Bicycles and Wines - Now With Censorship

I was going to do a post about wine labels featuring bicycles today. Nothing groundbreaking, I know, but hey. To my surprise, however, I found out that the Cycles Gladiators wine out of California, who use the above classic vintage poster on their wine labels, was just banned in Alabama for being pornographic.

Giggle.

First and foremost, it makes me happy that I live in Scandinavia. Censorship-free. You see ads like this on busses...

The ban is completely stupid, I know, but it's also the greatest marketing bonus for any product. Getting banned is free advertising.

Anyway, here's a wine called Red Bicyclette with a bicycle on the label. American owned, French grapes.

Then there's this one from Nevada City Winery in California.

Out of Australia there is Hill of Content.

And here's another Australian wine called Rolling. One of their labels features a cyclist. They've developed a story about the women on her bicycle:

The ROLLING label features the fictitious 'retro character, ‘Beatrice’, riding her bicycle through rolling hills. These hills are typical of the landscape at the beautiful Cumulus Wines Estate vineyard. Beatrice is a proud, confident, country woman.

Beatrice's scarf is in the colours of the local football team while the oranges in her basket point to the brand's locality.

Not sure about that screw top, though. While 'Bibs' or 'Bag in the Box' ['les bibs' in French... seriously] are now free of their stigma and many premium winemakers chuck their juice into boxes, I still get twitches when I see screwtops.

Bike Helmet Protest in Melbourne

I had a brilliant week in Melbourne as a guest of the State of Design Festival . Loads of interviews and events that all culminated with my keynote speech on the Saturday. There was, however, an event on the Saturday morning - July 26, 2010 - that was extremely interesting to be a part of. A group of citizens, rallied together by filmmaker and bicycle advocate Mike Rubbo , decided to go for a bicycle ride together on Melbourne's new bike share system bikes. A splendid idea. Melbourne's bike share system is shiny new, although unlike most cities in the world with a bike share programme, only 70-odd people are using them each day. In Dublin, by contrast, there are over 30,000 subscribers. Not to mention the cracking successes in Paris, Barcelona, Seville and most of the over 100 cities with such systems. So, a group of people, many of them Copenhagenize.com readers, fancy a bike ride. Sounds lovely enough. They met up at the bike racks at Melbourne University. Hired the bikes wi

Head Protection for Motorists

A while back we posted about an Australian 'motoring helmet' designed to protect motorists' heads in car accidents. It was designed in the late 1980's. Then we recieved this tip yesterday. Another head protection device for motorists, this one developed at the University of Adelaide, in Australia. A serious product for the serious of protecting motorists from the dangers of driving. Despite airbags and seatbelts, motorists are victims of alarming head injury rates. Here's what the Centre for Automotive Safety Research [CASR] in Australia says: The Centre has been evaluating the concept of a protective headband for car occupants. In about 44 percent of cases of occupant head injury, a protective headband, such as the one illustrated, would have provided some benefit. One estimate has put the potential benefit of such a device (in terms of reduced societal Harm) as high as $380 million, compared with $123 million for padding the upper interior of the car. Thi

Fear of Cycling 03 - Helmet Promotion Campaigns

Third installment by sociologist Dave Horton, from Lancaster University, as a guest writer. Dave has written a brilliant assessment of Fear of Cycling in an essay and we're well pleased that he fancies the idea of a collaboration. We'll be presenting Dave's essay in five parts. Fear of Cycling - Helmet Promotion Campaigns - by Dave Horton - Part 03 of 05 Like road safety education, campaigns to promote the wearing of cycle helmets effectively construct cycling as a dangerous practice about which to be fearful. Such campaigns, and calls for legislation to make cycle helmets compulsory, have increased over the last decade. In 2004, a Private Members’ Bill was tabled in the UK Parliament, to make it an offence for adults to allow children under the age of 16 to cycle unless wearing a helmet. Also in 2004, the influential British Medical Association, in a policy turnaround , voted to campaign for helmets to be made compulsory for all cyclists (for comprehensive detail on these

The Life-Sized City Blog

Search This Blog