All Helmets 15% Off – This Week Only – End 3/6/12

We just received a shipment of new helmets with bold colors, stripes, sparkles, polka dots, and other patterns that are especially fun for spring. Putting on a new helmet is a little like putting on a new short or pair of shoes- it helps you approach the day with a fresh perspective. Rarely do you find a helmet that manages to be fun while totally and effectively protecting your coconut.

Stay safe, ride in style, and save a few bucks this week.

Local Builders and Champagne Rides at NAHBS This Week

The North American Handmade Bike Show takes place around the country, and this year it’s taking place in Sacramento. You’ll see the finest handmade bikes in the world at this show, and there are always some surprises.

NAHBS Portland 2008 Roller Racing

Four years ago at NAHBS in Portland I went to a fantastic roller racing event sponsored by Rapha and wrote about it for Studio Forbes. I’m not sure if there will anything as intense as this year, but Sheila Moon is hosting a “Mimosa Ride” on Sunday morning, and we’ll be there rolling around Sacramento. There is something for everybody at this show. Join us.

SPRUCE UP YOUR DASHBOARD

We think of PUBLIC bike handlebars a little like a car dashboard – a place for functional everyday objects and useful information. Lights and bells are the two most common amenities, but having a place for a cup of coffee, or your phone, or a doggie is also essential for many of us. Or keep track of how your bicycle commute translates into speed, distance, and time with an odometer. Take a look at our new dashboard items.

SAVINGS FOR DAYLIGHT SAVINGS – 15% OFF ALL LIGHTS

Sunday is daylight savings, and this means that many of us will be riding home from work in darkness for the next six months. Lights become especially critical this time of year for safe riding. So all lights are 15% off this week. If you want the biggest and brightest lights, get the Spaceship Headlight & Red Planet Taillight Set from Portland Design Works. We just added this set to our collection after seeing so many of the Oregon Manifest bikes sporting these during the competition. We also like to support local design firms whenever we can, and the Portland Design Works is a very talented group.

What do the Sierra Club and Moving Design of Chicago have in common?

City bicycling is getting support from an ever-increasing eclectic list of organizations. Every month it seems we partner with some cool group working to encourage more people to incorporate a bicycle into their daily urban lives.

This month we’re working with two very unique groups, The Sierra Club, one of the largest national environmental advocacy organizations, and Moving Design, a small design-based group in Chicago.  Both groups use their unique skills to encourage people to rethink the way we get around in our communities and to reduce our dependency on cars and fossil fuels.

The Sierra Club
Founded in 1892 by John Muir, The Sierra Club has over a million members and supporters and is one of most influential grassroots organizations in the United States. They literally defined environmental activism for many of us. The Sierra Club is giving away three PUBLIC bikes to encourage more people to leave their cars at home. You can enter to win by going to The Sierra Club website or visiting The Sierra Club Facebook page.

The Sierra Club also created a video, with help from our friends at Agency Charlie, to showcase how someone can move around their community by bicycle instead of a car.

Two Mornings from Sierra Club National on Vimeo.

We all recognize that we need our cities to become more livable and dense in population in order to reduce urban sprawl and protect our environment. We’re happy to team up with The Sierra Club to invite more people to make a difference on city streets.  While our partnership with The Sierra Club may not have the same dramatic effect on our environment as NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s recent $50 million gift to The Sierra Club to reduce coal consumption, we’re happy to do our part.

Moving Design
Founded in 2010 by renowned graphic designer Rick Valicenti, Moving Design is pushing a number of civic-minded community based projects in Chicago. They hosted an event this week in Chicago where City Planner Adolfo Hernandez and PUBLIC Founder Rob Forbes made presentations on urban bicycling and the progress to make Chicago streets more livable.

Chicago has been an international leader in urban architecture dating back a century. In recent years they have again launched themselves into international prominence with the development of Millennium Park, which includes the fantastic Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate (aka “The Bean”), the Jaume Plensa Crown Fountain video sculpture, the Lurie Garden, and the Jay Pritzker Pavillion designed by Frank Gehry in Grant Park.  Former Chicago Mayor Daley and the spirited civic-minded community can be credited for these monumental achievements. We rode by these projects and the lakeshore as we biked around Chicago this week.  See photos.  We hope new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and groups like Moving Design continue to make Chicago an example of a modern livable city with blue bike lanes across the city.

We’ve received wonderful referrals from friends and customers. If you work for a company or organization that might consider PUBLIC bikes for employees, let us know. A successful referral will get you a free PUBLIC A7 or PUBLIC J7.

At the very least, you should consider inviting our friends from Bikes Make Life Better to meet with employees at your company or organization.

Bikes Make Life Better offers a free “Ready to Roll” workshop at workplaces to help your company figure out how to encourage more employees to bike. The benefits are numerous.

Tired of getting hung up in traffic? Is parking a hassle? Would you like to try commuting to work or getting around on your bike but feel a little intimidated? In a one hour “Ready to Roll” workshop, our friends at Bikes Make Life Better have answers to all your pressing questions:

• Is it safe to ride with traffic?
• How do I plan my route?
• What bike should I ride?
• How do I carry my stuff?
• What should I wear?
• How will I clean up?
• How do I securely park my bike?

Contact amy@bikesmakelifebetter.com for details about bringing their “Ready to Roll” workshop to your company or organization. Or contact dan@publicbikes.com if you’re interested in getting PUBLIC bikes.

How are companies encouraging their employees to bike? Several weeks ago we visited Berkeley-based Annie’s, a company that offers delicious, all-natural and organic alternatives to traditional comfort foods.

We came with a test ride fleet of PUBLIC bikes for their employees to try. Annie’s is providing their employees reimbursement credit for bike purchases to encourage employees to consider bicycle commuting to work or to get around town.

We were already big fans of Annie’s, but now even more knowing that the company values their employees enough to encourage them to incorporate bicycling into their lives.

Some companies, like AOL or Google, provide a fleet of bikes for employees to share. Others, like Annie’s or David Baker + Partners Architects, provide incentives to help employees buy their own personal bikes. Either way, the growing number of companies that want employees to get around by bikes encourages us.

Does your company provide a financial incentive for employees to buy bikes, or has implemented a company bike share program? We’d love to hear which progressive companies are making life better for their employees.

A sad fact of life is that bikes get stolen. Even with the enlightened bicycle cultures in Denmark and Holland, hundreds of thousands of bikes get ripped off every year.  We watch this with consternation. With all the GPS tracking and smart technology, why hasn’t anyone come up with a universal solution? At this early stage of our company, designing a solution is beyond our reach. The best we can do for now is to include unique serial numbers on every PUBLIC bike for tracking and to offer a good selection of locks for all occasions. We keep our eyes open for new solutions, like this one from Japan sent in by a reader. Read on.

The Eco Cycle automated bike storage system in Japan, designed by Giken, is almost identical to systems used throughout Europe in train stations to store luggage. They operate like an underground elevator for belongings and provide security, as well as convenience, and eliminate the need for a lock. They are marvelous, ingenious, and so appreciated by weary travelers who don’t want to lug their bags around the city.   These clever systems are not common in the United States, but neither are trains, sadly.

If a solution similar to the Eco Cycle popped-up in New York soon, we would not be surprised. The New York Department of Transportation has underwritten contests for bike rack designs in recent years that drew the likes of David Byrne. They continue to push for progressive polices in biking infrastructure. At the forefront of their policy making is Janette Sadik-Khan who we interviewed last year. Sadik-Khan has been voted in the “Top 100 Urban Thinkers” by Planetizen, celebrated by Fast Company, dubbed a genius by Esquire, heralded a street fighter by the American Prospect, and offered as a reason to love New York by NY Mag.

The lack of available and convenient modern bike storage in San Francisco is unfathomable to most of us. Even with our SF Bike Coalition boasting over 12,000 members, the City can’t seem to keep up with the demand for bike parking. Even if not quickly enough to please us, our city streets are changing. Since the bike injunction lifted last August, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority continues to repurpose street parking spots for bike corrals. In our car centric South Park neighborhood, a bike corral was just installed at our favorite French bistro The Butler and the Chef, just 50 yards down the street. Come visit. Have a signature quiche dish and stop by PUBLIC. We have some pretty cool racks, as well as locks, home storage solutions, and other stuff.  If you want to get a bike corral for your hood, go here.

Is there a silver lining to the bike thievery problem? Unlikely. But the subject is at the heart of one of the greatest classic movies in history, The Bicycle Thief by Vittorio De Sica. It’s Woody Allen’s favorite movie of all time. Another positive outcome is that bike locks themselves make for good visuals seen on the streets. Take for example the photo essay, Bondage in Amsterdam that we sent out last year after a trip to Amsterdam. The diversity in solutions is pretty cool.

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

Bicycle theft is a sad fact of life in every country we know. It sucks. And most of us have had a bike or bike component stolen at some point. Depending on our mood, theft hits us somewhere along the unfair–depressing–devastating continuum. Is there any way to see something positive in bicycle theft? Not really, but if one had to try, studying the scene in Holland offers some rich material.

We learned on a recent trip to the Netherlands that 750,000 bikes get reported as stolen every year. That’s about 2% of all bikes in that country. The Dutch typically employ a standard rear wheel clamp to deter petty thieves, and a hunky steel chain sheathed in fabric to discourage hard-core thieves. These Dutch chains and locks are as ubiquitous in Amsterdam, and they make for some compelling compositions – studies in contrasting materials, color, and form. The durability and permanence of steel in our world of plastics and virtual safeguards is a compelling story. And chains and locks are quite brilliant low-tech solutions that have endured without much change since the advent of civilization. There is something cool about that.

These compositions are as individual as the bike riders themselves and offer us one chance (admittedly desperate) to put a happy face on bike theft.

A Gallery of Bike Locks

Bike Locks

We sell two basic solutions that work for most situations in the US. Our Kryptonite u-lock will keep most hard-core thieves away, and using a cable lock in addition will offer even better protection. Using your good senses and defensive instincts are the best deterrents to bike bandits, and most thefts are a result of bicyclist naïveté. If your PUBLIC gets stolen keep in mind that we have the serial number on record to help track down your bike.  

Also, please check out our Shoes and Socks Sale for the month of July.