🚨 Please note that BikePortland slows down during this time of year as I have family in town and just need a break! Please don't expect typical volume of news stories and content. I'll be back in regular form after the new year. Thanks. - Jonathan 🙏

Job: Fabrication Department – The Vanilla Workshop

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Job Title *
Fabrication Department

Company/Organization *
The Vanilla Workshop

Job Description *
Custom bicycle makers, The Vanilla Workshop are hiring for fabrication. We’ve been right here in Portland since we started building almost 20 years ago. We are a small operation with a family dynamic, a low/no drama workplace with people who want to be here and love what they do. At the core of what we do is innovation and refinement of bicycles we make from scratch for our customers. We are not motivated by bringing more “stuff” into the world, as the world already has more than enough stuff. What motivates us is bringing greatness to the world both in the bikes we make and in the business that we build. Through in-house design, fabrication, paint, final assembly, customer service, and fittings, we are able to push the envelope and bring a level of detail and completeness that isn’t found in many other places.

Our ideal candidates come with a collaborative mindset, like working hard, and have super high standards. Both expert and entry level positions available. Sound like you, or someone you know? See our employment page for full job descriptions.

How to Apply *
If you feel that you’re a good fit, please apply by email. In the body of the email, state the length of your last two jobs and your highest level of education completed. Also attach a one-page resume and a one-page cover letter describing your life experience as it applies to this job, including three work references and any experience with bicycles or the making of things to: hiring@vanillabicycles.com

It’s looking like a dry, warm evening for Saturday’s World Naked Bike Ride

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Celebrations before the 2014 ride. It usually rolls around sundown.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Oregon’s biggest pay-what-you-will group ride of the year is three days away. Maybe you’ve heard of it.

Portland’s World Naked Bike Ride will start rolling at 9 p.m. Saturday from Mt. Scott City Park, SE 74th Ave and Knight St., in what’s currently forecast to be a rain-free night after a warm day, with late-evening temperatures in the high 60s and a low of 54 degrees by early morning.

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Portland police will exchange a U-lock for your cable lock on Sunday

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hales lock

Mayor Charlie Hales on his way to work last fall.
(Photo: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

As bike theft has become the only major category of crime in Portland that’s on a long-term rise, cable locks have been going the way of the station wagon and the wristwatch.

The Portland State University Bike Hub doesn’t even sell them. When Mayor Charlie Hales briefly started biking to work last fall, Willamette Week wrote an entire online article about the fact that he used a cable lock. (His wife Nancy, a regular bike commuter, told us at the time that it was because they’d misplaced their U-lock keys that day.)

Apparently the Bike Theft Task Force at the Portland Police Bureau agrees. In a tweet on Wednesday, the team said they’ll be offering a lock exchange program at North Portland Sunday Parkways this weekend: you give them a cable lock, they give you a U-lock.

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Portlanders divided sharply by geography on the local gas tax

The paving and safety projects scheduled to be built with Portland’s proposed gas tax will be spread quite evenly across the city.

But votes on the gas tax definitely weren’t.

Of the 81 Multnomah County precincts in the City of Portland, only 19 tallied “yes” votes between 45 percent and 55 percent. In more than half of precincts, the vote on the 10-cent local gas tax, one of the country’s largest local fuel taxes ever approved by popular vote, was a blowout victory or loss by 20-point margins or even more.

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Multnomah County’s drop in auto ownership since 2007 would fill 287 acres of parking

Everyone knows Multnomah County is growing, and that most new residents are buying or bringing in cars, too. In all, state records show, 8,709 more passenger vehicles are registered in the county than there were in 2007.

But a review of car registration statistics shows that if passenger vehicle ownership were still as popular in the county as it was in 2007, it would have had to find room for 38,501 more cars and trucks instead.

How many cars are we doing without? Well, if we built a parking lot to hold the 38,501 cars that didn’t show up and assumed a standard 325 square feet per space, we’d need about 287 acres of land. For the sake of scale, that’s everything between NE Killingsworth, Skidmore, Rodney and 16th:

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Columbus beats out Portland and others for federal Smart City Challenge

columbus skyline

Downtown Columbus.
(Photo: Sean Denney)

Well, it’s a nice week to be an Ohioan.

Two days after the NBA Championship, the Buckeye State’s capital has apparently scored a $40 million federal grant that’ll be matched by $100 million in private investment to create a model of a future tech-connected city.

Columbus beat out Portland, San Francisco, Austin, Denver, Pittsburgh and Kansas City for the Smart City Challenge victory, an initiative of U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

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The story of today’s Portland in the path of the No. 75 bus

riding against the grain

Screengrab from bus75.org, photo by Geoffrey Hiller.

We don’t often publish transit-only posts, but we’ll make an exception for this one.

Portland-based photographer Geoffrey Hiller is working on an all-year project to document the life of Portland through the lens of a single bus line: the No. 75 that runs between Milwaukie and St. Johns via Chavez, 42nd and Lombard.

For a post yesterday, he recruited Portland-based transit consultant and writer Jarrett Walker (who happened to be a teenage intern at TriMet in the 1980s, when the 75 bus was created) to write about the ways the 75 reveals this moment in Portland’s ebbing, flowing life.

The result is a short illustrated essay that is, somehow, both about our city and about good public transit network design. It’s something to behold:

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Five rides before Friday: This week in Pedalpalooza

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Sunday Parkways Southeast-15

Tandem riders unite! Though not necessarily in matrimony.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Don’t postpone all your bike fun until the weekend! Here are a few highlights from the Pedalpalooza calendar from the next few weekdays.

Open Architecture PDX
Everybody talks about new building; this ride invites people to do something about it. “We will be touring vacant sites or unused land in the area and inviting our members to sketch their ideas for the site.” 6 p.m. Monday.

Dapper Tandem Twinsies
“We’ll promenade around town looking classy, stop at a classy grocery for classy on-the-go drinks, and play some classy lawn games.” 6 p.m. Tuesday.

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BikePortland journalism scores two awards in five-state contest

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The bike lane gap at NE Lombard at 42nd, where Martin Greenaugh died in December.
(Photo: J.Maus/BikePortland)

For the first time, BikePortland’s reporting has been chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists as some of the best from small newsrooms in the Northwest.

In the annual awards announced Saturday, Jonathan’s December report about the circumstances around the death of Martin Greenough (“Why would anyone ride on that scary stretch of Lombard?”) took first place for general news reporting in the five-state contest among news organizations with 10 staff members or fewer.

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The Monday Roundup: The 19-crash house, the accidental triathlete & more

crash-prone house

Ray Minter’s house in San Jose has a 50-year history of violence.
(Image: Google Street View)

Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:

Crash-prone house: A single San Jose home near an offramp has seen 19 vehicles land on its property since 1960, most recently last Monday.

Accidental triathlete: A British mother of three, out for what she thought would be a “leisurely ride” two weeks after she started riding a used hybrid bike for exercise, unexpectedly found herself riding with a triathlon — whose participants talked her into joining them for the whole 13-mile route. “I kept thinking it can’t be that much further,” she said later. “I’m known for getting myself into odd situations.”

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Job: Bike to Leadership (B2L) Program Manager – Bike Clark County

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Job Title *
Bike to Leadership (B2L) Program Manager

Company/Organization *
Bike Clark County

Job Description *
Bike Clark County is a not for profit bicycle advocacy, safety and education organization located in Vancouver WA. We are seeking a dynamic, self starter with good social and communication skills to represent our organization and help launch our High School B2L Program. The Job is part time and begins immediately – the actual H.S. program will begin in the fall.

The B2L program is an after school mentoring and leadership program designed around bicycle maintenance and community service.

The Program is still under development. The Manager is responsible for working with our board of directors and other partners to finish program development. When the program launches in the fall, the Manager will be responsible for smooth workflow and ensuring students and subject matter experts are scheduled correctly and administrative requirements are met. Basic Bicycle knowledge is helpful but not required.

Program Managers must be reliable, pass a thorough background check, have solid administrative skills and work well with our students. Current pay rate is 15-18 per hour based on experience. Required hours are approximately 10-15 flexible hours per month currently, but will likely increase. This is a funded position for 3 years with big potential to evolve into full time work for the right person.

How to Apply *
Send resume with applicable skills to: info@bikeclarkcounty.org

Candidates will be contacted for preliminary phone interview then scheduled for an in person panel interview. Closing date is 30 June.