Dan Mikkelsen on Wellington’s cycle culture
Tucked snuggly between two stores at the end of Riddiford Street,
Bicycle Junction is a friendly bike store for bike lovers; from those who ride routinely, to those like me who are more likely to admire and cheer on cyclists from afar. Dan Mikkelsen — bike enthusiast, chef, and owner of Bicycle Junction — sat down with me one foggy Saturday afternoon to chat about Wellington’s journey to become a cycling-centric creative city.
Why bikes?
I was born in Australia but I grew up mostly in New Zealand — also in Denmark and the States. Both my parents were Danish but my father lived in the States, so it was just me and my brother and my mother growing up and we simply never had a car. Cycling was natural for my mum so we grew up with bicycles as the way we got around; they were an underlying part of my life that was always there and natural. I finished up high school in the States and when I came back to New Zealand I picked up my first job as a bike messenger with Office Express, which even further immersed me into cycling. Then I went and travelled for a number of years working as a bike messenger in Melbourne, San francisco, Montreal and Copenhagen. In Copenhagen I studied to become a chef — but cycling was always there in the background.
When I had my first child I wanted to be able to continue riding my bike with my kids on board, but there were no cargo bikes here so I had to look further afield. The natural choice for me was to give Christiania bikes a call. Christiania bikes are still made in Denmark — and I lived five minutes from their workshop when I lived in Copenhagen — so I gave them a call and said “Hey, I want a bike” and they said “Well you can’t have ‘a’ bike, you need to buy four bikes because that’s how we pack them on the pallet.” So I got these bikes and I had three left over — I had a bit of time off work and thought, well, I’ll set up a website; it just grew from there. Eventually I sold more bikes and had more pallets and I needed a place to put the pallets — I was looking around for a commercial storage space to put them, and this place at the bottom of Riddiford street popped up. I had often suggested to my bike friends “Why don’t you open a bike shop with a coffee bar?”, because I just thought it would be a good thing to do. But no one had. Then here I was with some bikes, and a space, and I thought, well here we go, I had better do it myself. So that’s what we did. I had this strong idea from living in Copenhagen that you don’t need to be a ‘cyclist’ to ride a bike — I wanted the shop to be inclusive and welcoming to anyone who just wants to ride a bike to get around.
What has changed since you started Bicycle Junction four years ago?
Certainly urban cycling has changed. There’s a lot more people discovering riding for transport again, and electric bikes have drastically changed who is getting out riding; I think there’s a real momentum building. When I think about the first cargo bike that I bought over, we had it for about an afternoon and then somebody pointed me to a website called Weird in Wellington; someone had already taken a photo of us with the bike and put it on the site. People didn’t really know what it was — they didn’t have a word for it — they just knew it was something weird. But now, people know what cargo bikes are and businesses are using them more and more; the awareness of them is really changing. I think at some point we’re going to hit a point where urban cycling will start snowballing — that’s probably the point where we will actually start to get some of the spend on infrastructure.
What are the advantages of cargo bikes for businesses?
The value to businesses can be from a practical perspective as a great way to get around for transport or delivery, and then there’s businesses who use them for vending or promotion. It’s a really low cost way to set up a business; if you want to build a food truck and you’re on a budget, you can build a food-bike. It provides a lot of flexibility and there’s not a lot of setup costs. Then there’s also the marketing perspective; people don’t notice branded cars anymore, people notice branded bikes. It’s so visible and cycling is so on point at the moment so there’s real benefit for businesses in creating a brand story around a bike, much like Vicky Ha has with her Christiania bikes dumpling bike stall.
It’s one thing seeing a stream on Facebook of what people are up to, or an emailing list — it’s another thing to meet someone in the street.
Urban cycling isn’t just a one-way information thing that’s quickly overshot, it’s engaging, and the people that are out on the streets engaging and making things happen will know that it’s good for business. Cargo bikes are great for showing people what’s possible by bike, and businesses are great at leading the way — they make things acceptable to people. When a business is doing it, people look at it and say, that’s OK for me to do as well.
Why does Bicycle Junction hold community events?
Part of the whole idea behind this shop is inspiring people to try cycling. There’s already enough people out there saying you should, but I don’t think that’s a very effective way to get people to ride a bike. It’s better to help people want to ride a bike, and there’s a bunch of ways to do that. We’re trying to come up with new things all the time; stuff we want to do and have fun with. We’re connected with a bunch of artistic people like Stephen Templer, Kelvin Aris, and Hannah Clarke from Fringe festival. They’re a wonderful source of creativity and they love cycling, so we just try and do things together; whatever we can think of that we’d have fun doing because if you have fun doing it then other people will too.
What’s been a favourite event so far that you’ve helped create?
The Lucid Dreambike performance that we held for the Fringe festival last year would have to be a favourite. The idea came a little slowly over a few conversations in the store here; we wanted to create a progressive show, and we wanted it to be about the bike ride — something fluid. We thought about an exploration of the city’s back-lanes and some strange goings-on that happen along the way. Then we thought, why don’t we incorporate all kinds of performance: dance, music storytelling and puppetry. Then the Wellington creative community came up with how we would tie everything together into a storyline, which was ‘anything that could happen in a lucid dream bike ride’.
We started up on top of Holloway Road in the bush with some story telling just as it got dark, and then people walked out of the forest to see that their bikes had been decorated with glowing lights — it was quite a magical start to set the scene. Then they flowed down Holloway Road, looking at a performance along the route in somebody’s house where you had to peak in the window — a little bit voyeuristic — and then down Aro Street where there was a band crossing the zebra crossing, and a couple of things like the throat singer in the back of Opera House Lane, which was absolutely magical.
The beautiful thing about it was that fluidity, where the audience just flowed through this performance around the whole city.
The other interesting thing was that there was actually two audiences and two shows; there was the audience on cycles watching the show made for them, and then there was the public watching the audience flow through the city and taking a peek at some of those performances too. People just loved it. We guided them through the traffic and held traffic so they could pass, and they felt like kings and queens because it’s a rare occasion that you get to do that as a cyclist — be number one out there. We won the most innovative show award for the Fringe; that was pretty special.
When have you felt proud about the good work you’re doing?
Last Saturday night I felt proud. We had a full-moon ride with a sound-system bike and a DJ and we met at the top of Mount Vic. We had more than twice the number of people I expected to come along and everyone was into it and dressed up and it made me realise that something about the cycle culture is catching on — people want to be a part of it. I feel like we’re helping a little bit with that, and that’s really exciting. I feel proud seeing a whole lot of cargo bikes out there being used; there’s a whole set of families who drop their kids off to school by cargo bike and I can’t help but feel that we’ve been a part of at least bringing that forward. That’s the stuff that makes me feel good.
What’s unique about cycling in Wellington?
It’s a beautifully compact city. You can be wearing your suit in a business meeting, and in half an hour you can be riding mountain-bike trails. You can ride from an urban environment with cafes and beautiful food two blocks away to a golden sand beach, and then you can ride a little further around to a black-sand, rocky, outcrop. You can head over a hill the other way and all of a sudden you’re in farm-land which could be 100 miles from anywhere. There’s no place that I could think of quite like that. A lot of people don’t realise how lucky we are that we have all these free things that people would pay a lot of money for in Europe.
What does the future look like for cycling in Wellington?
The addition of electric bikes has ironed out the geography to make it possible for everyone, and as we see electric bikes take hold, the prices of them will also come down, enabling a lot more people to take it up. Every household will have an electric bike before long. And if every household has an electric bike, you’re going to see so many more people out cycling, and if there’s so many more people out cycling, we’re going to have to have the infrastructure for them. I can see Wellington becoming a really cycle-centric city. That may sound really foreign to people right now but when you think about the council’s plans to build a mountain bike capital, if you have those mountain bike tracks interlinked by city paths and you’ve got that creative city buzz going on it can create a uniquely Wellington culture where creativity and sports and culture all mix together.
Wellington’s such a creative and vibrant city and cycling really adds to that.
One of the beautiful things about cycling in a city is the people you meet, the things you stop and do along the way, the ideas you come up with when you’re riding and then you share them with someone you meet on the street and an idea takes hold and spreads a bit further. That’s the kind of city I want to see and be a part of.
How can someone get in touch if they’d like to get involved?
Come into the shop and have a chat over coffee. If you’re out of town, flick us an email.
