Bike racks set up outside city hall for participants in the Bicycle Transportation Alliance’s bike commute challenge. There’ll be free Hotlips Pizza at tonight’s event, and Widmer Brothers have donated a keg. It’s a good job they are donations—BikePortland.org reports today that the BTA lost $92,509 last year, due to sloppy accounting. THERE’LL BE BIKES, […]
Bikes
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The Most Photogenic Photo Op of 2009.
Today is Walk and Bike to School Day which means it is the cutest day of the entire year. I stopped by Abernethy Elementary in Ladd’s Addition, which was hosting its 2nd Annual bike-a-thon Tour de Ladd in honor of the nationwide kids on bikes day. To fill your cute quota for the day, here […]
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Can Replacing Car Parking Help Business?
To certain business owners (all of Hawthorne, I’m looking at you) who go into hysterics when the city suggests doing away with some of Portland’s free parking, there’s heartening news from our Canadian friends: according to this Toronto study, replacing car parking with bike lanes or widened sidewalks helps local businesses. According to the study, […]
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Bikes, Blood, Beer: Perfect Weekend!
I wanted to post a quick follow up to my feature in this week’s paper that profiles a couple local bike builders. The builders crafted custom bikes for month-long bike design celebration Oregon Manifest and actually raced the handbuilt bikes 77 miles on Saturday. As with all great plans, things did not quite go as […]
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Five Steps to Make PDX the Best Bike City in the World (and Destroy Zoobomb in the Process)
Five European bicycle ambassadors turned up in an unusual place yesterday: Beaverton City Hall. Metro received a grant to bring the five transportation experts from Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Lyons, Brussels and the Netherlands to Portland and its glorious suburbs to school us on how to make biking seriously mainstream transportation. Beaverton City Hall sits just off […]
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Just to Get You Excited for the Weekend…
Here is a total bike nerd orgasm photo of a frame local builder Tony Pereira is unveiling this weekend at Oregon Manifest, a handbuilt bike fest that kicks off with tomorrow’s 77-mile bike builders’ race. Pereira’s Flickr Kryptonite lock, PDX-made custom frame. Be still, my heart. Building a U-lock right into a bike?! AGGHHHHHH I’M […]
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Full Cycle
Upstart Portland Bike Builders Reinvent a Craft—And Will Soon Race Their Old Hero
Young Portland bike builders prepare to face (and race) a long-lost
bicycling pioneer.
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Byrne-Ing Down The Bagdad
David Byrne at the Bagdad Theater is Portland’s hot ticket tonight. “Why are they getting in but I’m not?!” screamed a middle aged lady at the poor desk clerk on my way in. “Because they’re on the list,” he said. “You people are full of it,” she said. And we are. PRESENTING BYRNE’S NIGHT: THE […]
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Interview: Amazing Oregon Bike Builder Mark DiNucci
Doris DiNucci Mark Dinucci (long-haired ne’er-do-well at right) & Andy Newland build their first ridable bike circa 1971. Mark DiNucci was Portland’s first modern bike builder—he brazed together his first frame in his mom’s backyard all the way back in 1971. He quit the solo bike building business in 1985 to go work for Specialized […]
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Fewer Portland Women than Men Ride Bikes. Why?
Last week’s announcement that Portland is America’s #1 bike commute city created a lot of discussion on the blog, so check out this statistical tidbit: there’s a roughly 3 percent bike gender split among Portland bike commuters. In 2008, 7.3 percent of Portland males reported their bikes are their primary mode of transportation to work […]
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The Dead Freeway Society
The Strange History of Portland’s Unbuilt Roads
Portland’s progress comes from the roads not built.
Posted inBikes
Portland is America’s #1 Bike Commute City!
This exciting news just in from the Census Bureau: Portland has the highest percentage of commutes to work by bike of any city in the entire goddamn U.S. of A! The numbers collected by the census show a huge jump in biking to work in Portland over the last decade. In 1996, fewer than two […]