Been thinking about this for the last couple of days, and am posting this up to find out whether it'd be worth the pain of doing.
With the launch of Fixed magazine (lovely idea and execution guys) got me to thinking that I'd really like to document in a physical, non internet way the forum as it is now. We've been going a year, there's been a shit load of great threads, arrospok, epic fail to name a few, a host of great rides, London to Brighton, Southend, Cambridge, Oxford, Dunwich Dynamo, Bridges, Secret London, Monopoly, and forum drinks established throughout the big smoke.

So I thought it'd be good to produce a book to show what a truly great forum this is, using the skills and the ingenuity of the creative forumengers amongst us, we've got great designers, photographers, writers, and everything else to make a great book, plus a whole years worth of material in the threads to start off with.

Right now I think we can do it in two ways, one we could put together a book through Iphoto, quick, relatively simple, and not that expensive maybe? or two we can try and get it done professionally, obviously the more you make the cheaper the costs will be, and to try and keep the costs down we could try for sponsorship from someone or other.

So what do you think? Good idea, bad idea, let me know in the poll, also put your name down to help put the bastardbook together if the idea ever gets off the ground.

thinking too much corny. do more ridin!

why don't we put together a website that documents threads and rides and... oh.

I'm a literary agent, so if you guys felt you wanted to do something through a regular trade publisher (rather than self-publishing) I would be happy to pitch it to the houses...but I think if that was the case there would need to be more of a hook to make it interesting to non-forumengers. A decent book on fixed gear cycling generally would be worth considering.

Nice idea corny, my mates done a book through iphoto the other day for their round the world trip, was a really nice touch i thought. It only cost £15 i think....

theres also bobbooks or whatever it's called that'll do small runs of hardbacked books. No idea how good the printing is though...

B.

I'd be up for helping with this.

Be nice to do a proper book with a bit more control though.

i thought you changed to moobies???

thats what I was thinking, but I wanted to gather a bit more feedback/support.

I can right stuff.

To those who aren't sure or might see this as an attempt to commercialise something pretty free and organic - I'd say the following. Who would you rather create something like this (because as with any 'movement' for want of a better word it's happening now and will continue to do so); people you know who genuinely love what they/you are into? Or, sharp, opportunist, people not that bothered about the scene who only see the dollar sign and may not care that much about accuracy or quality of content?

Just a thought for you.

In theory dude I think it's a nice idea. But on the other hand it seems - dare I say it? - retroactive? is that the word? This is the technology we've got - it would be like playing chess by post, no?

I just think it would be difficult to convey the (fairly fundamental) forum vibe once you start bringing threads into it. A lot of them twist, turn and spiral out of control because of the role time and technology play in the process. In a way..."you had to be there.."

If you're talking about a record of rides and drinks, cool - but you miss the day-to-day bollocks everyone reads which makes them feel the sense of community we have.

Why not just have a "Best of London fgss" section?

not trying to be harsh or anything man, just not really seeing how it would work or why it would be necessary.

Irony. Haha. Or was it...?

don't let tommy write anything !!

Bussted :(

all valid points, but as I was saying yesterday, not sure if I said it to you, but the forum's growing pretty fast, you just have to look back at some of the resurrected posts from march 2007, when its just six or seven posters pushing views back and forth to the amount of views/poster on any given subject now, to realise the speed of change.

I want the book to capture the forum as it is now, to take the best bits of it and put it in a form which any member of the forum who has a copy can look at, and with a little bit of nostalgia say I was there when...

the book isn't supposed to supplant the forum, its supposed to be the best bits of the forum given physical form, a place where we collate the threads, images, rides, that show the forum as it is/was, at this point in time.

There is no real need to do a book, apart from the fact that I think it'd be fun to do and to own, and I want to have some record of this forum, when I'm no longer actively using it, or if it doesn't exist anymore. And I think that even if people aren't aware of it now, that we'll want to have some record that we were here, we were part of this really vibrant, funny, twisted, scatalogical forum/community, before its just archived pages on a server somewhere, which will take you forever to find because you forgot what that thread with the funny aerospoke photos was called and you haven't logged on for the last couple of years, so your password is a mystery etc etc etc...

scatalogical? I haven't found that stuff yet. I knew there were VIP threads..

yeah I dig what you're saying actually. Fair labour of love though, harnessing all this and encapsulating it will be a challenge.

I think you're talking about an editorial team, meetings etc.

could be good.

Coffee table book stylee would be nice. In this day and age of websites and digital this and that I think it would be nice to have a large format, chunky book with big pictures, short texts on the countless rides that have gone on, West/South/East/Central 'scenes' within london, extra-curricular stuff that people get up to (Trixies etc)...

I personally think this could be a goer. I'm down to help.

know what'd be good? the londonfgss guide to riding fixed. booklet that answers all the questions all you newbies have on buying/setting up your first fixed gear or ss bike, how to pimp up your slave bike and how to do minor repairs. available for £10 from the website. proceeds go to running the website.

But we live this forum. I've got the scars to prove it.
Hope you're not planning on leaving us anytime soon big fella.

dude thats a great idea, ten notes might be a bit much, but its doable, and a valuable resource, and I'm pretty sure we could produce an online version of it, which would sit on the forum and we can point out to those new to the forum

no not planning on leaving anytime soon, and living the forum is the best way, but for everyone else there will be the book

with the threat of having to pay a tenner I bet the search function would get alot more use!

Having tangible records of things is still important I think. I'm a lover of tactile objects as well as all the digital stuff going on at the moment.

I know it sounds old-school but if 'internet-things' were to go haywire all this could be lost. Also a record of all the crap we have got up to over the year would be great.

AND, if the 'bubble' were to burst which I'm sure it will at some point, the forum could eventually die out in it's current form (As VB's other forum is/was?). To have records of all the great stuff and rubbish that goes on here would be a really nice thing.

My 2c.

I got dem MAD skillz n'ting.

This is a good idea!

You can use some of my material.. and a bargain at only £10 per post :)

i think this idea is wack. no offence, but why make a book of a forum? i know you've sort of explained it above but i'm still confused. can't u just ask vb to give u the entire forum on a dvd or something?

Perhaps just a one-off book made along this idea as a fund-raiser for the forum?

jonty, I'm not offended, slightly protective maybe but not offended, if you don't understand the explanation, ask me and I'll endeavour to make the reasons behind the idea clearer, you're welcome to your point of view, but explain to me why you would want to have a dvd, turn on a tv, and show your friends/family this really great forum that you're apart of, full of insightful posts, and little mpegs, and photochops. they'd get bored in a heartbeat,whilst you navigate through menus to show them that one little bit that made you wet your pants the first time you read/saw it. But give them a book, and they can flick through it, put it down, pick it up again, look at the photo's, read the funny things we've spent so long crafting, at their own pace.

The book is supposed to be something substantive, you hold it, you love it, you own it, it goes with you, it can be shared, given away, taken back, lost, found, bent, broken, repaired, much like the bikes we ride. You can't do that with the forum in its natural internet habitat.
Thats why I want to do this, I'm not trying to recreate the forum on paper (well maybe just a little bit) what I want the book to be is a time capsule for the best of this forum, a yearbook, an annual even.

Corny, heard your thoughts on this on Sunday... Im not to sure about this myself. You could probably tell that I was a bit reluctant to say yeah I'll give you a hand etc.

I still cant quite put my finger on it but it just seems a bit odd. I actually think that this is something that does not appeal to me. Best of luck on this though.

[was going to delete this but pros as much as cons are useful]

shins thats cool, right now I'm canvassing opinion if the people aren't feeling it, it may well die, or it may not. who knows

i think this idea is, well, pretty corny.

lol^^^^
I was hoping for the full of love, bright eyed and bushy tailed pj (pj), but instead I get a slightly subdued lake of darkness ;-P

i''m tired and miserable today. i need to sleep, it is imminent.