This article was originally published as part of UAL Subculture Interest Group (SIG) Newspaper. SIG is a collective established in 2019 by a group of PhD students and research staff with an interest in subcultures, especially music, style and youth cultures, and their intersections.
There is a moment of surprise as they cruise by. Their loose formation is shoal-like as together they claim the lane, a space usually the undisputed domain of metal chassis and noisy petrol engines. Handlebars pulled back, front wheels defiantly off the ground. It’s a wheelie gang!! The sight is a jolt out of the habitual numbness, the distracted filtering in and out of the familiar while navigating the city at street level. Suddenly I pay attention, I reach to see, to take in, not to miss it. This is a noiseless spectacle, but agile, with tantalising energy and momentum. As the bikes disappear ahead, the uplift lingers in their wake.

According to Miles, one of the riders in the Storyville documentary If the Streets Were on Fire directed by Alice Russell, the public’s responses to wheelie riders are of two kinds. Some feel annoyed or threatened by them, for others the sight makes their day. Me, I fall into the latter category. And when it is a whole group of riders, even more so. Spontaneous demonstrations of skill and individual expression, both contained and supported within the synchronicity of the group in motion; I am in awe at the sight of them. There is no regimented choreography. But there is plenty of bravado and showing off. This is neither more nor less than fitting considering the youth of these riders. But at the very same time, they form a dynamic collective that command the road and move forward as one; passing through, self-possessed, in a few fleeting moments. This is more happening than performance.

If the Streets Were on Fire follows Mac Ferrari-Guy, co-founder of Bikestormz (he has since left the project). He spends much of his time building and supporting a community of bike enthusiasts from various under-resourced parts of London, as an escape from a life dominated by gang culture and allegiances. Bikestormz organises large scale annual bike rides, or ride outs. The most recent took place on 19 August 2023*. Thousands of riders, brought together under the call for “knives down, bikes up,” crossed Tower Bridge, passed by St Paul’s Cathedral and in front of the Houses of Parliament.
[* La Fomo note: This was the most recent ride when this article was originally written for SIG Newspaper. At the time of publishing this, the most recent ride took place on 15 December 2024.]

Bringing a mass scale ride out to Central London makes sense on several counts. Firstly, it works as a demand for recognition extended by embodied presence: vital, tangible and in the very spaces of power those participating are habitually excluded from. The ride also challenges dominant narratives of vilification, according to which young people (especially youth not cushioned by privilege) are motivated by aggression and destined for carceral detention or worse. Challenging such stereotypes is in part about changing perceptions by others, possibly even more crucially about destabilising the way in which such narratives become internalised. The ride out does this work through the coming together of bodies with a common purpose. As importantly for many (if not necessarily all) of the riders, central London offers a temporary release from day-to-day stresses and local troubles. And let’s not forget the empowering charge of appropriating stretches such as the Embankment, with its wide lanes and one-way traffic, perfectly suited to the riders in purely practical terms.
A ride out of the scale seen on 19 August demands prior arrangement and official agreement, but suitable spaces for these youth to ride together on a more regular and frequent basis is a project, no less demanding of leadership and negotiation.

The documentary shows Mac attending various meetings as he tries to do just this with council officials and police force representatives. Determined to provide space away from daily environments that are constrictive and carry disproportionate risks, his aim is to instead offer opportunities for self-expression, agency and community building. This seems an uphill battle. Mac’s arguments, lucid and informed by lived experience as they are, fall on deaf ears. His reasoning has little impact on minds trained on public order. Such stolid reluctance to make the connection between Bikestormz and the backdrop of drastic cuts in services and (much publicised) growth in knife crime is painful to witness, even if it does not exactly come as a surprise.

The phenomenon of wheelie gangs is not just a London thing. One recent January, viewers of a BBC news item from Bristol were encouraged to report any instances of the ‘menace’ of wheelie gangs to the police. But, as Christopher Stricklen sets out in The Real Problem with Wheelie Kids, this hostility should be recognised as part of racist and racialising structures. These are the very structures that unevenly distribute both chances of becoming victims of crime and of being criminalised. The push to actively criminalise (some) youth for riding their bikes, then, amounts to something more than just another moral panic.
The connections between wheelie crews and other urban subcultures are many. Skateboarding and BMXers are perhaps the most obvious examples, but I am also reminded of breakdancing (in terms of physical virtuosity and showmanship) and graffiti writing (as a gesture of non-compliance and self-assertion). Here, too, youth, for many of whom resources are scarce and opportunities in short supply, come together to develop skills and find hard-to-ignore ways of showcasing their brilliance.

Urban space is commodified and branded, redeveloped and gentrified, regulated and policed in ways that benefit a select few, constrain many more and render others invisible while also severely hampering their prospects of a decent life. Most of the time we seem to just go along with it, incapable of even daring to imagine things to be otherwise. The interventions staged by wheelie crews are a refusal to stay out of sight and out of the way. If they express a demand for a share in the city, it does not involve waiting for a response. Instead, the claim is enacted, immediate and participatory. As deliberate inconveniencing goes, the bike rides are playful rather than aggressive or confrontational acts. They express a joyful momentary release from constraints and stresses that requires skill but minimal material supports. “It didn’t cost a lot of money. The investment was a bike. It didn’t need to be a new bike. You could put work in on any bike.” This is how Mac describes the beginnings of the project and the principle remains the same.

The momentary disruption of space reserved for motorised traffic makes for a radical gesture in a city and culture that privileges efficiency and regulation. Unsafe. Illegal. That particular refrain of condemnation sounds all too familiar. In a hyper-individualised society, the display of agency and togetherness is no less of a challenge. Perhaps that is another reason why the sight of young riders forming an interdependent collective body that moves through the city on its own terms, with grace and speed, becomes the cause of such unease.

Words by Nina Mickwitz
[La Fomo note: If you're inspired to go on a mass-scale bike ride this week, join Critical Mass on Friday 31 January at 19:00.]