Traffic

Don't we all know deep down that WE are the cause of all traffic in the world?  We should be ashamed!




Really.  We should be ashamed.

On imagination.

This wouldv'e been very spot-on if when the kid gets shown back to reality in suburbia, he was also shown as an adult :)
I think this commercial is kinda cute, what do you think?

Arthursday: Bicycle Film Festival 2012 Compliation

i've got video making on the brain lately. as such, i wandered to youtube/vimeo to see what i could find for today's edition of Arthursday.

here's a compliation of the submission to the bicycle film festival. we've talked about films we've seen there on the blog before. check it out if you are in a city where it is showing (it travels around the globe). last time i went to the festival, i heard the organizer said he's tired of coming to SF cause the gospel of the bike is already spoken. (hint: that doesn't mean you shouldn't show films here!)

either way, this is a nice compilation of bikes on film, digital or otherwise, a medium we rather love. enjoy!

Change Lots Of Lives. Build A Bike!

One of the most interesting things about blogging, to me at least, is getting the chance to see where our readers come from.  I use a stats program that can give me a world map of readership over a specified period of time.  When the world map comes up, there are little dots for where each visitor's general area is.

Today, when I looked there were dots in Finland, New Zealand, Rio de Janeiro, Ghana and Turkey all within the same time period.  What a global spread!!  It got me to wondering what kind of information I could easily find about bicycling in some of these places, starting with Turkey.

There isn't a lot of easily findable material from a first person perspective about bicycling in Turkey.  There are a few stories about people having a bicycle vacation in Turkey, but I didn't find (with a very limited search) anything written by a Turk about riding in Turkey.  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed.  Lucky for me, I wasn't disappointed for long!

In my search I found this story about De Fietsfabriek, The Bicycle Factory, in the Hurriyet Daily News.  It turns out that De Fietsfabriek was started by a Turkish immigrant to the Netherlands, Yalcin Cihangir.

"Cihangir discovered that he liked fixing bicycles and wanted to make his own bikes; after six months, he started his own business in Amsterdam. Teaming up with a local colleague in 2004, he started the Bicycle Factory (www.defietsfabriek.nl)."*

The best part of this story is that Cihangir has his parts manufactured in his small hometown in Turkey.

"Bike parts are produced in Büyükcamili, creating jobs for almost 30 men in a small place in danger of being abandoned. Cihangir opened the factory in his home village in order to give something back. People working at the factory have reasonable working hours and get a decent salary, between 1,300 and 1,700 Turkish Liras. Next to the bicycle factory, an atelier has been created where women make special clothing that is sold in the Netherlands and returns the revenues to Anatolia.

Cihangir is also financing a local agricultural project to grow products in an environmentally friendly way. His final goal is to make his home village an attractive place for young people to stay and make a living."*

Here are some of the people who make his bicycles in Turkey

and here is a wonderful little documentary of the opening of his factory. It is in Dutch and Turkish but you will get a very good idea of how big a deal this factory is and just how much good it is doing.

I have never met Yalcin Cihangir and I probably never will, but I would be very proud to own one of his bicycles.  He proves through his actions that there is so much more to bicycles than any of us think of when we jump on them to go to work or play.  Bicycles can save your home town!  Maybe Flint and Detroit, Michigan should get on the bandwagon, too.  After all, Henry Ford built and sold bicycles before cars and now Michigan is suffering the after effects.  Maybe those same bicycles could help repair some of that damage.  I know I would buy an American made bicycle like we used to be able to.  

I would certainly buy a De Fietsfabriek bicycle.  I may not be from a tiny village in Turkey, but it doesn't mean I can't help one out!

*excerpt from "The Turkish Bicycle Factory" by JOOST LAGENDİJK and linked to above.

Yeah, Baby! Run 'Em Over!

Maybe you have seen the Mayor of Vilnius (Lithuania) running over a car parked in the bike lane already. Maybe this is all over the internet. I don't care! I would vote for him if I could.



As I have stated before, San Francisco has more of an extended cell phone parking lot than it does an extensive bicycle network.

So, Mr. Mayor, if you would like to run to be the next Mayor of San Francisco I will be your campaign manager for free!

The Ethics Of Stealing A Bike (Not Appropriate For Work)

Is it ever OK to steal a bike?

I have to admit, I think bikes left long enough to go flat and rusty become part of the public realm. Not sure I would cut a chain to get one, but...

Thanks to my friend Phil for bringing this to my attention!

Mi Bici

There is a whole world of bicycle stuff out there! This from Spain in the 80's by the group Parchis. I am contemplating bicycle culture and what it means and this just fell into my lap. Why don't we get happy about bicycles like this anymore?

If anyone out there would like to get a translation of the lyrics, or even the Spanish ones, I would be happy to add them to the post!

me and my bike

when you ask for reader submissions, you get them! here's a video link from another reader and colleague of mine.

i have been off the bike blog interwebs for the past two weeks or so, so i apologize if it has already made the rounds....

via my colleagues in anti-oppression fun times y aquí

The Beginning Of The End

Aaah, the 80's! A time of wisdom and modernity. When all lessons were wise and men's running shorts left little to the imagination. I can't help but wonder if this is part of why people stopped riding.

Is it just me, or do those old helmets look a lot like the training potties you use for toddlers?

Found via Imagine No Cars (when are you coming back?)

Too Freaking Cute!

While we bang on about it, the kids just get it and go.

We Have Nothing To Fear, But We Do It Anyway

I noticed today on the blog "Road Gap" that friend to the blog Mikael Colville-Andersen's speech at TED was up and ready for sharing! It is always fun to hear his thoughts on all things bicycle. This speech is about one of my favorite topics to ponder- the Culture of Fear. In this case he relates it to bicycle helmets, but it could really be about any number of things. When we do things for our "safety" without really finding out if it is indeed "safe" we become less.

The post below is one I wrote in 2009 and is from my more personal blog. More fear, less thinking as something we can teach our children seems to have become the norm. Even when the intentions are good the damage is the same.

----

Today was 'Bike Rodeo' day at my daughter's elementary school. The YMCA brought out a ton of bikes and helmets for the kids to ride, and spent a couple of hours teaching the kids riding skills they can use on the streets- looking over your shoulder without swerving, sudden stops, right of way... Overall, perhaps one of the more potentially useful lessons these kids will learn this week. I was so happy to see them learning something practical and basic, something kids learned just by being on the block when I was a kid.

Despite my joy at seeing the kids riding around, there were more than a few moments in the morning where the kids were being fed fear rather than knowledge. Right at the beginning, the helmets went on. While I do not wear a helmet (please don't write me to tell me I am crazy- I have my reasons and they are fine for me), I have no problem with others wearing them and insist that my children do, if for nothing else than to keep them from scraping up their faces when they stack- I do not think they will provide any protection in the case of major collisions (again, I have my opinion on this, you have yours- leave it at that). As the instructors fitted the kids with various helmets, I heard one of them telling the kids "this helmet will save your life". Not 'could save your life' or 'will keep you from scraping your face if you fall'- the kids were told, with absolute conviction, that their lives would absolutely be saved. By implication, the instructors sounded as though they knew that today would be the day that death came to visit my daughter's class and that these plastic buckets would fend off the scythe of the Grim Reaper.

So right off the bat, the kids are being conditioned to accept other people limiting their choices and ability to reason through situations by instilling fear as the basis for decision making. As my presence in this class was to take pictures of the kids learning how to ride, I was not in a position to say anything about it, nor was it an appropriate forum for that discussion. But it got me to thinking about how often our kids are controlled by fear, mostly because the adults are all living in fear. Fear of pedophiles and trans fats and lead paint and underachievement and delayed speech and public schools... have turned parents and teachers into peddlers of fear and anxiety. Children who are never allowed out of eyeshot of an adult grow up to be teenagers who can not be off the electronic leash of phones and computers with everyone they know for fear of not being connected to everything at all times.

The worst part is we have marketed this as cool. Fear of the world has become fashionable! Instead of facing our demons we have made them the fodder for talk shows, the basis of indoor play spaces with monitors at the ready with antibacterial wipes, the warning label on matchboxes telling us the contents are flammable. We have made being weak and frightened the epitome of 'fitting in'. We have allowed something as simple and basic as riding a childhood bike to become an activity that calls into question our parenting if we do something as radical as let kids just get on with it and have fun.

How do we turn back the clock on this? Is there a way to teach others the joy of simply allowing the moment to be what it is without catastrophizing it? To 'go with the flow', so to speak. Can we stop this before we paralyze our children's future, a future where they will need to be creative and fearless and brazen on a level most of us have never known? My goodness, I hope so, because we have fallen off and we need to get back on the bike of life without fear for the sake of our kids and ourselves.

---

I leave you with this terribly funny video introduced to me by Todd of Clever Cycles.

A cyclist's special

A friend of mine showed me these videos awhile back. They are from the mid-50's and

At 1:40
BART- *should* have these. This is every Bay Area biker's dream and I'm sure many trains and public transportation systems could definetely use these wagons. Would be SOOO nice.
The narrative is fantastic, in many ways reminds me of heading out of SF and riding into the Marin rolling hills.

Lovely fashions, picnics, beer, 'extravangant wheelmen' and bicycle talk while riding. Some simple basic things that are timeless =)

Anyway, enjoy these - they are quite charming to distract you from the Monday daily grinds

Short films about a day out cycling in 1955, made by the British Rail film board

Ride My Bike

Because the Bronze Bombshell is way cooler than the rest of us, I have seen this video. I now want am orange bicycle and a bullhorn.

Seems a good tune to pop in your IPod for the ride home from work. Or school. Or wherever.

limits

lately i've been rather enamored of the wnyc show, radiolab. i've been listening it to sporadically at work, despite the interruptions involved.

the most recent episode is called "limits." physical limits, mental limits, that sort of thing. the second story in the below segment highlights the RAAM, or race across america. 3000 miles. 10 days. think you could do it? what about going into it with "minimal" training? would you even want to do this? where does this desire to test oneself come from?

the RAAM segment starts at about 16 minutes in.

(i personally recommend that you listen to the first story too, about a woman who discussed completing the 4th ironman triathlon...)

the radiolab page for this show also has a link for a documentary about the race, bicycle dreams.

so as we venture into another week full of commuting, training, living life, working, whatever, try to think of something you previously thought was impossible and then tell that voice in your head, "no."

see what happens.

have a great monday everyone.

If I Could Talk To The Animals...

The Pushmi-Pullyu lives!

Tuesday Injection of Confusion: Driving on chairs?

Zero emission? but you have it RIGHT THERE
dear dude:
pick up your bike, you will remain to have 'zero emissions' and have even more fun with your friends around town, seriously. Oh Nissan, why even bother putting the bike there, it aint no trophey, that beautiful machine is to be ridden - no need to reinvent the wheel.

Bike To School

Bike to School Day is almost upon us (April 15th). Like last year, I will lead a bike bus to school. I see more kids being taken to school by bike than ever these days, and I know that more will come in the days to come, but it gets me wishing nonetheless.

Other places get that cars and kids don't mix, so they do something about it. In Japan women ride their kids to school in droves (it is illegal to drive a child to Kindergarten there).

In Ontario, Canada they have started a public school where it is against the rules to drive your child to school except in very specific circumstances. The kids either walk, bicycle or take a school bus to stop cars from building up around the school (story via Treadly and Me).

Of course, there is the Dutch paradigm that we all wish we had. This video from David Hembrow shows kids traveling from one town to another to get to school. Now, before we get into the discussion of "we can't do that here! There isn't room" I would just like to say that my stance is "yes we can do this, if we choose to" and I am sticking to it.

Mostly, I just wish people would think about what they can do to get their children out of cars and into the world. There has become such a culture of group think about how dangerous and horrid everything is that we are all believing are own hype. Our children suffer because of our unevaluated fears and paralysis in the face of change.

I wish we would all just get out there and ride our kids to school! You know you can do it. Really, you can.

Lance & Tony

Here it is. Lance Armstrong and Tony Kornheiser. I will leave it to you to decide what it means to you. I am not surprised that Mr. K hasn't been on a bike since he was a child. I was surprised that he has a daughter who bicycle commutes to work. Props to Lance for taking up the cause of the 40 yo mothers!

Stupid. Plain Stupid.

When people have a forum to speak, they should really think before they open their mouths. If we can blame AC/DC for causing teenagers to commit suicide, then why can't we hold commentators like this responsible for firefighters shooting riders with their children?

What these people fail to realize is that their words, "just tap them... not a fatal tap, just knock them over... if you aren't rubbing you aren't racing" are just as bad as "he's just a nigger" or "he's just a filthy Jew" or "she was asking for it". There is no difference between gay bashing and inviting people to run down cyclists. Advocating and trivializing violence and intimidation against any group is wrong and there are no degrees to it. Stating that anyone's right to life and safety is less than your right to drive a "big powerful car" is hate speech.

ESPN is the home of this ridiculous man. He represents them. If I watch this show and hear this out of his mouth, then my assumption is that ESPN backs his words and agrees with him. ESPN suspended him for criticizing a fellow commentator's wardrobe choices, but will he be suspended for encouraging his listeners to kill? I understand that Lance Armstrong will be confronting Mr.Kornheiser on his show over this issue. I am sure that many will think that is enough.

I think he should be fired. Had he advocated violence against any group based on race or sexual orientation he would be out on his butt. It is that simple. If you encourage others to maim and kill on a national television show, you should be fired.





Feel free to comment.

via Bikerumor.

(addendum) Here is where you can let the network know you feel the same (or maybe you don't but I will just think you do). I have already sent off my feelings on the subject.

Bahati.

Found this awesome story/video trailer of the amazing Californian rider and Compton's finest and couldn't help to share.
The Williams sisters, dr.Dre & I hope soon American cyclists other than Lance, become as influential as the inspirational Bahiti is. Ride on!!


Found/From here.