‘Herding cats’ is a much-used and spot-on phrase to describe the experience of trying to organise a flock of couriers to a single end and if you think 2011′s London Calendar was a coup to pull off then spare a thought for the LCEF’s very own, Marcus Cooke award winning, Papillon, who has spent much of this year drawing on her thick book of European contacts to come up a with a fundraising idea bigger, badder and more ambitious than anything else seen this Millenium. With a truly international cast and profits being split between the Warszawski Fundusz Kurierski, the LCEF and the ECMC 2012 Edinburgh, this year’s calendar (again beautifully designed by talented London exenger Niki D-K) will be on sale to the international courier massive in all its naked glory Europe-wide in time for Chrimbo.

This year’s London launch party, to be held in the exclusive basement space of the Betsey Trotwood pub on Farringdon Road, EC1, will be defiantly bucking the trend this time around by being held on Tuesday 20th December. Yup, that’s right, it’s a school night! But it’s Christmas week and central so with ales on tap, live music from Italian breakbeatist and sax blowing maestro DJ Sax, LCEF DJs, mince pies, mistletoe and carol singing, there’ll be something for everyone. So come on down for a xmas booze, pick yourself up a calendar or two and help us toast our way out of 2011 with style.. For those unable to attend or from outside of London, keep your eye out for coming news of where you can get hold of a copy online and we’ll post one out to you… inyt.

]]> http://lcef.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/european-courier-calendar-2012-launch-party-tuesday-20th-december/feed/ 6 lcef http://lcef.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/digger-the-revolutionary-fundraiser-dark-times-and-more/ http://lcef.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/digger-the-revolutionary-fundraiser-dark-times-and-more/#comments Sat, 29 Oct 2011 10:30:43 +0000 lcef http://lcef.wordpress.com/?p=963 ]]> On Saturday the 15th of October we had the opportunity to celebrate Digger’s 50th birthday in Look Mum No Hands. Digger asked me to organise an alleycat for that occasion, with the intention to raise some money for LCEF (that man really has his heart on the left side). So I printed forty manifests for “The Revolutionary Diggcat”. Digger himself took care of the spokecards. All was planed, apart of one thing…. well, the racers. They were just too busy to have a great time on the dance floor and forgot about the race. So, another alleycat that never happened
However, everyone had an awesome time and Digger managed to sell a loads of spokecards… in total £180 worth of spokecards for the benefit of the LCEF. Well done young man! We salute you! Also big thanks to Brixton Cycles, Bikeworks and LMNH for supplying the prizes. They will be used for the next race!

And so the bands battled for the LCEF!

On Friday 21st of October, our friends, and always supportive courier band Ragworm and also for the messenger community unknown band Rikky Fredo & the Fabulous Fucktones organised a battle of bands at the amazing Grosvenor. Ryan the Cannuck organised the “Race of Cocks alleycat” to make the transfer to SE London quicker and more fun. Starting at Fullcity and finishing at the Grosvenor with four checkpoints in between. New to the London messenger scene, Lane from Melbourne Australia, won the race and took home a track frame donated by Fullcity.
Before the battle we were to witness one surprise announcement by Buffalo Bill and that was award winning ceremony for Steph aka “Papillon” with the “Markus Cook Award” for services to the international courier community. Well done Papillon, you truly deserve it! And then the battle started with Ragworm. They showed us more than their solid performance of pumping punk’n'roll. These guys are getting better and better! Nobody quite knew what to expect from Rikky Fredo & Fabulous Fucktones. But I have to say…these “fakengers” rocks! I didn’t have such a fun for a long time! And the same counts for the half naked audience! Good times and rock’n'roll! I don’t really know which band won the battle, however these guys managed to raise around £200! So the LCEF is the winner! Well done all of you, who are about to rock!

by Vojtech

…and everyone had a good time! The list of thank-you’s is a pretty long one so we’ll have a go now. First to Niki Dukes-Kovac’s for putting together a beautiful website, one for the portfolio – to Alex Story for creating the artwork for the Max poster and the t-shirt, some pretty unique work and very well received. To all our amazing sponsors without whom we wouldn’t have been able to heep some pretty amazing prizes on our racers. To Rollapaluza for letting us use their roller equipment, always willing, always appreciated. To House of Pistard for printing up the wicked LC T-shirts, to Hobs Printers for offering to do all our flyer and spokecard printing (for free!). To all the staff at the venues, in particular Victor at The Macbeth, Alfie at The Victoria and Hannah at Imbibe. To Black Rainbow and Gwem for up-front tunes on Friday, to DJ Scarper, Ragworm, Defcon Zero and Noise Complaint for filling the stage with pure awesomeness on Saturday, to Liz Hughes for rushing off on Sunday at the last minute to get music equipment for the roller race. To George for collecting logs, to Bardi for the Goulash! To JP and Barry for BBQ duties. To everyone who came out to marshall at the checkpoints, to the amazing photographers who produced some stunning imagery, Redrum, Rod, Roman, Selimski, Jorge, Stoy, and Aga for last years selection. Fantastic. To Gertie, Little John and Liz for running the rollers, to Creative Ian for van work, to those out-of-towners that made their way to London, you knows who you is. To Peter and Dave for tall bikes and jousts, to Look Mum for our registration venue. Finally to everyone that came out to play and to the LCEF for all their hard work behind the scenes, it was real!

Thanks to everyone for coming out to help show off our new bold design shirts and hoodies, soon to be found for sale online, in all their shining glory, at the web-shop of our friendly cafe partners, LMNH. We also as always have a few of these to buy in Fullcity if you’re in the vicinity of Leather Lane. Or, you can just flag us down on the road if you’re interested in something, we’re happy to take orders and that way you can take advantage of your courier discount!

All images © Selim Korycki

Two weeks ago,  about 20 London couriers set off on an epic journey to Warsaw, Poland to attend the 19th Cycle Messenger World Championships. These championships, held every year in a different city since 1993, are “an annual urban cycling event gathering both professional bike messengers and cycling enthusiasts from around the globe. The participants compete in a variety of events which test riders’ skills, stamina and determination. The culminating point of the event is the Main Race, which mimics the everyday tasks faced by cycle messengers. It is a weekend of racing, partying and a celebration of global messenger culture.”

I have been attending European and World championships for the past 10 years, nearly as long as I’ve been a messenger. These events have taken me to places I would have probably never visited and it’s always a true pleasure to meet up with old friends, make new ones and be part of the worldwide messenger community.

This event was even more special as I got to meet up with Daria and Karol from the Warsaw Courier Fund and hand over the £250 we collected for them after the Polecat Alleycat. T-shirts and caps were exchanged and I saw for myself the good work they’re doing for their community.

The LCEF was also hard at work.  In spite of very stormy weather, we set up stall selling caps as well as the new edition of our t-shirts and hoodies. Thanks to Urban, Kuba and Vojtech, we sold most of our stock and raised more monies for the fund. Messengers from all around the world know too well how hard it can be to be injured and unable to work and they were showing a lot of support.. thanx to all of you….

This years CMWC definitely didn’t disappoint.  It had all the ingredients for a great weekend… good racecourse, great people, crazy main race, super sound and general bicycle chaos.
I cannot wait for next year’s events around the ECMC (European Cycle Messenger Championships) in Edinburgh (with the pre-event being held here in London) and the CMWC held in Chicago, US.
In the meantime, London will be holding their now yearly 3-day event at the end of September – London’s Calling – with more info coming soon…

by Steph

First up, stripy-topped, string-of-onions-bedecked London uber-exenger Brice Bedos. This high-profile media darling, prolific child actor and wonder-starlet of such beloved cinematic courier family favourites as ‘The Courier of Oz’, ‘Charlie and the Docket Factory’ and ‘The Jungle Map Book’ has been making the LCEF his firm priority of late as we hear that as part of his leaving gift to London (he’s taking off with his family for fresh horizons in Denmark in June) he’s donated his entire pay from his recent weekend of working with (and learning the ways of) the Rollapaluza. Nice. It’s a little known fact that Brice was actually brought up by a pack of wild couriers deep in the jungles of Boulogne which we think goes some way to explaining his deep affection for and keen sense of preservation towards today’s urban population of couriers.

Merci beaucoup Brice, best of luck in Denmark to you and your family Monsieur.

Watch a small piece of Brice’s epic showreel here..

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At the end of April the LCEF moved into it’s 4th year of being and to celebrate our birthday we had a bash at the Boston Arms in Tufnell Park, organised in large part by London courier legend and joke-tastic raconteur Seamous O’Hooligan. Seamous was on the receiving end of a payout from the LCEF last year following a tumble at work so was keen to step up and help out with the gig which along with the mighty RAGWORM, included one of his bands DEFCON ZERO along with quaintly monikered Finnish thrash-metalers ANAL THUNDER. Seamous passed us £130 taken on the door that night which is loads of quids so brilliant effort and thanks. Now we’re just looking for an opportunity to take Seamous up on his idea of a sponsored back, sack and crack wax – we’re currently waiting on finding out whether St. John’s ambulance are gonna be happy to stand by for that.. There will be blood.

Defcon Zero by Miguel de Melo

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Another donation came in from Matthias Wjst, a visiting photographer from Germany who made an appeal for London couriers to meet up with him and be photographed for this exhibition. Matthias very kindly stuck £100 into the fund by way of thanks to the community, a very nice gesture indeed. Here’s a couple from the series..

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Finally London-based designer Scott Notscot has been working on producing the messenger bag to top all messenger bags and we’re waiting on the launch on his new Black Rainbow Project website which will reside over here. Overdrive has been trialling the bag and can’t say enough good things about it, it’s a pretty high quality item by the sounds of it. Scott’s been kindly donating 10% of all sales of the Black Rainbow pouch he’s also been producing, so if your interested get in touch with him on Facebook for a gander. Many thanks Scott, look forward to the launch..

Cheers chaps!

Polish ex-London courier, Daria, now working back in Warsaw, tells of how she’s been inspired by what the LCEF have been doing over here and that she was keen to export the model back to Poland. The W.F.K. want to shout out about being only the second initiative like this in Europe after London and that other European cities should follow the lead and start their own funds, too. Why not? It’s seemples.™ Apparently the Warsaw crew are getting hold of their own set of rollers and will be kicking off their own fundraising events using these. They’ve also launched their own website here, so grab one of the numerous Polish couriers working in London right now to help translate it for you.

Aces. Good luck getting going and see you at the WORLDSZ.

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That Cabby Judas, commonly known in dirty courier circles as ex-Reuters wild-child Lover Nick, put on a hair/money raising show for friends and family recently when he took the radical and life-changing step of shaving off his flowing locks in aid of the LCEF. After passing the knowledge last year, Nick now spends his days avoiding clipping couriers in his cab, saying “you wouldn’t believe who I had in the back of my cab the other week..” twenty times a day and eating roast-of-the-day baguettes in butty sheds all over London. After he made £250 quids for us by shaving his bonce WE SALUTE HIM. Thanks, man – nice work.

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The Donkey Derby at The Horseshoe was another top night, thanks as always to Rollapaluza for taking the time out and putting on a show for us. Thanks to Caspar especially for running things, Gertie and Simone for helping out with the rollers and Lawrence of Cyclone for DJ’ing duties. A frenetic night of woozy, high-spirited racing with Apryl walking away with the cash prize for top female and Janky James effortlessly maintaining his top spot for the third year in a row. Results and photos over here. Plus we made another £250 quids on the night. Double plus good.

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Claims-wise it’s been quiet since Christmas. But there must be something other than Spring in the air over this last month because we’ve had five, yes five claims in March. I guess we must also be up to ‘G’ in the alphabet because claims have come from two Georges, a Glenn, a Greg and then finally a Ken. A broken wrist, a broken rib, a pair of sprained wrists, a broken hand and a knee injury make up the gruesome tally of injuries from the spate of road-related ‘accidents’ this month. We take immense pride in the financial help and moral support that we are able to offer through the LCEF in response to incidents such as these and we know that the fund-raising we get involved in really does help smooth things over in the short-term for those injured riders that come to us. Yup, we’re gonna keep gunning…
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Finally, take a look over at the LFGSS forum where you can see further philanthropy in action from our friends in the wider cycling community. We’ve seen serious help from this direction before and warmly welcome a donation this time around. Many thanks for the props chaps, see youz on the highwayz..
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Cash prizes generously provided by Rollapaluza.

Spectators/flag wavers/screamers welcome.

A note on the flyer, ‘Duonkia’

Interpretations of Duonkia vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the flyers’ two dominant elements: the duck and the donkey. LCEF historian Philip Anthropi said, “The duck and the donkey are important characters in the culture of roller racing. HOP themselves have certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the duck and the donkey very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout HOP’s many visions.”

When pressed to explain these motifs in Duonkia, HOP may or may not have said,

“…this duck is a duck and this donkey is a donkey… If you give a meaning to certain things in my flyers it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the flyer for the flyer. I portray the objects for what they are…”

Disclaimer: No members of HOUSE OF PISTARD may or may not have been interviewed for this piece.