RIP Don Rafa, owner of 16th St. Cyclery

We have written before about Don Rafa and his store over on 16th near Mission street in SF. I went in a couple of times, but since is not close to my house, nor do I work near there, I was an infrequent visitor. I definitely appreciated his presence in the latino community as a bike store that caters to what some people call the "invisible cyclists." That term makes me think of fingernails on a chalkboard, and I'm glad that the store will live on through his daughter.

Mission Local has the info:

Rafa Macias, who was known to many as Don Rafa, has passed away.

The owner of Don Rafa’s Cyclery at 2929 16th St. suffered a heart attack while driving home from his daughter’s house on Jan. 20, according to another daughter, Lupe Macias. He was 60 years old.

He had worked on bicycles for most of his life, first in Mexico and then in the Bay Area.

In the late 1990s, Macias moved to the United States and started working at local swap meets, renting space and fixing bicycles on site.

Here's to a new generation over at 16th St. Cyclery! We extend our condolences and wish the family well.

Sunday Drivers

I took the picture on Saturday, but the day of the week is inconsequential where my friend Deep and his fiancée are concerned.

I am almost more impressed by how many people do not give them a second look than I am by the fabulousness of Deep's one off Public bike/Indian rickshaw hybrid.

22nd St & Valencia

oldest way to get around town...

i love this picture. we were hanging out on sunday streets in the mission a couple of months ago, and we found ourselves needing to go somewhere that was more efficient to travel by bike than by walking. our friend here didn't have a bike. the tall one has a large bike frame with extra space and the thigh muscles to match. yours truly had the know-how and suggested they do the below.

how cute. old friends, old way to get around town. now she has her own bike with fancy and friendly friends showing her how to ride. so awesome. much love!

The smile maker

Ran into this bike the other day and wanted to hug it. That little colourful parrot is just wonderful.
This was taken outside the coffee bar, one of my favorite spots for coffee in the city - which coincidentally, is painted almost entirely red outside.
Red walls attract red bikes.
Happy bikes attract happy energy.

have a great weekend
besos .m

Weekday Glide

It's a workday. You have things to do and stuff to carry. However you do it, do it by bicycle! Automatic style points for top tube gliding.

A Little Something

Another weekend has come and passed and I have nothing pithy to write about and not enough photos dealt with on any one subject to cobble something together with. So I'll just throw up a few random shots of happy bike life in San Francisco from last weekend and try to do better tomorrow.

Bicycles in front of cafés is pretty much the "fish in a barrel" shot in these parts.

The City was awash with adult Bike Ed classes from the SFBC.

It is easy to stop at intersections if you get something interesting, like one of SF's historic trolley cars, to watch.

When the signs say that bicycles are not allowed on the path we try our best to comply and head for the lawn instead.

And if it all gets to be just too much in the City, we can head to Point Reyes and leave our trusty steeds outside while we get a beer.

Everyday People

While I am a participant and chronicler of the "Cycle Chic" movement, I really love the regular old folks you see on bicycles. There is so much beauty in the everyday, mundane world that we hardly ever notice.

This guy and I talked about riding around the city and how much fun it is. He took off down 3rd st. and I kept going. We'll see each other again on Market St. and we'll have someone new to wave to.

These two were on their way somewhere and taking the opportunity to people watch at the red light.

Maybe he needed to pick up his bike somewhere and she was heading over there with him.

You just know this lady has sons and she took one of their bikes to get out with her daughter. I love all of those clips in the girl's hair! I bet they click like the spoke beads we all used to put on our bikes.

Sometimes you have to make your own parking. Unless you have a skateboard, in which case you can park in your messenger bag.

One of the great joys of human powered transportation, any kind, is what you get to see- everyday people, doing everyday things and making the world a more beautiful place in the doing.

My Coffee Window On The Bike World

For those who know Meli, Cali and myself, the name "Four Barrel" is somewhat synonymous with us getting together. It has been the jumping off point for many excursions and our default meet up spot.

When Esteban, from Vélo-Flâneur, was in town for a bit we met him at Four Barrel.

My favorite part of 4B is the front window. I love to sit in it and take pictures of what goes on outside.

Because the café is located on Valencia St, near Market St, it gets a constant influx of bicycle riders (although it has NO bicycle parking which is my one HUGE complaint about the place). Every kind of bike rider passes by the windows and I can just sit and shoot away.

You can usually count on someone you know being there. Helpful when you are experiencing technical difficulties.

Most of the time, I just like to take pictures of the people riding by.

Sometimes, if the subject is just right, I am known to shoot other two wheeled conveyances.

Hey. I am married, not dead : )

Rain, steel and pizza.

A number of weekends ago, a few of us had planned to get together for the afternoon with coffee, bikes and good company. The weather was a tad moody and most didn't make it. We missed Adrienne and her crew, but the two steel pizza coffee enthusiasts, went on to do some roaming around the city.
Eric is a good friend of the SF bloggy, bike, and coffee crew and he knows he is much love by all of us. With his affinity for vintage bikes, I decided to take him to North Beach's only bike shop, Citizen Chain. Sasha and him talked frames for a bit and I was off looking around for cute things, they are the spot to check out for little trinkets and beautiful accesories. ding ding.

This will really flaunt your stuff in the trunk...

Oh mickey donde estás?

Then we biked in a little bit of rain, and decided it was time for pizza. Why not, as if San Francisco lacks any gourmet pizza spots, we stopped at Piccino's in the dogpatch.

pizza stop

After we roamed around some more. At that point I was quite convinced that my knee would start to feel funny, and it did not, which was a huge confidence boost. This would be the first time I rode the road bike, a steel frame Italian beauty since early November. It was more of a test to see where my cranky knee stood. Good, pretty good, for the most part. My conditioning, yea not as good, but riding with Eric is always a mellow-no pressure experience so everything was chill.
We stopped by one of my favorite in/outdoor retail spaces around, Flora Grubb. This place is a must for all things plants, house trinkets and if I say is a must, then there must be coffee correct?!… I've blogged/posted pictures about this place many times, but I can never quite get tired of it, you know!?

Hola flower bike.

ttzzzzzzz

Everybody luvs this wall.

Here are our two Italian beauties. Smooth operators they are.

After riding around some more, of course it was time for coffee stop no.4. Yes. Four as in Four Barrel. Eric was happy to finally be in the place Adrienne and I spend many mornings and afternoons with our peeps. I learned some cool geek facts about the copper used for certain pieces and we ended the afternoon with some delicious cup of coffee.

Caffeination station.

So here it goes, a raise a cup of coffee for what became a tiny confident shove to no longer baby the leg and keep going, slowly but surely. One day I will slowly conquer you again giant hills, one day.

- - -

Check out his blog at: Classic lightweight bikes & rides.

I also cross-posted today, a collection of his awesome wool sweater collections at Bikes and The City.

.xo♥m.

thursday thoughts: bikes as installation art?

UPDATE--late wednesday evening:

so i had a post written out from a few days ago regarding the below pictures. but then i checked in with another fellow SF blog, mission mission, and they have also seen the cords, literally hanging around town. turns out marketing: it can haz some hazy powers over the calitexican (and apparently over other bloggers). along the same lines, now that i know this is advertising, this is NOT an endorsement, just merely an observation. kthx.

to keep with the integrity of the post, i will keep it as is, because it may be interesting (to some) my initial reactions. but my honest one was, why waste all that material on a bike like that...

(tuesday during the day)
i'm not quite sure what the intentions of this person behind this bike seem to be, but this bike just could not be functional. i also apologize for the iphone at night picture, but the best camera is the one you carry with you, right?

wrapping every spare pieces in pink corduroy. except the brakes and the bike light. seen outside of ritual coffee roasters in the mission.

i also like how the bike is completely locked up. you know, just in case someone wanted to score a pink present.

KT over at velo vogue has noticed them too.

is this the beginning of springing into action in springtime, or just arting around town? what is the purpose of them, or do they have no official stance? or do they just mark "hipsters reside here?"

does anyone know? please share in the comments.

Change Your Life. Ride A Unicycle!

This always makes me laugh. Especially this rider. Valencia street, pictured here, is in the middle of massive design changes. The end result will be great, but the construction phase is challenging. This is one of the busiest bicycle corridors in the City and with great, huge chunks of the bike lane dug up everyone has to be patient and really try extra hard to share the very limited space. So what do some people do to make it all work? Ride a unicycle!!!

Meeting People

This is Sisely (I hope I got her name right! I am very bad with names). She passed me while I was riding on Valencia street. Her bright green bike (a Specialized Langster) was noticeable enough, but it had very unusual steel fenders that caught my eye.

When I saw the bike parked near me a few minutes later I had to take a look! I love how they are cut out to accommodate the brakes. The bolts are a wonderful touch!

The best thing about this? Sisely made the fenders herself! She works in a metal shop and decided to do some DIY . I love that a woman fabricated bike parts for herself and look forward to more woman following suit!

El bike shop.

In 2003, I had borrowed about 3 bikes in 2 months. Figuring out that it was the fastest way to get to school, run out to get food, get to my two jobs and make it on time back on bart (living in Oakland to save money, saved me NO MONEY at all...) 2 of them came from the same source, one of my good friends that was able to live close enough to school, so he had no use for his 'extra' bikes. So there I went.
While saving up for a bike of my own, I borrowed his bikes, of course they broke down quite a bit so I had agreed to fix them as needed, a type of thank you-return. At the time, I had no idea how to even lower a quick-release seat post.

Well anyhow, in 2003, the mean, fast and furious skinny cool city kids were in full throttle and I was too out of the loop to know which shops were snob-free. Walking down south Van Ness one day, I spotted two guys smoking a cigarette outside this bike shop I had never gone in. They were both about 5'1 and I ask them to borrow their lighter. I no longer smoke, but that was also how I met plenty of interesting random people. They told me they were waiting for their bikes to be finished so they could go to their jobs in fisherman's wharf area. The bike was faster than any nite-owl muni bus by the time their shift ended, they told me. Our small smoky chat, all in Spanish, ended and I went in to check out the place.
"I'll be back tomorrow" I told this man, I didn't have my bike because I had snapped the chain. I had a 35mm camera and I probably looked like a very dorky art student taking pictures of random stuff. He asked me why I was taking pictures, I said I liked bikes. I don;t think he was too happy about that, but didn;t say much about it.

I'll have to dig in my old boxes from art school to dig those out because I'm sure I captured his grumpy energy. After a couple of days, I returned, he fixed the chain and told me that I take better care of the chain by lubbing it up. Fair enough I said.
After that repair, for some reason I just never returned. I enjoyed the fact that the shop didn't carry those trendy bags every cool kid had, I also enjoyed that the place was kinda beat and cluttered and all of its mess, I was perfectly fine with it. I plain and simple, didn;t find him very warm or friendly. It is a fix it and move on, functional place. I ended school a couple of years after that, and the shop was really not in my vicinity to stop back again at all after 2003.
Didn't expect him to make friends with me, but maybe a friendlier approach would have made me return to give him more business or recommend him to my peeps. Or maybe that is not his goal. Who knows.

At any rate. That is my experience with Don Rafa's shop, the only Spanish speaker bike-repair in the mission that I really wanted to like.
I had the writing crazies and thought I'd share the video regardless, as well as a little bit of my bike learning experiences. It wasn't always pretty.
However I enjoy the interviews of not only bikes, but a vast amount of interesting topics from the community and businesses in the mission district posted over at by missionlocal.org – Enjoy



Don Rafa’s Cyclery by missionlocal.org

Sit Up & Beg?

I hate that term. This guy certainly doesn't look like he is begging for anything!

How about, looking-them-straight-in-the-eye style?

What Did You Do This Weekend?

Quiet family weekends are always a good thing!

Time with friends is a great way to enjoy the afternoon and a little people watching.

Riding around on your own can be peaceful, even when everything around you is go-go-go.

Just remember that your four legged friends need some quality time with you, too.

What did your weekend look like? I bet it was better on a bike : )

Day 2 Of The Copenhagen Invasion

This was exactly a month ago. Our month for us here in San Francisco has been a complete package of bikes, coffee, friends, visiting friends, let's go, we're here non-stop. Lots of fun, and I, am personally glad for this Thanksgiving break. I savored it to the max.

Anyways, this post is long due from the Friday night before halloween. Mikael (As you may now him from copenhaginize & CCC) had done his lecture about bikes and cities earlier that day, and he was probably more jet-lagged than anyone I had interacted with in a while. He was a trooper It was a great group for dinner, some blogging friends of Mikael from the Bay area, the girls and Ade's family.

3 big kids.

Bike light lane.

After some yummy Ethiopian finger friendly dinner, we went for a stroll around the post-critical mass craziness around the heart of the Mission. Mikael was more than thrilled to be riding with all the SF ladies, and concerned that the bar would be too far, you know in copenhagen we only go 2 blocks to a bar and back ;-)

Wait, we got 3 blocks to go - oh so far...

Ground control to major pirateskulzz. HAR HAR

La pirata y la de cabellera verde. Sounds like 2 mexican wrestling names ;)

Somehow we ended up drinking some of the local flavor, dancing and chatting the night away, mariachi's included.

Mariachi shots.

Table for 6 margaritas, gracias.

Dancing fun.

Gotz mi eyes on you missy.

After we heard last call, we decided to yes, head out and ride to each of our destinations. San Francisco may only be 7 mi. square so nothing seems 'far' but I guess those Europeans think of our blocks as big long miles (are we there yet?!?) It was a blast and we all enjoyed ourselves.

Duck and Dutch.

Wigglin /Calitexican and her invisible pirate sword. AYE AYE

Market street at 2:20 /Mikael, Ade and I.

I love this pic!!

---------
It was great having all our girlfriends, Ade's family, and Mikael around for a fun night in the city.
From the CPH to SF, with love. Cheers!
♥ 'Til next one everyone /m. ♥