Last Saturday morning two masked men ran into our Veemarkt shop, put a gun to my head, waved a knife in my face, and moments later ran off with a few hundred euro in cash. I was alone since Wesley had just ridden a bakfiets full of trash off to the recycling center down the road. There wasn’t much I could do aside from stand still and subtly try to stay away from the knife the punk repeatedly threatened to slash me with without provoking him to actually do so. Several times he screamed at me “Where’s the cash?! Where’s the register?!” but it was obvious that his pistol wielding buddy had already cased the joint. He ran right upstairs to the correct drawer in the correct desk before I said a word.

It took me a moment to even realize what was going on. Is this a joke? Is a guy in a ski mask really pointing a pistol at my forehead? After a few seconds the neurons connected. Yes, that gun looks real enough. The big kitchen knife is certainly real. No I don’t have any prankster buddies with Moroccan-Amsterdam accents. And they’re yelling at me that it’s a robbery.

I’ve never been threatened so directly and dangerously before but I can easily imagine that different people could react in many ways. One might just be paralyzed from the fear. Or spurred into risky hero-action by the rush of adrenaline. I managed to keep it together. I just stood there quietly and tried to catalog as many characteristics of the two men as I could remember. I have a very good visual memory. I don’t mean to imply it’s easy under such stressful circumstances but I managed to get the following down:

Robber 1

Robber 2

Since customers don’t normally go upstairs Tom immediately recalled a suspicious incident a month or two ago: A young guy came in asking for change. Despite firmly telling him to stay downstairs he followed the employee upstairs, apparently to see where the cash is kept. When you run a couple retail shops all sorts of strange things happen but this one caught Tom’s attention for several reasons:

After last week’s robbery our descriptions of this character matched well, obviously given the limitations of what one can identify on a man wearing a woolen ski mask, a heavy sweatshirt with the hood over his head and baggy jeans.

When the men ran out (pistol guy falling and bumping down the stairs on his ass) I scrambled to find a phone and dial 1-1-2 as quickly as possible. I was running as soon as their backs were turned. Of course I later realized that one of the phones was actually sitting on the workbench within arm’s reach of where I’d been cornered. Oops, a ten second delay in calling the police. Phone in hand I ran outside hoping to see which direction they went. They were no longer visible but that in itself is an answer since there’s only one direction one could run and be out of sight within about 15 seconds. I assume they had a vehicle waiting around the corner and my vehicle prejudice says it was probably a scooter, but I didn’t actually hear or see anything to confirm that.

Reaching the police through the emergency line was frustrating though in retrospect it probably took less than a minute. The dispatcher couldn’t seem to understand why I wanted the police to come to the Veemarkt while another address (the billing address for the phone) was shown on her screen. But once they had the right address the police were there within a couple minutes. A better part of the day was then spent talking to the police, waiting for the forensics team to collect fingerprints and other samples, and then viewing a suspect through a one-way mirror. It was all pretty much like we see in movies and on TV except the criminals weren’t so polished and there was no dramatic music to make it more exciting.

This isn’t Workcycles’ first criminal incident this year. In fact it’s at least our third in just the last few months and it’s getting rather annoying to say the least:

A couple months ago and actually the last time I spent a Saturday at our Veemarkt shop a rather normal looking, well-dressed woman talked to an employee about Cargobikes, rode off on a test ride and never came back. Upon inspection we discovered that the wallet she’d left behind was filled with nothing but fake cards and small change.

We’ve also recently had two incidents at the Lijnbaansgracht shop that we can only guess were botched or failed robbery attempts. One unfortunately resulted in a fight between an employee and one of the perps, apparently instigated as a diversion.

So it’s clearly time for some changes to make it safer for everybody except the criminals. In the grand scheme the material losses are annoying but minimal. The risk of an employee, customer, family member (my kids are often in the shops) or bystander getting hurt has to be minimized.

Change number one: Eliminate cash from Workcycles’ stores.
In the Netherlands this is not so difficult. The locals already pay for most things with debit cards instead of cash. Tourists almost always have credit cards. The only significant challenge is the rentals, for which we’ve always taken a cash deposit. That’s always been an annoyance but neither the debit card nor the Dutch credit card system allow reserving deposits or making refunds. We now have an alternative credit card system that we can employ for deposits but many Dutch simply don’t have credit cards. Whatever. We’ll figure it out and then make sure that even semi-literate cretins can see that there’s no cash to take here. It’ll make our bookkeeping a good deal simpler too.

Change number two: Surveillance cameras in our shops.
I’ve always been opposed to such things but it’s both a good deterrent and would have helped the police in each of the cases above. Of course I mean REAL cameras and recording systems, not the ubiquitous fake cameras with red LED light one buys for a few euro on the Internet. Then we’ll somehow make it very clear that there are cameras. Yuck, but we need it.

Change number three: Silent alarms.
After last Saturday’s robbery I thought through the incident about 75,000 times finally coming to the conclusion that, under the circumstances, I couldn’t have done anything much differently or significantly better. I wish I could have remembered even more, noted the perp’s shoes for example but that doesn’t make much difference anyway. What I really missed was a way to silently alert the police that I was in danger, and in most of the incidents we’ve had the criminals were around longer than it took the police to reach us. I tinkered unsuccessfully with my iPhone to find a way to make an emergency call from my back pocket. That would be handy but does such an app exist? Even if it does we can’t count on every employee always having a certain type of mobile phone in their pocket. No, much better would be “panic buttons” discretely located in various places. Considering that one push of the button brings the police some care would have to be taken to ensure that they don’t get touched accidentally.

Meanwhile the police are apparently working on the case and have two potential suspects. I’ve complained about the Amsterdam police in these pages before but it’s clear that they do take the matter very seriously when weapons are involved. I’m OK and relieved not only of several hundred euro, but also that nobody was hurt.

Much of the world is now (re)discovering the joy and practicality of cycling for transportation, often blissfully unaware of how it’s been done elsewhere for a century. So, to use an obvious expression, they’re reinventing the wheel with, as a few examples…

Thus the photo above of Stephan, Workcycles shop foreman and generally amazingly handy guy… carrying a small tree in a box a few kilometers home after work. His bike of choice? A filthy but perfectly functional, pre-war Magneet Opafiets. Not only is no special bike or carrier necessary, Stephan didn’t even bother to secure the tree. Nope, just like the Dutch carry a crate of beer balanced on the rear carrier Stephan rode home with one hand on the handlebar (Yay for coaster brakes!) and one hand steadying the tree. I was cycling the other direction to pick up my son at the daycare but I imagine Stephan just rode a little slower than usual. I’m sure the time “lost” by cycling slowly was more than compensated by the time “saved” in skipping the special preparations… if those couple minutes are even relevant.

Stephan “maintaining” his dirty, old Magneet

Perhaps more relevant is that riding that tree home by bike was the only imaginable transport solution. Had it been bigger he would have borrowed a bakfiets for the evening. Every Workcycles employee cycles to work every day, not out of idealism or self-sacrifice but because that’s just the best way to get around. Actually from our perspective its the only way to get around. In a town where it’s as normal as day and night to ride bikes one hardly even knows how to go about their business by another mode of transport. I’d rather just get wet on a rainy day than search out the best way to go by tram. I find driving a car annoying only partially because of the traffic. The bigger issue is that I just don’t know which routes to take, what the parking rules are in various districts or even how to operate the strange parking ticket machines. All that and we don’t have a car anyway. My morning route consists of cycling my son two kilometers to the daycare and then continuing on about a kilometer to work. Evening is the opposite. We do this in sun, rain, snow and winter darkness and I’ve never really considered another way to do it. Why would I? Cycling with Pascal is one of the highlights of the day.

Another difference between an established cycling culture and the emerging one is that people don’t look for excuses to ride, nor do they often gather for the purpose of riding (a certain type of) bikes. Critical Mass, Tweed rides, Cycle Chic rides, bicycle house moves etc are certainly all harmless fun and, depending on your perspective, good or bad for the promotion of cycling. But for me there’s just something artificial or staged about them. Take the tweed/cycle chic rides for example: I totally understand and respect the reaction to the dominant male, techno-equipped lycra/carbon/helmet cycling look and attitude of the emerging cycling culture. But isn’t there a danger that the tweed chic costume thing just makes cycling from A to B to C too elitist and class stratified in the other direction?

In any case tweed/chic rides, critical masses and the likes are irrelevant in the Netherlands, perhaps much in the same way fixed gear bikes won’t catch on here; These are artifacts of an emerging cycle culture.

This doesn’t mean you won’t see groups of cyclists riding together or just headed for the same destination in an established cycling culture. Actually you do all the time:

Groups of sports fans headed to watch or participate in event

School kids riding to school

Even hundreds of people dressed as angels going to a big party with a religious theme

Come to think of it it’s very common for one to move their furnishings from one apartment to another by bike, more specifically with a big bakfiets. However it’s just called “moving” and not a “carfree bike move”.

Moving by bike in Amsterdam:

A “Car Free Bike Move” in Portland:

The difference in the examples above is that riding bicycles is being enjoyed but not celebrated; it’s just the means to another end.

Thanks to everybody who voted Workcycles the Best Bike Shop in Amsterdam!

That’s no mean feat in the bicycle capitol of the world with no less than 250 bike shops and half a million daily cyclists.

Workcycles has been nominated “Best Bike Shop of Amsterdam”. We certainly believe that’s true so if you’d like to make this an official reality we’d really appreciate your vote. And there’s a bonus: Voting enters you to win a specially built Workcycles bike!

Click here to vote and register to win the Workcycles bike. “Best bike shop” appears on page 10 so you can either vote for all of your Amsterdam favorites or just skip to the important part.

Of course you needn’t live in Amsterdam to vote but you probably will need to visit to pick up the bike… not that visiting Amsterdam is such a bad thing. You’ll already have a bike to use here too!

Being an American who’s founded and runs a bike company in the Netherlands, bicycle capital of the world is considered newsworthy by some so I periodically get interviewed. I’m certainly happy to have the opportunity both as marketing value for WorkCycles and also just to speak my mind. I’ll admit that it’s also fun to act like a mini celebrity in my little pond.

Here on “Bespoke” of Fourth Floor Distribution in Toronto, CA the topic revolves largely around the issue of quality, something WorkCycles is widely known to be a bit obsessive about: Noshing in A’dam. The Workcycles interview

“Red Kite Prayer” is a blog for the cycling enthusiasts that many amongst the ranks of transportation cycling proponents decry… entirely missing the point of course. Most of the articles there involve the professional racing scene, high-end racing bikes etc. It happens to be amongst the best reads in the business, with humor, engaging discussions and nice photography. Just to make my point for the 100th time: Transportation cycling and recreational/competitive cycling are not at odds with each other. They’re just different.

This interview was different from most in that the interviewer (Alex Armitage, coincidentally the brother of a peloton acquaintance from my racing days) approaches the topic from the perspective of a bike enthusiast accustomed to high-end road bikes. It’s an interesting read:
Builder Interview: Living Life as a WorkCycles Bike, Part I
Builder Interview: Living Life as a WorkCycles Bike, Part II

The Vogelvrije Fietser, monthly magazine of the Dutch Cyclists Union (Fietsersbond) recently talked to me about some of the industrial applications for Workcycles bikes. You can download it here. It’s in Dutch but the photos are great.

For our French speaking readers I was interviewed by Paris-based blog Je Pedale.

The September issue of German travel magazine GEO Saison has a article in which I give a little tour of some of my favorite spots around Amsterdam’s cozy Jordaan district (where WorkCycles larger shop is). Unfortunately it’s not available online.

In a couple months an interview with myself and Marc of Amsterdamize will appear in Journal de Nimes.

Roughly: “It’s gonna be such a year!”

Thanks to our super photographer Martin van Welzen for the New Year’s card.

And thanks to all of you for making 2009 such a year!

Groeten,
Henry

Before I moved to the Netherlands in 2000 I was hardly aware of carrier bikes, especially anything more exotic than a Schwinn Cycle Truck or Worksman hot dog cart. Even in cycling capital of the world Groningen where I first lived here transport bikes were very uncommon. The streets were swarming seas of cyclists but everybody just rode normal Dutch bikes. The only unmotorized bakfiets I recall was a loaner at a second hand shop called Mamamini. It was big, old fashioned bakfiets just we sell at WorkCycles. Mamamini even shows the bakfietsen in front of their stores on their website. But somehow that trike didn’t interest me. Maybe it just seemed too absurd, as if it were just a prop. In reality these bikes are actually quite easy to ride as long as the terrain is flat.

[Show as slideshow]

But in Groningen I met Marjette, crazy about bikes, probably ten centimeters taller than me and fond of riding her bike in absurdly short skirts. Marjette had (and still has) a hand-built carrier bike of a type I’d never seen before (not that that was a challenge). It’s a Long John type bike cobbled together from an old city bike, a folding bike, an upright from a heavy duty shelving system and random scrapyard bits. Most importantly it has a big rack in the middle to carry stuff: a couple crates of beer, a fridge or a chest of drawers etc. It might be crude but it is strong. The steering system was very cranky making the bike difficult to ride but after tweaking it here and there and lubricating the pivot points it was much more manageable. In any case that relationship didn’t last long but the obsession with transportfietsen stuck with me.

How Marjette got this bike is a good story in itself. It was made by the neighbor of an acquaintance who lived on a boat in the Oostelijk Eilanden (eastern islands) area of Amsterdam. This is the 19th century docklands area where WorkCycles Veemart shop is also located. Like a handful of the area residents this guy had a yard full of rusty, old stuff. Marjette brought him 20 liters of paint from a Groningen paint factory where you could get “seconds” paint for free. As payment Marjette could choose something from the scrap pile. She chose the Long John bike and believes the guy was very happy she didn’t go for the motorcycle next to it.

Just browsing through the old photos here, and I came across some nice oldies: January 2004, WorkCycles‘ first shop in the Veemarkt in Amsterdam under construction. We’d cleaned it up from it’s former (extremely dirty) life as a truck garage and installed the platform that’s still in place.

The large beams were purchased new but the rest of the wood was second hand. I bought an entire truckload of used “betonplex” which is an extremely tough and water resistant coated plywood. It’s a very expensive material and I scored it cheaply but… it was covered in concrete molding residue and had thousands of (bend and broken) screws to be removed. It took a friend and I a couple weeks to clean these boards but to this day almost all of the flooring and shelving in the shop is from this purchase.

A few bikes are visible: Gustav Transport trike on the right and on the left a handful of Monarks including a Long John. Except for those big beams, the Gustav transported practically everything needed to build this shop. Sometimes it was loaded with 250+ kg of materials. That bike remained in rental service until 2008 when Melissa Halley purchased it. I’ll tell that story in a following post.

June 2004, WorkCycles Veemarkt shop is open for business. It wasn’t busy yet and here artist friends Sietske Tjallingii and Eric Staller are using it as HQ for a film shoot nearby. I was happy to participate, especially considering the attractive women involved. Kyoko and I didn’t meet until a couple years later.

June 2004, Gustav Transport cargo trike in service as a rolling film platform… for the Conference Bike. That’s me pedaling. They filmed this movie about the CoBi.

Above a couple more recent pics of the WorkCycles Veemarkt shop from Marc of Amsterdamize fame.

Why bother advertising when your customers make sweet videos like this with testimonials about your bikes? Thanks very much Mark and Mark and I wish you many years of pleasure from your new WorkCycles Secret Service!

You might be wondering what this plan is that enabled Mark to buy the bike. In the Netherlands there is a tax law (called “fietsenplan” or “bedrijfsfiets”) to promote cycling. An employee can purchase a bike once every three years with pre-tax salary. You thus save 35-50% on the cost of the bike, depending on your tax bracket. The rule is very straightforward and the only real limitation is that the ruling only applies to the first €750 of bicycle price and €250 of accessories though the tax service (“belastingdienst”) doesn’t seem to care how it gets added up. The bike can cost more but you have to pay out of pocket for the portion over €1000. This law applies to all employed people in the country so, as you can imagine, many of the bikes WorkCycles sells locally are purchased under this ruling.

The strangest thing happened the other day: I arrive at WorkCycles Lijnbaansgracht to open the shop and I find that our front doors have been graffitied, or rather artfully painted actually… with a skeletons and bikes theme. It’s kinda strange and creepy but heck, it’s funny, bicycle related, eye-catching and far better than the stupid tagging we were getting every week!

It says “Posada” in big letters, I assume a reference to the Mexican artist famous for murals in a similar style. It seems unlikely Posada did this one considering that he died in 1913.

In small letters in the lower right it says “Abner” and “Slacker” which I assume to be this guy: www.abnerpreis.com/

Strange.