The Radavist

The 2014 UCI Mountain Bike World Cup
Words and photos by Chris Lee

I’m not gonna lie, I’m not very well versed or informed about the mountain bike racing circuit. But I do know about the MTB World Cup and when the announcement that it was going to be making a stop in Windham again, I knew I had to make the trip up…

The 2014 All City Championship Weekend: Bandit Cross
Words and photos by Chris Lee

The third and last segment of the All City Championships got off to a wet start. With isolated thunderstorms all morning, racers began to trickle in to the start at One On One.

After a quick briefing of the rules and some last minute instructions, racers ran to their bikes for the le mans start and started knocking out checkpoints from their manifest.
In the end it was David Smith and Chelsea Strate that took the win for men’s and women’s category, respectively.

____

Follow Chris on Instagram and at his Flickr account.

Ride Along: Henry Mesias of Send It Courier
Words and photos by Chris Lee

Let’s face it. We bike messengers are trying to keep a dying industry afloat. Please don’t ask us how long its gonna last, because we don’t want to think about it. Some cities have tried (successfully or not) to unionize to help make conditions for messengers on the road better. But this is a long and grueling process that often leads to a lot of fired bikers.

Ride Along: Leah Hollinsworth
Words and photos by Chris Lee

I first met Leah Hollinsworth a few years ago in Chicago, a couple days before the Stupor Bowl. I decided to meet her and a handful of other couriers in Chicago to ride the AmTrak to Minneapolis. What was supposed to be a 6-8 hour train ride turned into something like 14 hours because of winter blizzards and other mayhem that comes with obnoxious snow accumulation in the Midwest. Needless to say, I got to know Leah well during that train ride.

Fast forward to the first weekend of May, 2014: I just crossed over the border into Canada on my way to the 5th annual Mayday alleycat. Mayday is the biggest race that the Toronto courier community throws. It brings racers (courier or not) from all over Canada and even the United States. In addition and even more importantly, this race is a fundraiser for the Bike Messenger Emergency Fund, or BMEF for short. After the race and the parties were all said and done, I met up with Leah to talk a little about her involvement with the BMEF and the Mayday alleycat.

This is the bike that really put Ian from Icarus Frames on the map. Well, at least that’s what I think anyway. My reasoning? It was one of the first truly over-sized / shaped tubesets he fillet brazed and the Fresh Frame paint job was so loud at the time, that I don’t think anyone was coming close to hitting that mark. Seriously, what the hell is up with those chevrons?!

What I’ve realized over time is that I end up with a lot of bike portraits of riders in my film rolls. This sparked an idea: a “ride along” interview series. We’ll start this off with Chris Lee, in NYC, where he interviews Brean Shea, a bike messenger and track cyclist.

In order for the Red Hook Crit to maintain its unofficial title of the gnarliest track bike criterium, it sometimes must rely on mother nature. This year’s race was a total wash. Literally. Rain poured all day and well into the women’s and men’s circuit, shortening both and creating a less-than-desirable mental mind fuck for the racers.

Even the photographers and crowds suffered.

Chris Lee has contributed multiple times to the Radavist and I couldn’t think of a better person to capture and document the eerie environment of the 2014 Red Hook Crit…

Monster Track. The world’s most infamous, dangerous and in my opinion, most significant alleycat. In the 15 years it’s been thrown in New York City, it never ceases to surprise its contenders. There are only a few rules, the most important being two words: NO BRAKES.

Typically, there’s a weeding down process, at the hands of multiple manifests. Everyone starts with one, but only a select few make it to true completion by filling up to three. This year, mother nature smiled on the event, delivering somewhat favorable conditions (when compared to previous years being riddled with rain and snow). At the end of the event, the winners of Monster Track XV were Cooper Ray and Hannah Todd.

On the scene at the event and working the Williamsburg Bridge checkpoint was Chris Lee, who provided a few photos from the event. Check them out in the Gallery!