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Monthly Archive for December, 2011
Japanese comics, referred to as manga, have a well-earned reputation for being risque, perverse, violent and downright strange. They’re also known to cover a diverse range of subject matter, from basketball to bukkake. So it comes as little surprise that there’s this compendium of manga art depicting women and bicycles.
Via Bicycle Design, via Cyclelicio.us, via Halcyon Realms.
Indianapolis has come an incredibly long way since I was involved in local advocacy work. In just 5 years we’ve gone from ZERO bike lanes to 64 miles of them. 5 years ago it was a massive effort of wading through red tape just to get some bike racks around town, but now they’re everywhere. The awareness of all these changes is still a battle to be fought, however, as detailed in this piece by our local major newspaper.
The learning curve has been incredibly steep, but serious efforts are being made to get over this hump. In the meantime, we’ve been fortunate to have avoided a number of collisions and/or fatalities that could be occurring. Right now, as evidenced in the comment section of the linked article, we are only dealing with annoyed drivers who think painted bike images on the road are just surprisingly artistic smears of road kill.
Personally, I’m curious what efforts have been made in your areas to overcome the problems associated with a sudden burst of road sharing. If you want to share these ideas with our local advocacy group, Indy Cog, feel free to send them a message at their website.
The London Bike Show runs January 12-15 in conjunction with The Outdoors Show, The Active Travel Show and the Tullett Prebon London Boat Show and one £15 ticket covering entry to all four consumer shows. Check the list of exhibiting brands and if you’re in the area mark your calendar.
Bike taxis, aka pedicabs, are no joke. They’re a serious heavy-duty machine that will give your legs a workout even before you start carrying passengers. So you have to respect the drivers. In Austin, bike taxis are big business, with hundreds hitting the street on a busy night, working only for tips. The folks who put out The Dropout come from this scene, and so they decided to celebrate it with their 2012 calendar. From their website:
The Bike Taxi Babes 2012 Calendar is a full sized 11X11″ Wall Calendar where ever month features a new (or a couple new) biking beauties. These are real pedicab girls in Austin, TX in pinup styled outfits. It makes a great gift for anyone who likes hot babes and/or pedicabs.
The calendars are $15 each plus $5 domestic shipping. Check out www.biketaxibabes.com.
Now for something completely stupid. Ok, I’m being a little harsh, but these ideas by architect Martin Angelov seem more like an excuse to play with the shape merging capabilities of Illustrator than practical ways of progressing the value of the bicycle machine. On the other hand, how do we get to “the future” without dreaming big and absurd?
Kolelinia, a self-described “lab for alternative transportation, crazy ideas and bicycle lifestyle”, has developed and presented a few ideas for bike and transportation enthusiasts to consider. The image above shows his idea for an elevated bike lane that works on the principles of a high-wire walker, but with a few more safety features added. Another project details a Segway like bicycle, without the gyroscopic motor, called Halfbike, which has a little more practicality than the circus travel act.
Sure, these ideas are pretty pie in the sky, but sometimes these are how we make the leap to truly progressive and, ahem, grounded advancements in alternative travel.
Although sometimes they’re overkill, there are times when disc brakes just make sense. And most of the time they just don’t hurt. Either way, Surly has you covered with the Disc Trucker, a disc brake version of their venerable Long Haul Trucker. It’s designed with new dropouts and a redesigned fork. Visit www.surlybikes.com for more info.
From Bicycle Retailer:
Specialized president Mike Sinyard is warning the company’s retailers to beware of Amazon.com’s incursions into the bike market.
Sinyard sent a letter to dealers Tuesday evening to bring their attention to Amazon’s Price Check app, a smart-phone application that allows consumers to scan a bar code from a product in a store and then order it immediately from Amazon. It raises the specter of customers trying on shoes in a bike shop and then buying them, presumably for a lower price, from Amazon.
Modrobes is Canadian clothing company who not only sew their own garments in Canada, they’re dedicated to utilizing environmentally friendly fabrics. Many of their products use fabric that’s derived from recycled plastic bottles. They also make use of a fabric derived from eucalyptus trees called Eucalpytex (also known as Lyocell or Tencel).
As this video explains, the fabric is made from wood pulp, and it can be made with very little harm to the environment. What’s more, the source material is fast-growing and low-maintenance, so the land can produce more while using less water.
Of course environmentalism is important, but even if you don’t give a hoot, you’re likely to be impressed by the product. Out of the package I was impressed with the soft, smooth feel of the fabric. I appreciate the relaxed fit, which seems on par with most long-sleeve cotton t-shirts. I typically wear a size medium, but in retrospect I could have chose a size smaller. As promised the material wicked away sweat as well or better than my wool base layers. Eucalpytex is claimed to absorb 10% more moisture than wool and 50% more than cotton. It also dries quite quickly.
With any base layer, one of the most important features is its resistance to bacteria, which leads to foul smelling garments. I’m definitely impressed with this material’s antibacterial properties. For the sake of testing (and not because I’m a lazy slob, ahem) I exercised in this shirt six times in five days without washing it. Perhaps a more discerning nose might catch a faint whiff of body odor, but I certainly could not.
One last thing I would like to mention is that I appreciate the simple styling—no prominent logos, no silly colored panels, no pockets on the sleeve. Nope, nothing but a simple, good looking long sleeve shirt. It’s available in black, blue or grey in sizes S, M, L and XL.
The Base T Longsleeve retails for $52. Visit www.modrobes.com for more info.
Chaibaba is a three-piece Pittsburgh-based band and really some of the nicest folks you’ll ever meet. This is especially true of singer, bass-player and avid cyclist Ketan Bakrania, who is likely to invite you into his home and make you the best chai you’ve ever had. He and his brother, guitar player Vijay, were bicycle messengers at Triangle back in the day.
Bike parts seem to be a continuous source of material for artists and might even appreciate faster than other forms of art. Adding to the wealth of bike art is sculptor and ceramic artist Troy Neiman from Tucson, Arizona, who has created a handful of projects for local parks, neighborhoods and organizations.
It’s always nice to see the longevity of bikes extended further than their transportation lives, because it’s amusing to think that the hipster fixie you’re rolling today might actually just be a 100 pound chicken waiting its reincarnation.
Messenger bags are great for urban cycling, and messenger-style backpacks offer many of the same benefits along with the additional stability that two straps afford. Still, there comes a time when you need a backpack that’s designed with even more stability in mind, whether that’s for mountain biking, trick riding, etc. Yet, you still need to have a little bit of extra cargo capacity for a brief stop at the store on the way home. Enter the Osprey Talon 11.
I’ve been using this backpack for years. At first I only used it for all-day mountain bike adventures. In recent times it’s become the bag I grab when I ride my cross bike in Frick Park. Just today I headed out in the morning, crossed town, hit some dirt roads and a little singletrack, then stopped by the liquor store for a little holiday cheer. I carried a few bits of extra clothing, a lock and all the spares and tools I could ever need. I still had room for a 750 ml bottle, and should I have needed to shed a layer, I could easily have lashed it to the outside of the bag with the integrated elastic cables.
I’m not a big fan of extraneous pockets, but even though I seldom make use of all of the Talon’s compartments, I do appreciate the options. The pockets on the shoulder straps are just the right size for an iPod (though a little too tight for an iPhone). The side panel pockets are big enough for gloves or energy bars. And there’s a zippered exterior pocket, too. Inside the main compartment there’s a small pocket near the top that I keep my wallet in. Behind the main compartment is a hydration bladder pocket. The latest model features zippered pockets along the waist support, which mine didn’t have, and it includes device called the Lidlock, which can be used to carry your bike helmet when it’s not in use.
The bag makes extensive use of nylon mesh to improve ventilation. The contoured semi-rigid back panel really does a lot to relieve back sweat. The rest of the bag is made from lightweight technical nylon fabrics and Lycra, which keeps the weight down to scant pound and a half. The Talon 11 is water resistant to the point where you don’t have to panic if you get caught in a sudden downpour. It’s not waterproof, however.
Despite years of use, the bag shows practically no wear, save for a little accumulated dirt. All of the composite buckles are intact, the elastic hasn’t lost its snap and the zippers all work flawlessly.
The Talon 11 is available in two sizes, S/M and M/L, with the difference being 600 cubic inches of cargo room versus 700. The pack retails for $89. Visit
When I was a wee lass and David Byrne was fronting The Talking Heads I thought he was a big ‘ol geeky nerd and wanted nothing to do with him, but as I matured I came to appreciate his musical and cultural genius. Then add to that his involvement and promotion of bicycles and I was sold. I knew about his book The Bicycle Diaries, which is now available as an audiobook/T-shirt combo, but I wasn’t aware of so many other projects he has contributed to bike culture and city life in general.
For instance, there are his art bike racks in New York, of which the contract they are under have been extended past their year long deadline. Then there is the bike he bedazzled for auction to benefit the Exit Art organization. Byrne also traveled around Southern America giving a talk titled “Bikes, Cities and the Future Of Getting Around”, promoted with really amazing posters. He even donated the folding bike he rode in The Bicycle Diaries for auction to benefit the London Cycling Campaign.
I don’t know what he’s got coming up related to bicycles, but whatever he touches will probably be creative gold…and never the same as it ever was.
Custom headset caps are nothing new, they’ve been around since just after the threadless headset hit the market. Kustomcaps.com offers a number of standard caps, but also offers fully custom one off caps for $16 each. For the person that wants their own personal logo on their bike, this is one of the less expensive pro options. Discounts are available for those who may want to order a bunch of them for their club, shop or event.
Here’s a look at some of the I Love Riding in the City contributors for issue #29.
We want you to represent your city. Click here, and don’t forget to attach a high-res photo. A “high-res” photo, for those who don’t know, is typically 300dpi or greater at print size. If you’re not sure, try sending the unedited photo file that comes from a digital camera.
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