehearsals as the music queues were a bit complex. It all paid off. The crowd were awesome!

Here’s the set list:

Spokey Blokey intro / crowd warm up

Captain Planet

Mungo Jerry – pushbike

Spokey Blokey Interlude (Ertha Kitt – Boy from Ipanema)

Beyonce – Single Ladies

Shania Twain – Man I feel like a women

Huge thanks to DJ CC and all our enthusiastic stage hands for making it happen! And to Manchester Bike Hire for being our dedicated roadie:

This performance was dedicated to our number one fan and Shania influence Anna PoWWow!! Check out this photographic evidence of why PoWWow is the number one:

Thank you and good night Manchester!

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Beauty and The Banner

Check out our Lotte rocking the recruitment banner on the Space4Cycling ride.

If this tempts you, then come down to the boathouse in Plattfields Park any Monday 6-8pm.

We’re Recruiting

The Spokes Bicycle Dancers are recruiting. We are an all-female mini-bicycle dance troupe who aim to communicate the JOY of cycling….through the medium of DANCE!

We are launching the recruitment campaign today as this is the perfect time of year to take on new members. The rush of summer events are coming to an end, but the cold of winter is still far away.

We’re on the look out for women who can give up one evening a week and have the enthusiasm for trying something new, fun, and silly. No experience of performance or bike tricks is necessary. Membership is free and we provide the little bikes.

We meet every Monday night, 6-8pm, Plattfields Bike Hub, The Boathouse, Plattfields Park. Feel free to turn up and give it a try with no commitment to join unless you really want to. Just turn up or, if you’d like, get in touch:

thespokes@yahoo.co.uk

Twitter: TheSpokesMCR

Facebook: The Spokes Manchester

Banner Making Workshop

Last night, Plattfields Bike Hub hosted a banner making workshop. The Spokes took this opportunity to work on our latest recruitment campaign. Under the expert direction of Anna from PoWWoW Eco Arts, and with the assistance of long term fan Jessie, we created a huge banner ready for today’s critical mass.

The process involved making a design on the laptop which was projected on a large piece of fabric (spoke green fabric, obviously). We traced the projection with marker pens, then coloured this in with acrylic paint.

Plattfields Boat Hub plans to host more of these events in the future, the dream is to fill critical mass with creative banners. If you’re interested, get in touch with the hub

 

Plattfields Bike Hub

Earlier this year The Spokes moved their HQ to the boathouse in Plattfields Park. Since then, the space has been regenerated into the hub for all things bicycle related in our city. They can fix your bike, teach you how to fix your bike yourself, hire you a bike if you don’t have one, teach you how to dance on kids’ bikes, serve you refreshments from a cargo bike, take you on a bike ride, and so much more. It’s open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Just search for Plattfields Bike Hub on Facebook and Twitter

The Spokes lent a hand getting the space ready for it’s launch, and we were rewarded by uncovering a whole bag of old-school Spokes shirts:

 

Our little bikes are really happy in their new tidy space:

 

Pedal Powered Routine

The Spokes are teaming up with PoWWow Pedal Power to bring you a new routine. We loved performing to the pedal powered tunes so much that now we’re going to attempt to power the tunes ourselves, whilst dancing and doing tricks! The bikes will be static which will allow us to start performing in smaller spaces, and do new tricks! We had a “get your tricks out” workshop, here’s a sneak preview of what we’ve got in store:

Manchester Day Parade

The Spokes were thrilled to be invited onto Manchester Day Parade with GMCC / Love Your Bike. The theme was international, which we fit quite nicely thanks to our Hungarian, Spanish and Polish members. Infact, we’re so international, two of The Spokes were in Denmark together so couldn’t make the parade. But that’s ok, we wrote a special routine for just three members. However, disaster stuck the night perform when one Spoke broke her leg! So now there’s just two left. But that can’t stop us. Bridget and Lotte attended the parade but on their full sized bikes, no routine but making a presence none-the-less. Here they are at the start of the parade, about to bring some bike joy to the city

 

Huge thanks to GMCC / Love Your Bike for letting us get involved

THE SPOKES @ MANCHESTER NAKED BIKE RIDE 2014!!!

 

The Spokes took part in the naked bike ride last Friday starting at All Saints Park on Oxford Road. There was an amazing turn out of people, over 200 participants, the vast majority riding the route naked but the emphasis was on ‘bare as you dare’. It even attracted a rider in a full traditional Scottish outfit! The naked bike ride is a global event emphasising the vulnerability of cyclists and highlighting how cyclists are generally overlooked on the roads. Well the ride certainly stopped traffic!!! There were a lot of on-lookers and motorists were very accommodating by letting the whole group ride through the lights and attracting a lot of support from passer-bys.

 

Our very own Spokes joined in the proceedings to show support for the cause, covered in body paint and looking fabulous…….it just goes to show that any ‘body’ can be a cyclist so grab a bike and GOOOOOOO……(Spokes!)

 

 

Messing About on the Mersey

The North West Velo Fest duathlon took place yesterday. Like all good athletes, we started off with a big cooked breakfast in the city centre after a night of heavy drinking. Event 1 was a leisurely 5 mile cycle through South Manchester to Burnage Rugby Club. Here we successfully took part in the transition from bikes to kayaks! The pros gave us a very scary briefing about the dangers of life on water, the rain came down, the river was fast, and we entered with intrepidation. As you will see from the photos, we quickly gain our water legs and had a jolly time paddling our way down stream. The duathlon conveniently finished at a pub near Chorlton, where we took on board more sports nutrition. A great day was had by all. Well done team!