Synopses & Reviews
Providing a better understanding of bicycle culture, this collection of short films displays the wide variety of people that embrace the bike. Joe Biels shorts follow the emergence of modern bike culture in U.S. cities over the last 10 years. They show that anything can happen, including activists educating policymakers, bureaucrats creating whimsical public art, strangers coming together to move a house by bike, and corporations turning their drive-thrus into bike-thrus. These 21 short documentaries include Martinis in the Bike Lane, Burgervilles Bike-Thru, Training for Carmageddon, Hunter-Gatherers Never Looked This Good, Disabled Cyclists, Sunday Parkways, Last Train Out of North America, and more.
Review
"I really enjoy the subjects Biel presents, as well as the way personal commentary figures in, yet is not contrived. . . . Martinis in the Bike Lane is probably the highlight of the collection: a short about the improvisational graphics in Portland's 'bike only' lanes and the crew who made them. . . . Really worth checking out." —Feminist Review
Review
"Joe Biel's collection of 'talkies' perfectly embodies the DIY [documentary] mantra of 'just get out there and shoot it.' . . . Biel injects each film with a political and socially conscious agenda." —Broken Pencil
Synopsis
What is bicycle culture? Its what you make of it. Anything can happen: Activists educate the policymakers. Bureaucrats create whimsical public art. Strangers help each other move house by bike. Corporations turn their drive-thrus into bike thrus. Joe Biels short movies explore all these phenomena and more as he follows the emergence of modern bike culture over the last ten years of riding the streets of US cities and meeting the characters who are making the magic happen. The twenty eight short documentaries include Martinis in the Bike Lane, One Less Truck, Burgervilles Bike-Thru, Training for Carmageddon, Hunter-Gatherers Never Looked This Good, Disabled Cyclists, Sunday Parkways, Last Train Out of North America, and many more.
About the Author
Joe Biel is the founder of Microcosm Publishing and the creator of the documentary about the DIY music scene, If It Aint Cheap, It Aint Punk. He is the coauthor of 13 Years of Good Luck and the author of Bipedal, By Pedal!; all volumes of the CIA Makes Science Fiction Unexciting series; the Perfect Mix Tape Segue series; and You Can Work Any Hundred Hours a Week You Want (In Your Underwear)!! He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Joe Biel on PowellsBooks.Blog
It was Christmas Day, 2012. I sauntered into the checkout line of the downtown Powell's Books with a copy of
It's Okay to Be the Boss. I had struggled to find a book that spoke to my experience or at least didn't alienate me. When I reached the counter, the clerk looked at me, then looked at the book, then looked back at me...
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