Next up, top prize for Friday nights dress-up like a HIPSTER and take an unforgettable, magical mystery tour of London’s famous London’s coolest and hippest East London hotspots and hangouts HIPSTERCAT race. Huge thanks to Tokyo Fixed for providing us with the beautiful DREAM MACHINE frameset as a prize for this most auspicious, timely and important event. Don’t forget your shades and chapeau!

Yeeeaaaarrgghh! Here’s a preview of our top prize for Saturday 24th’s dress-up like a sun-addled, leather-clad, POST-APOCALYPTIC SURVIVOR Road Warrior race, as kindly provided by one of our top sponsors, Alex, Tom and Will of Fitzrovia Bicycles. It’s full carbon, weighs less than a tin of dog food found under a rock and it could be yours in any size if you’re the glorious victor on the day.

It was just over a year ago in September 2010 that the three proprietors of New Cavendish Street’s well respected shop took the plunge and decided to throw their own money behind a full take-over of what was Cavendish Cycles. A re-brand quickly followed and Fitzrovia was born. Business has been brisk and after securing an exclusive deal to sell the beautiful, high-end track, road and touring frames of Leeds-based production outfit Woodrup, the near future promises a full refurbishment and official launch party so keep an eye out on their Facebook page for news on that front. Fitrovia Bicycles – ‘a proper bike shop’.

The light fades,the vision dims.
All that remains are memories.

I remember a time of chaos, ruined dreams, this wasted land.
But most of all, I remember the Road Warriors,
the ones they called The Couriersz.

To understand who they were, you have to go back to another time,
when the world was powered by the black fuel
and the deserts sprouted great cities of pipe and steel.

Gone now, swept away.

For reasons long forgotten,
two mighty warrior tribes went to war,
The Gazs and The Couriersz.
It touched off a blaze which engulfed them all.

Without fuel The Gazs were nothing.
They’d built a house of straw.
The thundering machines sputtered and stopped.
Their leaders talked and talked and talked,
but nothing could stem the avalanche.
Their world crumbled, the cities exploded.
A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear.
Men began to feed on men.

On the roads it was a white-line nightmare.
Only those mobile enough to scavenge,
Brutal enough to pillage would survive.
The gangs took over the highways,
Ready to wage war for a tank of juice, or a drop of oil.

And in this maelstrom of decay
Ordinary men were battered and smashed.
In the roar of a billion engines, they lost nearly everything
and became shells of men,
burnt out and desolate,
Haunted by the demons of their past.

They wandered out into the wasteland.
And it was here, in the ruins of this blighted cityscape
In the 9th month of the 11th year of the 3rd millenium
That the battle continued to be fought..

…beyond the Velodrome..