I headed down to the start of the Occupy Portland rally this afternoon to see if there was a bike story there. Turns out most of the bikes I saw were either parked to railings or for police use. Here are a bunch of photos, bikey and otherwise:
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RSS feed for this sectionFraming the debate.
Bikes on my mind
Posted onFor three years, I compiled a weekly bicycle news roundup at BikePortland (Jonathan is keeping it going, and now I’m the one getting my news that way). Since moving on a month ago, I’ve relaxed my eagle eye on the news: instead of skimming everything quickly, I’m able to take the time to be choosier […]
Buddhist economics
Posted onThe writing process for my Bikenomics zine (it’s due out in two weeks!) keeps getting derailed by fascinating research avenues. Like this one: a 1955 paper on “Buddhist Economics” by economist E.F. Schumacher. It’s a simple argument for valuing humanity and dignity over goods and capital. The Buddhist point of view takes the function of […]
Quantifying Britain's bicycle economy
Posted onPashley made the bikes for the Royal Mail and now sells cargo-worthy commuters to the general public. (Photo: Elly Blue) Researchers from the London School of Economics have been looking into the bike economy, and have found it to be thriving.
Taking back the streets, with books, by ...
Posted onPortland’s Street Books—a library on a cargo trike that serves readers who may not have a home, identification, or other welcoming access to books—has been in the news a lot lately. This charming video shows it well.
Biking big, thinking big
Posted onMy latest column over at Grist is about bicycling when you’re big. It was going to be quite a different piece. Krissy Durden, a Portlander and fat-acceptance activist (who publishes a zine on the topic called Figure 8) connected me with the woman featured in the column. Durden also gently steered me away from the […]
Protagonism and Horizontalidad
Posted onI’ve been reading A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit. Here’s an excerpt with some new words we could use around here, too. She’s talking about Argentina during its economic crisis a decade ago: “The 2001 meltdown created something akin to disaster’s sense of community. It was […]
Bicycle society in Jakarta
Posted onThis news report is a tantalizing look at cycling in Indonesia’s capitol and largest city. There’s a huge grassroots movement (the Bike to Work organization has 50,000 members) and a weekly ciclovia called Carfree Day, but people on bikes still need to contend with terrible traffic and a lack of bike infrastructure. Worth a watch.
A video tour of the bike dance movement
Posted onI’m writing about bike dance teams for one of my upcoming zines. I keep wishing I could include video clips in the zine – it’s a limitation of print, but one of the bonuses of having an accompanying blog. Here’s a selection that spans the wide and fascinating variety of what’s going on out there […]
Biking in Joplin after the tornado
Posted onPhoto from the US Army Corps of Engineers, Kansas City District Joplin, Missouri resident Chris Patrick emailed yesterday to say he’d been thinking about my writing about bikes and the economy in light of his experiences in the wake of the tornado that destroyed a large part of his town this May. He wrote: “Since […]
My so-called out-of-control life
Posted onSometimes I’m tempted to go where all the successful young lady writers seem to be going these days. I know I have it in me: I could write a damn intense essay casting a glamor on the parts of my life that the lascivious world probably wouldn’t mind reading about. Sex, drugs, despair, abandon, adventure. […]
Adaptive cycling on the go
Posted onWhile I was writing about adaptive cycling for people with disabilities two weeks ago, I remembered the adaptive adventures of my friend Ellee Thalheimer – yep, the one who’s writing the book on bike touring in Oregon. Ellee testing her one-armed setup for tour in 2007.
A news roundup for the carfree at heart
Posted onI’m trying something new – a weekly roundup of the kind of news I follow closely but don’t otherwise have an outlet for compiling. This will be similar for the Monday Roundup, which I’ve been doing for more than two years running at BikePortland. That used to be a general transportation/bikes/urbanism selection of weekly news […]
Minot, after the flood
Posted onMinot before the flood (Photo by Elly Blue) We’re throwing a fundraiser for our friends’ flood relief work in their hometown of Minot, North Dakota. What: Tall Bikes Keep Heads Above Water: Punk Rock Relief for Minot Flooding. When: Saturday, July 30th from 2-7 Where: Microcosm Store parking lot, 636 SE 11th Ave in Portland. […]