BikeBiz Bicycle and cycling retail news

Three Peebles-based bikers will ride on timber North Shore-style ramps and see-saws at the city centre Parklife 05 event. The display is being organised by Forestry Commission Scotland and the 7stanes trail-building scheme.

Nick Larsen owns clothing company Gate Eight and runs the GT and Mongoose teams in the UK. His new brand is Charge Bikes, and as well as jump bike frames he'll be offering 4x frames. Both will be titanium.

Perhaps Strictly Come Dancing winner Jill Halfpenny will cycle to her new job as one of the two female leads in Chicago in London's West End? She's just one of the cycling celebs in our irregular look at who's whom on two wheels. For instance, Condor Cycles can confirm Mick Jagger rides and Chris Tarrant does so with his wife (Tarrant's wife, that is, they've just bought a tandem...)

The US pork barrel patrol Citizens Against Government Waste - a self-appointed guardian of what is and isn't a waste of tax-payer's money - is claiming victory. It and it alone forced the US Postal Service to cease sponsoring Lance Armstrong's pro road team.

In a controversial article in The Providence Journal, Shih-Fen S. Chen, the international-marketing professor at Brandeis University's International Business School, uses Giant's relationship with Schwinn as an example of 'suicidal outsourcing'. First Giant hits back and then so does the prof...