A few weeks ago I wrote about a short piece about the film B.I.K.E. (Black Label bike club documentary), an entry at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, about the tall-bike subculture.
A writer over at Dirt Rag has seen the film, and offers this review — B.I.K.E. Movie Review. Meanwhile, the Village Voice has published its own attempt to get to the bottom of the tall bike culture (“Mutant Bike Gangs of New York”)
The film will be shown at the 6th Annual Bicycle Film Festival, which may be coming to a theater near you this summer. It sounds like it's as much about the filmmaker as it is about New York's chapter of the Black Label Bicycle Club, the group of “tall bike” riders that the film is purportedly about. There are some disconcerting scenes, writes Eric Matthies.
One is when the New Yorkers trek to Minneapolis to visit the original Black Label club, essentially a group of homeless kids who found a family in the bicycling subculture. The NY gang members pile into their parents' SUVs for the trip.
Matthies says there interesting footage from Critical Mass rides and Bike Kill events, where tall bike members joust and perform tricks. But there also are unnecessary scenes about the filmmaker's supposed heroine addiction.
In the end, Matthies draws a parallel between the clothing store that uses tall bikes in its window displays to be hip and a filmmaker who shoots the film.
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