It’s been two long decades since most U.S. bike companies moved their factories overseas, primarily to China and Taiwan. It’s a story avid U.S. cyclists often lament—the decline of domestic manufacturing—and the death knell seemed to sound this past April when the owners of Cannondale, among the last big brands to have a U.S. production facility, announced they would cease stateside production by 2010.

Perhaps Cannondale’s execs (and bummed-out cyclists) should pick up a copy of the New Internationalist. In its June 2009 issue, the global justice publication predicts that large-scale bicycle manufacturing will return to the United States in the next few years. Overseas shipping has become less economical (not to mention an environmental boondoggle), and U.S. retailers are interested in faster turnaround, industry analyst Jay Townley tells the magazine.

If the prediction bears out, which U.S. cities will nab domestic factories? The New Internationalist article, written by a contributor to BikePortland.org, understandably showcases the many perks of Oregon’s bicycle mecca, while conceding that Portland’s “roads and railways are not placed as favorably as a Midwestern transportation hub like Indianapolis or Nashville.”

Source: New Internationalist

Image by doviende, licensed under Creative Commons.

Last weekend, my two young sons and I attached twin booster rockets to their Burley bike trailer and shot like a comet through the streets of Minneapolis. Actually, the rockets were tomato cages encased in wrapping paper, with red streamers serving as flames. And when I say “shot” I mean we traveled at 2 to 3 miles per hour. We were part of the bike parade in the Tour de Fat, a traveling bike festival with a carnivalesque atmosphere sponsored by the New Belgium Brewing Company.

We had the only twin booster rockets in the parade, but we weren’t the silliest bikers by any stretch. There were cowboys, Vikings, a green bumblebee, an Elvis, and men in dresses. Propellers whirled atop beanies, crazy wigs struggled to stay on heads, at least one toga got caught in rear brakes, and a sound system in a bike trailer pumped out cheesy hits from the ’80s. A good half of the riders had taken to heart the suggestion to “come as a participant, not a spectator” in this “costumed celebration of human-powered transportation.” We looked ridiculous, and we had a blast.

It was a refreshing change from past mega-bike rides I’ve been in, notably the now-infamous Critical Mass, which I sampled more than a decade ago. In the Tour de Fat there were no hyper-aggressive “corkers” blocking traffic at intersections and holding their bikes in the air like triumphant WWF champions. It didn’t feel like a hipster clique, even though there were plenty of trendy bike fashions on parade. Bikers of all ages, sizes, and abilities were welcome. And it didn’t matter what kind of bike you were on, as long as it had pedals. For once I didn’t feel as if the twitchy, track-standing dudes on meticulously color-coordinated fixies were looking down their noses at my ancient Trek mountain bike repurposed as a commuter ride. (I’ve been riding since you were in training pants, punks.) Again, the atmosphere was written right into the guidelines: “Honor all other bikes: All bikes are good bikes, and all those who ride them are good people.”

As we circled Minneapolis’ Lake of the Isles, it was amusing to see bystanders’ reactions to this rolling mass of weirdness. Most of them couldn’t resist a smile, and even the lines of drivers roadblocked to let the parade pass seemed less hostile than drivers held up by Critical Mass—though I admit I saw one unmoved SUV driver wearing that unmistakable “I hate bikers and all they represent” scowl. Looping back to the Tour de Fat venue, we engaged in more silliness: neo-vaudeville stage shows, a ring full of crazy bikes for people to ride, afternoon beer drinking, a funeral for a car (which had been given up by the lucky winner of a deluxe bike).

It struck me that perhaps this was a better approach to promoting bike power than the in-your-face confrontation of Critical Mass. By dressing in crazy costumes, encouraging diversity, and discouraging testosterone-charged grandstanding, we disarmed our potential foes and robbed them of any good reasons to tell us to get back on the sidewalks or, worse, back in our cars. Because, as more than one T-shirt proclaimed, Cars R Coffins. Long live bikes!

Sources: New Belgium, Critical Mass, Cars R Coffins

Image by dustinj, licensed under Creative Commons.

Mitch Schneider was getting rid of a “sweet, ten-speed thrasher” road bike, and he decided to make hopeful riders work for it—by having them write “in exactly 20 words why you are the most-deserving candidate for my road bike, and what you plan to use it for.”

He shares a handful of responses—some goofy, some earnest—in the new issue of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, a lively, thoughtful journal that features bike-inspired essays, poetry, reviews, conversations, and more (the article is not available online). Here’s some of the “pure road poetry” that Schneider received:

I done could like this bike to fetch stuff fer me and my wench to cook our vittles real good. –O'Connell

Twenty words is hardly enough to explain how much commuting, cruising, and possibly crashing would happen if it were mine. –David P.

Help I am in need of a bike for Pops! Please help him escape loving but crazy menopausal wife. THANKS! –Sam R.

Moving from Oregon without cash for a car makes this bike an important component to my future success and happiness. –Jordan H.

stripped naked like a chop shop
and then put back together to wheel downtown
and friends in need to borrow
its no haiku, but let me know –Will B.

I would convert this bike to a fixed gear bike then learn how to perform track stands to impress friends. –Bob B.

Source: Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac 

Issue #5 of Philly-based sustainability magazine Grid arrived this week—chock full of summertime “how to” cheer that’s just begging to be shared. Grid is a free magazine, and you can read its entire digitized issue online. Be sure to check out:

How to make rhubarb cobbler on page 15: This tasty-looking recipe calls for delectable maple sugar instead of the loads of predictable, refined white sugar found in most rhubarb concoctions.

How to attract beneficial insects to your garden on page 12: From lacewings to ladybugs, Grid has the skinny on how to lure the good guys—insects that pollinate and keep pest populations in check—into your yard, including specific “companion plants.”

Plus: How to fix a flat bike tire (page 10), how to recycle your television (page 11), and loads of other recipes, including vegan blood orange cupcakes and sugar-snap peas with bacon.

Source: Grid

Organic Gardening just made this bicycle geek smile: The May 2009 issue includes simple instructions on how to convert old bike wheel rims into a support for climbing garden plants, like beans. All the nailing and stringing necessary (which isn’t much), happens through the holes already there for spokes. Brilliant!

Source: Organic Gardening

The kids at Bear Creek Elementary in Boulder, Colorado, are some of the most hardcore green commuters in the land. Seventy percent of the students there walk or bike to school, we learned on the website Commute by Bike—an achievement that earned the school the 2008 James Oberstar Award for excellence in the federal Safe Routes program.

Only 25 percent of the students walked or biked when the program began two years ago, which shows that a little encouragement can go a long way. A little wackiness doesn’t hurt, either. Principal Kent Cruger has helped inspire students by arriving at school on wheeled transport including a foot-powered scooter, a skateboard, and a unicycle. And the school’s “Walking Schoolbus” program promotes walking routes with names that are anything but pedestrian, like Darley Dart, Vassar Vroom, and Sooper Shuttle.

“We are trying to create a new culture of daily car-free habits in this young generation,” says Vivian Kennedy, a parent volunteer at Bear Creek, according to the National Center for Safe Routes to School. “A parent’s perception is a dominant factor in molding a child’s thinking, [but ] it’s now a matter of honor and pride for the students.”

In other words, it’s cool.

Sources: Commute by Bike, Safe Routes, Safe Routes Bear Creek Case Study, James L. Oberstar Award

Image by Dan Burden, courtesy of the  Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center . 

A wiry thirtysomething guy bikes out of the Whole Foods parking lot, a pannier of organic produce strapped to his rack. He’s on his way home to make dinner after a couple of hours volunteering at the local Obama campaign headquarters. He inches down the driveway, waiting for an opportunity to turn right into the busy rush-hour traffic.

He sees an opening and jumps into the lane, pedaling quickly. But he’s not moving fast enough for a hulking SUV whose impatient driver doesn’t want to change lanes. She tailgates him for several yards, laying on the horn, then swerves into the other lane and tears past him, yelling something about getting on the sidewalk. The cyclist gives her a one-fingered salute, then notices a McCain-Palin sticker on her bumper.

Typical.

We are all guilty of certain prejudices. In the escalating (and increasingly dangerous) tensions between car commuters and bicycle riders, battle lines are drawn. As an avid cyclist leaning fairly hard to port, I had very little reason to interrogate the stereotypes embodied in the scenario above. But eventually a few needling questions penetrated my insulated sphere of thought: What if there are conservatives who ride bikes? What the hell do they look like? And where can I find them?

On the Internet, of course.

“I am a gun-owning, low-taxes, small-government, strong military, anti-baby murder, pro-big/small business, anti-social program, conservative Democrat,” wrote Maddyfish, a poster on Bike Forums, an Internet discussion forum where everyone from the casual hobbyist to the obsessive gearhead can discuss all things bike-related, from frame sizes to the best routes downtown. There are dozens such forums for bicyclists and I recently crashed three of them—Bike Forums, MPLS BikeLove, and Road Bike Review—with a simple question: Are there any conservative cyclists out there? Maddyfish (an online pseudonym) was one of the first to reply: “I find cycling to be a very conservative activity. It saves me money and time.”

And just like that, biking conservatives came out of the cyber-woodwork, offering their own mixtures of bike love and political philosophy. “I do not care about gas prices or the environment. I care about fun and getting where I am quickly,” wrote Old Scratch. “I’m a Libertarian,” wrote Charly17201. “I am extremely conservative, but definitely NOT a GOPer. … I ride my bike because it provides me the opportunity to save even more money for my pleasures now and my retirement in the future (and my retirement fund is NOT the responsibility of the government).”

The more liberal bikers in the forums repeated some variation of this formulation: “Drive to the ride = conservative; bike to the ride = liberal.” In other words, conservatives load bikes onto SUVs and drive them to a riding trail, while liberals incorporate their bikes into every aspect of their personal transportation, whether utilitarian or recreational. For moneyed conservatives with a large portion of their income budgeted for recreation, high-end bikes and gear have taken their place along golf as a rich man’s leisure activity.

But there are conservatives who integrate bikes into their lifestyle just as thoroughly as their liberal counterparts. Mitch Berg is a conservative talk-radio host whose blog, A Shot in the Dark, is divided between political content and chronicles if his experiences commuting by bicycle. “I grew up in rural North Dakota, and biking was one of my escapes when I was in high school and college,” he told me. “It’s my favorite way to try to stay in shape. And if gas fell to 25 cents a gallon, I’d still bike every day.”

Berg doesn’t believe there’s anything inherently political about riding a bike. “But people on both sides of the political aisle do ascribe political significance to biking. The lifestyle-statement bikers, of course, see the act as a political and social statement. And there’s a certain strain of conservatism that sees conspicuous consumption—driving an SUV and chortling at paying more for gas—as a way to poke a finger in the eyes of the environmental left.”

The impression that bikers are liberal is reinforced, Berg feels, by the most vocal and political members of bike culture. These are the folks who corner the media's spotlight (and draw drivers' resentment) with high-profile events like Critical Mass, a group ride that floods downtown streets in many cities at the end of each month as riders zealously reassert their rights to the paths normally traveled by cars. Similarly, when the price of gas climbed to $4 over the summer, the media couldn’t run enough stories about the unprecedented popularity of bike commuting. Activist bikers leveraged the newfound media attention to promote certain messages: that bicycling is an inherently political activity; that cyclists care about traditionally progressive causes like environmental protection; that more tax money should be allocated for bike paths and a transportation infrastructure that takes vehicles other than cars into account.

“The faction of bikers that is fundamentally political has done a good job of tying [bikes and politics] together,” Berg says. “The Green Party has wrapped itself around the bicycle.” But for many, biking is political because everything is political: “You need a public infrastructure to [bike],” wrote Cyclezealot, on Bike Forums. “So, cycling will always be affected by politics, like it or not.”

When politics does bleed into cycling, does it create tensions? I asked Berg if he ever feels outnumbered on group rides dominated by liberals, and if those differences ever come to the fore. “Of course,” he replied, “On several levels. I’m a conservative. I don’t believe in man-made global warming. I’m biking for reasons that are partly personal and partly capitalistic; I don’t want to pay $4 for gas.” But he has made liberal friends based on a common love of cycling. So has William Bain, a retired Naval officer living in the Pacific Northwest whose bike commute is a 43-mile round trip. “Cycling is the common bond I have with my liberal friends,” said Bain. “We can get in a heated passionate argument about politics and then go out and try to ride each other into the ground. Good clean fun.”

Berg and Bain have allies in the government who see bicycle advocacy as a nonpartisan issue. Take Republican Greg Brophy, a Colorado state senator and an avid cyclist who competes in road bike marathons and uses his mountain bike to haul farm equipment. Brophy worked with Bicycle Colorado to pass Safe Routes to School and is supporting a “Green Lanes” bill to give bicyclists safer routes through metro areas.

Conservative cyclists don’t tend to get help from all their political allies, however. Some right-wing personalities know that biking is a hot-button issue and make pointed attacks on cyclists while reinforcing the liberal-cyclist stereotype. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s hard-right columnist Katherine Kersten earned the ire of the Twin Cities bike community in 2007 when she characterized Critical Mass as a mob of “serial lawbreakers” bent on ruining the lives of honorable citizen motorists. “Are you rushing to catch the last few innings of your son's baseball game? Trying to get to the show you promised your wife for her birthday? Critical Mass doesn't give a rip.”

Last fall, Twin Cities talk-radio host Jason Lewis made on-air remarks decrying the “bicycling crowd” as “just another liberal advocacy group.” He recycled a common anti-bike canard—that bicyclists have no rights to the roads because they don’t pay taxes to service those roads—before issuing a call to arms: “The people with the 2,000-pound vehicle need to start fighting back.” Lewis’ comments seem especially reckless in light of recent events: In September alone, four Twin Cities cyclists were killed in collisions with motor vehicles. One conservative blogger celebrates bike fatalities and gleefully anticipates more. “Keep it up,” he tells cyclists, “and the law of averages says we’ll have a few less Obama voters in November.”

While such critics tap into right-wing rage at all things liberal, conservative bikers appeal to a saner tenet of their political tradition: the free market's invisible hand. “Let the market roam free,” Berg exclaimed. “The higher gas goes, the more people will try biking.” And where there’s money to be made, bikes and bike-share programs will emerge. When the Republican National Convention came to the Twin Cities in September, for example, a bike-share program was there to greet it. Humana and Bikes Belong made 1,000 bikes available for rental during the convention, with 70 bikes staying behind as part of a permanent rental program.

Conservatives on bikes represent the breakdown of party-line stereotypes. They are heartening examples of crucial divergences from the lazy red/blue dichotomy the pundits are relentlessly hammering in these last frenzied days of campaign season. They are a microcosm in which a stereotype falls away to reveal an actual individual. What's more, they represent not just the abandonment of tired clichés, but more bikes on the road—something all of us on two wheels, regardless of our political idiosyncrasies, can agree is a good thing.

Image by  Kyknoord , licensed by  Creative Commons . 

A newly developed piece of clothing called the Speed Vest is giving bicycle safety some much-needed visibility.

The reflective vest displays its wearer’s speed in bright neon numbers on the back, increasing the rider’s visibility while addressing the common complaint that bikes slow car traffic. Automobile drivers’ impatience might be mitigated if the Speed Vest confirms that the bike in front of them is traveling at or near the car’s speed.

The Speed Vest is still in the prototype stage, but its designers—Brady Clark, of Minneapolis, and Mykle Hansen, of Portland, Oregon—have already won the Bike Gadget Contest held by the Hub Bike Co-Op in Minneapolis and showcased their invention at the Minnesota State Fair this summer. The bike blog Urban Velo has some playful suggestions for alternative messages bicyclists could convey via the Speed Vest.

Image by Nathaniel Freeman, courtesy of Speed Vest.

The 8^th annual international Bicycle Film Festival (BFF) concluded its Minneapolis leg this past weekend with a hefty roster of screenings at the Theatre de la Jeune Lune. For Twin Cities residents, Saturday served as a bittersweet goodbye to the venue, which officially shuttered operations at the end of June.

The BFF screens its first films tonight in Los Angeles, and gets rolling this Wednesday in San Francisco, before moving on to Chicago and Boston during the month of August. After that, the jet-setting festival will travel to Toyko, Austin, London, Vienna, Zurich, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, and Milano—before finishing its run this December back in Portland, Oregon. Here are some of this past weekend’s cinematic highlights—many of which citizens of next-up cities can partake in:

Road to Roubaix , a 2008 documentary directed by a pair of Davids (Deal and Cooper), tells the story of one of the world’s most brutal road races: the 160-mile Paris-Roubaix, which, as the name suggests, winds north from the City of Lights toward the industrial town of Roubaix, traveling along unforgiving cobblestone roads. Not all riders finish the historic race, but those who do complete the course in a single, grueling day. (The bikes take so much abuse, the filmmakers note, they’ll never again be ridden professionally.) Road to Roubaix relies on the triumph-of-human-spirit trope, but fairly so—one look at the hefty chunk of stone bequeathed to the victor, and it’s clear that riding in the Paris-Roubaix at all is a Herculean feat. Watch it for: the holy crap factor.

See the Road to Roubaix trailer here:

The Six-Day Bicycle Races , directed by Mark Tyson, is a jaunty romp through the origins of track racing, the jaw-dropping endurance cycling races that drew sell-out crowds to Madison Square Garden in the1920s. This sport phenomenon of the American Jazz Age required pairs of (handsomely paid) riders, one of whom was always on the track, to zoom about in a brutal, non-stop, no-holds-barred contest to accrue the most mileage. Hollywood and gangster glitterati would sweeten the pot for impromptu sprints by offering extra cash premiums—known as “prems”—to the winners, but the real cash was in the big race, where superstar cyclists earned enormous purses and ageless glory. Watch it for: geezers’ recollections of the sort of glamorous heyday you and I will likely never know.

The Urban Bike Shorts program offers a variety of views of cycling in the city. King of Skitch ought to be mentioned if only for the awesome, unexpected ending. (Watching bike messenger Felipe Robayo hang onto the back of a sports car and fly through New York City traffic isn’t bad either.) Pterodactyl “Polio” begins with a well-worn concept—the lone bicycle wheel, bouncing down the road—but rises to deliver a creative spin on the idea. The Trunk Boiz entertain in their music video Scraper Bikes, which is pronounced scrape-er not scrap-er, and explained here. Raven and the Bicycle Angel tracks a new biker’s determination to win the heart of (or just even a minute of conversation with) his bike-riding crush. And Fast Friday—at 27 minutes the “feature” of the bunch—does a respectable job documenting the rise of Seattle’s youth bike culture. Watch the program for: more track stands than you can shake a stick at.

Image courtesy of Kelly Riordan.

A custom-welded, 10-passenger, beast of a bicycle (complete with a purple velvet banana seat for the driver) was just one of the highlights on this past Saturday’s FRAME x FRAME gallery opening-barbecue-bike ride, which—as if it weren’t enough to squish all those activities together—also kicked off the Minneapolis leg of the Bicycle Film Festival (BFF).

The ride meandered leisurely through the city, making use of Minneapolis’ top-rate trail system. At the Minnesota Center for Photography, riders paused to have their portraits shot in the parking lot—posing with bikes, of course. Word is the photos will run as a slideshow during parts of the Minneapolis BFF, which takes place July 9-12. (The festival tours to more than a dozen other U.S. and international locations, so stay tuned for our online coverage of the Minneapolis event.)

The ultimate destination was the One on One bicycle studio, where the opening reception for the FRAME x FRAME photography exhibit was already underway. The show features work by six local photographers: Mark Butcher, Mark Emery, Jason Lemkuil, Kelly MacWilliams, Heidi Prenevost, and Kelly Riordan, and will run through July 13.

As I wandered through the gallery—noshing on hyper-local grub provided by Common Roots Café—I couldn’t help but feel, well, cozy. Bikers sometimes get a reputation for being insular, unfriendly, a clique on two wheels. Not here. The photos on display at One on One wrap the room in welcoming colors. From giddy shots of the Stuporbowl to portraits of riders in a back-alley derby, FRAME x FRAME makes biking look like what it’s supposed to be. Fun.

Image courtesy of Kelly Riordan.

Tired of the anarchy of Critical Mass rides, when street cyclists often disregard traffic laws, Reama Dagasan launched Critical Manners for the well-mannered bikers, reports Bicycling (article not available online). Critical Manners promises “a helmet-wearing, bell-ringing … good time” the second Friday of each month in San Francisco, Seattle, and Little Rock, Arkansas. There’s even synchronized signaling practice. Dagasan believes that cyclists can encourage motorists to share the road without provoking them or putting themselves in danger.

—Lisa Gulya

Government efforts to foster fitness have expanded from passive public service announcements to interventionist urban planning. Spiked finds attempts to create obesity-combating “fit towns” in the United Kingdom downright Orwellian. It concedes that more attractive stairways and improved lighting in parks are sensible steps. But suggest giving pedestrians and cyclists roadway priority, and Spiked grows indignant. UK lawmakers—audaciously!—proposed limiting office parking to cycle-sized spaces. (Spiked’s virulent anti-bicycle commentators might commiserate with U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, who drew a link between bike path funding and Minnesota’s August bridge collapse.) Yet compared to the stupidity Salon chronicled in October of U.S. “parking requirements” that result in overabundant, frequently unoccupied pavement, urban design that encourages outdoor time and self-propelled travel seems downright sensible, not despotic.

—Lisa Gulya