‘This is my bicycle, there are many like it, but this one is MINE’ is a sentiment most cyclists are familiar with; your bike is precious and personal, a friend as much as a possession. Like a lover, it might have ‘issues’; a cranky personality, the occasional breakdown, and the ability to puncture your emotions from time to time. However, together you make a beautiful partnership without the complications of bad sex and arguments about whose turn it is to take the bins out.
Anyone who has owned a bike will know the pain felt when some undeserving, low-life swipes it whilst resting and vulnerable. It is inconvenient, expensive and annoying – really, really annoying.
Elliot Jones, a 22-year-old photographer and content manager at website basementapproved.com, had owned his Quella Nero fixie for precisely 489 days. It had whizzed him across London from Tufnell Park to Shoreditch hundreds of times, always beating the traffic and the tube. Sure, it had thrown him a couple of punctures, one of them in the pouring rain, and it lost its chain bouncing out of one of London’s ‘infinite’ potholes, but it was a good’un – extremely good looking, low maintenance, reliable and steady. So, when he emerged from the pub after a quick post-work sharpener to find what little remained of his lock lying on the floor, he was very, very hacked off. He had lost his loved one to a thief.
Luckily, Elliot is a resourceful fellow and a talented photographer, so when he was told a couple of days later that his insurance company wouldn’t pay out – because the bike hadn’t been locked in his garage – he came up with a plan. THE PHONE RANG AT QUELLA and Elliot pitched his intent “What if I provide some great photos of your new Varsity range and we work together on some Fixie art prints for the website, could we have a deal on a bike?’. A new partnership was born.
A brand-new chrome finished Varsity Imperial was dispatched and it was time to ‘move on’. The old Nero had been great, but the Varsity was a step up. In Elliot’s words; ‘This bike really is the business, I love riding it and the chrome frame gets comments every day. I am chuffed to be working with a brand like Quella on an on-going basis, and, as well as the general photography, we are going to partner on some limited edition, ‘fixie themed’, urban art prints, which is a really exciting project. Getting my bike nicked was a massive pain but every cloud…’
It all sounds like a happy ending, but if you are the grubby ‘tea-leaf’ that nicked a Quella Nero from outside The Prince Arthur, be very careful you don’t get spotted riding it around anywhere near Elliot Jones. We have met him, he is a big lad who’s definitely been around the block, I wouldn’t fancy your chances.
Elliot’s work can be seen at www.quellabicycle.com and on his own website www.photojones.co.uk.