Job: Sales Associate – West End Bikes

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Job Title
Sales Associate

Company/Organization
West End Bikes

Job Description
Downtown bike shop seeking part time sales associate.

Qualified candidates will have a strong work ethic, a positive attitude, top notch customer service skills, and a passion for bicycling.

Previous retail experience required.

How to Apply
Email resume to: jobs@westendbikespdx.com

In Portland, crime has plummeted in every major category except one

bike theft trend

Chart: BikePortland. Data: Portland Police Bureau via PSU Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute.

Like most cities in the developed world, Portland is a dramatically more secure place than it was in 1995.

Reported residential burglaries per resident are down 63 percent. Auto theft is down 69 pecent. Gun crime is down 86 percent.

But 20 years of Portland crime statistics collected Wednesday on Portland State University’s website showed that there’s a single glaring exception: bike theft. It’s up 50 percent since 1995.

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Two free mountain biking events in Portland tonight!

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Who says Portland is a bummer place for mountain biking?! Tonight there are two free events where you can get your dirt riding stoke on by hanging out with pros who want to share their knowledge with you. Oh, and you’re almost guaranteed to win some great schwag just for showing up.

Check details below…

MTB pro Sonya Looney at Portland Bicycle Studio (1435 NW Raleigh) 6-7:30 pm (Facebook)

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Enduro Clinic and Q & A – 6:30 pm at Evo Portland (200 SE MLK)

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So you’ve just signed up for your first enduro mountain bike race. Maybe you’re asking yourself, “What did I just sign up for, am I in over my head?” Or maybe you’ve already got a couple races under your belt but want to edge out your friends. Wheelie Drops and Bunny Hops: Secrets to Staying Pinned with Matthew Slaven and Lars Sternberg is here to help

With the growing popularity of “enduro” format racing and the advancements in all-mountain and trail bike capabilities, evo has partnered with two of the NW’s fastest mountain bikers to collaborate and host clinics at both Portland and Seattle stores. ‘Wheelie Drops and Bunny Hops’ is an enduro focused town hall style Q&A session, where Matthew Slaven and Lars Sternberg will be answering questions covering all aspects of this style of riding and racing. Portland will take place on Wednesday April 29, and Seattle the following evening, Thursday April 30. We will have Lars and Matthew’s bikes and accessories on display for folks to see how they ride, and with what gear. It should be a fun couple of evenings – of course, evo will be providing snacks and libations to make sure everyone has a good time.

We’ve got some rad prizes to give away from Lars and Matthew’s sponsors – Transition Bikes, Cycles Devinci, Smith Optics, DAKINE, Bell Bike Helmets, Five Ten, GiroSportDesign and of course, evo. On top of that, we’ll be giving away a registration spot in Seattle to a Cascadia Dirt Cup race, and a spot in one of the Oregon Enduro Series races in Portland.

Portland’s most affordable neighborhoods to bike from (for now)

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Number one is poised to get better.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

The Willamette Week bike issue came out today, which makes this the one day a year when we stoop mooching off their generally excellent reporting and they get to mooch off ours. (Seriously, y’all, no problem.)

But one piece in their nicely put-together bike issue falls clearly in the “wish we’d done that” category: a tally of median single-family home prices per Portland neighborhood ranked by the time it takes to bike to the city center.

“Portland has long been thought of as a cycling mecca for one big reason: Affordable homes were close enough to work to commute by bike,” Willamette Week’s Tyler Hurst writes in the piece, more or less accurately. “Housing prices rose by another 6.6 percent last year, and a February project by Governing magazine found the city is gentrifying faster than anywhere else in the nation. Does the promise of an affordable, bikeable Portland still hold up?”

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Off-Road Cycling Plan gets Council nod, Bureau of Planning will take the lead

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Daniel Greenstadt and his daughter Gigi
testified in support of the plan at
City Hall this morning.

A few minutes ago at their weekly meeting, Portland City Council voted in favor of a motion to fund the Off-Road Cycling Master Plan. During a discussion of an agenda item about the City’s Spring Budget Monitoring Process — known as the “spring bump”, Mayor Charlie Hales put forth a motion to split the plan’s $350,000 price tag between the Portland Parks & Recreation Bureau and the Bureau of Planning & Sustainability.

The mayor’s proposal uses $50,000 from Parks’ budget and $300,000 from BPS. The motion was passed with Commissioners Saltzman and Amanda Fritz both voting in support (Commissioners Nick Fish and Steve Novick are out of town and were not present). With Fritz on board, all five commissioners are in support of the plan is it’s ultimate passage is all but assured when Council votes on the budget adjustments sometime in the next few weeks.

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Why Sunday Parkways organizers are reaching out to female volunteers

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A volunteer “Superhero” in action.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Sunday Parkways, the series of summertime open-streets festivals that starts next month, runs in large part thanks to volunteers. Today we noticed an interesting angle in a recruitment pitch for those volunteers.

The recruiter, Phil Barber of Axiom Events, called his appeal “a long-overdue first step toward trying to connect with wider circles of women interested in supporting Sunday Parkways.”

Here’s what Barber wrote in an email today to the Shift bike-fun email listserv, with emphasis added:

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Ride Along with Ben and Kate Cogdill: Downtown streets and secret paths

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Ben and Kate Cogdill outside her preschool in northwest Portland.
(Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)

— This post was made possible by Portland Design Works, a local company that designs beautiful and functional parts and accessories for everyday cycling. Ben Cogdill is one of three winners of our Ride Along Contest that will be featured in the coming months.

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In many ways Ben, Jenica and Kate Cogdill are a typical Portland family. But when it comes to getting around, they’re a rare breed. The Cogdills live and work downtown and bicycles suffice as their family vehicle. While Portland’s inner neighborhoods have some of highest rates of family biking anywhere, it’s uncommon to see kid-toting parents amid the hustle and bustle of the central city.

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A ride where women outnumber men? That’s the fact at Cycle Oregon Weekend

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Fun in numbers.
(Photos by J. Maus/BikePortland)

In the bike world there are a number of accepted truths. One of them is that there are far fewer women than men on bikes in America. You see this phenomenon play out on the streets when commuting or running errands around town. Beyond anecdotal evidence, the statistics also bear it out.

Female participation at large, organized event rides usually fares a bit better. But a ride where women outnumber men? That was the surprising fact I came across when doing some research on Cycle Oregon’s Weekend Ride (which is coming up in July by the way).

The Weekend Ride turns 10 years old this year and, according to Cycle Oregon’s demographic data, for the past two years women have accounted for 52 percent of the participants. When the event — essentially a three-day mini-version of the group’s more well-known Week Ride — first started in 2005, attendance by women was only at about 38 to 40 percent. Then, as word spread, it jumped to nearly half before tipping the scales in 2013 and 2014.

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Oregon Senate votes (yet again) to let cabbies use hand-held phones while driving

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Should they be allowed to use phones while driving?
(Photo by J. Maus/BikePortland)

For the second legislative session in a row, the Oregon Senate has voted in favor of a bill that would allow taxicab operators to use hand-held cell phones while driving.

Oregon’s existing cell phone law (ORS 811.507) permits the use of hands-free mobile devices while driving, but taxi operators want to be added to the list of exceptions for hand-held phone use that already includes police officers, public safety workers, farm equipment operators, transit workers, public utility workers, tow truck operators, HAM radio operators, and others.

Senate Bill 167 passed by a vote of 18-12 last month (all 12 “no” votes were from Democrats). A similar bill passed the Senate in 2013, but failed to get a vote in the House.

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