This is a stunt video, not an education video. The idea was to recreate a tool I read about in the book “Snowcrash”. The device is called the carpoon and it costs $5. The Carpoon: Designed to attach to large slow moving vehicles and allow a bike to quietly skitch behind it. Enjoy.
Read MoreThis was one of about 10-15 short performances I did during the festival. Later in the video you see footage of Brenda talking about the bike she just one from New Belgium and Clif Bar. I thought she was rad so I sponsored her with a Down Low Glow for the bike she just bought.
Read MoreIn the new Mattias Johansson video for the Rubies song “I Feel Electric”, the three members of the group first appear standing over cruiser bikes tricked out with the Down Low Glow.
Read MoreHere’s a cool video compilation of the Down Low Glow shots we’ve posted to Flickr over the last two years.
The music in the video is a track called “Boda Boda Rap” I worked on when I was working in Kisumu, Kenya for Worldbike.org . My partner and friend Ed Lucero had found us a sweet apartment, and he had been there for almost a year when I arrived in March 2006. I was trying to help Ed finish up the marketing and monitoring for the Big Boda Trial Market, for which I had raised the funds. It was hard work selling bikes in Kenya, but Ed and I had great teamwork and lots of fun together.
Anyway at night at the apartment, Ed’s friends would come over. When they met me, I told them I was a rapper and gave them a sample. I told them I was writing a song about the Boda Boda bicycle taxi operators. The next night they came back with Lawi One, and we hit it off immediately. He installed a bootleg copy of Fruity Loops on my laptop and we would make beats until the battery died, then go out cruising in the warm Kisumu night air. He wrote a verse and I wrote three.
On my last night in Kisumu, Thao and I took a cab to his recording studio in a dank basement. It was me, Lawi One, and his friend who wanted to sing backup but who I thought had no rhythm. We laid down the track in about 4 hours. Thao and I left to get on the night bus to Nairobi. A month later Lawi One emailed me the MP3 and it’s the only thing I have of the song. But my other friend Chris Okiri emailed me to say that the local radio station was playing it every so often.
I lost touch with Lawi One last year. I think he moved from Kisumu to Sweden of all places. But I don’t have his email anymore. Maybe someone who knows him will search for his name on the internet, see this and contact me.
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