The bicycle revolution. The revolution on a bicycle. The revolution by bicycle. Because the bicycle, for more than 200 years, has been revolutionary.

Bike Revolution, via Pola 35, Francavilla al Mare (tel. 389/9417008, bikerevolution2024@gmail.com). Two years ago, Saturday, April 13, 2024, the bike workshop. One year ago, Thursday, April 10, 2025, the cycle bar. The same philosophy: the bike is the most revolutionary thing you can imagine, it was for Baron Karl von Drais who first designed a machine to run fast (yet there was something to improve: he hadn't thought about pedals), and it's even more so now among cargo bikes and gravel bikes, among folding bikes and vintage ones, among "tool" and "custom" bikes... The bike to pedal and fly, to drink and eat. The bike to dream. The bike to inhabit and live.

Two partners, fifty-fifty: one who knows everything about bikes, Alessandro Di Paolo, and the other who knows everything about accounts, Benedetto De Rubeis. A great tandem, the first one who finds and chooses the path, the second who believes in it and accompanies him, and both pedaling. Di Paolo, a globe-trotting native of Francavilla, spent six years in Canada (Toronto), three in the Netherlands (Amsterdam), two in the Czech Republic (Prague), and two in Austria (Vienna), was born a carpenter: "When I started building handlebars with wood, then fenders, I realized that my destination (and my partner) was the bicycle. The bicycle not just as an object, means, tool, but as an objective, purpose, symbol. Then came the idea of returning home, not as a nostalgic operation, but as cycling sustainability. A city – Francavilla is at the southern gate of Pescara, on one side the Costa dei Trabocchi cycle path, on the other the bike path that climbs up to Ancona – where the bicycle would be grammar and map, possibility and opportunity, philosophy and style".

So: in Francavilla al Mare, just steps from the Adriatic. Repair, rental, sales. From city bikes to travel bikes through racing and mountain bikes. Above all, a meeting and transit point, between conversations and presentations (also for Macondo – the festival of narratives), where everything recalled the original idea and figure of the cycle carpenter. Di Paolo: "I started with furnishings: tables incorporating bicycle parts, from chainrings to sprockets, to bicycles hung or embedded. I continued with a beer menu (Lo Squalo Nibali, Coppi, Moser, Contador... and then Magroni as a tribute to a joke by Riccardo Magrini himself, who declared on Eurosport that he was proud and honored by the mention) and a small library (in progress, dedicated only to books about bicycles, from travels to biographies), from jerseys (framed, a stars-and-stripes Brooklyn) to other memorabilia (ah, the Eroica!). And we're not stopping here. We're already thinking and working on other... revolutionary points".

There you have it. "Repair and rent, advise and direct – lists Di Paolo, who boasts a past with fixed-gear bikes and as a bike polo player – and above all, transfer emotions. When I notice someone's eyes light up, I feel I've reached my goal". Victory.