🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
This is just a quick note to encourage everyone to check out BikePortland on Twitter. If you’re not sure what Twitter is, learn more on their FAQ page.
In a nutshell, Twitter is a mini-blogging platform that can be easily updated using text messages. The updates are short (140 characters max) and once you’re signed up, you can “follow” certain users and see their updates on your home page (or on your iPhone or other mobile device).
We are continually adding new titles to our shelves at the BikePortland Bookstore. Below are some recently added titles. We’re always looking for more suggestions. Feel free to head over to the Forums to discuss!
Also, in bookstore news, we just learned about this: on the Powell’s site you can order books to be shipped to you — or better yet, pick them up by bike! Just choose the “In-Store Pickup” option at checkout to have the books held for you at any Powell’s location.
| Pedal Power: The Quiet Rise of the Bicycle in American Public Life
by J. Harry Wray In this newly released book, Wray travels the country seeking every permutation of the 21st century resurgence of bicycle transportation. He writes about politicians, advocates, regular folks with kids, and even includes a section on Portland’s own bike activist group Shift. |
| Need for the Bike
by Paul Fournel An avant-garde meditation, translated from the French. Here’s the publisher’s blurb, which ought to give you the basic idea: “In his attention to the pleasures of cycling, to the specific “grain” of different cycling experiences, and to the inscription of these experiences in the body’s cycling memory, Fournel portrays cycling as a descriptive universe, colorful, lyrical, inclusive, exclusive, complete.” |
| The Chainbreaker Bike Book: A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance
by Shelley Lynn Jackson and Ethan Clark Half DIY bicycle repair manual with hand-drawn illustrations; the other half reprints the first four issues of Chainbreaker zine, one of the lesser-known casualties of Hurricane Katrina. Packed with history, stories, and passion for bicycles. Another excellent, affordable title from Microcosm Publishing. |
| Bicycling Science
by David Gordon Wilson Ever been riding along and wondered just what exactly, physically, you were doing? And what your bike is doing? And how? If you’re trying to hone your cadence, improve your speed, better understand your maintenance issues, or if you just have a burning curiosity about how things work, this book is for you. Physics and physiology alike are accessibly delivered. |
| Effective Cycling
by John Forester This is the man who brought us Vehicular Cycling, the idea that cyclists should act, and be treated, exactly as if we were driving a car. Interesting and influential, this book deserves attention from anyone who wants to understand one of the major debates in bicycle planning and advocacy. And it’s an excellent manual for how to ride your bike confidently in traffic, while taking the lane. Worthy of respect, whether or not you agree with every single point. |
Click on the icon below to search the Powell’s Books website. Any purchases you make on a visit that starts on this page will help support BikePortland operations.
Do you love bikes enough to wear friction-shifter earrings?
Looking over the final vendor/artist list for BikeCraft, I’m amazed at the unexpected ways our local craftsmen and women use bike imagery and bike parts in their work.
This year, we’ve got several vendors who are putting a bikey spin on jewelry. Here’s a quick roundup of the jewelry makers you’ll see at BikeCraft IV.
Jim Duthie makes beautiful earrings and necklaces out some of the most beautiful parts of bikes (including the shifters pictured above). He has been selling his work at Last Thursday and the like for a while, but this is his debut in the bike world.
The Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA) and the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition are teaming up on a new bill that will seek to improve public safety by rewriting and expanding on Oregon’s crosswalk laws.
The new law proposal will amend ORS 811.028 (Failure to stop and remain stopped for pedestrian) to create a new violation for motor vehicle operators that fail to stop for a pedestrian (or someone on a bicycle) that extends their hand toward oncoming traffic with intent to cross.
The impetus for the change is this: Currently, to legally cross a crosswalk in Oregon, pedestrians must step out into traffic before approaching traffic is required to stop. This, advocates feel, is dangerous for pedestrians, confusing for drivers, and unclear for law enforcement professionals.
“The whole biking movement is really a part of who we are as a city…it was a no-brainer for us.”
— Chris Finks, executive director of the Downtown Marketing Initiative on why they chose to feature bicycles in their TV ad campaign.
As several Portlanders pedal peacefully down the middle of downtown streets (one of them with a child in a Dutch “bakfiets” cargo bike), the words, “Is Portland the most European city? Or is Europe the most Portlandian continent?” flash across the screen.
The commercial (watch it below) is part of the Downtown Marketing Initiative that was launched by Mayor Tom Potter back in 2006. The ad has already been shown locally on all the major TV networks and some cable channels and several readers have emailed and called me with excitement about it.
Portland is set to be featured in an episode of a PBS television series about the “economies of being environmentally conscious”.
The series, e2 transport, is in its third season. The Portland segment is titled: Portland: a Sense of Place. A trailer for the series — which is being shot in high-def and has a very impressive, cinematic feel (meaning, this is no dry and wonky series) — U.S. Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Mayor-elect Adams, and others are interviewed.
Sharon White is PDOT’s pedestrian safety chief. One of the many programs she oversees is an ongoing “crosswalk enforcement action” campaign. Working with the Portland Police Bureau, White and staff at PDOT identify high-risk intersections and then employ decoys to walk across them while officers stand by.
White is so committed to her work that often, she herself takes on the role of crosswalk guinea pig. A few weeks ago, during one of the enforcement actions, she got more than she bargained for.