This year, as opposed to previous years, the festival is not held in the Frilagret youth culture centre, but in the Auktionsverket Kulturarena - a private (Frilagret is owned and run by the City of Gothenburg) "cultural scene". That's OK, we suppose. What is not OK is that... Let us put it like this:
If you're going to arrange a bicycle festival, and you name it "Göteborgs cykelfestival" ("the Gothenburg bicycle festival") you have an obligation. At least, that's what we think. When you call your bicycle festival "the Gothenburg bicycle festival" you represent Gothenburg. You should have a very including attitude, you should try to show the citizens of Gothenburg as much as possible and you should make as many citizens as possible come to your festival.
If you had a bicycle club called... oh, we dunno... maybe Komet Club Rouleur, organised a bicycle festival and called it "Komet Club Rouleur Bicycle Festival" we guess you could do pretty much what you wanted but...
Anyway. We think a bicycle festival is a great initiative. We really do. So we went to Auktionsverket Kulturarena today to check it out and listen to some of the lectures being given and a panel debate. (There were five lectures and a panel debate today and there are four lectures tomorrow.) But when we got there we were informed, by a really nice girl at the reception desk, that the entrance fee was 130 krona. € 13! We thought that was way too much, decided to skip it, thanked the girl and went out to grab a coffee instead. But we were curious, so we went back and asked her how many people were there. Maybe around 60, she thought. At least that was how many she had seen. How many people can the premises hold? 600.
The coffee was really good. But we have nothing to tell you from the bicycle festival because we didn't go. And we wonder, did many other "regular" not-hardcore-into-bikes people go, or was this mostly an affair for the initiated? And what does the city of Gothenburg think? They are not the organisers of the festival and they don't own and run the premises, but there were representatives (civil servants) from the traffic office at the festival, informing about their work. The city of Gothenburg has an explicit goal to make more people ride bikes. Regular people. Not just... bicycle club members. Well, instead of photos and a report from the festivel, here are some pictures from outside the venue:
(Art by the extremely talented Ollio.)
(None of the people on these photos are members of Ensliga Bergens cykelklubb. But the guy to the left on the last photo, with the backpack, is Kalle, who is way into old, vintage racers and sell absolutely beautiful bikes. Or, at least, he used to do that. We suspect that he might have had to clear out his workshop, to make way for big company gentrification. Thanks a lot, Peab!)
(A really cool cargo bike.)
(Some pretty cool bike stands!)
We are a little curious about how the bike second-hand market tomorrow will work. Will anyone interested in selling or buying stuff have to pay the € 13 entrance fee? (To be honest, after we had had our coffee we saw that someone had scribbled "100" on a poster outside the venue, so maybe the entrance fee was lowered to 100 krona. About € 10.) Or will the second-hand market be held outdoors? Last year it was. But then, last year, the festival was held in the Frilagret youth culture centre and was something like... 20 krona or so. That's € 2, and that's cool.
Well, check it out if you want to. Tomorrow the author Gabriella Ekström will be there.
(We borrowed this picture from Göteborgs Cykelfestival. Hope that's OK!)
We think that Gabriella Ekström is pretty good. (Her book "Lejontämjaren" is really good, but to tell the truth we thought that the sequel "Vattenbäraren" mostly was weird.)
Ride safe!
No comments:
Post a Comment