Every fan and promoter of urban cycling simply needsмаси a copy of Shirley Agudo’s “Bicycle Mania”. You can regard it as a photo book, with probably the best collection of Dutch cycling photos ever assembled. Even as an Amsterdam resident and amateur(ish) photographer I marvel at the shots in these pages. Have a peek at a few examples here at the Eduard Planting gallery.
But “Bicycle Mania” goes much deeper. The photos are accompanied by well-informed and thoughtfully written text covering in sections covering the how and why the Dutch have achieved (and continue to build upon) the world’s best of nearly everything in transportation cycling: broad popularity, amazing infrastructure, safety, fun and pure variety on wheels. The text is in both English and Dutch, handy learning for those anglophiles who want to delve deeper into Dutch cycling culture than English can take you. Numerous authorities are interviewed, hyperbole and abuse of statistics is thankfully avoided and and it’s just a good read. In a nutshell: Recommended.
Think you can take this one home? Well, you’d better act quickly since the deadline is 20 January. Photos must be emailed as jpeg’s of maximum 3Mb to: editor@xpat.nl. One photo entry per person and include your full name and phone number.
Wanna check out the bike first to see if it’s worth the trouble? It’s at the Eduard Planting Fine Art Photographs gallery where a number of Agudo’s photographs are on display. I also “borrowed” the above image from their site.
Wow, I sure wish we’d known about this stuff earlier! It’s been cold and raining for almost a month straight here in Holland and I’m really itching to get out for a nice, long bike ride in the countryside. Well this new “Anti-Rain Spray” from Dutch distributor Agu just showed up and I can’t wait to try it.
I know that the Dutch continue cycling for transportation regardless of weather... but riding recreationally is another story. I’d much rather cycle under a sunny sky, or at least when it’s not pouring and slightly above freezing temperature. I stopped racing years ago so I just don’t NEED to do that anymore.
Reading the instructions I’m already a little disappointed though; It says to apply the Anti-Rain Spray to jackets, bags and shoes. Problem is that I don’t always wear the same clothes and shoes to ride. So it already looks like more work than I expected but if it brings the sun out, or at least keeps it from raining for a couple hours I’ll be more than satisfied!
It’s entirely unclear what is supposed to make this bike better as a city bike (and better than what anyway?). The design seems to be focused on the elimination of that most impractical and divisive of all bicycle developments: the drivetrain. So instead of employing a chaincase, belt, shaft, gear, hydraulic, lever or treadle drive (all have been done) the designer has destroyed the ergonomics of the bike. 150 years of development? Hah, they all had it wrong!
Imagine what a wanker you’d look like as you waddled through town on this thing, busting your bottom and getting splashed from each puddle, trousers dragging on the sides of the fat rear tire. One more demonstration of how “designer bikes” usually suck. I’ll just walk thanks.
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.
Just the other day I was waxing philosophic about big, old skool, Dutch bakfietsen after a short rant about the theft of the rear wheel of my friend Doede’s bakfiets. Then today this blue beauty came back from Clarijs the “zeilmaker” with her new Bisonyl box cover. They did a great job getting a snug fit over the strange box shape. We’ve saved the pattern and will now offer it as a standard option for the XL Classic Bakfiets.
Why blue? Hey, it was the customer’s choice. We were really skeptical but now that it’s done we see it was a great call. It stands out from the sea of similar bakfietsen on the roads here but is still timeless. Perhaps it’ll help deter scumbag thieves as well.
While I’m writing about bakfietsen again here’s some more info about what makes them tick… (more…)
From the creative minds of famed eco-designer Ross Lovegrove and Biomega bicycles. Aside from being vaguely unique can somebody please explain what the benefit of this exercise is? I mean, I’m sure a complete aluminium frame was cut up to enable laboriously hand-fitting the carefully selected and finished bamboo tubes. I’ll eat my hat if such “hybrid” frames won’t require ten times as much energy to make as the Chinese made all-metal ones they replace. They’ll be heavier, weaker and more maintenance intensive too.
And then all this trouble to make a uncomfortable bike with neither practical amenities (OK, it at least has an enclosed drivetrain) nor sporting potential.
Interesting and structurally sound bamboo bikes have already been made, for example by Craig Calfee. I stick to my opinion that “designer bikes” are almost always pointless at best and bad bicycles at worst… and that’s coming from somebody who left the industrial design field to start a bike company.
Some stories have to be told, even when you know in advance you’re going to piss some people off. I’m writing this post much more out of sense of justice and to spare a few people some frustration than to further WorkCycles’ interests.
The topic of the horrible, Chinese made family bakfiets copies has come up here intermittently but I’ve never written anything in depth about them. For those unfamiliar I’m talking about bakfietsen sold under various and constantly changing names, some of which are listed in this post on bakfiets.co.uk. Regular readers already know my conviction that these crude constructions of randomly “designed”, stamped and welded pot metal in the shapes of “bikes” and “trikes” are actually of negative value to their unfortunate purchasers and the world in general. The various fly-by-night firms selling them without warranty promote them as less expensive though somewhat simplified alternatives to similar looking, quality bicycles made by Bakfiets.nl, Christiania, Gazelle, Fietsfabriek and WorkCycles. If this were really the case I’d respect their activities, helpful or detrimental to those of my own.
However they’re just pandering to wishful thinking; Sure, it’d be great to have some inexpensive bakfiets options for families but the laws of physics and economics even apply to bicycles. The quality models simply cost what they have to, given the heavy duty demands, the need for safety and relatively small quantity production. Depending on the format and how deluxe it’s equipped they cost (in the Netherlands) between €1300 and about €2300. Anybody who can come up with a better price-quality-feature ratio will succeed in this competitive market.
The “bak-fakes”, on the other hand, are sold solely to earn a quick profit. They’re designed and made to such low standards that they’re really not useful machines. The customer is not getting a less pretty version of a €1500 bicycle for €600, she’s getting stuck with a flatpack full of ill-fitting, fast rusting steel pieces, paperboard panels and inappropriately chosen bicycle parts sourced from the very lowest level of department store bikes. Even if one pays a professional mechanic to do the assembly and replace the completely unusable pieces a decent riding, safe, semi-acceptably durable family transporter will never emerge. Even if no physical harm results from riding the thing, it’ll deteriorate with amazing rapidity. Oh, and there’s NO warranty. When your bike breaks in half (yes, they do that) you’re just outta luck.
The Dutch seem to have lost patience with the bak-fakes so we’re seeing fewer and fewer of them. Dutch people might be famous for loving a good deal but they do actually ride their bikes, so really crappy bikes tend not to stay on the market very long. Look how Kronan’s success here was so short lived. I guess that explains why the Chinese bak-fake manufacturers are seeking out new markets. Now they’ve just shown up on American shores through a firm called DoubleDutchBikes.
Ian at Bakfiets.co.uk has been following my discussion with Daniel Kok, who’s written a few comments on this blog about the bicycles he’s importing from China to the USA. Judging one’s character just by the comments they leave on blogs and by their website isn’t exactly a reliable science but the picture Ian’s post paints is indeed pretty sketchy looking. Blog comments pretending to be a customer of your own business and roundabout non-answers to questions aren’t good signs.
Daniel initially commented as “dkok” here in this post, though referred to Doubledutchbikes as “they”. Clicking the link he left behind I found on his site that the proprieter seemed to be a certain Daniel Kok. Given the Dutch name and similarity to “dkok” it didn’t seem too great a leap to guess that Daniel was our poster. Returning to the site today I cannot find his name there anymore. Whatever. I understand that the small business owner just needs to get the word out there and who expects the etiquette police to be following like hawks.
On Bakfiets.co.uk Ian shows a bunch of pictures of these bikes with commentary about certain features. Some of the images actually originate from my own Flickr photo set you can see in the slideshow below.
Daniel claims to have made extensive changes to the bike so I suppose the crux of the matter is whether DoubleDutchBikes has really made so many improvements to justify:
A. Selling them at all.
B. A price increase from about $650 (€500 in NL) to $1900.
That would seem a tall order but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve seen more. Until then CAVEAT EMPTOR, folks… and happy cycling, whatever you choose to ride!
Today I received the following message from a woman in Haarlem (a very lovely and old city near Amsterdam for which the Harlem of New York is named for). Her story is about her terrible experiences with an inexpensive family tricycle from the firm Faya4You in the Netherlands. Its a “bakfiets” though not to be confused with the rather generically named “Bakfiets.nl” brand bikes we sell at WorkCycles.
Hello,
I was browsing your blog, and found it most interesting indeed. I thought based on what I have read there that I should share my recent experiences with you.
I purchased a brand new bakfiets 1 1/2 years ago and have been through so much hell with it and the company who sold it to me that the Rijdende Rechter even wanted to cover it on the show, but the vendors wouldn’t participate so that came to nothing. I am not looking for help or advice; I just thought this story might interest you.
I am a 39-year-old ex-American student with a 4-year-old. 1 1/2 years ago I realized that a bakfiets would be the solution to many of my transport problems, not having a car. I was able to use some of the money my family set aside after my great-aunt’s death for my education. That meant, however, that I needed to get an inexpensive bakfiets. Naively I thought that I should get a cheaper new one so that it would come with a guarantee. I bought a Faya4you.
The Faya4you bakfiets is ostensibly delivered “rijklaar”. When it arrived, the delivery folks left without waiting for me to test ride it. I took it for a spin, and one of the first things I discovered was that the brakes did not work– at all. Luckily this came to light outside the home of my then neighbor, who is a bicycle repairman and sells used cycles. He put the brakes in order for me, saying they had not been installed correctly.
Yesterday “Kassa” (cash register) the popular, prime-time, Dutch consumer program broadcast their test of family bakfietsen. Like some other consumer-rights organizations Kassa reports are widely regarded as quite reliable and honestly conducted. Despite my usual cynicism I felt the testing procedure they showed was quite rigorous utilizing two professional experts and a panel of experience experts, namely parents with children. A retailer specializing in child transport bikes and trikes provided lessons to get the parent testers proficient on the bikes as quickly as possible.
It was not a long-term test though, and it would be expected that some conclusions would change with further use of the bicycles. Our experience has been that the two wheelers gradually become more favored as parents get comfortable with them, while riding a trike tends to get “old” after the novelty wears off. This is apparently a particularly Dutch sentiment as our colleagues in Denmark, England and Germany swear by the trikes. Different strokes for different folks.
The testing appeared to have been conducted over a few days and many interesting moments and comments were captured on video. Amongst the most notable:
A woman overturning a Christiania trike, complete with two kids in the box
One expert noting that some bikes ride well empty but poorly with a loaded box, others ride well loaded but poorly empty and a couple ride well regardless of the load.
Moms trying to push loaded bakfietsen up a tall curb
You’ve probably never even thought about what bike the owner of WorkCycles rides every day. Fortunately that won’t stop me from showing you anyway. So here it is, in all its unwashed glory, plucked right from the street for its own, unglamourous photo shoot. I left the lock on the handlebars because I never ride without it. No gleaming, lustrous paint, polished anything, fancy parts, hydraulic anything or obsession about saddle care to be found here. Just to note: this Brooks B66 saddle was found on an abandoned bike and had probably sagged to death before I was even born. All the better – nobody will steal it.
My bike is an outdoor dog and that’s just a fact of life around the center of Amsterdam. Its about three years old and always sleeps chained to a lamppost right in front of our house. I ride it a couple times almost every day, for everything from commuting to riding to the station with a suitcase for traveling. There’s also a hitch that tows a nifty Carry Freedom trailer when the load gets too big. My wife Kyoko sometimes sits on the top tube, since I’ve no rear carrier… or at least she did until we had a baby a couple months ago. We have no car and I’m not much of a tram fan so the bike gets ridden in sun, rain, hail and snow. I enjoy almost all of it.
This bike gets cleaned only during repairs, which are extremely seldom. Nonetheless, it is smooth and silent and has never let me down: the lights have worked without a single failure, there are no gears to go out of adjustment, the brakes brake just fine, nothing has ever broken and probably never will. I can’t even recall ever having a puncture in this bike. Yes, I’m knocking wood right now. I pump the tires up either when I remember to, or the rims begin bottoming on the ground.
My bike has, however, been damaged for me, as described in this earlier post. Occasionally my bike falls or gets knocked over while parked. It has also inadvertently (and maybe not so accidentally) inflicted damage on some cars, as seen in the red streak of paint on the front carrier. That resulted in a car mirror flying though the air. Oops.
By no means is this my only bicycle but it is my only city bike and the one I ride 99% of the time. I love it but don’t obsess about it.
