PUBLIC is pleased to host author Sue Macy who will share tales of female bike racers, reformers, and reactionaries from the bicycle boom of the 1890s.

PUBLIC Book Talk: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom
Monday, October 17
6:00pm – 8:00pm
PUBLIC HQ in 123 South Park
San Francisco, CA

Sue Macy’s talk is inspired by her new book Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Tires Along the Way), published by National Geographic.

Today, the bicycle is an ecological, economical, enjoyable way to get some exercise, get to work, and generally get where you need to go while leaving a minimal carbon footprint. In the 1890s, the bicycle was all that and more, especially for women.

At a time when women were confined by constrictive clothing and restrictive social mores, the bicycle presented them with the chance to break free. They tossed aside their corsets and crinolines, waved goodbye to parental chaperones, and hit the road as they quite literally pedaled to freedom.

LIGHT SNACKS & DRINKS WILL BE SERVED.

EVENT IS FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. BUT PLEASE RSVP ON FACEBOOK OR TO RSVP@PUBLICBIKES.COM SO WE CAN PROVIDE ENOUGH SEATING, SNACKS, & DRINKS.

AUTHOR-SIGNED BOOKS WILL BE FOR SALE.

You can read a review in The Atlantic or watch the trailer below:

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

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.

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.

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.

PUBLIC loves art. We especially love art that creates community, fun, and connects to our mission about getting more people on bicycles.

That’s why we’re happy to support our friends at Papergirl SF. What’s Papergirl?

“Papergirl is, in essence, a mail-art and delivery systems art project that is participatory, analogue, non-commercial, and impulsive. Submitted artwork is distributed like a newspaper but not edited or printed like it, the artwork is rolled up into bundles of 5 pieces or more and thrown to passers-by from bicycles.”

PUBLIC’s office at 123 South Park is serving as a drop-off location for art submissions. Submission deadline is Sept. 18.

We’re definitely going to help with art distribution on our PUBLIC bikes. Our baskets and panniers will come in handy to carry rolled up art.

And we’ve got several members of our PUBLIC team who studied or dabble in art so we also plan to submit our own art. Our founder Rob was a ceramics artist with a MFA to boot. Sally got her BFA in painting and drawing. Hannah is a filmmaker and photographer. And all of us are proficient at doodling during staff meetings. Some are better than others.

How can you not get excited about this project? Especially since almost anyone can participate. Submit some art. Help roll them up. And see you on the streets to help make a random person’s day that much cooler and happier.

“Anything can be submitted: prints, photos, drawings, paintings, zines, writings, textiles, etc. The only requirement is that the art be flexible enough to be rolled up, we won’t be throwing any stretched canvases around. The art pieces aren’t selected for Papergirl, we use everything that is submitted, so the artists decide what to show and have given away in distribution. The art rolls cannot be sold and are not delivered to subscribers, anyone who catches a roll is lucky, and money can’t buy luck! Throwing the work from a moving bike means there is no time for any stereotypes when choosing recipients of the art rolls, as distributors often have to react fast and spontaneously.”

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