You Spin Me Round

You Spin Me Round from The Department of Style on Vimeo.
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There is an incredible purity to track cycling. It's not unlike great design. When you pare everything down, forget the bells, whistles, frills and anything that isn't absolutely necessary, you are left with a track bike and a perfectly smooth, unobstructed course on which to ride it.

This is what a velodrome represents. Cycing, stripped down to the bare essentials. And it is beautiful. The bikes are works of art, fit to be stared at for lengthy periods, even while at rest.

The Forest City Velodrome (www.forestcityvelodrome.ca) in London, Canada, is a rare beast. There aren't many indoor velodromes in the world, and this is one of the more unusual of them all. In 2005, a few track cycling enthusiasts found an old unused hockey arena that had been set for demolition, and figured it was just barely big enough to cram a velodrome into.

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The Department of Style is a field guide to the timeless, the adventurous, and the enthusiastic. We celebrate craft. We explore tradition. We find the creative imaginations that take classic forms and make them their own.

It is about understanding that in life, doing something right takes time, and skill, and effort. But therein lies the joy. Finding people who still do those things that way and telling their stories is the original Departmental mandate.

Semper Intrepidus