On the Steve Allen show. Very strange to see Zappa at 22 years old and still unknown.

Hong Kong: World's Worst Cycling City

I didn’t know that David Byrne has a blog, but upon finding it I wasn’t surprised to find that it’s interesting, beautifully written, and demonstrates Byrne’s interest in cycling.

In his post “Hong Kong – The Future of No Future” Byrne describes cycling around Hong Kong, with fascinating social commentary along the way. He finally congratulates “…Hong Kong for being the worst city for cyclists that I have encountered in the whole world. That’s saying a lot. Worse than Napoli, worse than Istanbul. Worse than Manila! Hong Kong takes the prize.”

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.

Introducing the “Waffle Bike”. Complete with a refrigerator, machete, two shotguns, public announcement system, a chicken coop (to provide eggs) and of course a waffle maker. I can’t believe it – I had exactly the same idea but they made it first!

Is it a picnic table or is it a bike? You decide. Creativity from Boulder, Colorado.

I returned from our New Year’s holiday to find this great drawing in my mailbox. Its from Sjoerd at DoubleDutch in Frauenfeld, Switzerland who sell the interesting combination of dutchtub and Dutch bikes, including WorkCycles.

Anybody who’s spent a New Year’s in Amsterdam understands the significance of the fireworks in the box of the bakfiets: Amsterdam is an wild and crazy war zone of everybody and their grandmother sending off impressively big fireworks in the street, from apartment windows, over the canals, from your bicycle’s carrier, in your mailbox… you get the idea. I’ve done New Year’s in many cities and nothing even comes in the same territory as the random and unorganized violence of Amsterdam’s fireworks.

I’m only curious about the 90 degree placement of the cranks on Sjoerd’s bakfiets. Is this a new system for the mountainous terrain of Switzerland?

Keeping with the international spirit today here’s a beautiful video featuring “Dekochari”, Japanese bikes decorated with enormous amounts of lights and effects, and beautiful music by Bunta Sugawara and Kinya Aikawa. I’m guessing that “deko” stands for “decorated” and “chari” for “chariot” like for “mamachari” which are the women’s bikes with built in baby seats for one or two kids. Kyoko could provide more info here but she’s sleeping.

These bikes have lots in common with the Queens, NY “boom box bikes” I wrote about in 2007.

And there’s also more than a little in common with the crazy, dressed-up Japanese kids bikes of the 70’s, also from about a year ago here.

Thanks to customer Wendy Monroe for the tip!

From Design Boom.

This cargo trike in Barcelona is equipped with rather sophisticated electronics is used to draw giant “graffiti” with light on buildings. See a video of the graffiti bike in action here.

More photos of their laser graffiti can be found here on Flicker.

The Dutch are doing “L.A.S.E.R. Tag” too, though in a reversal of roles… from a Hymer camper van.

Wanna get in on the action? Here you can find LASER Tag how-to information and source code.

I guess I’m kinda out of the “bike culture” loop here in Amsterdam where most people just ride bikes without thinking or caring about them. My WorkCycles coworkers and I are definitely exceptions in this regard, even amongst our bicycle industry colleagues who too often just aren’t crazy about cycling. I suppose this explains how I’d missed the Yehuda Moon comic, now even with a story about a Bakfiets Cargobike riding mom. Nice stuff with some good inside digs interspersed. Rick Smith, the artist “gets it”.

Thanks to the Dutch Bike Co. Seattle Blog for the tip!