🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏

How David Bowie, Prince and Todd Haynes accidentally begat a beloved Portland bike tradition

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
Bowie vs Prince Ride-29

The eternal conflict.
(Photos: J.Maus/BikePortland)

Each summer, fans of two brilliant, proudly weird performers meet in two different Portland spots and then join up to form a huge, glamorous rolling jam with costumes and thumping dance beats.

Not unlike with the late, great David Bowie himself, the success of the annual Bowie Vs Prince ride took even its creator by surprise. It turned out that, just as the English-speaking world had spent the 1960s secretly getting ready to be blown away by Ziggy Stardust, the Portland of the 2000s had been secretly getting ready to go nuts for this particular bike ride.

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Checking in on the newly installed diverters on SE Clinton

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They’re in (mostly).
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Over the weekend the City of Portland began their project to discourage people from driving on Southeast Clinton street and restore it as a true “neighborhood greenway” where bicycling is comfortable, safe, and prioritized.

There is now a new lane configuration on SE 34th (a north-south bikeway that feeds into Clinton), a semi-diverter at SE 32nd, and a full median diverter in place (but not finished) at SE 17th. After seeing reports about the diverters over the weekend, I rolled out this morning to get a closer look.

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The Monday Roundup: Misplaced bragging, JPow wins again, Volkswagen bailout & more

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This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by Lancaster Engineering, a Portland-based traffic engineering and transportation planning firm.

If you’re still sputtering up to speed after the holidays, have no fear, we’ve gathered all the best bike stories for you in one convenient place…

Pow!: Jeremy Powers rode to his fourth national cyclocross championship yesterday. And young Pacific Northwest product Logan Owen grabbed third.

“Success” story: A UK engineering firm chose an unfortunate Twitter illustration of that time they “successfully delivered another greenway project.”

“Bike Butler”: Indoor bike storage racks are getting more sophisticated.

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Biketown, the day after (reflections on a big deal)

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Makes your jaw-drop huh?
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Wow. Yesterday’s bike share news was pretty amazing. Our heads are still spinning here at BikePortland headquarters.

Nine years ago when we announced that Portland wanted to be the first U.S. city with a bike share system, we never expected it would take this long. But now that it’s happened, we’re just glad that the deal was done. And, like many people in Portland, we’re eagerly awaiting the sight of 1,000 orange bikes being used in our city.

We’ve posted 70 stories about Portland’s bike share saga since 2007 and things are just now getting interesting, so expect a lot more coverage in the months to come. For now though, Michael and I want to share some brief thoughts about PBOT, Nike, Biketown, and what this means for all of us. Some are fun, some are serious, and like always, we’d love to hear your thoughts…

Wait. Before we get started. I want to publicly congratulate the team at PBOT. There are some smart and dedicated people who worked very hard under a lot of pressure and ups-and-downs (understatement) over these past nine years to pull this off (I won’t name names, you know who you are). Something like this doesn’t happen in a city unless someone makes it a priority and sees it through to the end. High-fives all around.

OK, let’s go…

Hey, wanna’ grab a Biketown? Let’s Biketown to the Timbers game.

I’ve been wondering how the system’s name, Biketown (pronounced bike, not bikey), will be used once it becomes common parlance. It works well as a place name, but it’s not so great as a noun. And will it work as a verb? This is only the second time naming rights have ever been sold to a title sponsor of a U.S. system (the other one is CitiBike in New York), so we’re all a bit new to this.

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City testing ‘rumble bars’ to prevent encroachment into NE Couch bike lane

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New rumble bars added to Couch bike lane approaching Burnside Bridge.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Oh, if we could just get people to not drive in bike lanes. We’ve tried nearly everything (except for concrete barriers): First there was white paint, then blue paint, then green paint, then parked cars, then more white paint, then flexible plastic bollards, then solar-powered LED lights. And now Portland’s Bureau of Transportation is testing ‘rumble bars’.

The new bars have just been installed on the infamous s-curve on NE Couch as it approaches the east end of the Burnside Bridge. They’re about a foot wide, spaced a foot apart, and stand about one-inch high. PBOT has installed them only on the curved portion of the Couch bike lane — a segment of roadway that has raised bike safety concerns since the day it opened.

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Off-road update: New council date set for River View plan, committee selected for Master Plan

NWTA Forest Park Rally and Ride-31

(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

2016 is starting off with a bang for off-road trail riding in Portland. Two major plans — one that could bring bike access to the River View Natural Area and the other that develop a blueprint for off-road bike access in parks and other spaces throughout the city — are both moving forward in significant ways.

Back in November we shared some of the uncertainty that looms over a management plan for the Portland Parks Bureau’s River View Natural Area. That plan was controversial and spurred a legal action by off-road cycling advocacy group Northwest Trail Alliance.

The River View plan was set for City Council adoption last month, but the hearing was rescheduled. Now it’s set for next Thursday January 14th at 2:00 pm.

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No Logo: Nike’s sponsorship shows lopsided funding priorities

Celebrating Nike’s $10 million sponsorship package reifies the currently lopsided funding priorities we have not just in this town but all over the place, where anything to do with cars is automatically funded without any public conversation much less a vote, but when it comes to high-vis bike infrastructure (Sunday Parkways, Bikeshare – now BikeTown) we’re apparently out of luck, and the search for a corporate sponsor raises few eyebrows (how many thousands of taxpayer dollars were spent cozying up to that sponsor?).

Were any of you bikeportland readers in Seattle to protest the WTO in 1999? Do we even remember what those protests were about? One of the things they were about was corporations’ need to create, infiltrate, and dominate the emotional and physical landscapes we inhabit, convince us that their brand and the lifestyles we seek are one and the same. A few of these companies have become very good at it and very wealthy in the process. But in the post-manufacturing era there is fierce competition for this dominance. The remaining opportunities are few and getting fewer. Nike isn’t the only one who’d like to brand us, our aspirations, our (formerly) public spaces.

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Weekend Event Guide: Skatepark benefit, big adventures, grilling by bike and more

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
Scappoose to Buxton on dirt-17

Two rides this weekend promise new roads and excellent adventures.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

This menu of delicious rides and events is brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery. Their support makes BikePortland possible.

Welcome to the first guide of 2016! After what has felt like weeks of rain and snow and ice, we’ve finally got dry streets and tolerable temps. Things are relatively quiet on the bike ride and event front this weekend, but we’ve still got some cool stuff for your perusal. One note, the City of Portland has said they might install the new traffic diverters on SE Clinton this weekend. If that happens, and if you’re wonky enough to care, it might be worth cruising up and down Clinton just to check them out.

What are your plans? Check out our suggestions below…

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Latest Headlines

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Off-Road Cycling Master Plan: A decade later, what has changed?

From the Archives

The 10 busiest bicycling spots in Portland