15 August 2008 Archives

Kidical Mass: A slideshow from North Portland

Ready to ride.
(Photo © J. Maus)

Kidical Mass continued to stoke the family biking revolution with several rides all over Portland tonight.

I joined a healthy group of families at Peninsula Park for a pleasant, few-mile ramble over to Arbor Lodge Park where the kids played, the parents chatted, and everyone nibbled on potluck offerings.

Did anyone join the main ride downtown? How were the root beer floats?! How about the Sellwood ride? Did anyone show up in Southwest?

Share your reports in the comments. I’m very interested to see how/if this new group ride takes hold.

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

Inside the Sapa factory.
(Photo: Sapa)

A company based in Northeast Portland that produces tens of thousands of bicycle frames per year might be on its way to Vancouver.

A story published on July 30 in the The Columbian, Aluminum company might bring 900 jobs to Vancouver, details that documents filed with the City of Vancouver for a new development near Vancouver Lake point directly to (but do not specifically mention) Sapa Profiles Inc..

(Photo © J. Maus)

Here in Portland, the “bike fun” movement is alive and well.

What is bike fun? Well, it’s sort of a broad term (not sure who coined it, but I suspect it was popularized by an early pioneer of Shift) that encapsulates the fun-loving, free-spirited, enjoy-yourself-at-all-costs approach to riding bikes that is so common here.

Bike fun is important X factor that helps foster Portland’s bike-friendly status. It allows people to make a subtle statement (“we’re having fun, join us!”) that is an appealing option compared to more traditional bike activism and advocacy. It’s so subtle in fact, that many people partake in bike fun for the fun itself, and couldn’t care less about any statement it might be making.

On July 31st, a high-speed collision between a car and a bike on Stark Street in outer southeast Portland struck a nerve with readers and the incident left many with questions about how the law was applied.

The collision itself was horrific. The man driving the car, 23 year-old Lance Waddy, was going an estimated 40 mph (consistent with speed limit) when he struck Steve Volz from behind, ~~launching~~ throwing him 138 feet in the air.

LA Times’ “Road Sage”
Steve Hymon.

One of the reasons some Portlanders take our bike policies so seriously and passionately (and are not shy about defending them) is because we realize that the microscope is on us. Portland is an important model that many other large cities look to (with even more urgency these days) when they want to learn how to manage, create, and foster a more bike-friendly urban environment.

The choices we make about bike planning here, reverberate far beyond the Portland city limits.

A reader sent me a link (thanks Charles!) to a company that has found a way to make helmets look cool — in a stylish Portlander sort of way. Check out the designs available from Copenhagen-based Yakkay:

They call it, “Brainwear for smart people.”

If you want to work in the bike industry, this might be your lucky day. Team Estrogen (the top online retailer of cycling apparel for women) and Burley Design (based in Eugene) have both listed top-notch opportunities on the BikePortland Job Listings this past week.

See below for more information (and good luck if you apply):

Apparel Buyer – Team Estrogen, Inc.
Apparel Product Photography – Team Estrogen, Inc.
Product Manager – Burley Design
Design Engineer – Burley Design

Kidical Mass: A slideshow from North Portland

Is major Portland frame maker headed to Vancouver?

Ad watch: The emergence of “carfun”

A look at enforcement policies in dramatic Stark St. collision

Portland’s bikeway system, from a Los Angeleno’s perspective

Too hip for a helmet? What if it looked like a hat?

Jobs of the Week

Latest Headlines

Dispatch from hiatus and update on the future

Reminder: No riding through River View Cemetery during Memorial Day Weekend

Guest Article: Demand a pause on PBOT’s SW Alder decision

Guest Opinion: The bike beat lives on in all of us

From the Archives

The 10 busiest bicycling spots in Portland