Fun fact: About 5km south of Launceston Airport in the north of Tasmania lies the historic village of Evandale. Among other reasons – including being the final residence of famed artist John Glover, the subsequent birthplace of the Glover Prize, home to a historic water tower, and home to a rather popular Sunday market – the town is notable for being the home of the World Penny Farthing Championships.
The annual event sees riders from all over the world gathering in the small village to pith their big bikes around a village street circuit at breakneck pace. The event is something of a spectacle for a number of reasons – chiefly because the fixed gear nature of the bikes means some fairly astonishing speeds are attained, and also because seeing blokes stack it off of giant bikes is totally mad in a really cruel kinda way.
Anyway, my point here is that whilst that happens once a year in a small village in Tasmania, this happened in the ~uber-cool~ inner northern Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy – latched onto by Internet chumscrubber Reddit and subsequently gone full boonta on by users of said seaweed net.
Whether a legitimate niche hobby or not, it’s certainly an item/location combination that’s ripe for the pickin’. (Incidentally, Shawcross – the pizza joint across the road from where this was taken – does a bang ‘up margherita.)
Snort derisively at the image if you like. Get indignant at those that do if you prefer.
Or, if you’re anything like me, find the appropriate accompanying Simpsons quote to giggle at.
“So, uh. You don’t like the old time bikes, eh?” pic.twitter.com/JyjKA1ovsJ
— SimpsonsQOTD (@SimpsonsQOTD) November 12, 2014
Photo via Imgur.
