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February 5, 2012

Let’s Polo! Orange 20 Bike Polo Wheel Covers!

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Let’s Polo! Orange 20 Bike Polo Wheel Covers!

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New Orange 20 Jerseys available for Pre-Order. 

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New Orange 20 Jerseys available for Pre-Order.

Posted by: mrflexer @ 5:05 pm Permalink | 0 Comments

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February 4, 2012

Don’t Knock This Opportunity

Recently, Bureau of Street Services changed the contractor it allows to provide benches at bus stops in exchange for the privilege of putting ads on the things. The old benches were awful plastic things, but the new ones are rather handsome dark-green affairs made of large-diameter steel tubing. They’re even a bit stylish, as you see from the snapshot below:


spacer You might note something else: that the tubing is about the diameter of the tubing used in bicycle parking racks….


In doing so, you will not be alone: I have often seen bicycles locked up to these new benches, presumably by folks doing those multi-modal commutes we all, in and out of the administration, are hoping to encourage. You know, solving transit riders’ first-mile/last-mile conundrum by making it easier to bicycle to or from the bus stop…. (I’ve also seen them used as racks by folks stepping out of a restaurant, on blocks where there weren’t “real” bike racks.)


Sometimes the bikes are locked up the long way, but many bikes won’t sit close enough to that transverse bar behind the backrest to lock up easily, so more often the bikes are perpendicular to the bench, blocking passersby on the sidewalk and folks trying to get on the bus.


Now, you’d expect our historically unimaginative city simply to outlaw locking to the bus benches, as they have outlawed locking to a parking meter (a law that no one has ever known to be enforced), but…we can do better. This is opportunity knocking!


Here’s my suggestion to the Bureau of Street Services: let’s modify those benches with a couple of security bolts to make sure that bracing bar can’t spin or be removed, then put an add-on bike locking loop on it.


A modified version of the Cyclehoop, with only half a loop, would work fine. Whoever makes LADOT’s current racks could certainly fabricate something like this.


It would be a huge boon to LA’s cyclists, boosting the number of racks in the city very cheaply, and it would benefit Metro too, by getting more riders to its buses. Getting some company or other to “sponsor” the retrofits would bring them bragging rights. And pedestrians as well as bus passengers would not find their way blocked by crosswise bicycles.


The anonymous bus and bike riders of LA have already started using these benches as bike racks. Let’s make it easier for them, and everyone around them, to keep riding bikes and buses for their daily travel.


It can only make our city better.


Are you listening, Los Angeles?


(Readers: if you like this idea, let Bureau of Street Services know here, but be civil about it, okay?)
 

Posted by: Richard Risemberg @ 4:15 pm Permalink | 1 Comment

1 Comment »

  1. [...] Risemberg writes in praise of the new Main Street road diet and bike lanes in Venice, and suggests turning bus benches into bike racks. How can we stop bike thefts when police are doing the stealing? More grants for environmental [...]

    Pingback by Three cyclists hospitalized after Seal Beach DUI hit-and-run; Palms Desert cyclist critically injured « BikingInLA — February 6, 2012 @ 1:01 am

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January 28, 2012

Alden Seats in stock at Orange 20 Bikes. Also check it out at Kickstarter!

Alden Seats in stock at Orange 20 Bikes. Also check it out at Kickstarter!

Posted by: mrflexer @ 10:31 pm Permalink | 0 Comments

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Profile Racing Road Hubs in stock!!

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Profile Racing Road Hubs in stock!!

Posted by: mrflexer @ 2:59 pm Permalink | 0 Comments

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Time and the Pedals Turning

Bicycles are enduring as well as efficient, at least steel bikes are; and the other popular materials can be too. Titanium, certainly; aluminum, if done well; sometimes carbon fiber, as in Calfee’s handmade carbon bikes with their 25-year guarantee. But any of them would be hard-pressed to keep up with steel–not on the racetrack, but on the cycle of time.


spacer The bike in this photo, for example:


That’s the bottom half of a fellow named Dennis, whom I met at the bicycle bridge in Playa del Rey, one of my favorite hangouts. He’s astride the bike he rides fifteen or twenty miles every day, as he has done for years. The bike’s seen a lot of miles, and Dennis isn’t its first owner by any means. Because that bike was made in 1927.


At eighty-five years old, it makes my daily rider, a 45-year-old Bottecchia, look brand-new by comparison.


It’s a “President,” out of Tacoma, Washington, with the classic old-school double top tube design, and a little gas-tank-like fitting in between the top tubes–I think it may have originally housed a tool kit.


Dennis took off the stock wheels, which have wooden rims, and has them stashed away. Aside from that and tires and chains, the bike is pretty much original. It’s entirely coated in rust, and the bearings are pretty much open to the sea air and windblown sand of the bike path.


Yet it keeps going, day in and day out, and it keeps Dennis going as well. He wears through a set of tires every year, and they are thick, old-fashioned roadster tires too. It also brings him together with other bike path users, folks like me who hang out at the bridge and always have a few minutes to talk about bikes and whatever a bit of casual chat will lead to. I’ve made good friends there. That’s part of the beauty of bikes, they give you a talking point and let you get to know people. I met one of my best buddies at the bridge, a fellow whose political views are almost exactly the opposite of mine and who worked in a completely different industry. We would not likely have met otherwise.


A bike is much more than just metal, then…but of course without the metal (or the epoxy), you wouldn’t have a bike.


So when you come in to Orange 20 looking for a new ride, steel or otherwise, choose carefully–because you’ll be making a lifelong friend. And one that will take you to meet friends you never knew you had.
 

Posted by: Richard Risemberg @ 2:08 pm Permalink | 2 Comments

2 Comments »

  1. [...] company based on a made up bike team based on a real beer-drinking Belgium racer. Rick Risemberg meets a man on an 85-year old bike; he also finds a bike/ped bridge in Whittier, but no signage that says how to get there. Some [...]

    Pingback by Main Street road diet brings joy to Venice cyclists; I missed it by that much last week « BikingInLA — January 31, 2012 @ 1:30 am

  2. [...] company based on a made up bike team based on a real beer-drinking Belgium racer. Rick Risemberg meets a man on an 85-year old bike; he also finds a bike/ped bridge in Whittier, but no signage that says how to get there. Some [...]

    Pingback by Main Street road diet brings joy to Venice cyclists; a road rage finger and a shipload of links « BikingInLA — January 31, 2012 @ 1:44 am

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