BikePortland.org Naked in Portland: A-OK! Local cyclist Matthew Vilhauer was pretty comfortable taking off his clothes. Maybe a little too comfortable. Biking naked around Vancouver, WA, last June got Vilhauer arrested and charged with indecent exposure. The jury in the trial came out with a hung verdict on the charge yesterday, but a phrase uttered […]
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Run Off the Road, Cyclist? Get a Helmetcam.
From the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation comes the tale of one young cyclist who was tired of having no witnesses to cars running him off the road. So he installed a video camera on his helmet and filmed his rides for a year. Behold, the highlight reel: I don’t really agree with his assessment that drivers […]
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How to Get Charged for Assault With a Car
Last week the news broke that the TriMet bus driver who made an illegal turn into a crowd of pedestrians, killing two people, would be given a handful of traffic tickets rather than charged with a crime. This prompted many commenters to wonder: what the hell does it take to get charged with a crime […]
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To The Lady Who Almost Killed Me During My Bike Commute This Morning…
You. Old lady with the bright blue eye-shadow, who almost sideswiped me on my bike this morning… I believe you were wrong, in the assertion you made, in our brief (yet heated) debate when I caught up with you at the stop light of NE 20th and Broadway. You claimed that I should have stayed […]
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Which Neighborhoods Have the Most Bike Theft?
I asked the police to run the numbers on where bikes are being stolen in Portland. As I reported two months ago, Portlanders reported 2,300 bikes stolen in the past two years. But where are they being taken from? Here’s the breakdown, courtesy of the Portland Police East Precinct. More neighborhoods—and findings about how NOT […]
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This is What Rush Hour Should Look Like
An average morning rush hour in Utrecht, Holland. All that’s missing is the Benny Hill/Yakkety Sax soundtrack. via The High Definite. This is an ordinary Wednesday morning in April 2010 at around 8.30 am. Original time was 8 minutes that were compressed into 2 minutes, so everything is 4 times faster than in reality. The […]
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Quick Questions for Women-Owned Bike Businesses
The workshop room at United Bicycle Institute on N Williams was packed last Thursday night with 85 people talking about wheelsets, eyeing custom-made bike frames and munching on cupcakes. This “Bike Economics” showcase of Portland women-owned bike businesses was the first event hosted by fledgling bikey women’s group Portland Society and it brought out 20 […]
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Snap Judgment: Apex Beer Bar
[Welcome to Snap Judgment, a new regular Blogtown feature wherein I’ll be dropping by places both old and just opened for a one-dish fly-by, and developing an opinion based on that singular experience. Basically, it’s the complete opposite of what I do each week for Last Supper. I don’t expect to get it right all […]
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City Promises to Fix East Couch for Bikes
After complaints from cyclists (including Bicycle Transportation Alliance), the Portland Bureau of Transportation says it will enact some safety changes the newly-rebuilt East Couch street ASAP. Here’s what Transportation Director Sue Keil says the city will do: Cyclist crash on East Couch last Friday (photo by Mike O’Leary) • Ground out the slippery bike lane […]
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15 Questions for Bike Snob NYC
If you don’t read BikeSnobNYC‘s rambling, hilarious, absurd, obscure-joke-ridden blog about bikes and bike culture, you should probably devote the rest of your workday to scrolling through its archives. Bike Snob (recently revealed as New Yorker Eben Weiss) is so good at poking fun at all things bikey that he snagged himself a book deal […]
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BTA: Couch Couplet is Not Ready to Ride.
We discussed the pluses and frustrating minuses of the new eastside Burnside/Couch couplet on the blog a couple weeks ago. Now the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) and BikePortland.org are chiming in that the new bike lanes on Couch are unsafe to ride. Michael O’Leary As BikePortland detailed last week, the sweeping curve of the bike […]
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Riding a Bike Through Mexico City
I’m a little grumpy this morning because at this time yesterday, I was riding a bike through Mexico City, where it is 84 degrees. With a souvenir sunburn, I have returned to our gray, gray city. So let me reminisce a little. Cyclists on Ciclovia bike around the Angel of Independence Mexico City is the […]