Chris McAuliffe

Fringe to Famous examines exchange between small scenes of cultural production and mainstream institutions and markets.Drawing on Australian examples in music, streetwear, comedy, screen and digital games, it argues that there has been much greater crossover between the two than is generally recognized.The book resists a tendency to represent fringe and mainstream as abstract opposites, bringing a focus instead to concrete historical formations. It offers an alternative both to romantic celebrations of a ‘pure’ fringe – discredited now by half a century of critical responses to the counterculture – and to an increasingly hardened anti-romantic reaction.Drawing on extensive original interviews, Fringe to Famous offers an overview of transformations in Australian culture since the 1980s, concluding with suggestions for cultural policy ‘after the creative industries’. It proposes an idea of ‘generative hybridity’ between fringe and mainstream that allows us to imagine new possibilities for arts and culture in the 2020s and beyond.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Chicago was the center of bicycle manufacturing in the United States. As an early industrial and transportation center, two-thirds of all bicycles manufactured in the United States were from Chicago--it was the Detroit of bike manufacturing. For decades, Chicago was also a center for cycling track and road racing. Six-day races drew capacity crowds at the Chicago Stadium, Chicago Coliseum, and International Amphitheatre. Road and track competitions were also held at Sherman Park, the Humboldt Park Velodrome, and on Chicago's famed Magnificent Mile. Today, Chicago is a hub for recreational cyclists. Hundreds of miles of bike lanes, rail to trails, and bike paths, such as the Illinois Prairie Path, the Bloomingdale Trail, Lakefront Path, and the Big Marsh, provide cyclists with numerous recreational and commuting options in a crowded urban environment. Chicago was awarded Bicycling Magazine's Best Bike City of 2016.