This tip was passed on by my friend Sally, who was such an early Internet adopter that she actually has www.sally.com as her personal domain name. Think about that.

Yesterday the New York Times ran an article about a gang of teenagers in Richmond Hill, Queens (NY) who build outrageous two-wheeled sound systems to cruise the streets . They “engineer” up to a couple hundred kilos of speakers, batteries and electronics and a few thousand watts of amplification onto BMX bikes and then DJ from iPods at deafening volume. Cool. 

The kids are from Guyanese and Trinidadian backgrounds and apparently this is a popular hobby in various areas around the Caribbean.

Below are a few photos but you can read the full article in the Times. 

Who says kids are lazy and don’t get out of the house these days?

(all photos: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)

The only vague way that this video is related to workbikes is that it stars my wife (performance artist Kyoko Inatome), who carries tons of stuff on her Workcycles transport bike, often with a super handy Carry Freedom City Trailer behind as well. She abuses the hell out of that little trailer but hasn’t done it any harm yet. You can see a picture of “normal use” below.

But the video is just a must-see: Its from a Japanese TV advertisement for a new Philips video game player called “Mr. Shake” and it couldn’t be more Japanese. Just to note the Japanese subtitle in the picture above says “Kyaaaaaaa!!!”. 

Normally I only write about the most practical bicycles but here are some bikes (and other things) so beautifully impractical that they demand inclusion.

Frank Kloos, web-design extraordinaire of BUROFRANK fame turned me on to Chris Gilmour’s sculptures in packaging cardboard, the humblest of all materials. 

Gilmour sculpts iconic objects to an amazing degree of reality and often in life-size. Yet they are made of nothing but cardboard and glue, never containing any further supporting frame. I suppose there is more than a bit of irony in the re-creation of such timeless, durable objects in such a cheap material normally just used to package, protect and discard.

All photos from Chris Gilmour’s website. You can see much more on Gilmour’s own site here.

Photographer Peter van de Wijngaart has been renting a bakfiets (big old-fashioned dutch cargo trike) from us each week or so for months. I just figured he used the bakfiets to carry his equipment like a number of other Amsterdam photographers do.

Today I learned that the story is actually much more interesting: Peter rides around the city at night collecting furniture, televisions, kitchen equipment and other household items. He then creates and photographs improvised “rooms” on the street. They’re eerie but somehow also intimate and cozy. Have a look for yourself:

Peter van de Wijngaart’s “Buurt op Straat”

This post has nothing to do with bikes unless you consider that sketching is the communication equivalent of the bicycle: like a bike is just a few kilos of material that can do so much, a sketch is a minimalist drawing that can convey enormous amounts of information. Friends and colleagues know my propensity for sketching – sometimes it seems as if I cannot speak without a pen and paper to assist. However, my sketching technique is extremely crude in comparison to Mike Daikubara’s…

My former design colleague and friend Mike Yoshiaki Daikubara has just published Sketch Mike Sketch. Its a witty, entertaining (and beautifully illustrated) book about what’s usually a dry topic. Mike conveys his personal journey of honing his sketching skills through over 150 sketches from his daily life and travels.

This is no boring text book and sketching is a remarkably valuable communication skill. Of course its also just fun and an immensely satisfying hobby.

The book can be purchased online and you can preview the first 20 or so pages. Have a look:
Sketch Mike Sketch

May 9, 2007

By COLIN MOYNIHAN
To look at nearly any bicycle — from graceful racers with inch-thick tires to the clunky, rusted workhorses of food delivery fleets — is to behold a union of form and function that has existed for nearly two centuries. Bicycles, after all, have been transporting people at least since 1817, when Baron Karl von Drais invented a contraption in Germany that operated without pedals and required riders to push against the ground with their feet to propel themselves.

Look closely though, and there are aspects that transcend the utilitarian. People who ride regularly tend toward the philosophical when they describe why. Some view bicycles as political symbols with which to make a statement about carbon emissions from cars. Others are inspired by the mobility that bikes can provide in a crowded urban setting. Then there are those who are invigorated by the physicality of pedaling or simply savor the way the city looks when viewed from atop two wheels.

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