howies®

Every year this goes down for BMX and Skate. This is a very short clip of the best trick comp on the up and over handrail. Federal’s Dan Lacey took home the big one. heads up to the D-Lace.

Kris Vile ripped in Pool and i cant find any footage of it but here’s a great clip of him anyway doing it on the steel drum ramps of Bath.

Good Morning kids, i just found this and thought there night be a few others out there that might like it too. A folksy cover of the Roses.

A nice lady called Alison came up to the warehouse last week to buy a dress. We got chatting and turns out she’s an artist  We all got an invite to her SuperOrganism exhibition deep in the woods of Snowdonia to discover the mysteries of Hairywood ants. So a few of us have decided to head up there and make a day of it. So if you fancied doing something different with your weekend and you’re in the area Sat 13 Feb then I’m sure it’ll be worth a look. Its from 6-8pm in the Coed y Brenin woods… see you there… we’ll post some pics for those of you who can’t make it.

here’s a taster of the Shared Interest lecture we had at the shop last week, there was some very interesting stuff about how a Fairtrade Co-operative really works.

information about our next talk will be up here shortly!

Fela Kuti

Acid Mothers Temple

Dick Dale and the Deltones

Here at the Bristol shop we have strong links with a local charity called Fairbridge West which works with some of the most disadvantaged and disengaged young people in Bristol and the West. Fairbridge West offer these young people a combination of 1-2-1 support, training and skills to help them realise their true potential and change their lives. You may remember that some of us had a box car challenge with Fairbridge last year.

They are inviting 50 people to take part in the Bristol Half Marathon on September 5th 2010 to raise money for their great cause. If it’s the time of year for you to dust of your running shoes, then the 13 miles harbour side to suspension bridge run would be fun to aim for and you have plenty of time to build up those muscles and get your time down.

The places are going to be available soon, cost £36 and we will be getting some leaflets in the shop with some more info. If you are interested, contact Ella at Fairbridge West on 0117 9425362 or email her at ella.pollock@fairbridge.org.uk

i just found out about this, anyone seen it yet?

Made in Queens is a short film that lifts the lid on an underground scene emerging in the outskirts of New York’s Queens borough. Directed by Nicolas Randall and Joe Stevens, the film looks at a small crew of Trinida­dian teenagers, led by Nick Ragbir, who are obsessed with customising their bmx bikes with the fattest soundsystems they can possibly hook them up with.

There is a Tenby contingent at work, Anna being one of the crew, cant see her in this Tenby promo video though.

There’s no point me telling this story so i’ll leave it to my good friend Paul to tell it how it is.

Hi Tim

Was in the pub watching the inevitable occur at Elland Road last night and found myself sat at the bar next to Dr. Geebers – the pebble man.

I had heard about him a few days before, creating a pebble sculpture on the beach in Criccieth so i guessed that it might be him. I do tend to frequent my local pub for local people….

He is inspiring in that he is homeless with all the issues that seem to go with this. He decided in May last year to walk down the coast from Brighton and make a couple of Pebble sculptures as he went along. He wanted to walk along the coast because he wanted to stop drinking during the day etc.. this shortish walk has now turned into a determination to walk around the coast of Britain. He is now walking around Anglesey and is due to create his next sculpture in Beaumaris early next week.

He is writing a book about his experiences/journey etc and all proceeds of the book will go to the homeless.

He is on facebook here

There is a youtube clip from Amroth

Not really sure about how else to contact him. If you can give him any publicity on the howies by the way blog.

He is living off the generosity of people who meet up with him, usually only when he is making his sculptures. So any publicity that he gets will I am sure help him on his journey.

Hope you are well.

Paul

The naughty banks have been in the press a lot lately, but do you know how they came to be in the first place?

Once upon a time, well, in the in the middle ages to be exact, Venetian merchants relied on gold as a standard value to prevent the limitations of  barter (I imagine carrying a lot of chickens around with you to exchange for bread and honey would have been quite annoying!)

At sea their stores of gold would be vulnerable to pirates, so some ingenious people set up strong vaults and offered to look after the merchant’s gold for them while they were at sea. So that no gold had to be moved by the merchants, they gave out ‘promissory notes’ in exchange for goods, essentially promising that the vendor could collect the merchant’s gold from the vault. The notes soon took on the same value as the gold as vendors just passed them between one another.

The newly established ‘bankers’ then realised that the gold wasn’t leaving thevaults so they would sneakily lend it out to other people and charge them interest, thereby starting the now familiar magic trick of creating money out of nothing by lending money that wasn’t even theirs.

This system was regularised by the Banking Acts in the early nineteenth century and has been accepted ever since. The End ……

Or, can we go back to the good ole fashioned barter system? A customer the other day did offer the jacket off  his own back in exchange for the Cuddy shrit that Will was wearing…it turns out the jacket wasn’t entirely his as he still owed his friend a shirt in exchange! Maybe this customer was a banker?!