The Bike Show on KBOO FM (90.7 in Portland) was home to a discussion of Portland’s bike economy last week.
Show hosts Tori Bortman (a part of that economy herself as the owner of Gracie’s Wrench) and Carl Larson talked about bikes and business with Matt Cardinal of Signal Cycles, Jennifer Nolfi, bike industry sector liaison for the Portland Development Commission, and Jessica Roberts of Portland-based consulting group Alta Planning.
Listen to an MP3 of the show here.
With 24 builders (at last count) currently plying their trade in Portland, this city is the epicenter for America’s bike-making renaissance.
What do builders from other places think about that? Ask 15-year framebuilding legend Curtis Inglis of Napa, California-based Inglis/Retrotec Cycles. Or better yet, check out the T-shirt he was wearing at the Oregon Manifest show…
Bright lights set the stage for cycling showmanship
[Note: I’ve updated the slideshow with captions.]
The first annual Oregon Manifest Bike Show is now in the history books. I’ve got more coverage to come — including a full report on last night’s Roller Races, updates on several local builders, and of course some general thoughts on the show as well.
For now, check out the slideshow below for a few more selections from my Oregon Manifest photo gallery.
Here are selected images (full gallery here) from my first day at the Oregon Manifest Handmade Bike Show:
I first shared news that a pair of Portlanders were working on a locally made version of the legendary Dutch “bakfiets” cargo bike back in February. Since then, I haven’t heard much from Metrofiets, so I was excited to see their progress at the Oregon Manifest show on Friday.
The Rapha Roller Race is just a few minutes away and the scene is full of drunken pageantry as teams ready themselves for competition.
Zoobombers, Gentle Lovers, Team Beer, Super Relax, Ironclad — all of Portland’s colorful teams are here, costumed and ready to go.
I intended to have reports and photos from the Oregon Manifest show up starting on Friday afternoon, however, due to some serious issues with my server (the site was down for over two days!), I haven’t been able to share…until now.
I’ll have more reports to come, but for now, watch audio slideshow below. The person speaking is Austin Ramsland, co-owner of Sweetpea Bicycles (his wife Natalie does the framebuilding). Austin is one of the people who’s vision for a Portland-style bike show is what lead to the Manifest.
In the slideshow below he describes a very cool exhibit at the show.
[Editor’s note: This story was originally posted on Friday 10/10 but has been re-posted after a server outage.]
Joe Doebeles big idea is to help other Portlanders with theirs.
The 44-year-old Doebele, who grew up in Chicago and moved to Portland in 2000, has rented a building near the corner of SE 20th and Belmont and is setting up Portlands first-ever bicycle industry incubator Stumpworks.
[Editor’s note: This story was originally posted on Friday 10/10 but has been re-posted after a server outage.]
According to an article by Amy Ruiz in this week’s Portland Mercury, Commissioner Randy Leonard is intrigued by carfree public spaces something he saw during a recent trip to Copenhagen.
Ruiz reports that during the question and answer session of a forum sponsored by the Oregon Environmental Council on October 1st, Leonard brought up carfree spaces in response to a question about congestion pricing.
Joking that his answer was going to get me in trouble, Leonard made a bold announcement: After visiting Copenhagen earlier this year, he has been quietly looking at those cities that have created public spaces by eliminating auto traffic on certain streets. While it’s not a congestion toll, Leonard’s intrigued by cities that have opened up parts of their city to just pedestrians and [I] would like to actually look at doing something toward that end in the next four years.”