An improbably fashionable girl prances through the door, beret in hand. “Hot chocolate, please,” she breathes, leaning a 1970s bicycle and basket against dozens of others.
This is Broadway Market’s Lock 7 cafe, where cyclists are free to park their bikes indoors while they have a coffee. Today the place is crammed with cyclists for Cycle East, a theatre tour in celebration of Hackney, which is being held at three local landmarks: Toynbee Hall, St John-at-Hackney Church and the Arcola Theatre.
In fact there are so many bicycles crammed into the small space that the baristas begin to serve coffee to cyclists standing outside. Among them is Cycle East tour leader Marian Farrugia (pictured left), in a fluorescent green t-shirt.
“Are you here for the tour?” she asks me, gesturing towards my high-visibility sash, which clashes horribly with an orange jumper. I am outdone by the range of waterproofs around me as weather-wary cyclists prepare for all eventualities on the 10-mile tour. Luckily the sun is still shining.
Cycle East is part of East festival, a series of events celebrating the local arts scene. Why is a cycling tour among them, then?
‘This is such a culturally rich space, and cycling is a good way to see it,’ explains Farrugia. “We were contacted by the [East Festival] organisers who asked us whether it might be a good idea to do a tour of the local theatres. We said yes.
‘This is one of the few places in London with a cycling cafe. Cycling is integral to Hackney.”
Maybe so, but the 30-strong group of cyclists still gets a few stares after setting off towards Toynbee Hall to see Mercury Music award nominees Portico Quartet.
Seasoned cyclists chat with newcomers as they ride. I, meanwhile, struggle to keep control of my ancient Raleigh, let alone keep up conversation.
“Stole that bike recently, did you?” quips one rider as I wobble my way through Haggerston Park.
The trauma ends briefly when we arrive, and the Portico Quartet (pictured right) strike up their first jazz melodies.
Hang drummer (like steel drums in sound, but woks in appearance) Nick Mulvey grins into the microphone. “How many of you cycled here?” he shouts. The silky notes of saxophonist Jack Wyllie play out over the subsequent cheer.
Jazz is a fitting choice for the Hackney art scene. It’s messy, avant-garde and risks being extremely pretentious. Luckily, these Mercury Music nominees are easy on the ear, with the hang drummer’s lilt tempering the frenetic saxophone.
If Mulvey’s hang drum evokes distant echoes of the Caribbean, it doesn’t last long. Emerging back into cloudy Hackney, the cyclists face the next leg in torrential rain. And when we reach St John-at-Hackney, the heating isn’t working.
I locate the nearest portable heater and other cyclists join me to thaw out. “It wasn’t meant to be like this!” complains Stoke Newington cyclist Nicola Wissbrook through clouds of steam rising off her drenched clothing.
But a clear note sounds through the airy, freezing church and the audience falls silent. Dalston composer Helen Chadwick and a group of singers process along the church aisle, intoning Venezuelan poetry.
After the hymnal opening, Chadwick observes: “We’ve never had to perform to a group of damp cyclists,” before going on to narrate the journey around the South American countries that inspired today’s recital.
Chadwick weaves stories out of her everyday experiences in Venezuela and Brazil, from ordering coffee to political marches. Accompanying singers Joanna Foster and Barbara Gellhorn provide ethereal vocal layering by moving around the church during the performance.
Thankfully the rain has cleared by the time we emerge from our musical tour of South America and it’s onward to Hackney’s eco-friendly theatre, the Arcola. Birds of a Feather star Linda Robson is having a coffee in the LED-lit foyer, before going onstage to perform in one of three new plays by Steven Berkoff, David Eldridge and Rebecca Lenkiewicz.
Presented on a bare stage, each short play comprises East End vignettes, deeper insights into the daily grind of being single, grieving or renting a room. David Eldridge’s The List closes the performances, a grimly comic presentation of a family grieving over a lost wife and mother whose final words take the form of a list.
Perhaps flawed in execution (Linda Robson’s landlady reads from a script), the audience is still engaged, laughing raucously when one character claims Hackney Marsh is upmarket.
And engagement, for cyclist Oliver Schick watching the performances beside me, is the spirit of Cycle East.
“This is totally wonderful,” he says. “People are usually so ignorant of their geography. They take roundabout bus routes which take half an hour longer than cycling would.
“People think cycling is a form of assisted walking, but it’s just the best way of getting around Hackney.”
As we cyclists troop back out for our bicycles, wet and cold, it seems that’s something we all agree on, whether dressed in high-visibility lycra or vintage Brick Lane chic.
[…] my relationship with the borough and eventually I discovered I had fallen torridly in love. A quirky 10-mile cycle tour seeing East End music and theatre (the borough was home to Pinter) revealed an arty side I’d never […]
[…] This has been a week of simultaneous celebration and destruction for Hackney. Shakespeare launched his career in Shoreditch, as lively in the 16th century as it is in the 21st. Residents have loved, censured and explored their corner of London during this week’s East festival. News editor Oliver Shah buys into a unique, co-op economy at Petticoat Lane market while arts correspondent Morwenna Coniam gets cosy with Birds of a Feather star Linda Robson. I accompanied the Hackney branch of the London Cycling Campaign on a ten mile tour of the borough’s musical and theatrical venues. […]