merry winter solstice

We're on vacation for Winter Solstice.

We'll be back next year.

videos contained herein explain both portland bike inflation AND urbana bike deflation

Wednesday, we reported on Bike Inflation! in Portland.  We've been working hard since then to discover the root cause and offer you this video, dramatizing an explanation for the spike in Portland's bike prices.

As a bonus, we've also discovered the root cause of bike deflation in Urbana!

brooklyn vigilantes repaint removed bike lane

Urbana's likely to get some new bike lanes soon, but if you thought that would finally make the place as hip as, oh, Brooklyn, New York, think again.

Under pressure from Hasidic Jews concerned about the steady procession of "scantily clad hipster cyclists" flaunting their one piece cranks all over colonial Williamsburg, New York City removed the bike lanes on Bedford Avenue, the most direct bike route to the Williamsburg Bridge and Manhattan.

But recently a group of vigilante cyclists, under cover of night, began repainting the Bedford Ave bike lanes.  You can read all about it here, but here's the nut graf:

Baruch Herzfeld, who has tried to bridge the gap between hipsters and Hasids with a bike-rental program, said safety is not the issue so much as xenophobia.

"They don't want the hipsters in their neighborhood," he said. "It's like in Howard Beach back in the day when they didn't want black people in the neighborhood."

(Whoops, that's not the nut graf!)

UPDATE: the New York Post reports that some of these vigilante bikers are now in the "spokey."

Winter biking tips from Chicago Bike Winter

 The snow's flying today, so it's time to think about winter commuting. A great resource is Chicago Bike Winter, which has tips on thrifty gear, bike handling, staying inspired, and even pulling kids trailers.

Even though we did a really crappy job of promoting it, there's a winter commuting workshop tonight at the Bike Project at 7 p.m. which will feature CBW's curriculum. It's free, so brave the wind and join us.

bike mini-flation in portland

or, another reason I am glad I live in a small town in the midwest:
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/bicycle-inflation-in-paradise/

Bikes are getting expensive in places that are nice to bike in- high demand and low supply! Let's lead an Arbitrage Tour across the country-- we'll fix up 1991 Treks for $100 and sell them in Portland for $475!


Also, to see how we compared, I averaged our recent Craigslist bike prices: $145.74 (Yes, there are huge statistical problems)(But it's still interesting)

for sale: prized bicycle

Apparently, the winner of the Fat Tire Bike wasn't impressed:
http://chambana.craigslist.org/bik/1481041125.html

a build-a-bike

Here's a bike I built at the Bike Project:

It's a late 70s Free Spirit/Pinnacle frame, originally sold by Sears.  I replaced almost all the components with spare parts from the shop.  Then I posed it in front of my 1950s-era hideous sofa.

Later I added a front rack and rode it in the Cranksgiving! bike race.

welcome!

Yes, we started a blog... because you deserved one!

Check back here frequently for news about the shop, new stuff we have for sale, and our upcoming events and general meetings.  Check too for pictures of beautiful bikes built from scratch in the shop and other miscellaneous bike stuff (like this video of Hipsters Discussing Cyclocross).

RSS us by clicking here.
Read a profile of our current Americorps volunteer here.
Learn about "Cycling on the Cheap" by clicking this.
If you're a member of The Bike Project, come to our next general meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, 6:00 pm, at the shop.
You can learn how to join here! 
...and you can buy a Bike Project t-shirt here!

Thanks for visiting!