BIKING GEAR CYCLE LOGICAL
On yer bike! And no excuses: the weather’s getting better, and both Edinburgh and Glasgow have cycle shops specialising in everything you’ll need to get wheeled up.
Glasgow’s Gear Bikes has been dealing in road, mountain and hybrid city bikes for over ten years, and is run by cyclists - owner Joe Allan has spent the last 17 years working in the industry - who all know bikes like the back of their handlebars. Whether you’re an amateur looking for a puncture repair kit, a hardcore cyclist looking for a bike upgrade, or a beginner starting from scratch, you’ll be up and cycling in no time. The UK’s most experienced stockist of Orange, GT and Ridgeback models, it also stocks accessories. And looking the part’s no problem; clothing ranges such as Altura and Endura are on offer to both look and stay cool.
Looking cool is a prerequisite for BMXing, a scene which is on the up across Scotland, and last month Edinburgh got its first BMX specialist store. ‘Rider owned and fiercely independent’, Odd Ball Mall in Tolcross puts equal emphasis on gear of both the cycling and clothing variety. Owned by bike fanatic Euan Kelly, the aim is to provide the city’s expanding BMXer population (of any ability) with everything, including a large clothing section for aficionados of both sexes. A huge selection of T-shirts in every colour is hung up at the front of the shop, and you can opt for big names such as Howies, as well as stock brought in from London, New York, California and Texas. Like a BMX museum, accessories are displayed in glass cases and cabinets built into mini ramps which merge into the pine floor. The whole Iifestyle’s available, with jackets, hats, bags, belts and DVDs, and plans to expand into watches and sunglasses look set to follow suit. Getting back to the bikes themselves, you can take your pick from BMXs and trail bikes (a BMX/mountain bike hybrid), and there’s currently a mini bike in stock. Retro BMXers will be pleased to hear of plans to introduce chopper-style beach cruisers and low riders - stretched low down choppers originating from California - so you can relive hazy childhood BMX memories. So whether you want to make tyremarks on tarmac or hillsides, doing it in style should be no problem at all. (Emma Newlands)
I Gear Bikes, 79 Gibson Street. Glasgow, 0747 339 I 179. http://www.gem/bikes.com; Odd Ball Man. 28 Lochrin Buildings. 073! 229 66 l l, http://www.oddball/hall.cot/k
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BLOW YOUR CREDIT CARD LIMIT OKI-NI LIMITED EDITIONS
Look. you can get perfectly nice Jeans from Gap or Top Shop. You can spend a little more and get seriously good ones from Diesel. checking out the hilarious—as-ever website Iwwwdiesel.comi along the way. But If you're the kind of person who wants your Jeans to be more or less unique. and are prepared to throw $3150 at the problem. then maybe OkI-Ni is the label for you. With an outlet In Glasgow's Cruise shop. OkI-NI has formed a collaboration With Japanese brand Evisu to produce a limited edition range of Jeans that look like you've owned them since 19:38. The boys and girls at OkI-NI take standard EVIsu jeans and subIect them to a series of enzyme washes. brushes and grinding processes to create the vintage look. And for brand Junkies. the EVIsu seagull logo Is created out of smaller Images of OkI—Ni's own ‘godhead' logo and the seagull swoosh. Go on, break the bank. (Nick Barleyi
I Crurse. 223 lag/7am Street. Glasgow. 0147 229 ()000. www.okI-/II.com
Shoplalll
Spend, spend, spend
I This issue’s prize for its crazy, mixed up take on gender binaries goes to Lush, whose products look like cheese but whose ‘smother me with it, pleeease’ scent draws you in from around the block. Its product development folks have come up with a range of Euro 2004- themed stuff which might have sounded good on paper but . . . actually they should have been thrown out long before they hit the shops. There’s ‘David James - The Soft Touch, a Safe Pair of Hands’ body butter. Or the ‘David Beckham - Two Timing Tart’ bubble bar slice, with which to ‘wash away guilty secrets or loos [ha ha - gedditl] yourself in temptation’. Poor old Frank Lampard gets ‘Les Caca’s’, which doesn’t sound like something you’d want anywhere near you. Least enticing of all, though, is the ‘Paul Scholes - Ginger Dusting Powder’. Cracking midfielder, but you’d have to opt for washing your hair, wouldn’t you?
oviEN
I More exciting is the idea that the poor England team, almost certainly destined for a drubbing at the hands of the French and the Italians. will at least get a bit less sweaty in the process. The team's shirt manufacturer. Umbro. has enlisted the help of the boffins at NASA to help deal with
Shopping
the Portuguese heat. and has come up with a silver weave called X- Static. Umbro claims it will cool players in hot environments through an unspecified heat transfer and moisture management system
. . . Let's hope the English realise that winning football games ain't rocket science.
I Chances are that the streets of Scotland’s cities will be more populated with French, Spanish and Italian replica shirts than English ones this June. So it looks as though Adidas (suppliers of shirts to the German, French, Spanish, Greek and Latvian teams) might win the battle for retail hegemony in our neck of the woods. Soccer clothing accounts for 15% of Adidas’ total revenue, but
perhaps more importantly, since 1972, every winner of the European Championships bar one has sported an Adidas shirt. Bear that in mind when you’re down at the bookies. See www.adidas.com/uk
I Of course there are plenty of boys and girls who couldn't give a hoot about fitba. When TV Danmark launched Football Free Zone. the channel's ratings scared by 15%. Why not celebrate Euro 2004 with a trip down to a shop that '3 about as far from football as you could possibly imagine? You COuld camp it up at Chic and Unique. a costume jewellery shop that opened in Edinburgh this April, setting out to ‘recapture the elegance of a bygone time'. Who knows. you might even catch Victoria Beckham in there.
8 Deanhaugh Street, Edinburgh, 0731 332 9889. www.chicand unique- edinburgh. com
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