13 January 2012

The Creatives. Part 1, Rat Patrol

| ArrEmm
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What do you get when you put a whole bunch of intelligent people in a city with little to do? The answers are many and varied, but among the many stereotypes of binge-drinking weekend-warriors and healthy living family folk, are the Creatives.

The Creatives are a group of like minded people share a love of creation. There are many groups of Creatives and they all create ‘art’ using different materials.

Over the next few weeks, RiotACT will feature several of these groups.

This week, Let me introduce to you, The Rat Patrol.

The Ratrol Patrol makes freak bikes. What is a freak bike?

These are freak bikes.

freak bikes freak bikes

A freak bike is a functional, yet oddly shaped bike made from lots of other bikes.

This group of welder-wielding bike-binders meet up regularly to create their functional art and then peddle around for all to see. The most recent ride being called, Summer Rats, where the lads (and laddets) rode down Lonsdale street among the Summernats hotted up petrol guzzlers.

These guys are also responsible for the mega awesome, Corinbank festival.

Check out their website, have a look at what they do, and be thankful for the creative and proactive people who add flavour and spice to this fair city of ours.

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Today is Friday. Where is the next installment?

fgzk said :

Cars welded on top of one another, strange bikes with odd people, lots of fire and explosions….I just can’t remember their name. I do miss them. Where is the thrill without fire. Canberra culture…I like it.

Anyone remember their name………………..

Splinters Theatre of Spectacle.

Solidarity said :

So if you spend your time modifying a bike, you’re smart and creative, but if you spend your time modifying a car you’re a bogan dickhead?

+1

…and Rat Patrol are obviously mainstream now, they will need to find something else ‘underground’ to do..

fgzk said :

Cars welded on top of one another, strange bikes with odd people, lots of fire and explosions

Is this true? That would be cool.

Heh. Me thinks ArrEmm, you should have someone read your next post on the “Creatives”. It will be a little less controversial that way.

On the other hand, controversy a good way of getting attention for the groups you want to promote.

Cars welded on top of one another, strange bikes with odd people, lots of fire and explosions….I just can’t remember their name. I do miss them. Where is the thrill without fire. Canberra culture…I like it.

Anyone remember their name………………..

Solidarity said :

So if you spend your time modifying a bike, you’re smart and creative, but if you spend your time modifying a car you’re a bogan dickhead?

i’d like to see, say, a wrecked kia welded onto the top of a kingswood and driven down the parkway without seatbelts or windscreens – or maybe it’d have to be welded inside a kombi to be one of the kre8ives?

ArrEmm said :

Sorry if this came across as smug or elitist, that wasn’t the intention. I just think the act of people getting together and doing unusual and creative (and in the case of tall-bikes, brave) activities is something of interest and largely unknown by greater Canberra. Too often I hear that Canberra is boring and lifeless, but this is said by people who don’t know about these little groups doing bizarre things. It doesn’t imply less of anyone who’s not engaged in the activity.

Woah, hang on. So now you have gone from being ‘a bit smug’ to ‘a lot smug’. So you get to decide on which groups are doing something interesting and which ones aren’t. For the record, I think that what the Rat Patrol do is pretty cool, but it is not interesting to me. I personally think that groups that spend hundreds of hours assembling and painting minatures so they can have tabletop battles are interesting.

People will seek out things that they find interesting, not what you tell them is interesting. The biggest issue I have come across in the ACT it there is a serious lack of promotion and information about events and groups.

Now I might write some stuff for the geeky people out there that they might find interesting.

Sorry if this came across as smug or elitist, that wasn’t the intention. I just think the act of people getting together and doing unusual and creative (and in the case of tall-bikes, brave) activities is something of interest and largely unknown by greater Canberra. Too often I hear that Canberra is boring and lifeless, but this is said by people who don’t know about these little groups doing bizarre things. It doesn’t imply less of anyone who’s not engaged in the activity.

As a humble worker I bow down before my obvious moral, spiritual and mental superiors.

So if you spend your time modifying a bike, you’re smart and creative, but if you spend your time modifying a car you’re a bogan dickhead?

Do bigger bikes mean more points if you hit them with the car?

(not demerit points)

So this is what the rent-a-crowd protesters get up to when they aren’t chaining themselves to bulldozers!

LSWCHP said :

So are “the Creatives” actually an organisation of some sort?

They are similar to The Workers only they shower less and don’t work.

So are “the Creatives” actually an organisation of some sort which includes the Rat Patrol among others, or is the term used in the generic sense of “there are people in our community who are creative”?

And I really don’t understand the references to binge-drinking weekend warriors (WTF?) or the healthy-living. What’s that all about?

I think I’m tending to agree with Poetic about the tone of this post.

DrKoresh said :

poetix said :

I found something about the the tone of this post really off-putting.

‘The Creatives are a group of like minded people share a love of creation’ is as fatuous as it is ungrammatical. Since when did being ‘like-minded’ with a group equal being creative? And ‘Creatives’ would like creation, wouldn’t they? Duh.

‘(B)e thankful for the creative and proactive people who add flavour and spice to this fair city of ours’, implies that the rest of Canberra is of quite a different and inferior nature from the splendid creative types identified by ArrEmm. Stale white bread, perhaps. Or bland slugs.

I’m not talking about the bikes here, just this smug little introduction.

Oh thank Christ I wasn’t the only one who thought that! I thought I was just being a cynical prick, but it is a really off-putting little introduction up there isn’t it? As if the people I see tooling through the inner-north on ridiculous bikes are really a secret society of geniuses who are too ‘far-out’ for most of us ‘lames’ to get.

I like the bikes; they look like fun, and a cheap equivalent to sky-diving. Also a kind of moving sculpture.

But how did you know about the lamé? (Sorry.)

poetix said :

I found something about the the tone of this post really off-putting.

‘The Creatives are a group of like minded people share a love of creation’ is as fatuous as it is ungrammatical. Since when did being ‘like-minded’ with a group equal being creative? And ‘Creatives’ would like creation, wouldn’t they? Duh.

‘(B)e thankful for the creative and proactive people who add flavour and spice to this fair city of ours’, implies that the rest of Canberra is of quite a different and inferior nature from the splendid creative types identified by ArrEmm. Stale white bread, perhaps. Or bland slugs.

I’m not talking about the bikes here, just this smug little introduction.

Oh thank Christ I wasn’t the only one who thought that! I thought I was just being a cynical prick, but it is a really off-putting little introduction up there isn’t it? As if the people I see tooling through the inner-north on ridiculous bikes are really a secret society of geniuses who are too ‘far-out’ for most of us ‘lames’ to get.

I’m pretty sure they pedal their bikes not peddle them.

Jethro said :

Do creative poets rate differently?

Strangely, I think you can practise in whatever area of the arts you choose, without necessarily thinking you’re the cat’s lurid nightwear. (Note necessarily…)

I-filed said :

Jethro said :

Do creative poets rate differently?

If there’s a bunch of vain hipster smug poets with unjustifiable Attitude around the traps, do let me know. Vibe of the Australian Poetry Society and ACT Writers Centre is, well, inclusive & serious … they seem to be actually just getting on with their work without a layering of “lookerme”. I’d sooooo much prefer to be posturing as a Creative somewhere. How do I begin? Where do these soi-disant “creative, intelligent” people hang out? The hip cafe in Lonsdale St? Hardly – I keep seeing senior public servants there with no ersatz New York ‘tood whatsoever (serious, employed). The Front? Hardly!

Slam poetry anyone?

Jethro said :

Do creative poets rate differently?

If there’s a bunch of vain hipster smug poets with unjustifiable Attitude around the traps, do let me know. Vibe of the Australian Poetry Society and ACT Writers Centre is, well, inclusive & serious … they seem to be actually just getting on with their work without a layering of “lookerme”. I’d sooooo much prefer to be posturing as a Creative somewhere. How do I begin? Where do these soi-disant “creative, intelligent” people hang out? The hip cafe in Lonsdale St? Hardly – I keep seeing senior public servants there with no ersatz New York ‘tood whatsoever (serious, employed). The Front? Hardly!

poetix said :

I found something about the the tone of this post really off-putting.

‘The Creatives are a group of like minded people share a love of creation’ is as fatuous as it is ungrammatical. Since when did being ‘like-minded’ with a group equal being creative? And ‘Creatives’ would like creation, wouldn’t they? Duh.

‘(B)e thankful for the creative and proactive people who add flavour and spice to this fair city of ours’, implies that the rest of Canberra is of quite a different and inferior nature from the splendid creative types identified by ArrEmm. Stale white bread, perhaps. Or bland slugs.

I’m not talking about the bikes here, just this smug little introduction.

Do creative poets rate differently?

Rat Patrol…broke hipsters?

I found something about the the tone of this post really off-putting.

‘The Creatives are a group of like minded people share a love of creation’ is as fatuous as it is ungrammatical. Since when did being ‘like-minded’ with a group equal being creative? And ‘Creatives’ would like creation, wouldn’t they? Duh.

‘(B)e thankful for the creative and proactive people who add flavour and spice to this fair city of ours’, implies that the rest of Canberra is of quite a different and inferior nature from the splendid creative types identified by ArrEmm. Stale white bread, perhaps. Or bland slugs.

I’m not talking about the bikes here, just this smug little introduction.

I-filed said :

Can’t quite see how being creative quite warrants the “intelligent” descriptor … in my experience, people with uber-smarts are more likely to be self-deprecating. Calling yourself “intelligent” is a bit too like people (often of moderate intelligence) who join Mensa …

The whole concept of intelligence is obviously subjective.

The idea of multiple intelligences is probably the best way to approach it. Creativity being seen as a ‘type’ of intelligence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences

Can’t quite see how being creative quite warrants the “intelligent” descriptor … in my experience, people with uber-smarts are more likely to be self-deprecating. Calling yourself “intelligent” is a bit too like people (often of moderate intelligence) who join Mensa …

That said, the bikes are cool. Just please don’t have a chapter on knitting graffitists …

Jebus you wouldn’t want to fall off the top of one of those bikes without a helmet, you would completely eat it!

I also imagine that you would want to have ruddy good welding skills. Wouldn’t be a pretty sight when the upper half of the bike collapses and you are waiting in ER to have the lower half of the bike removed from up inside your colon.

I spose that is why Freak biking is fun though right?

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