Tall bikes will save the world

The Zenga brothers grew up in a rural small town northeast of Toronto surrounded by farm fields, cows and horses. Sure, they could have ridden their horses around town and nobody would have batted an eye. But they had different ideas. And a lot of them began when they got a simple Lincoln Electric wire feed MIG welder and they started splicing together random parts to create wild works of bicycle art. 
 
“Discarded bikes are free so we just started chopping them up and building whatever came to mind,” says Benny Zenga. “We built low riders, choppers, and tandems. We experimented with multi-wheeled and arm-powered bikes but the tall bike proved to be the ultimate two-wheeled human-powered machine.”
 
Luckily, the Zenga’s, eight siblings all told, seven brothers and one sister, also had a penchant for video cameras, and their story is chronicled in a cool documentary aptly titled Tall Bikes Will Save The World complete with historical footage of many of their early creations. 

“We grew up with a video camera, which was rare in the ‘80s, because not everyone had them as we do now. Our first video camera was tethered to a full-sized VHS recorder which was like a cinder block,” Zenga says. “Dad bought us the extension cable so we could bring the camera all around the house and even out the window into the side yard. Once the Sony Handicam came out, with much smaller tapes, the video camera was always in my backpack and with us on all our adventures.”
 
Much of their adventures involved figuring out how to ride these elaborate creations and then showcasing them around a town used to seeing horses and cows out in the fields, not someone pedaling a bicycle sitting 10 feet in the air. 

“Riding a tall bike anywhere is fun but in our small town it was especially wild because we built an entire fleet of tall bikes and when we’d hit the streets it was an instant parade,” says Zenga.

There was no blueprint for what the Zenga’s were attempting aside from a ‘zine out of the Portland dubbed Chunk 666 that inspired them, but they figured it out the old-fashioned way. 
 
“Trial and error is the only way to build a tall bike. Because tall bikes are built using discarded bikes, there is no set way to build one. You are always problem-solving,” Zenga explains. “We have come up with some great techniques over the years but we’re not bound to them. The goal is to surprise ourselves with some sort of new invention every time we build a tall bike.”
 
Benny Zenga moved to Toronto and eventually Vancouver, while the siblings have kept up an art collective with several different projects and streams of work including Zenga Bros., Three Beans, and the Winking Circle since 1999.
 
Zenga says tall bikes might appear awkward and difficult to ride, but once one is perched up high, apparently it’s quite natural. 

“The actual handling of the tall bike isn’t any more difficult to ride than a regular bike,” Zenga says. “We build our tall bikes with a longer wheelbase so they handle really well. Imagine a regular bike is a Porsche, our tall bikes are like Cadillacs. They cruise.”
 
There isn’t a big global tall bike scene, says Zenga, but there is a group in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Also, there are tall bike gangs in New York City and, of course, Portland. 
 
Since the tall bike projects got rolling, Zenga has also traveled extensively on a tall bike including a trip across Africa with his brother Christian. 
 
“Travelling by tall bike is the best. It truly is,” he says. “Anyone who has traveled by bicycle can wax poetic for hours about how great cycle touring is and touring on a tall bike adds an additional layer of wonder, an endless stream of uplifting interactions, and a comedic edge to the struggle. I can’t exaggerate enough; the tall bike is an exaggerated bicycle.”
 
In addition to his passion for tall bikes, Zenga is also a filmmaker who directs, shoots, and edits documentaries such as the new film Seen Him featuring professional skateboarder Andy Anderson. And, he still rides his tall bike across Vancouver to his studio a few times a week. Although, with six-month-old twins, he has a new focus over the short term. 
 
But, he adds that anyone interested in getting into tall bikes should not hesitate. 
 
“The excitement of dreaming up new designs, the challenge of building, and the joy of riding tall bikes continue to have a positive impact on my life,” he says.