If you’ve been to downtown Spartanburg recently, chances are you’ve seen various bicycle-related art on street corners on parks. It’s part of the ArtCycle initiative, which is a joint venture by Spartanburg Creative Energy, Hub-Bub.com, Spartanburg Art Museum and Partners for Active Living to promote (not surprisingly) creativity, art and bike culture in the city. Here’s a video of one of the pieces, pre-assembly.
The Spartanburg-based Partners for Active Living are well known as the bike-lifestyle promoting folks here in the area. But did you know that they’re also TV stars? Well, kind of. They have an occasional 10-ish minute show on the Spartanburg channel, but that’s still more than most local non-profits can say. Recently, they uploaded a number of their videos to YouTube, covering mostly practical issues related to bike riding in the city.
If riding a bike around to do your shopping sounds like torture, consider being suspended from metal hooks which have been sunk into the skin of your back. Torture? That’s just a fun night out for some people. Particularly YouTube user Shannonopolis, who participated in the Psychotic Suspensions over at Ground Zero in January. (If you’re grossed out by this kind of thing, don’t click it. But it’s not as bad as you probably suspect.)
Speaking of torture at Ground Zero, here’s a video of the Pretty Things Peepshow burlesque troupe. Actually, there’s no torture here. I just couldn’t think of a fitting segue to a video of a woman doing a silly strip-tease. It may not be safe for work, but you can calm down: There’s pasties over the nipples and everything. Don’t click it if you’re offended by campy dancing which is only slightly more sexually provocative than the average beer commercial.
Another kind of torture is that specific feeling of pain comic book fans experience when a great comic is ruined by a bad film adaptation. David (aka Kratos87Fan19) explains why we shouldn’t be so hard on adaptations, even when they ruin everything.
And let’s close on a song, shall we? Here’s Peter Cooper (of Hub City Music Makers and music journalism fame) and Eric Brace performing “Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me” at the Showroom at the Hub-Bub.
That’s it for this week. As always, feel free to leave a link to a cool local video we missed in the comments.
Steve Shanafelt
