The Life-Sized City Blog

A resident of Vancouver, Canada has started a new church. The Church of Sit Up Cycling. Cycling 'enthusiasts' have long exhibited a passion for their hobby or sport that resembles religious observance. Now the realm of worship has come to the aesthetic art and act of regular citizens riding upright bicycles. We like this theological uprighteousness. Reverend James Twowheeler is the 'nom de plume' of the church's founder. As stated on the church's website: Wearing their normal work and play clothes is an essential religious practice of members of the Church of Sit-Up Cycling. This may or may not include wearing plastic hats. Believers wholly endorse the use of such accident-preventing safety measures as lights, bells, height, strict compliance with traffic signals, a leisurely pace and the use of dedicated cycling streets and lanes. Reverend Twowheeler discovered a potential loophole in British Columbia's Motor Vehicle Act . British Columbia is one ...

Week in and week out I get inundated with emails from people who want to advertise either here on Copenhagenize.com or over at Cycle Chic . It's quite amazing that most of the emails are for products that have nothing to do what I write about or take pictures about. Goes to show that one pops up in a Google search and the person in question doesn't bother to do their research. Even after writing posts like this at Cycle Chic , or this one , two days later I get an email from someone wanted to pay to advertise their "cycling trousers" for urban cycling. "Avoid chafing and wear and tear!" Oh bother, as Winnie the Pooh would say. Anyway, this email arrived today, from China. Perhaps the products are of interest to some of you, out there. Seriously. Maybe Carlton can get cheaper lycra gear for his I Pay Road Tax cycling clothes or some of you out there want to get some kit for your local club. Who knows. Being multilingual and having made major embarassing faux...

In the ruthless, cutthroat world of finding bicycle parking in Copenhagen, some citizens have taken to drastic measures to secure prime parking spots. This outside the Central Library.

Ladies and Gentleman. Live from Copenhagen. It's the inaugural Copenhagenize Bicycle Battle. In the Blue Corner: Origin unknown but we're guessing North America. The Bitchcruiser. Marrying, at long last, unnaturally high testosterone levels, a misogynist world-view and good old-fashioned sexism with... The Bicycle. In the Pink Corner: From Helsinki, Finland. The Giant Vulva Bicycle Taxi, created by the artist [pictured] Mimosa Pale, who feels the world is too penis-centric. She calles it a Mobile Female Monument. You just crawl inside and are cycled around the city. You get to feel like the star of a film by Pedro Almodovar. Put some windows in it and the title would be 'A Womb With a View'. So... here's the question. If you HAD to ride down the main street of your town or city on one of these - let's assume you had to ride the bike pulling the vagina and not hidden inside... too easy - which one would you choose?

A bit of strangeness on this Thursday morning. Creative Director Yorgo Tloupas of Intersection Magazine had this bike made by Max Knight. Art meets bike. Quite the funky ensemble. It actually works, too, as you can see in the video below. Perfect for commuting distances of up to 4.5 metres:

If you're lucky, you, too, can ride around safely after dark thanks to millions of salmon sperm. Recent research has shown that a thin layer of DNA from salmon sperm has such fine optical qualities that it increases the strength and effectiveness of light diodes by holding onto the electrons longer than synthetic materials. It's a chappie named Andrew Steckl, one of the world's leading light diode experts and professor of light learning at Cincinnati University who has figured it all out. Namely that thin layers of our hereditary material was better at blocking electrons than conventional materials like silicium. "DNA contains certain optical, magnetic and structural qualities that make it unique. It makes it possible to improve the effectiveness, the strength of the light and the clarity...", Steckl said in a press release from the university. Okay, via a Danish article from which we shamlessly translated this whole piece... but anyway... The two light diodes on...