Ryan Quickfall Tea Towel

When I was a kid, towelling sweat bands were considered must-have item wether you were good at tennis or work-outs or not, I doubt if tea towels will ever become as de rigeur but something we made on a whim but has sold surprisingly well.

The Jim Rice one (above), designed by Ryan Quickfall, sold out straight away.

This is the lovely Thekla of Spoke and Stringer getting busy with the latest number 1 tea towel, also designed by Ryan.
Available from the Sideburn webshop. BP

Spoke And Stringer

Kristian Crews' Spoke And Stringer, one of our Bristol stockist finally has his own cafe shop after a run of pop-ups. Down on the waterfront opposite the SS Great Britain. Propper coffee, and chilies in the chocolate Brownies YUM! The pintxos tapas menu is especially impressive. BP

Bygone Bodge

Clocked this classic Robin Reliant outside the most pleasant cafe No. 12 Easton, Bristol. Most steel cars of this era have long been sent rusting to the scrapyard, but the 30+ year-old fibreglass on this was no longer sea-worthy either. On closer inspection, what made me smile the most was the coat hanger ariel up-grade. I haven't seen one of those for ages! Do modern cars with digital radio even need an ariel at all? BP

Peaks Ride-Out Snaps

This was the only accident of the whole day. It was just topple during the coffee break when the sidestand pressed through the flapjack tarmac. The only damage was some earth deposit on the sidestand which didn't exactly warrant calling out the AA.

Dave on his newly acquired CB175

Max winner of 'Best Jacket' wearing Dave Aldana's old leathers from when he was a teenager.

Proper coffee in the middle of nowhere, served from the back of Motore's Piaggio Ape - How fantastic!

And the next day on the way home, I stopped by Derbyshire Aggregates out in Youlgrave for a few sacks of black Bassalt chips (not peculiar to the North of England) for my wannabe-Japanese garden. (I nearly gave myself a double hernia when I acquired the stone doorstep from a field next to the A53 when I was last in the Peak District). BP

Bialetti Moka Express

This contraption keeps me sane. BP

SEE SEE

Thor Drake philosophizes about exploding antique 2-strokes, and defying gravity on them in SB#11. And there's no better place to kick back and read it cover-to-cover than in the See See cafe. BP

Reilly Rocket

This neat cafe, Reilly Rocket, in the East End of London now stocks Sideburn. We haven't been yet, but they're hosting a bit of a Sideburn knees-up there in July, probably a Thursday night, you're all invited. Watch the blog for details.
They're behind a Suzuki dealer on 507 Kingsland Road. The corner of Tottenam Road & Kingsland Road London, Hackney E8 4AU. G

Work Wear

11:49 and the front door bell goes; we have a zero tolerance policy on hawkers, bible / UPVC double-glazing salesmen, and any charity, after my wife nearly fell prey to a scammer who was supposedly collecting for 'a sponsored donkey in Africa' but when he demanded to have her bank details there and then on the door-step, the game was up. So anyway, ready with my curt "No", it turns out that the shabby-chic couple standing there are actually inquiring about the house next door which is for sale. They apologize for "getting me out of bed" - as I am still dressed in my pijamas. I explain that although I went to bed at 03:30, I've actually been up since 07:14 thanks to my kids, and it's not that I'm too lazy to get dressed, I'm just too damn busy finishing off SB#7 before it goes off to the printers. BP

toweling bathrobe - The White Company
T-shirt - Death Spray Custom, but with a spelling mistake that makes it more rare and valuable than a print error Penny Black.
pin-stripe PJs - John Lewis
Joseph Beuys felt slippers - Birkenstocks
coffee perculator - Omegna

Steam power

Where A is water, B is where you stick your ground coffee and C is where the thick, dark stuff of life dribbles into. An irregular heartbeat in three simple stages. Thanks to Asbestos for the diagram. MP

Mopeds of the Medina

When I'm a billionaire and I've already got my Amsterdam pizza delivery boy MotoGP up and running, the next project will be another life threatening street race but set in amongst the tiny Souks of Marrakesh. The max speed obtainable on such puny step-through machines wont render it as terrifying as Macau, but then again Macau isn't awash with donkey piss, toothless beggars, carpet salesmen trying to abduct your wife, and dumb tourists stumbling about.
I've just got back from a week's family holiday. We stayed in a cheapo riad with air-con that actually heated our room up above the ambient street temp. Icecream couscous became our staple diet. But it's an amazing place. I had hoped to sneak off for a couple of days KTM'ing with Wilderness Wheels, but my back was still out, so I had to make do with a one day taxi trip into the spectacular Atlas mountains and daily gorking at mopeds.
BP

#67R

It's official. My ACU racing license came through today. New, olde style, AMA number plates are on back order with Red Max Speed Shop, in the mean time a melamine tea tray from Oxfam will do just fine. BP

Exhibition Continues...

Dai doesn't do things by halves, and after an excellent lunch at the revamped Viet Hoa on Kingsland Road, I was happy to piggy-back the sturdy Welshman to the Shoreditch High Street shop PRESENT. Started by two former founders of Duffer of St George, it stocks a colourful array of menswear, including Eley Kishimoto - and now Sideburn magazine. The second Red Max'd SR500 is parked in the window. Neil casually offered me a coffee while I was browsing and I congratulated him on the fancy foam motif; not realizing it had been made by the current Swedish national champion barista Mattias Björkland. Together with Gwilym Davies the current world champion barista, they have set up a titanic coffee machine on the shop counter. My already pleasant weekend received extra spring in it's heel. BP

UPDATE:
Steve Red Max is a better photographer than me so I robbed this off his Flickr album

At Home With Jam Roll

On the way back from Rye House, I decided to to take an hour detour south into west London, to catch up with a few friends. I hadn't seen James Chappell in the flesh since 1805 (we go back a long way). I forgot his flat number and was ringing his neighbor's bell for 20 minutes. It was anti-sociably early for a Saturday morning but poking an air-rifle out through the letterbox was a bit excessive. But one good thing about turning up un-announced is you can have cold Lebanese take-away for breakfast (the veiny spheres I can only presume were lambs testicles), washed down with some cold Arabic coffee which having stood for 7 hours allowed the cardamom sludge to fall to the bottom. Responsible for scattered illustrations in Sideburn; a new piece on Dave Aldana for SB#5 lay still steaming on the kitchen table.One day I'd like to do a photography book about peoples mantelpieces, I'm forever intrigued by their personal dioramas. BP

Mailout

After many months of nailing SB#4 together, now stage two starts. The labourious process of mailing. Most of what you pay goes to Postman Pat (the UK > USA costs are crazy), a smaller percentage to the printers, and about thr'pence ha'penny to us. All the subscribers issues have now gone out, followed by contributors. Surprisingly Gary's local post office (just a single counter in the local minimarket) don't seem to fazed by the daily mound of Jiffy bags that he and Mrs I take down there. This photo was taken at breakfast last Saturday when we had a hot-crossed-bun fueled session. BP

Alternative Fuels

As SB#4 gets into its stride, members of the scattered and loosly-affiliated staff reach for varying versions of midnight oil to keep things moving. Mick Phillips, out in a hot and humid Rome, prefers a caffè corretto.
'It's the mix of heart-jerking caffeine with a big slug of sweet and high-alcohol sambuca that keeps me focussed into the early hours. Unfortunately, after five or six of the things, I tend to be focussed on sweating profusely, staring at my reflection in the long-blank screen and pawing my own face, before being guided to bed at 4am by my exasperated wife.'

James Bettinson In Da House!

The love-child of many influences, Sideburn magazine welcomes another soldier to it's ranks. Way back when we were still heavily pregnant with SB#1, Gary showed me a copy of DIRT mountain bike magazine. We really liked it's progressive graphics and bold layouts. Fast forward a year and a half (bloody hell doesn't time fly), and some guy called James Bettinson contacts us out of the blue...
"Hows it going? Its James here, who use to design MOTO [moto X magazine] and DIRT....I've just been looking through the latest issue of SB, Its a project I would love to get involved with creatively..."
Step this way James. Milk and 2 sugars? BP

nominate your local bike shop

We're looking for shop stockists for SB magazine. If your local bike shop serves excellent coffee and has a pretty mechanic, but lacks quality reading matter, give us a shout! We are currently sorting out a new and improved US distributor, to reduce the shipping costs & waiting time to our American customers, but we are always looking for new openings. You don't have to be a bike shop, maybe a tattoo shop, skate shop, record shop? We're open to suggestions.
photo courtesy CHOKE who stocks SB in LA.