The Chainbreaker Bike Book, Shelly Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark (2008)
A punks’ guide to puncture repair and more
Microcosm Publishing 9780977055739 21cm x 18cm 256pp £10.99
Borrowing heavily from the countercultural publishing of the late 1960s and the fanzine culture of the 1970s, this book looks like it was assembled in a haze of copydex by the light of a photocopier. There are Xeroxed illustrations, glued in at odd angles. The ‘type’ comes from a typewriter, some pages are hand-drawn and hand lettered and there is a liberal use of the photographic white-on-black process that allows one to create inky pages studded with white text.
Is the kind of style that made Lloyd Kahn’s Shelter a classic of its time and was turned into an artform by Jamie Reid in his work for the Sex Pistols. Viewed today, it certainly leaves me feeling nostalgic for the days before desktop publishing. Perhaps its target audience – all born after the march of the Macs – want to recapture a whiff of the times when Roneo’s were an essential precursor to revolution?
The first half of the book is a bicycle repair manual. Its advice is sound enough, although it is a bit text-heavy and the illustrations whilst full of naive charm might not be quite so useful as the detailed colour photographs that are the staple of more staid competitors.
The book’s second half reproduces four editions of the Chainbreaker, a New Orleans cycling fanzine, the original copies of which were lost in Hurricane Kartina in 2005. The quality of this is variable. Mary Christmas’ tale, for example, Girl In A Bike Shop, is as sad as it is weird. She starts by posing naked for her ‘local indie politics magazine’ and later finances her apprenticeship as a bicycle mechanic by working in a peep show. Then, despite loving her job, quits in disgust when a less experienced man is hired at a better rate.
Another story tells of how a cyclist responded to a friend’s cycling death by making an audio documentary about the accident. It sounds interesting – but I would have preferred to hear the documentary than read about the difficulties of making it.
Other articles draw on cycling history and iconography. It has an agit-prop appeal, but is hard to follow at times.
Perhaps reactions to this book will depend on the age an experience of its readers. To those young enough for it to have an incendiary air of rebellion and self-organisation, there may be much to pore over. To one whose punk t-shirts went for dusters before the authors of this book were born, it’s a trifel old hat. According to its frontispiece, though, it has already sold out 9,000 copies in two editions, so in the eternal youth vs. experience tussle, that’s a clear point to the kids.
TD Feb 12