🌿Sublime Sunday - Street Art and the Zombie Bike 🚲

I was inspired to write this post after seeing this great blog from @tattoodjay about his sublime Sunday walk and 360 photography.

#SublimeSunday is a community inspired by @c0ff33a witness and white rose coffee roaster. I buy all my coffee from them, to learn more check out this post I wrote a few years back on hive:
Hive a Nice Cuppa Coffee - Blockchain Economy and Utility

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The Tale of the Zombie Bike

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Today I had the welcome chore of walking to my local bike shop to pick up what has come to be known as 'the return of the living dead bicycle.'

The tale behind this zombie bike starts with an impulsive purchase from the leading shyster bike merchants (here in the UK) called Halfords._{Seriously, don't click that link unless you want to buy a bike that will start to break after 6 months!}

I remember as I cycled back from Halfords last summer looking down at the back wheel and thinking it was circling off-centre, but as my last bike had a similar problem, and the off-centre motion was subtle, I dismissed it.

Big mistake.

Fourteen months later, and my back wheel buckles beyond repair for no reason (luckily as I was leaving my house rather than while I was cycling) and I'm left with a bike that has the equivalent of a broken hip... the fabled Zombie Bike of Liverpool. No longer fit for the purpose of hitting those sweet sweet jumps! 🤣

To cut a long story short, after waiting three months for Halfords to get a new wheel, two months of which were a direct result of their incompetent staff ordering the wrong type of wheel, I finally called an independent bike shop that sourced a new wheel and fixed it within a week.

But what is sublime about this harrowing story? I hear you cry 😅

I don't own any other form of transport, so along with the walk to the bike shop where I found myself on the road with the most Street Art per square metre in the whole of Liverpool, getting back my 'zombie bike' and hitting the road again after such a long time was sublime.

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Now for the Street Art 🎨

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Along with the joy of finally getting my trusty bike back, the walk down to the cycle repair shop took me along James Street which has one of the most extensive open-air street art galleries I've ever seen.

The street art on James St is mainly elaborate tags which some people don't like, but I personally think are aesthetically pleasing and reflect a street culture I used to be a part of back when I was young (and foolish) and would hurl myself down sets of stairs flipping a skateboard beneath me 😂

As shown in the picture above the art stretches literally as far as the eye can see.

Some of the pieces are more mural-style, with characters or motifs, depicted within the body of the work ⬆️

Although it was a grey and cloudy day, the James street art cheered me right up and kept me motivated to walk to the shop as the wind was blowing below freezing today.

The art stretches roughly 320 metres along the road and the pieces have been painted on a board wall that was put up to hide an unsightly construction site.

As you walk down the road it is like an ever-changing psychedelic mind-scape that pulls you in - far more interesting than the plain cream boards that were there for the first week or two of the construction project.

I'm quite proud of our city authorities for embracing this type of high-quality street art all over the city. These pieces aren't commissioned, and the only change that happens is every few months or so a new piece pops up, I'm assuming by agreement of the street artist collective who I've spoken to in the past.

Whatever the case may be, the council don't remove these pieces... and IMO Liverpool is better off for them.

After viewing this street art, and snapping some pics to share here on hive, I walked to Ryde Cycle shop & Cafe and picked up my zombie bike.

No longer crippled, and ready to rock.

Thanks for joining me for my Sublime Sunday 🌿

Please check out the location of this street art on Pinmapple in the comments section 👇

All photos used in this post are taken and owned by myself.

Camera: Samsung S7 Smart Phone.

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