The Club
A private membership, rooted in one city and belonging to people everywhere.
Verona Cycling Club exists because the culture that made the bicycle beautiful is held by very few people, and because a great many people who love it have nowhere to put that love.
Why we exist
Two problems that turn out to be one.
The first problem is on the supply side, and it is not sentimental. The people who can build a steel frame by hand are ageing. Apprenticeship — the only way this knowledge has ever been transmitted — has largely stopped paying for itself, because the years it takes to reach competence cannot be justified by what the work earns at the end of them. Workshops close. Marques change hands. What goes is not a style; it is a body of tacit knowledge that no manual can reconstruct.
The second problem is on the demand side, and it is almost the opposite. A large number of people have made cycling part of who they are rather than part of what they do. They are looking for craftsmanship, for context, for company that takes the thing as seriously as they do — and they are offered apparel, tours, and a leaderboard.
VCC exists because each of these is the other’s answer. The audience can fund the craft. The craft is the only thing that can give the audience what it is actually looking for, which is not access but meaning.
Plainly
VCC is. VCC is not.
This club sits one degree away from three things it is regularly mistaken for. Rather than let that resolve itself slowly, here it is at the start.
VCC is
- A private membership, with a door on it and a standard behind the door.
- Headquartered in Verona, and global in who belongs to it.
- A way into working ateliers, and to the people who work in them.
- A calendar of rides, tables, workshops and journeys, run at a scale where you know everyone by the second morning.
- The thing that funds L’Accademia, and therefore the apprenticeships.
VCC is not
- A tour operator. We are not selling you a week; we are giving you somewhere to belong between the weeks.
- A bicycle brand’s owners’ club. You do not need to own anything to join, and membership does not entitle you to a frame.
- A charity. Membership is a membership. If that changes we will say so, with the registration details.
- A performance platform. There is no leaderboard here, and there will not be one.
- A local club. Verona is the home, not the catchment.
Member life
The year, roughly.
The programme is being scheduled and we have not published dates we cannot yet honour. What we can describe is the shape of a year, because that is set by the place rather than by us.
- Spring
- The season opens on Garda while the water is still cold and the shore road is still empty. The first atelier mornings; the first long table.
- Summer
- Early starts or high ground — Lessinia, Monte Baldo. Members come with families; the afternoons belong to the lake rather than the bike.
- Autumn
- The best weeks of the year. Valpolicella during and after the harvest, the retreat above the lake, and the workshops that need a room with the doors shut.
- Winter
- Verona itself: archives, talks, dinners, and the unglamorous months in which apprentices actually learn. Members travel less and read more.
Local and global
One home. Members everywhere.
A club with fifteen clubhouses is a hotel group. A club with one home is a club. VCC is deliberately the second: Verona is where the ateliers are, where the roads are, and where members come — repeatedly, and increasingly with other members.
Between visits, the club lives wherever its members do. Over time that means a member platform for the community, the routes, the groups and the bookings, and gatherings hosted by members in their own cities. Those are described here as intentions, because that is what they currently are.
What will not change is the centre of gravity. If you want to understand this club, you have to come to Verona. That is a feature.
How we behave
Four commitments, stated as behaviour.
Say the true thing
If a date is not fixed, we do not publish it. If a partnership is not signed, we do not name it. This costs us marketing copy and buys us the only currency that matters in a membership.
Access, not spectacle
A demonstration staged for visitors is worth less than a Tuesday morning in a working shop. We would rather take four people somewhere real than forty somewhere arranged.
Small rooms
Every gathering is sized so that nobody stands at the edge of it. Growth happens by adding rooms, not by filling them further.
Leave it better
The measure of the club is not how many members it has in 2030. It is how many people can still build a steel frame in 2050.
The roads are only the beginning.
The Founding Circle is open by application. Amico is open to anyone.