I’ll admit that I don’t usually find the tall-bike scene very interesting and perhaps that statement will have me besieged by an army of black clad squatters armed with padded lances. However this tall bike, dubbed “Skywalker” by Atomic Zombie is not only absurdly tall, its also very thoughtfully designed and and attractively constructed. It must be a helluva trip to ride a bike from 4 meters in the air.

What makes this tallbike unique is that it the rider can climb and dismount it while riding. This isn’t just a circus stunt concept. Its a practical and safety advantage: otherwise the rider would have to find and climb a suitable pole, second story window or truck roof to begin… and then find another to dismount.

Oh, and if you want to be jealous of somebody’s fabrication skills… it was built in one weekend.

There are even do-it-yourself plans for the tall bike on Instructibles. Its not likely you’ll ever see one of these, never mind convince its owner to let you try it out. So if you want to experience riding a 12 foot high bike you’ll just have to collect some bike parts and lots of tubing (electrical conduit actually) and fire up that MIG welder. Have fun!

Check out the video to see the tall bike being ridden:

The Atomic Zombie site is worth checking out too: Lots of photos of, and DIY plans to build all sorts of strange bikes, trikes, robots and stuff.

This site called “Het blijefietsenplan” plays on an inside joke in Dutch. The Dutch love “plans”, especially with regard to bicycles. These “plans” are always something serious: They can be political or have something to do with reducing your taxes.

Back in the idealistic 60’s a highly progressive Amsterdam politician and bicycle promoter by the name of Luud Schimmelpennink proposed the idea of “het witte fietsenplan” (the white bike program) whereby thousands of white bikes without locks would be left in depots around the city for communal, free use. Urban legend has it that the bikes were all stolen within weeks or days, depending on who tells the story. In reality the plan was never put into action. Many other cities are now putting such bicycle loan programs into use but perhaps its just not needed in Dutch cities

More recently the Dutch tax service has allowed the purchase of bicycles with pre-tax salary. Because quality transportation bicycles are expensive and the tax rates are high this translates to considerable savings. Its a straightforward tax rule that every employee can benefit from but that hasn’t stopped businesses from meddling. There are thus a number of “bedrijfs fietsenplannen” (business bicycle programs) that handle this administration for employers. In fact its a totally bogus service; these bicycle programs are actually set up by major bicycle manufacturers such as as a means to extract another revenue stream from their dealers. Nationale Fiets Projecten, the biggest such program has their office at Industrieweg 8 in Heerenveen. The Batavus factory is at Industrieweg 4. That’s my bicycle conspiracy story for today.

While I’m at it I’ll even add that there are a couple bike shops (fietsenmakers) in Amsterdam called “Het Zwarte Fietsenplan”, I guess as a wordplay on both the wittefietsenplan and the bedrijfsfietsenplan. Why they chose to split the words instead of just Zwartefietsenplan like the others I can’t answer.

So anyway Het Blijefietsenplan has nothing to do with such serious topics. Its just a forum for people (mostly women) who like to decorate their bikes with plastic flowers, stickers, colorful brushed-on paint jobs and whatever else does the job. Nothing could be more Dutch bike than this. There are lots of great photos and you can even add your own!

Whether you’re a proud WorkCycles rider, an aspiring Workcycles owner saving her pennies, or just think its cool to wear a hoodie sweatshirt with a custom WorkCycles Kruisframe transport bike stylishly displayed on the front we’ve got just the thing for you. Its the official WorkCycles hoodie, as displayed here by celebrity artist Kyoko Inatome.

The gritty details:

West 8, a leading urban design & landscape architecture practice in Rotterdam, Netherlands has recently led a winning team in the design competition to transform Governors Island in New York into a major new park. This announcement was made by New York City mayor Bloomberg and New York State governor Spitzer on 19 December 2007.

The plan is to recreate Governors Island into an extraordinary park that embraces what New York Harbor encompasses: ecology, history, culture and beauty. Everybody knows New York City’s Central Park. Now Governors Island will become its “Un-central Park”.

Not only are the park plans lovely, the proposed shared wooden bicycles are too. Much like the white bicycles that are free to use in the beautiful Hoge Veluwe Park in the Netherlands (see below photos of the white bikes and wooden bikes in similar racks) Governors Island will have NO automobiles and feature simple wooden bicycles for visitors to use as needed. Making the bicycles from wood not only makes them charming. It also discourages theft. Stealing the wooden bikes won’t be easy anyway since the island is only accessible by ferry.

Governors Island has had a rich history dating back to the period when New Amsterdam was a Dutch colony, a fact probably not missed by either West 8 or the jury panel. That the Dutch have extensive experience with this type shared bicycle use certainly didn’t harm their proposal.

In case you’re not familiar with Governors Island: It is situated near the mouth of the East River between Manhattan and Queens, and is technically within the borders of Manhattan. Since its essentially in New York Harbor the Statue of Liberty is within view.

Here is more information about Governors Island from:
West 8: A brief history of Governors Island
Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation
Wikipedia: Governors Island

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)

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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