Sam
January 15th 04, 04:42 PM
I started construction on BikeReader.com in the summer of '00 to
warehouse a large variety of material that all had one thing in
common: I'd seen it in a magazine and liked it. That mission statement
soon expanded to include cherry-picking from the web, the 20 Questions
cycle, and ‘Over the Transom' reader contributions. I even began
soliciting haiku, which sent a shudder through the respective haiku
and bicycling communities.
My archiving knew no bounds. I spent a week typing in an entire
out-of-print book I'd never read before (‘The Man Who Loved Bicycles')
simply because I thought a few readers out there might enjoy it and
would appreciate a copy online. I collected public domain poetry,
topical Calvin & Hobbes strips, Dirt Rag Magazine covers, a
collaborative work in progress about a couchbike, forum threads,
excerpts from books... anything that caught my eye.
Naturally, BikeReader provided a venue for my own writing, including
my first published cycling-related story, made-up letters to the
editor which fooled a publisher, and a
genre-bending-experiment-cum-homage to Douglas Adams. Considering all
the work I was putting into BR, it seemed only fair. If you groove on
my oeuvre [ouch], visit ‘BikeReader: solo' on the index page.
I pestered a wide variety of people to get their permission to
reprint, from a former speechwriter of President Carter and current
incumbent of the New Yorker, to folks who I wasn't sure really existed
except as pseudonymous bylines in now-defunct but unerased webzines.
In the end over a hundred authors and artists responded, and
BikeReader grew to hold 400,000+ words and a not insubstantial cache
of cartoons and photographs.
The site was meant as a refuge for anyone who desires quality
editorial without the advertorial. As I wrote in the FAQ, ‘Given the
tiny market for cycling literature, and the micro-population which
savours a well-turned sentence, or at least an eccentric one, we never
expected much of an audience share.' That I've been rewarded with not
entirely dire stats over the years is probably due to the Googling
habits of certain well-represented segments of the browsing public
(‘Nude Cycling' comes up quite often). On any given day 500 to 1000
unique visitors show up for a browse. It costs me about £10/mo to keep
the show on the road; as there's no money from advertising I hope to
eventually make it up in volume [baroom-boom].
Some of you will have already visited the site. I hope you liked it;
if you didn't, I have a special mailbox devoted to critiques. Due to
technical difficulties which my ISP assures me will soon be resolved,
all such mail is currently trapped in a recursive loop and sadly
unreadable.
For those who haven't stepped into my virtual parlour, consider this
an invitation. BR is now largely static, but it will continue to be
available baring unforeseen circumstances such as an electromagnetic
pul--
http://www.bikereader.com
warehouse a large variety of material that all had one thing in
common: I'd seen it in a magazine and liked it. That mission statement
soon expanded to include cherry-picking from the web, the 20 Questions
cycle, and ‘Over the Transom' reader contributions. I even began
soliciting haiku, which sent a shudder through the respective haiku
and bicycling communities.
My archiving knew no bounds. I spent a week typing in an entire
out-of-print book I'd never read before (‘The Man Who Loved Bicycles')
simply because I thought a few readers out there might enjoy it and
would appreciate a copy online. I collected public domain poetry,
topical Calvin & Hobbes strips, Dirt Rag Magazine covers, a
collaborative work in progress about a couchbike, forum threads,
excerpts from books... anything that caught my eye.
Naturally, BikeReader provided a venue for my own writing, including
my first published cycling-related story, made-up letters to the
editor which fooled a publisher, and a
genre-bending-experiment-cum-homage to Douglas Adams. Considering all
the work I was putting into BR, it seemed only fair. If you groove on
my oeuvre [ouch], visit ‘BikeReader: solo' on the index page.
I pestered a wide variety of people to get their permission to
reprint, from a former speechwriter of President Carter and current
incumbent of the New Yorker, to folks who I wasn't sure really existed
except as pseudonymous bylines in now-defunct but unerased webzines.
In the end over a hundred authors and artists responded, and
BikeReader grew to hold 400,000+ words and a not insubstantial cache
of cartoons and photographs.
The site was meant as a refuge for anyone who desires quality
editorial without the advertorial. As I wrote in the FAQ, ‘Given the
tiny market for cycling literature, and the micro-population which
savours a well-turned sentence, or at least an eccentric one, we never
expected much of an audience share.' That I've been rewarded with not
entirely dire stats over the years is probably due to the Googling
habits of certain well-represented segments of the browsing public
(‘Nude Cycling' comes up quite often). On any given day 500 to 1000
unique visitors show up for a browse. It costs me about £10/mo to keep
the show on the road; as there's no money from advertising I hope to
eventually make it up in volume [baroom-boom].
Some of you will have already visited the site. I hope you liked it;
if you didn't, I have a special mailbox devoted to critiques. Due to
technical difficulties which my ISP assures me will soon be resolved,
all such mail is currently trapped in a recursive loop and sadly
unreadable.
For those who haven't stepped into my virtual parlour, consider this
an invitation. BR is now largely static, but it will continue to be
available baring unforeseen circumstances such as an electromagnetic
pul--
http://www.bikereader.com