Sheffield
stayed with Steve- rockclimber with a rooommate on vacation. raining and lots of traffic. i never thought of sheffield in this way, but apparently there is a serious traffic congestion problem there. we witnessed it first hand as we had no bikes to borrow, so were riding in the rain in steve's car and waiting around in traffic as bikers whizzed by. saw some nice bike paths, but people said they are unfort. not that common there. small crowd - maybe 15 - at the screening in a IMC freespace on Matilda St. people were engaged and had a lot of questions. there was a huge blowout party till dawn type of party with three soundsystems, etc the night before, so maybe that accounted for the lack of attendance. but there were great posters for our screening and we met a woman from the states and learned about her zine 'chart your cycle' a bit and were invited to breakfast at hers the next morning, but through a miscommunication we ended up fucking up on the bus system and going the wrong way into town and messing up our brunch plans. so we got the next train to manchester.
Manchester
the train to manchester took us through the beautiful peak district national park. lots of green rolling hills and cute little villages and farmhouses with herds of sheep just like you imagine in picture book england. we found our way from picadilly station to Ride Manchester bike project to pick up some bikes.... we didnt really call people to let them know what we were doing, so i think the organizers of a whole day of bike events culminating in the screening of Still We Ride were a little freaked, but we let them know we were in town eventually and we had bikes!!! we were biking (on the wrong side of the road) back into town (ride manchester is waayy out in levenshulme) with these heavy ruck sacks with laptop and DVDs to sell and all that. there was a pirate-themed alley cat type event that we missed the beginning of, but were there when everyone was coming back from the race. Nes who organized it did a great job and all the riders had a great time. elizabeth was videotaping people and making them feel weird. but since we are Americans, we are weird anyways, so no big deal. screening was at The Basement. fucking awesom space and great impressive project thats been like 5 years and many squatted social center evictions coming. there is a linux computer lab, infoshop, vegan cafe, art gallery, and screening stuff. good crowd. some drunkenness. good questions, and lots of rallying people to come out strong for Manchester Critical Mass in September. we will be back in Nottingham by then. we stayed with Hazel and Alex who i only knew slightly but they are wonderful... their flat is cool too... part of this council-run housing project that used to be a big heroin shithole and as flats became empty activists looking for cheap living situations slowly started moving in and cleaning the blood and slime off the walls and it has evolved into a bit of a haven for likeminded radicals with a really cool community garden called leaf street and generally good people. we played badminton one day and road around by some canals and manchester was fun. then we got on fuel burning flying machine across the channel to amsterdam.
Amsterdam
we had met someone in nottingham who emailed his ex-roommate in amsterdam lining up a place for us to stay. cool! and so when we got to amsterdam, we walked around with our packs... went first to a coffeeshop, of course... then on to find our contact, nathan's squatted flat. it was way in the east, in zeeburg. in a seemingly middle-class, middle-eastern neighborhood, but what do i know - better not to stereotype or generalize and say it didnt look like the picture of quaint little amsterdam in my head - which was actually refreshing. nice spot, with a overgrown backyard, a dirty kitchen, a smelly toilet, a friendly cat, and lots of paintings... and LOTS of mosquitos. i woke up bitten all over my face and arms everyday. nathan is a painter and he told us all about how he fell into coming to amsterdam and staying and now on the virge of being some sort of 'discovered' painter, which he doesnt give much of a shit about, but is excited to get some money for his work, it seems like. he has some sort of patron guy who thinks he is the next big thing. anyways. squatting in amsterdam is quite the scene. we visited several cool squats including a giant ex-bakery, now diy bike shop of Leo and Bronwyn, from NYC and Canada, respectively. they lent us some dope amsterdamer bikes and we were off exploring! we did two screenings - one at a rather established squat bar, the Molli, in ' The Pipe' diestrict and the Wilde West in the west of amsterdam. the crowds were very different - which is a good thing, i think- and though neither was huge, there was significant interest and people were glad to have us. at the Molli we met Cos, who used to organize Crit Masses in A'dam with a group called Autolozen... he was an older guy (who ended up getting really drunk). he had decorated the whole space with old A'dam critical mass posters and and signs and stuff. that was great. he ended up showning all these videos from 90s amsterdam street actions and news reports and this crazy BBC documentary from the early 90s called Autogedden. holy fick! this was an amazing thing, and it was beyond our version of USA-reality. we told him we could not leave amsterdam without a copy - but in drunkenness assumed that we would never see this guy again. but aha... the next night Still We Ride is up on the screen at the Wilde West, and who walks in and ducks under the projector to hand elizabeth a VHS tape but our new friend Cos!!! so now we have a copy of this insane piece of media that we need to take home and show to people to confirm if it is 'good' or 'cheesy' or what?! it was shitty weather towards the end of our 3 days there and we ended up taking a SHIT ride home from west to east for about 35 minutes in pouring rain. i think thats what made us sick by the time we got to berlin.
Berlin
we took another airplane for super cheap to berlin for four screenings. Carola, our contact and 'host' here met us at the airport and brought us to her and her family's flat in the Wedding district of Berlin. its a working class, mostly Turkish area now being populated by artists and the like who like big lofty spaces to make art and stuff. Berlin has lots of squats too- mostly leftover from when the wall fell. we only visited two... one where our video screened - RAW tempel and one where we went afterwards to drink organic beer and hang out with Monica and Jason - who works with the World Carfree Network and used to be a Green party organizer in the states and was elected to the city council of Arcata california in the mid-90s. generally rent in berlin is cheap. and cost of living affordable. we got bikes here too! and got have ridden all around berlin, seeing some sights and all that. the bike paths are great here, although the locals complain that because they are mostly behind the cars on the sidewalk, cars turning right often dont see or dont look for cyclists coming down the path and into the intersection because they have a green signal. we said one thing to do is go to a second hand clothing store in berlin, but we didnt really - o well. not sure why that was important anyways. we did manage to wash clothes, so thats good. we stayed in Carola and Christian's studio which was nice and private with lots of photo-realistic paintings around, but the smell is quite toxic and i will not help to heal us. my head has sinus congestion, though i got over the stomach problems of a couple days ago.
There was a Whirl (anti-shopping ceremony) in Helsinki!! 11Am on 21 Sept. 2005 -- for more on how this ritual came to be, check out
social projects
a collection of anti-rnc psas
a resource-zine for community bike projects. produced with Mary Blue
an open-source re-Cycling project
we push empty carts!