Despite absolutely horrible weather WorkCycles Oktoberfietsfeest 2008 was a huge success! Thankfully we were able to stay warm and dry in our giant, new shop on the Lijnbaansgracht in the cozy Jordaan historic district. Friends, colleagues, family and neighbors braved the elements to heartily showed their support and hunger. Please forgive me if I can’t remember half your names – its tough being a host!

Childhood friend, photographer and cyclist Jonathan Barkey of Brooklyn, New York took all of gorgeous photos you see here. Thanks Jon!

I’ll comment on most of the photos, beginning from above left:

My parents, Leonard & Betsey Cutler show off a couple new WorkCycles Fr8 bikes… so new they’re not even on our website yet. Henry shows off the latest WorkCycles “H.C. Clothing” to Sean Valerio of Museum Tickets fame. Mmmm, WorkCycles bikes! A cool English dude with accent straight out of “Snatch” checkin’ out the bikes and girls. A last minute rain shelter for the BBQ with Anne Kirchenmann, vegetarian grill virtuoso at work. Wieger from De Redding bakfietsen with Eric Loques of WorkCycles in front of the Great Wall of Panniers. Checkin’ out some (no longer) top secret WorkCycles prototypes. Willem & Dominik of Gitaarduo belting out the tunes. They’ve expanded well beyond bicycle themed songs and brought friends along to do original pieces. MacBike‘s new amphibious, submersible bakfiets. They’ll be using a fleet of these to lead underwater canal tours of Amsterdam. Its a little known fact that much of the most interesting history of Amsterdam is to be found under the murky canal water! Frank of BuroFrank and Stella brought their new prototype mini-bakfiets.

Here are some of the most notable personalities, at least those whose names I can remember:

Henry of WorkCycles compliments Rick of Segijn en van Wees on their beautiful bikes with attitude. Stella checkin’ out 8 week old Pascal who’s checkin’ her out too. Wesley Hemelrijk with artist Simsa Cho. More about him later. Marc of Amsterdamize fame, Bruno of Museum Tickets and Chopperdome Rhalf. Chris and Richard, a couple of the brains behind WorkCycles. Anne, veggie meat griller supreme with Milou and Natasja. Ronald Onderwater of the other famous submersible bike with Johan of Azor Bike. David Lee of De Woordensmederij. Eric Loques of WorkCycles with another sketchy English character. Me showing off Pascal Yo. Heng Sie and Aki, Ingeborg & Martijn Samsom, Marlies & friend. Eric Schuijt, world famous bicycle traveler and owner of nearby Vakantiefietser with photographer Martin van Welzen who makes the lovely photos for our site (the good ones that is – I take the amateurish ones). Henry and dad Leonard with Jan Rijkeboer, owner of Azor Bike.

Nope, I’m not even going to try remembering the names of the kids. Its clear they had a fine time though. A pair of De Redding bakfietsen (also to rent for parties!) made handy jungle-gyms. We grilled up lots of “pannekoeken” (dutch pancakes). Balloons were inflated, exploded, folded, tied, drawn on and fought with. A Xootr made a handy time-trial vehicle as the kids challenged each other to do the fastest lap through the crowd of tipsy adults. Two boxes of street chalk were reduced to mere powder – Note Jonah’s foot “drawing” technique. The kids won prizes in the lottery, here a big box that promises “300 games”.

And without further ado, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: The Oktoberfietsfeest Lottery (Raffle). The inside joke is of course that everybody wins, but you do have to put a ballot in the box (teaching good voting habits to the youngsters) and you do have to be here for the drawing. Take off for the next party or to visit your dying mother in the hospital… your loss, sucker!

We gave away tons of WorkCycles hoodie sweatshirts, T-shirts (new) and work/cook aprons (also new). These are all in stock and available to purchase as well. Lots of other schwag including Vredestein baseball caps to Schwalbe courier bags, LED blinking pedals and Axa SL7 locks (don’t actually try to USE these!) was also given away.

But the grand prize everybody was gunning for was the custom WorkCycles bike, complete with orange tires and matching graphics. Artist Simsa Cho was the lucky man of the day and I can’t think of a more suitable owner for such an extroverted bike.

Thanks everybody for your support and patronage! It was a pleasure being your hosts and we look forward to seeing you soon.

Missed the party? You’re still welcome to visit our new shop any time. You can find directions to WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht here. We’re open for business both at the new location and at the original WorkCycles in the Veemarkt in Zeeburg.

Here you can see what the WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht space looked like when we began construction this March.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 14:44 and is filed under About WorkCycles, Events, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.