Love Note

Boulder PUBLIC

PUBLIC J7 $495

PUBLIC A7 $495

PUBLIC D

Boulder Love Note

One of our customers in Boulder made a custom wood crate for his rear rack and swapped in a custom wood fender. Be careful when you do this or you may end up getting special attention. In this case, an admiring passerby left him this note in his crate. The story gets better. We located the woman who left the love note – Amee Hinkley – and learned that she is a local Boulder artist and part of a special White Space event occurring at DWR in Boulder on November 5th featuring local artists. Check out her work online. And if you live in Boulder, stop by the show at DWR. Help Amee buy a new bike.

New to PUBLIC: J7 and A7. $495.

The most frequent request we have received since launching in May has been ” We love your bikes but can you make one that is more affordable.” Our design team took this challenge to heart, and we have two new bikes – PUBLIC J7 and PUBLIC A7 – arriving mid-November. They are made from the same high quality chromoly steel frames for the same light smooth ride of our classic bikes. And they come with the same lightweight aluminum chain guards and fenders and other details. But we swapped in a standard derailleur instead of an internal hub gearing and made some other modifications to arrive at a more affordable all-purpose bike. We also plan to have a special home delivery option in place for the holidays. Getting a bike as a gift would make someone feel like a kid again in more ways than one.

Contest for Everyone. And Students.

We are giving away two bikes as part of our PUBLIC J7 and PUBLIC A7 launch, and there is a special program for college students. Please forward this along.

Fall Blues Festival

All blue PUBLIC Ds at 20% off.

We’ve got more Blue diamond-frame bikes (D1, D3, and D8) than we have room for at our warehouse, and we need to make space for new bikes coming in mid-November. For a limited time, we’re offering a special on our blue diamond bikes in single, 3, and 8 speeds in all sizes. You can’t get this deal by ordering online. You need to call us during weekday PST working hours at 888-450-0123 to place your “Fall Blues” order.

Free Shipping on All Bikes in stock through Election Day

Our recommendation for Election Day: Buy a bike this week to take advantage of free bike shipping and vote. Especially vote “No” on big oil-funded Prop. 23 if you live in California. Prop. 23 is a huge step backward.

Boulder Bike Lane

Vecchios

Vintage at U Bikes

Public in Boulder Rack

A quick trip to Colorado last month put us in the Denver International Airport on our way to Boulder, CO. We don’t know of two greater contrasts in transportation designs in one region. The experience was a study in the extremes we see in our modern world.

The Denver International Airport has been on the design radar since its inception in 1994. It rises out of nowhere in the high plains, like modernist Bedouin tents. Inside it feels like a study in efficient mobility with everyone everywhere in motion. The architecture firm, Fentress Architects, designed the airport and it lives up to their slogan “Inspired Design for People.” A speedy tram zips you to terminals. There are elevators, horizontal conveyor walkways, and escalators in every space. They whisk you around like magic inside the space. But once you get your bags and look for public transportation, it smacks you. You are stuck. You are 15 miles from anywhere. Denver is one of the few major airports in the entire world that is not connected to its city by some form of rail. Taxis and rental cars are your only way out. OK, there are buses (sort of) but who wants to pack into a bus, especially after a plane flight? It is as if the car rental agencies and taxis conspired to form a monopoly. Maybe they did. How uncivilized.

Nearby, Boulder is the opposite extreme i.e. very civilized. The city is designed to encourage people to walk, ride bikes, take public transportation, and reduce their dependence on cars. There are bike trails and well-signed paths everywhere and bike racks of all shapes and sizes all around town. For bike geeks there are several amazing bike stores like University Bikes (an amazing collection of vintage and modern bikes) and Vecchio where you can test ride a PUBLIC. For novice riders they even have a website, Go Bike Boulder that tells you how to get from A to B on a bike. With 300+ miles of bike paths within the 24.5 square miles of the city, this is very helpful. Boulder is not Amsterdam, but bikes do set the pace around downtown and you’ll see the full range of bikers from costumed nighttime bike parades to Lycra clad bike tri-athletes. And maybe the highest sign of civic enlightenment was that the bikers seem to obey the laws and leave the downtown pedestrian mall for pedestrians. Perhaps kudos goes to the City of Boulder for offering support and easy access to Bicyclists Rights and Responsibility on their comprehensive website. This is all very optimistic and idealistic – other cities could learn a lot from this example. The bike industry advocacy and educational organization Bikes Belong is headquartered there and it certainly belongs there.

What the Denver International Airport and Boulder have in common is that they are somewhat insular communities that attempt to provide the best mobility experience for people within their walls. However, they do not deal with the regional issues i.e. what to do when you are outside of their community. For this planning we do need government involvement, legislation, and public advocates.

It is our hope for enlightened transportation planning, whether that means high-speed rail or bike lanes.

Take Action. Vote.

And with another election season upon us, we encourage everyone to vote for candidates who prioritize sound transportation, bicycle and pedestrian-oriented land-use planning. And if you live in California, a strong NO vote against Proposition 23 is important. It’s worth a bike ride or stroll to your polling booth to vote NO against the disastrous, backward Proposition 23 that’s largely funded by big oil companies. This issue is not complicated.

Win a New PUBLIC bike

We have been besieged by requests from customers since the day we launched for an affordable all-purpose city bike. Our design team put this request on our fast track and we will have two new bike models here by mid-November. We are having a contest to win one of these bikes. So here is a chance to be one of the first to ride one, and for free. The bikes will be priced at $495. We will have full specifications up next week, but you can get a sneak preview and enter the contest today.

Tretorn Rainboot


We will be adding a wide range of new products this fall, including new Tretorn shoes like these Skerry Reslig rain boots. Made from all natural and PVC-free rubber, these 100% waterproof boots were originally designed for heavy-weather sailing. Which also makes them a welcome solution for biking on rain-soaked city streets and sidewalks. They could even make puddles fun again.

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

If you want an example of how an imaginative repurposing of a public space can change people’s perspectives of their own city, the best example in recent years is The High Line in New York. We “walked it” last month for the first time. It is perhaps the most provocative, creative, optimistic piece of modern design of this decade – as visually and culturally relevant, and as original, as Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao last decade.

In the 1930s The High Line elevated rail was constructed as part of the West Side Improvement project to serve the meatpacking and garment district of Manhattan without disrupting pedestrian traffic. By 1980 the rail was abandoned and in threat of being torn down as a result of the nationwide increase in interstate trucking. It was an irrelevant anachronism, and many felt the logical thing to do was tear it down – it served no rational urban purpose. Instead, community forces worked together to convert the structure into a mile and a half long public park and walkway. It now gives anyone and everyone a place to hang out, snooze, read a paper, people watch, jog, learn about the indigenous plants and view the city and its architecture from an elevated perspective.

Quiet. Reflective. Clever. Friendly. Inclusive. Pretty. These are not the adjectives we normally assign to most new urban developments. The fact that the private and public sectors even tried to pull this off is reason for giddy optimism; their success (and the final product) borders on the miraculous.

Architects Diller Scoffidio + Renfro and landscape architects James Corner Field Operations are responsible for the rehabilitation of The High Line. They blended historic and new materials and languages – leaving old chunky iron rails and hardware exposed and incorporating newly poured concrete creatively. Instead of denying the past, they incorporated and transformed it. The High Line has the feel of an outdoor museum – charming kids, foreign visitors, and locals alike. It combines indigenous flora and many designer details like the elegant modern outdoor benches. The neighborhood has been truly refreshed, and visitors are treated to forgotten vistas of the city.

We have examples of intelligently repurposed public spaces in San Francisco: Crissy Field, Fort Mason, and the Ferry Building, for example. But the High Line has a unique drama and character derived from its elevated structural nature and connection to the past. Like Chicago’s celebrated River Architecture Tour, it is equal parts education and entertainment, and perhaps destined to be as popular. (The River Tour is Chicago’s premiere tourist attraction).

Having given San Francisco and Chicago their due, it must be said that The High Line is another example of New York’s leadership in creatively reshaping public spaces to make the city more livable.
Check out more of our photos of The High Line on Flickr.

Knog Gekko Taillight

Bicycling around at dusk or at night without a highly visible blinking rear taillight is unsafe. When we turn our clocks back on November 7th we need to be extra cautious of bicycle safety. There are many bike taillights on the market, but very few that pass our test for being easy to install, easy to remove, elegant, and highly visible. Our Knog Gekko Taillight is a house favorite for its size and functionality. Made from flexible silicone, it wraps around almost any seat post or frame tube easily, and comes in several colors. Its three bright red LED lights keep you visible up to 1,800 feet. Ride on with safety.

M3’s: Back in Stock

The first deliveries of our PUBLIC M3 sold out in many sizes and colors early this summer. It turned out to be our most popular model. Our next delivery comes in this week. We will be filling backorders – thanks for waiting – and taking new orders for immediate shipment. This easy shifting 3 speed is especially suited for those who wear skirts or those who prefer not to swing a leg way up and over a typical crossbar, i.e. it’s good for guys too.

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

The fashion side of biking gains attention every year, driven mostly by mainstream media. Two prime examples are the recent articles in The New York Times, “Bicycle Chic Gains Speed,” and in The Wall Street Journal, “The Season of Biker Chic,” both placed in the style section. In new media, bike fashion has become a common theme for the increasing number of blogs, take for example, Velo Vogue, Velo Chic NYC, Copenhagen Cycle Chic, and Riding Pretty just to name a few. Even solely fashion driven blogs, such as the Sartorialist, started to include a biking category. Curiously, the bike industry itself has been a laggard in responding to this dimension of biking, still consumed with the logo and lycra side of biking. But times are changing. At the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas last month, there was a cool fashion show that that went all the way down to bike lingerie and guys taking their pants off.

Interbike is mostly a guy thing. We don’t have the attendance statistics, but anyone who goes can attest that women are a minority as exhibitors and attendees. As a result Interbike is, well, lacking in visual and fashion appeal in the same way that a male-dominated automotive, golf, or hunting exposition might be. But this year each afternoon Interbike hosted the 2010 Ready to Ride Fashion Show, well choreographed by Momentum Magazine and our Pedal Savvy friends, with a fast paced circular runaway of models cruising around on bikes.

We are not fashion critics at PUBLIC, in fact quite the opposite. We think that anything goes on bikes and our PUBLIC bikes are especially designed for everyday wear. And we’re not exactly sure how bike lingerie from Movmoda really functions for the everyday bicyclist, but we like to see boundaries being pushed. We loved the variety of color and pattern, and the fact that the show included a full range of accessories, complete outfits, and great attention to detail. Kudos to Momentum.

The fashion show is another example of women leading the industry in new directions. But it is a sea of change culturally. I was asked recently by the Daily Beast to write up what I considered to be the leading innovations in the industry. What I came up with was “more women riders.” Here is a sampling of the show. We’re all working together with new media to make sure that what happens in Vegas does not always stay in Vegas.

Papergirl SF Hits The Streets With Art

PUBLIC was pleased to support Papergirl SF. Papergirl, as self-described, is a “mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive. ” We love seeing the way in which art creates community, fun, and connects to our mission about getting more people on bicycles. This past Sunday our PUBLIC office served as the launch pad to roll up 1,700 pieces of art from over 100 artists from 52 different cities and 11 different countries. Hundreds of strangers on the streets of San Francisco received a nice surprise by a lovely posse of bicyclists giving away and throwing rolled up art on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  Take a look our photos we took of the strangers who received their surprises.

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