2nd Street SOMA

3rd Street SOMA

Brannan Street SOMA

There was a unique street event in San Francisco (and simultaneously around the world) last week called PARK(ing) Day. Businesses and community groups were encouraged to convert the metered parking spaces in front of their establishments into alternative public spaces. The event plays off what it means when you pay for a parking space, demanding a little awareness from us about this wholly habitual transaction. What is a parking space? What could it be? It’s a fun and quirky event, spread out mostly in the South of Market (SOMA), Hayes Valley, and Mission parts of the city. The best designed installations involved some humor, cleverness, and visual thinking ­­ an architectural pop-up environment made from the recycled cardboard tubes of large format printers by SWA/Studios SWA/Studios on Howard Street and the Pig (Harry Allen), a parked astroturf car piece at Propeller Propeller on Hayes. There were several animated spaces on Valencia Street that included insect habitats, brown bears, panda bears, maroon walruses on bikes (of course ), and more.

PARK(ing) Day asks people to reevaluate the very nature of urban street design and to prioritize the human experience over the car experience. It’s a mild-mannered demonstration, a lot easier for most drivers to accept than the more confrontational Critical Mass. PARK(ing) Day shares much in common with the hugely successful Sunday Streets program where sections of the city are closed to car traffic for a day. Both are international events, exploding in popularity, and well received by the residents and business alike because it increases friendly sidewalk traffic, not car traffic.

It’s great to call attention to these urban design issues with these diminutive installations, but a little sad that the monstrously dominant visual element that defines our environment – the massive swaths of asphalt – are implicitly given a pass. In our SOMA neighborhood numerous six lane one-way thoroughfares crisscross miles of the city and define the urban plan of the district. These supersized runways were smart design elements at one time. They were constructed back in the 1930’s in order to accommodate commercial trucks that serviced the heavy industries that made up this part of city.

But industry has left most of SOMA. Factories have been replaced by lofts, yoga studios, bars, eateries, art museums, music clubs, and design offices – a myriad soulful community-based enterprises. There is a vibrant community here, but not many of us enjoy walking around much. It’s impersonal in sight, sound, and scale not really designed for humans. One-way high-speed traffic runs counter to the needs of civilized neighborhoods. We live and work on highway corridors that serve freeways and bridges for outlying communities, not ours.

Logically, it is time for these thoroughfares to be retrofitted with trees, pedestrian zones, bike lanes, parks, and sidewalk cafes. All of this could be done at low cost with community support and with marginal impact to traffic. San Francisco also has some stellar examples of repurposed public spaces ­the Ferry Building and Crissy Field at the top of the list. Tourists and locals alike flock to these retrofitted destinations. Community is nurtured. What’s not to like about it?

It seems so obvious. Some of the most attractive and valuable real estate in the world we have operating as underutilized sober grey asphalt runways. I guess we just don’t see it. Or we are too busy hustling through it or making sure we don’t get run over crossing the streets to think about the possibilities. This is what is really strange, a lot stranger than maroon walruses talking to bears to be sure.

As many of you know we have been out of stock on most of our 3-Speeds for months. Thanks for your patience. We will have Medium sized M3’s in Cream, Orange, and Blue ready to ship by October 15th. We sold out of these quickly before, so this is a good time to place your order.

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

You can test ride (and buy) our bikes from a select group of bike stores around the US. If you want to combine a vacation and a test ride, here are two hotels that provide PUBLIC bikes for their guests. The H2 Hotel in Healdsburg, California and El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas. Both of these new lodgings offer exceptionally unique guest experiences in unique locations.

H2

In August, this boutique hotel opened and ever since has been getting kudos for many aspects of its design. Architect David Baker applied his eco-design skills to the project by utilizing local materials, installing a living roof, a solar system, an underground cistern for water collection, and employing other features to reduce the environmental impact. The interiors were designed by Marie Fisher and include Piet Hein Eek furniture and other unique details. You’ll find Piet Hein Eek work inside too. A short walk from the hotel leads you to the historic center square in Healdsburg, which is lined with unique local stores and our favorite Italian trattoria in the county, Scopa. Some of the best country biking in the state surrounds the hotel – easy bikes trips to wineries, the Russian River, and to numerous other Sonoma Valley destinations. H2 is a welcome alternative to the more traditional B&B’s in the area that stock potpourri and Victorian details but not bikes. H2 is quickly gaining a rep as one of the best hotels in the entire Bay Area. Mention PUBLIC and receive a 10% discount on rooms, Sunday-Thursday now through December 28th, 2010.
www.h2hotel.com

Photos courtesy of Eric Ryan Anderson

El Cosmico

Anyone who has been to Marfa, Texas knows that the hotel options lack in contrast to the uniqueness of Marfa itself. Marfa is home to a phenomenal collection of Donald Judd works and installations. He dedicated over twenty years of his life to this small southwestern town where he lived and worked until his death. El Cosmico may be as unique as Marfa itself. You can stay in a 1956 vintage Imperial Mansion trailer for $125 or if you’re on a tighter budget go with a Teepee or a Yurt for as little as $60. El Cosmico’s amenities – beyond PUBLIC bikes – range from a Bath House, Dutch Tubs, a Hammock Grove, and wireless Internet. The shared outdoor kitchen onsite and picnic tables set the tone for great conversation.

One cannot truly capture the experience of Marfa from a typical hotel room, while awaiting room service. El Cosmico allows you to feel the essence of the desert after visiting Donald Judd’s work throughout the town. Flat terrain and PUBLIC bikes allow you to see it all. Mention PUBLIC and receive a 10% discount on rooms, Sunday-Thursdays.
www.elcosmico.com

Other Bike-Hotels?

We plan to maintain a list of hotels that provide guests with free bikes – of any brand – as part of their hospitality package. Please send us referrals and we will mention them in future newsletters. Two hotels we frequently recommend are the Maritime in New York and the San Jose in Austin.

PUBLIC Rear Baskets now Back in Stock

We designed this handy wire basket that easily attaches to almost any rear bike rack. It’s been a best selling item because of its functionality and versatility – great for books, laptops, purses, and groceries. In just seconds you can pop the rear basket off, grab it by the handle, run your errands, and save a few plastic bags along the way. A couple bungee straps or a cargo net make it that much more utilitarian.

David Herlihy Event at PUBLIC Oct 8th

David Herlihy’s first book on bikes, Bicycle: The History won the 2004 Award for Excellence in the History of Science. It’s a great fast paced read and probably the best reference on bikes we know about. David Herlihy wrote another unique book, The Lost Cyclist. Check out Urban Velo’s review. We are delighted to have him at PUBLIC to talk about the book and hang out with us for an evening. Mark your calendars from 6-8pm on Oct. 8 at 123 South Park and RSVP at rsvp@publicbikes.com.

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

PUBLIC is pleased to partner with Green Apple Books to host author David V. Herlihy’s presentation on his new book The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance.

This free event from 6-8 pm on Friday, Oct. 8, 2010 will be at PUBLIC’s 123 South Park office as part of annual literary festival Litquake.

We love David V. Herlihy’s other book, Bicycle: The History, which won the 2004 Award for Excellence in the History of Science. So we’re excited to hear him talk about his new book The Lost Cyclist.

Here’s a book description:

“In the late 1880s, Frank Lenz of Pittsburgh, a renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist, dreamed of cycling around the world. He finally got his chance by recasting himself as a champion of the downsized “safety-bicycle” with inflatable tires, the forerunner of the modern road bike that was about to become wildly popular. In the spring of 1892 he quit his accounting job and gamely set out west to cover twenty thousand miles over three continents as a correspondent for Outing magazine. Two years later, after having survived countless near disasters and unimaginable hardships, he approached Europe for the final leg. He never made it. His mysterious disappearance in eastern Turkey sparked an international outcry and compelled Outing to send William Sachtleben, another larger-than-life cyclist, on Lenz’s trail. Bringing to light a wealth of information, Herlihy’s gripping narrative captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying the bicycle adventurer in the days before paved roads and automobiles. This untold story culminates with Sachtleben’s heroic effort to bring Lenz’s accused murderers to justice, even as troubled Turkey teetered on the edge of collapse.”

Green Apple Book will have The Lost Cyclist for sale at our event with a book signing to follow the presentation. You can RSVP by sending us an email to rsvp@publicbikes.com.

You can also read this New York Times book review, or watch the below video.

Dan is our PUBLIC Citizen. Dessert is his middle name & bicycles are his game.

We arrived in Lisbon, Portugal with absolutely no travel agenda other than to walk around and hang out in a European city and culture that is a little off the travel radar. Lisbon has a lot in common with San Francisco physically. Both cities are on the water with hilly, dramatic views, and a photogenic orange bridge. Both are great walking cities but spread out enough so that you need some kind of public transportation to get the feel of the entire city.

It’s challenging to see Lisbon by bicycle – if you want to think or talk while you’re seeing it – because the streets are heavily cobbled with rail lines slashing through them. And the hills are so steep that even kids walk their bikes up them.

We were tipped off that the #28 Streetcar was a good way to get an overview of the city. When one pulled up to our stop, I loved its canary yellow color and the fact that locals and tourists alike were hanging out of the windows and smiling. Inside it had the feel of a vintage motorboat more than a tram, with dark wood paneling, polished metal hardware, and neat design details.

The #28 zooms up and down around the city taking some sharp, jostling turns. It reminded me of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland more than public transportation. Fun. You could break an arm if you left it hanging too far out the window, but that little bit of risk just heightened the experience. Everyone fights for the right to a seat with a window that opens and closes manually. And everyone – including the locals – seemed to be getting a kick out of riding it. It was a treat, like taking vaporetti in Venice or the ferries in the Bay Area.

I live right on a cable car line in San Francisco, but I never take it. Our cable cars resemble the Lisbon #28 in character, but they are slow, inconvenient, unreliable, and they stop way too often. They are simply not fun to ride unless you’re a tourist, and walking is usually faster. What would it take it take to get me on a local cable car? Speed I guess. If it zipped downtown, I might use it regularly. But the same thing that would attract me (speed) would probably scare away the tourists.

Convenience and speed obviously comes first with public transportation, but maybe there are other design criteria like ‘color,’ ‘fresh air’, even ‘fun’, that should be taken more seriously? Would I have taken the #28 if it were a sober modern grey or beige with no manual windows and no thrill to the ride? Not a chance. Would I take BART more often if it were less dowdy? Maybe. Do you think our Department of Transportation design departments would laugh at me for suggesting that we should make BART more colorful, retrofit some manual windows for fresh air, and engineer some thrills into the ride? Definitely. Do charm and efficiency need to be mutually exclusive? No. This is why we ride bikes.

Lisbon has a lot more to offer than the Yellow #28. The cobbled streets and sidewalks make pattern a part of everyday excursion. The diversity and color in the tiles and buildings are a few of the unique details to the city. But you can’t see most of them from the #28 – it goes too fast.

See more of our Lisbon photos here.

Dutch Bike Company Seattle

Interior of the Dutch Bike Company in Seattle

Dutch Bike Company Seattle is known as “importers and retailers of the finest European city bicycles.” We’re proud that you can now test ride and buy a PUBLIC bike in Seattle at this fabulous retailer. Much of our inspiration comes from Europe. We designed our PUBLIC bikes as an alternative to the authentic Dutch bikes that we love – ours are lighter in weight, typically offer more gears, more vibrant colors, and sizes for every person. We continue to add more test ride locations around the country.

PARK(ing) Day on Sept. 17

One of our favorite days in the city is the annual PARK(ing) Day. This year’s PARK(ing) Day is on Friday, Sept. 17. PARK(ing) Day started in 2005 by our friends at Rebar, who are some of the most creative urban designers and planners we’ve come across. We’re teaming up with our friends from Bike Basket Pies and Nomad’s Kitchen to convert a few parking spots near our office as temporary picnic areas. We’ll have tables and chairs – and a bookshelf with reading materials to inspire visitors to read about our world of design and bicycles. We’ll have a few other surprises too. Come visit us at 123 South Park on Friday and share meal with our PUBLIC posse.

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

One of our favorite days in the city is the annual PARK(ing) Day. This year’s PARK(ing) Day is on Friday, Sept. 17.

PARK(ing) Day started in 2005 by our friends at Rebar, who are some of the most creative urban designers and planners we’ve come across.

We’re teaming up with our friends from Bike Basket Pies and Nomad’s Kitchen to convert a few parking spots near our office as temporary picnic areas. We’ll have tables and chairs – and a bookshelf with reading materials to inspire visitors to read about our world of design and bicycles. We’ll have a few other surprises too.

We’re lucky to work in South Park where there’s already some green space and picnic benches – but on a beautiful day there’s more people looking for spots to sit on than there are seats in the park. So we hope to provide some additional seating areas where our neighbors and visitors can relax on.

Here’s a short history of PARK(ing) Day:

“PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.”

You can learn about other PARK(ing) Day spots around the world here. Or check out the growing map of San Francisco locations.

We hope to see you and your friends at 123 South Park. And maybe we’ll run into you on our PUBLIC bikes when we visit the other PARK(ing) Day locations around the city.

Dan is our PUBLIC Citizen. Dessert is his middle name & bicycles are his game.

Sea of Cars at Eurobike

Next Bike stand at Eurobike

Next Bike Rentals

Next Bike text message

Next Bike Advertisement

Bike parking lots in Amsterdam

Our post last week, That Blind Spot drew a lot of feedback. It’s pretty easy to point to the problems car culture inflicts on the US and to wag fingers at poor transportation ‘design’. The irony of our local community – the ‘progressive’ Bay Area – succumbing to this collective blindness stands out as somewhat comical. This irony is not unique to the US. Let me tell you what I came across in Germany at the annual Eurobike show last week.

Eurobike is the Mecca for bicyclists. It may be five times the size of the US Interbike show. Getting to Friedrichshafen, the town closet to the show, is a treat and hopefully a taste of all travel in the future. You fly into Zurich, walk 100 yards to a train that speeds you silently at 100 mph to Romanshorn. You hop a ferry and have a beer with pals during an hour-long ride across the lake, disembarking in Friedrichshafen, where you can walk to your hotel. You’re feeling profoundly envious of the European public transportation system – the last car I thought about was the taxi in San Francisco taking me to BART (Bay Area Regional Transit).

Getting to the bike show the next morning brought me back to the reality of car traffic. The show is held in a remote suburban location and only accessible by cars and buses. The three-mile trip may take you an hour. Traffic is backed up for 20 miles in all directions with people in their cars trying to get to a bike show. The exhibition area is surrounded by fields of cars and feels stunningly like a racetrack event. This sea of cars really puts the ‘iron’ in irony.

These traffic-jams last all four days of the show. Remember, this is a show to celebrate bikes – amazing pieces of design that give us all independence and efficiency. The irony of it all seems lost on the leaders of the bike industry. How much sweeter it would be if we all rode bikes from our hotels to the show located in a city or community where bikes serve a social purpose? What if the parking lot looked like what you find in so many cities like Amsterdam?

Solutions are always more interesting, and I found one on the first day. I was standing in a long line waiting for a bus after the show, tired and cranky like everyone else. I noticed a small line of rental ‘Next Bikes’ outside the convention hall. I inquired. The bikes were all spoken for, but the guy thought there might be one in a remote location. He used a wireless GPS system and located a bike nearby. In thirty seconds he hooked me up to the online service and sent me a text with the location, serial number, and lock combo of my bike. After a 15-minute walk I was on my free bike and riding blissfully back to the hotel with that special pleasure of passing all the car traffic leaving the Eurobike show. I used the bike during my four-day trip and dropped it off outside my hotel where I simply called the service to tell them I was done. The rental price was $1 Euro for four days. (The ads on the bikes apparently pay for the costs of the system.) All of this is made possible by wireless technology, free enterprise, and local entrepreneurs.

Let’s not delude ourselves by nostalgic thinking that bikes alone are the answer to mobility. We need modern technology. Bike geeks love technology and we have such a tradition for innovation in our own backyard. We must be able to make this work at home, no? Grassroots innovations seem more likely than relying on governmental action or waiting for the bike industry to come around (which is having too much fun watching kids fly on bikes over hills, and it does look like fun).

Mellow Johnny’s

Mellow Johnny's Inside

Mellow Johnny’s is well known because it’s owned by Lance Armstrong, but better known for the adjoining Juan Pelota café, the showers for sweaty bikers, a bike service center, and the best selection in Austin of lifestyle clothing and bikes for racing and city commuting. I love it for its low-key local architecture. Check it out when in Austin. Also check out our other test ride locations around the country – we just added a few more.

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

PUBLIC will have one of our bicycles displayed at SPUR’s exhibit “DIY Urbanism: Testing the grounds for social change.”

Here’s the official exhibit description from SPUR:

“Since the onset of the ‘great recession’ in 2008, San Francisco, like many American cities, has struggled through a period of economic decline and drastically reduced public resources. Fortunately for San Francisco, a city with a long history of entrepreneurship and social activism, citizens have displayed great wherewithal and ingenuity in the face of budgetary stalemates—resulting in an outpouring of innovative do-it-yourself projects ranging from activating stalled construction sites, to constructing temporary public plazas and parks at street intersections, to designing pop-up storefronts, to creating a national forest in the heart of the Tenderloin. DIY Urbanism provides a snapshot of this burgeoning and distinctively local movement, and explores the meeting grounds between the bottom-up approach of DIY urbanists and the traditional top-down planning process.”

The exhibit will last from September 7-October 29, 2010. The exhibit is curated by Ruth Keffer and designed by our friends from Rebar.

And there’s a fun opening party with food and drinks on Sept. 7:

DIY URBANISM EVENT DETAILS
Tuesday, September 7, 2010, 6-9 pm
SPUR Urban Center
654 Mission Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10-$20 sliding scale
Buy tickets here

We hope to see you at the opening party!

Dan is our PUBLIC Citizen. Dessert is his middle name & bicycles are his game.