Old Archives - Aberdeen Voice

‘Ghost Bike’ Memorial Event.

Aberdeen City, Featured, News No Responses »

Jun 282012

The rain stopped for a while last Sunday, but the sky was suitably overcast to set a sombre mood for the ceremony which installed Aberdeen’s first Ghost Bike. Paul Kohn writes.

ghost-bikers-milenas-mum-hannah-and-friends-pic

A group of around twenty cyclists set off from the beCyCle workshop in Old Aberdeen for the ride down to Garthdee roundabout where the memorial to Milena Gott-Konopacka has been installed.
Milena was knocked off her bicycle by a tanker driver in July 2009, and died eighteen months later in hospital after a long and finally unsuccessful struggle to recover.

Milena, a promising science student at Aberdeen University, was 20 when the accident occurred.

The ride from Old Aberdeen to Garthdee was not without its lighter moments: the contrast between Benedikt on the ‘high bike’ and another beCyCler on a recumbent turned quite a few heads on Union Street as we passed. There were some lovely cakes, and the usual great sense of camaraderie that develops when cyclists ride together.

On arrival at Bridge of Dee we were met by Milena’s mother and family. She had come over from Poland for the event, and was visibly grieving but happy to be sharing that grief with some of Milena’s Aberdeen friends. There was a brief but moving ceremony as those present placed flowers on the Ghost Bike.

When I returned to the spot about an hour later, I saw that Milena’s mum had also returned to spend some time alone at the memorial.

All credit to Hannah Krueger and her friends at beCyCle for organising a moving and ultimately highly affirmative event . We were all happy to participate, although we hope that no more Ghost Bikes will be necessary in Aberdeen.

beCyCle – An Incentive To Cycle

Community, Featured, Information No Responses »

Jun 142012

Well away from the main commercial centre of Aberdeen, nestled in a lane just off Old Aberdeen’s High Street on the University campus, is beCyCle, a low-key community project dedicated to encouraging citizens to cycle. Voice’s David Innes popped in for a look and chatted with Benedict Poetz of beCyCle.

Benedikt is a member of beCyCle but explains that there is little formality.

“I just came along, took a bike out, got interested and continued participating. Now I help out here as much as I can.

“For example I built the work benches as a project with some other people.

“As a volunteer, I help maintain the workshop and help people out with repairs. I also repair my own bike, a hand-built lightweight Carlton from the 1980s.

“We get some funding from the University and from the Student Association. We get donations, but the most important thing is that we get bikes to fix. Today, for example, we picked up thirteen bikes from Cults and someone came past and dropped off another five bikes.”

These are not sold off for beCyCle funds as you might expect.

“We rent them out, but for free. BeCyCle’s for everyone, but mostly it’s university students who’ll take out a bike for six months or a year against a deposit of £40 – £60 which is returned to them when we get the bike back. All our services are free.”

All types of bike?

“Yes, whatever is donated, but mostly they’re hybrid type mountain bikes.”

“The idea is that volunteers are here to help people fix their own bikes, giving advice and a bit of tuition. Volunteers provide the tools, knowledge and advice and encourage people to do repairs themselves. It’s free and open for everyone in the community, not only students. We don’t offer any services, we just provide the space and help for people working on bikes. All the volunteers have a bit of knowledge, so between us we always manage to repair them.

“We’re here because the University has given us the space, rent-free – or for the symbolic one pound rental – and some funding. It was an empty shell, so we built the benches and painted it. We pay our own electricity bills and so on, but we don’t need too much money. We have no commercial sponsors.”

Do you buy parts and sell them on cheaply or do people have to supply their own?

“We get spares donated quite often, but some parts like cables and stuff like WD40 we buy in bulk from the money the University donates to us.”

There were around a dozen young people coming and going during the visit, but does it get quieter during the holiday period?

“It’s the beginning of summer, so this is about it for the moment.”

There’s a tangible community ethos about beCyCle.

“It provides a space for people to repair their bikes and exchange bike ideas and knowledge. The lending scheme makes bikes freely available for the community, to encourage cycling. We’re trying to get the wider community involved by making it more open to everyone, even beyond Old Aberdeen. We’d like to have some joint programmes, for example bike maintenance projects, with local community centres and have open days to encourage such projects.”

How many bikes does beCyCle have and manage?

“We’re never quite sure. At the moment we have maybe 100 bikes here with perhaps another 100 or 200 on loan, so a rough estimate of 300-400 bikes in circulation. We try to keep track but it gets difficult, although we are now using a laptop, spreadsheet and pictures of the bikes to improve this.”

Cycling continues to gain popularity as a healthy, quick, cheap and planet-friendly mode of transport. BeCyCle’s efforts are to be applauded in encouraging would-be cyclists to try it out affordably. If you like the sound of that, they’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Thanks also to Ferdy Binacchi.
info@becycle.org.uk
http://www.becycle.org.uk/

Aberdeen’s First Ghost Bike To Be Installed

Aberdeen City, Information No Responses »

Jun 072012

By Paul Kohn.

Ghost Bikes are small and sombre memorials for cyclists who have been killed or hit on the street. A bicycle is painted all-white and locked to a street sign near the crash site, accompanied by a small plaque.
They serve as a reminder of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise-anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of cyclists’ right to safe travel.

The first Ghost Bikes were created in St. Louis, Missouri in 2003. Currently, there are over 500 Ghost Bikes in over 180 locations throughout the world.

For those who create and install the memorials, the death of a fellow cyclist hits home. We all travel the same unsafe streets and face the same risks; it could just as easily be any one of us.

National Bike Week is coming up, from 16th to 24th of June. In Aberdeen, events are being co-ordinated by Aberdeen Cycle Forum,
http://www.aberdeencycleforum.org.uk/index.php?pf=news.php&nid=131

As part of the week’s activities, beCyCle, the community workshop based in Old Aberdeen, is organising the installation of Aberdeen’s first Ghost Bike, at Garthdee. It is being placed in memory of Milena, a beCyCler who was hit by a lorry three years ago.

BeCyCle comments,

“Please join us when we take the Ghost Bike from Aberdeen University to the roundabout in Garthdee.

“This event will also see the launch of the beCyCle cycle helmet. There will be drinks and a snack provided.”

This journey starts at 1100 at the beCyCle workshop on High Street, Old Aberdeen, on Sunday 24 June.
http://becycle.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/aberdeens-first-ghost-bike/

Aberdeen 3 Dundee United 1 – Pittodrie Stadium 15/10/11

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, Opinion, Sport No Responses »

Oct 172011

Back to back wins, a five-figure home attendance creating a good atmosphere, and a team physically dominating a match to a comfortable victory…surely this can’t be the Aberdeen FC of this season we’re talking about?! Philip Sim reports from Pittodrie.

Last time out against Dunfermline, Aberdeen created innumerable chances and only visiting stopper Paul Gallacher prevented the match ending with a cricket score.

Dundee United were expected to provide a much stiffer challenge than the SPL new boys, but in truth the Dons did not even have to play as well as they did against the Fifers to record a comfortable victory.

Dusan Pernis is normally a solid, reliable goalkeeper, but he made a bad error in United’s last match against Motherwell, and he seems low on confidence.

He did very well to parry Rory Fallon’s header seconds before Kari Arnason stabbed home the opener, but his kicking was all over the place and even Andrew Considine will be wondering how his trundling effort crept in for Aberdeen’s third.

The visitor’s deficiencies didn’t start or end at the back however.

United lost an entire midfield of talented players over the summer, and have tried to replace them with kids and the extremely average John Rankin. By contrast Aberdeen’s summer signings Kari Arnason and Isaac Osbourne had little trouble in taking the game by the scruff of the neck and absolutely controlling proceedings in the middle of the park.

Osbourne in particular didn’t miss a tackle, and his graft and tidy use of the ball left Aberdeen dominating the midfield, despite Fraser Fyvie and Rob Milsom having relatively quiet games.

At the back, the Dons were if anything even more impenetrable. United captain Jon Daly must think of Pittodrie as a fairly happy hunting ground, but he barely got a touch of the ball in this match with Youll Mawene and Andy Considine winning everything in the air and on the deck. Each also popped up with a goal at set pieces – another mark of how the Dons totally won the physical battle against opponents who are no lightweights themselves.

Up front, Fallon and Scott Vernon are beginning to understand each other better and better as a strike partnership, and the big Kiwi seems to be exactly the foil that Vernon needs to get back to the goalscoring form he showed last season.

Fallon is excellent in the air and at holding the ball up which leaves Vernon free to burst into goalscoring positions. The pair of them pose far more of a threat than the previously tried combinations which used Vernon or Magennis as the target man – as was proved after Fallon’s substitution when the Dons lost much of their bite going forward.

Much like Spain against Scotland in midweek – although admittedly with only an ounce of the panache – Aberdeen bossed their opponents with ease for the first hour, but after going 3 – 0 up were guilty of taking their foot off the gas and allowing the visitors back into the game.

United’s goal was no more than a consolation for the visiting support, but it took some of the gloss off an impressive Aberdeen display.

Brown’s substitutions in particular seemed to take a lot out of the Dons – Chris Clark once again failed to impress, the game seeming to pass him by, and as mentioned earlier the team really seemed to miss the presence of Fallon up front after he was replaced by Magennis.

Willie Collum took charge of the match and did little to endear himself to either set of supporters, strangling any hope of free-flowing football by awarding a succession of needless free-kicks for niggly half-fouls. He turned down a decent penalty claim for both sides in the first half, although his decision to wave away Danny Swanson’s claims were probably quite strongly influenced by his earlier denial of Rob Milsom.

Two wins on the trot is as good a way to bounce back from an embarrassing cup defeat as any, and Craig Brown seems well on the way to having a settled starting eleven.

The next two games are going to be a massive test for his squad’s new-found confidence though, with a trip to Parkhead followed by the visit of Rangers. The Old Firm sides were both held to draws this weekend and Celtic in particular look to be there for the taking – and for the first time this season, Aberdeen look capable of putting a run together.

The feel-good factor is back at Pittodrie.

UTG Is Not To Blame

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Featured, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Sep 012011

A year and a half ago, Steve Bothwell wrote to express some, shall we say, ‘reservations’ about ACSEF’s master plan and where Aberdeen is heading. It looks as if he had a point or two.

February 25, 2010 – ACSEF’s plan belies anything that can be comprehended as ‘essential to the future of Aberdeen and the North East of Scotland’. As Jonathon Meades put it, ‘Aberdeen is good at being bad’ – Polite prose indeed.

The former glory of George St, with high quality retail and high quality architecture/replaced with the now John Lewis building (formerly the Co-Op) – St Nicholas Centre and The Bon Accord Centre, whilst severing the bloodline to the rest of George St, which resembles a down market version of the down-trodden Argyle St in Glasgow.

The old Co-op Building in Loch St/Gallowgate, which with little imagination could have been a gem of high quality boutique-scale retail, instead of Architecturally impotent office/residential blocks. St Nicholas house dwarfs Provost Skene’s house, one of the oldest and most architecturally significant buildings in the area.

Union Terrace Gardens is not to blame

The Trinity Centre/Trinity Hall, which subsequently moved to an equally, but on a smaller scale, architectural abortion.

The Old Market building (Market Street and the Green) replaced with the New Market building, sporadically raising pointing questions from the public (locals and visitors alike). Amadeus nightclub on the beach front which offers nothing but bemused and disturbed confusion.

And last but not least, Union Square, which is a glorified retail park with parking. This Architectural abomination will need replaced sooner than we think.

Union Street comes up in conversation with great frequency. For the past 30 years planning and control has become so lax that we are adorned with gratingly luminous patchwork of irregular symmetry. Absentee landlords are never held to task, nor are the lease holders.

Union Terrace Gardens is not to blame.

Most City Councils have made errors, and some cities have corrected them.

Aberdeen City Council still strive forth to allow the most banal picture painting of a living hell, by destroying everything in its path.
Either they are missing the clues which sit firmly on their own created door step or are suffering a serious bout of doldrumitis. The Civic Square planning and design details do not excite but only represent the pointlessness of it.

The City Council, along with ACSEF and Central Government wholeheartedly supported the Peacock scheme, providing local planning guidance was adhered to. This was to make it blend into the historic park. Peacock’s did that.

We now have a scheme, which in its vagueness, is impossible to get to grips with. From that I mean, it is quite obvious that this charade is nothing to do with enhancing our city for future energy companies to get comfy with, because as we know, energy companies care about nothing but energy riches and not about Urban realm Strategies, and especially about retail connectivity.

ACSEF’s approach to retail connectivity is fed through a brainwashing exercise in which the retail ‘Pillars’ unease at motions of failure result in the bandwagon bursting at the seams with the ‘I’m on board brigade’ ensuring their retail offerings, bland as they be, will not suffer the ever-changing movement or trends of public spending.

Union Terrace Gardens is not to blame.

It is poignant that public money has been frittered away on asking Joe Blogs about ‘an idea’, an idea which still reveals no real detail of the final outcome, whereas Peacocks had it sorted and without the need for car parking. Their enhancing project upset no one, and has not created the furore that the Civic square has.

Union Terrace Gardens are not frequented often. Perhaps the reason for that is, the general public are more interested in other things. Society has gone through radical changes and people have become armchair deficits. They rage vengeance on slopes and stairs, grass and beauty, nature and health.

Union Terrace Gardens is not to blame.

However, Courtesy of Grampian Police, the facts are this: – There is negligible crime in Union Terrace Gardens. The Freedom of Information Act has provided much-needed defence, where Union Terrace Gardens is the safest area in the City Centre.

It’s plain to see that ACSEF have not used Europe as an example of quality city centres but used America and Australia as examples. America and Australia are fairly recent countries but wholeheartedly celebrate their Green Spaces.

Aberdeen City Council’s budget is tight and perhaps tight-lipped. And the Scottish Government should be representing Scotland and its history, which it’s not.

Union Terrace Gardens is not to blame.