Nope, I’m entirely unclear on what Ryan Doyle’s creation, dubbed the “Hell-a-Copter” is and does. I see something that looks like a giant, donut shaped, glazed balloon with lights, a frame suspended below, a hipster Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker and his legs spinning what seems to be a sort of horizontal propeller. It’s got pedals and art so it earns a mention on B.E.M. It’s intriguing though doesn’t seem nearly as hellish as another Doyle creation called “The Regurgitator”. Wanna get spun around faster than the feet of a Goldsprint competitor? Then you’d better hook up with Doyle and his cronies. Have a look below. Just thinking about it makes me wanna toss my cookies.

In any case you can go check all of this out… and RIDE them too during Doyle’s three part exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach, December 3-6 2009. The details:

Squishy Universe Gallery
150 NW 24th Street
Miami, FL 33127

ps: I think I might have seen Doyle in Amsterdam years ago when they did the “Tall Bike Jousting World Championships” here. Here are a couple pics, somewhat more interesting than the event actually was.

Sint Intocht 2009, originally uploaded by Tom Resink Photography.

Sorry for the lack of new posts in the last two weeks. I’ve been traveling in Japan with my family. We’re visiting family and friends and talking about cycling wherever possible. I’ve also been taking lots and lots of photos. Check them out here in my Flickr Japan set

I’ve got lots to show and write about but frankly, being in a place is more interesting and productive than writing about it. So the blog posts about Japan will come in due time.

In the meanwhile here’s a little tidbit about WorkCycles happenings in Amsterdam: Once again Sinterklaas (the skinnier, less politically correct, Dutch version of Santa Claus) rode into Amsterdam from Spain accompanied by a bevy of Zwarte Pieten on WorkCycles bikes. It’s become their preferred mode of transportation, probably for their reliability, classic looks and ability to carry tons of sweets for both the kids and horses.

Tom Resink, WorkCycles mechanic and damn good photographer took the pics that you can check out in Tom’s Flickr photo set

I can’t describe this event any better than the description on the New Amsterdam Bike Slam website:

Four hundred years after Henry Hudson’s arrival in Manhattan, two teams of Dutch and American planners & designers face off in a battle for the future of New York City transportation. Their challenge: find ways to bring NYC cycling up to the level of the Netherlands, the only country with more bikes than people.

Spread over four days, the New Amsterdam Bike Slam is a live design battle, a dance party, a world-class transportation summit, a bridge across the Atlantic, and a path forward.

New Amsterdam Bike Slam is an initiative of Amsterdam Cycling to Sustainability, produced by Vélo Mondial and Transportation Alternatives, with funding from Transumo and the City of Amsterdam.

Party favors provided by New Amsterdam Records.

And some more text blatantly copied from the NABS site:

Inspired by poetry slams, reality television competitions, and celebrity death matches, the New Amsterdam Bike Slam is a unique battle for the future of New York City transportation.

On the evening of Saturday, September 12th, after three days of intense preparation, two teams of accomplished Dutch and American planners & designers will face off in a live competition, part performance art and part debate. Combining insights from marketing, urban planning, and design, each team will present its most creative, compelling vision to increase bicycling in lower Manhattan and the New York Harbor District.

Over three challenging rounds, each team will defend its proposals in front of a panel of expert judges and a live audience. At the end of the evening, the judges will declare a winner, with the most innovative and practical plan for making New York, and New Yorkers, more bicycle-friendly.

The next morning at Battery Park, Mr. Job Cohen, Mayor of Amsterdam – one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the world – will convey the prize to the winning team: free Dutch bicycles, courtesy of WORKCYCLES.

I’ll add that, though not noted on the NABS website, those WORKCYCLES bike prizes are being donated in part by Dutch Bike Co, who’ll be opening their Dutch Bike New York City shop in early 2010.

The activities and festivities begin on Friday, 11 September and continue through Sunday 13 september. Check it out at New Amsterdam Bike Slam.

This past week Richard and I made our annual mandatory pilgrimage to zeppelin land Friedrichshafen, Germany for the gargantuan European bicycle industry orgy known as Eurobike. It’s probably the thousandth such bike expo I’ve attended thus my lack of enthusiasm and low expectations. I’ve simply come to learn that it’s pretty much all been done before and for the most part all that changes are the fashion materials (titanium is out, boron is nowhere to be found and carbon nanotubes are in) and attempts to cash in on current trends and themes. More about these later. In any case 99.9999999% of the displays focus on racing bikes, mountain bikes BMX bikes and other sporting goods which, while fun to look at, are irrelevant to this blog and to WorkCycles. As expected I’ll show you some stuff you won’t find in the glossy rags.

Upon arriving at the fairground shuttle bus stop we were greeted by a motley pack of WOOF bikes from Amsterdam via China. These one-trick dogs were introduced with massive press attention a few months ago and have already become the scourge of Amsterdam. You can hardly throw a rock with hitting a fashion victim riding one. Sorry but I just fail to see the attraction to this cheaply made bike missing most of what makes a Dutch bike great, and the feeble output of the built-in LED lights doesn’t do much to sweeten the deal.

Cheaply made you say? How’s this for attention to detail?… Coaster brake only combined with forward entry fork ends, no axle/chain tensioners and not even hard serrated washers to hold the axle in place: Good luck keeping that rear wheel in place and better luck stopping when your wheel slips forward dropping the chain. At least you won’t break the headlamp when you crash.

But that wasn’t the last we saw of WOOF. Again and again they reared their ugly headlamps.

And just when we thought it was safe sailing we found that the WOOF had won (or perhaps purchased) a Eurobike award. The nature of the award I didn’t see nor care. We did note though that the bike displayed on the award stand was completely different from the nasty production models.

If you’re going to make something pointless, please at least do it with a sense of humor such as these grips from OGK in Japan. For those unfamiliar with (or too young to remember) OGK, they’ve been around forever. Back in the day when yours truly rode a BMX bike, OGK made lots of BMX grips as well as helmets and other molded plastic goods.

We’ve got Sumo wrestlers, geisha girls, bacteria and German flags.

(more…)

carrier to noise ratio

Pascal, sweetheart Billie Divine and a bunch of other kids participate in one of Kyoko Inatome’s performance art pieces. Transportation arranged with the WorkCycles KDV bicycle kiddy bus.

Check out the slideshow:

Paul Steely White has had a long day

New York celebrity speaker and bike transport advocate Paul Steel White of Transportation Alternatives stood from dawn till dusk on “Drive Your Bike to Work Day” commending bike commuters for their good behavior and imploring them not to join the spawning bike salmon this spring.

Eventually even tireless White couldn’t take it anymore but his WorkCycles Opafiets wasn’t fazed. (Why would it- It’s just a bike!) But rumor has it the Opafiets even continued on for a rendezvous met a certain desirable Omafiets in his neighborhood, saying something about wanting a Brooks saddle.

On Wednesday, May 13th (2009), hoist that bike onto the roof of your car and drive it to work! Celebrate the joys of bike-driving with your fellow road warriors! Put some miles on that under-used eco-transport! Plus, raise awareness about the hazard that affects bike-lovers everywhere. Low clearance garages.

Today was the most important day of the year for the Dutch: Queen’s Day. Everybody should experience this monumental block party slash mass garage sale at least once in their life. Nowhere else have I ever experienced so much humanity in such close quarters for so long over such a large part of a city. Three quarters of the city wears orange. Boats fill some canals bumper to bumper. People pack the most popular streets making even walking impossible, never mind bicycling or driving a car.

A few years ago Queen’s Day meant heavy-duty partying from the evening before (Queen’s Night) until at least late afternoon for us. Beer flows through the streets as water through the canals. We wandered the Jordaan (drunkenly) feeling half insider and half outsider.

But after eight or ten Queen’s Days the spectacle of the crowds and the partying becomes too familiar. More recently it’s become a quest to buy as much needed baby stuff as possible, as cheaply as possible. Kyoko researches the best neighborhoods to shop, and maps out our schedule… beginning at an ungodly early hour. Of course she knows what she’s doing and this year we scored a high-chair, lots of old wooden toys, modern toys, three buckets of baby-lego, cute clothes, two Bobike Mini child seats and more, all for maybe €100. The lightheated salesmanship and negotiations over how many cents will be paid for a toy make it all fun. Our partying was limited to sitting on our friends’ roof terrace afterward.

So why tell you about “Koninginnedag”? Well, because the bakfietsen are instrumental. All of the WorkCycles and MacBike rental bakfietsen get reserved months in advance by people and organizations planning to sell their goods or put on a show.

We and many others carry our new possessions home by bike too. It’s pretty much the only practical way to do so considering you can’t get a car within kilometers of the busy areas. Cycling might sometimes be slow or frustrating but you can usually find a quieter street to ride along or at least walk the bike through the crowd for a couple blocks. This year we took Kyoko’s Bakfiets Cargobike and a WorkCycles shop errand bike with two 60cm x 40cm plastic bins.

On a more somber note there was an attempted attack on the Royal Family, who was in Apeldoorn for the event. Some guy sped his Suzuki Swift (a small car) through the barriers in an attempt to hit the open bus the Royal Family rode in during the procession. He missed the bus but hit a number of bystanders. Some five people were killed and about a dozen wounded. The Dutch Royal Family has always travelled with minimal security and has never previously had a seriously threatening situation. Similarly the Dutch ministers are known for riding bikes around like normal people The press is speculating that this era of innocence has just ended.

A couple months ago I wrote about my own city bike, and noted that the lights have worked for years without fail. Well, yesterday I noticed that my headlamp bulb had gone dead. So I replaced it.

[Show as slideshow]

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The Sinterklaas “Intocht” (arrival parade) needs no introduction for the locals who began chasing Sinterklaas and his many “Zwarte Pieten”along the Amstel river and through the streets of Amsterdam as toddlers. It goes as follows (please forgive me for the semi-accurate description – I’m only after the basics idea here):

Sinterklaas is the Dutch equivalent of Santa Claus, and probably a much older, more original, less commercialized story. Sinterklaas comes from Turkey, though I cannot say whether that’s related to the fact that Americans often eat turkey for Christmas dinner. As a helper (or slaves, depending on who’s telling the story in what era) Sint has Zwarte Piet (”Black Pete”), or rather a whole army of Zwarte Pieten. Piet is black because he’s a Moor from Spain (like Othello).

Here’s where it gets tricky for those sensitive about such topics, specifically because the Dutch are not particularly sensitive: The role of Piet is traditionally played by white people made up in “blackface” as was normal in the US back when gangsters wore hats and pointed tommy guns out of black sedans in battles over gambling and bootleg liquor. There’s occasionally debate about whether this practice (the blackface, not the gangsters) is racist… but not much. That can be witnessed by the 350,000 happy fans lining the streets of Amsterdam cheering the arrival of Sinterklaas and 670 Zwarte Pieten. Just to note I spotted what appeared to be a handful of black Zwarte Pieten, also in blackface of course.

In any case Sint and the Pieten load up a ship full of “pepernoten” (little cookies like ginger snaps) and stuff in Spain and sail for Holland. Their exact route is unclear but they do end up sailing up the Amstel, which is odd considering that this is inland from Amsterdam. Perhaps they’ve chosen another inland route to pick up carrots for the horses or something. Once they reach the Amstel thousands of families with kids on bikes and in bakfietsen ride along the banks cheering Sint and the Pieten onward. The ship lands by the Scheepvaartsmuseum (the shipping museum) in the center of Amsterdam and Zwarte Pieten and Sint parade through the streets in all manner of Dutch vehicles and conveyances. Sinterklaas rides his white horse while the various Pieten show their preferences for bakfietsen, Land Rovers, rollerblades, unicycles, BMX bikes, stilts, fire engines etc etc.

Why am I explaining all of this? Because of the bakfietsen of course! WorkCycles had the honor this year of loaning a dozen bakfietsen and transportfietsen to Sinterklaas and his team. The bakfietsen were used to carry pepernoten for the kids, hay and carrots for the horses, and yet more Pieten.

A few of the photos are my own. The others found on the following sites:
Sint in Amsterdam
Photos by Sandra Machielsen
MichaËl also has some nice photos, though I didn’t use them here