Bicycling

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Get lit (up) on your bike

Posted by Julia Thiel on 02.23.12 at 04:31 PM

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  • Image courtesy of the Get Lit campaign
Steven Vance of the sustainable transportation blog Grid Chicago started a campaign last year called Get Lit to encourage cyclists to use lights at night by giving out free lights to riders without them. The Active Transportation Alliance has done several bike light giveaways in the last few years, and Vance volunteered at a couple of them. He noticed that most of the cyclists who were riding without lights also didn't know that they're required by law to have a white headlight, so with the help of some friends, he made up educational postcards that he's been distributing. Vance now wants to do a headlight giveaway, and is soliciting donations so he can buy the lights (there's information on his blog post about how to donate). He says he still sees a lot of people biking without lights, and wants to change that.

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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

The Man Who Lived on His Bike

Posted by Julia Thiel on 02.14.12 at 03:35 PM

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My father is 64 years old.
He's been riding his bike over 120,000 km.
And he keeps going.
This film is dedicated to him.

Thus begins the brief voice-over (in French with subtitles) to Guillaume Blanchet's recent short film, The Man Who Lived on His Bike. The product of more than a year spent biking through Montreal, Blanchet's film is a creative imagining of what it might be like to literally live one's whole life on a bike: sleeping, showering, ironing clothes, frying an egg, washing dishes.

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Bicycle Dreams documentary premieres in Chicago

Posted by Julia Thiel on 02.13.12 at 09:50 AM

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This Thursday the Chainlink and New Belgium Brewing present Bicycle Dreams, a documentary about the Race Across America, playing at the Viaduct Theater (3111 N. Western) in its Chicago premiere. The 3,000-mile race takes about nine days and is one of the longest endurance events in the world; only about half of the participants finish the ride. The film claims to offer a look at the riders' "emotional and physical breakdowns, late-night strategy sessions, and great moments of personal triumph, all in intimate detail."

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Monday, February 6, 2012

I can't believe people bike through blizzards

Posted by Joey Jachowski on 02.06.12 at 01:31 PM

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  • By Jos van Zetten/Wikimedia Commons
I’m pretty new to Chicago, the city of a shitload of hard-core bicyclists. I started as an intern here last month, and arriving most recently from California, I was thrown by the sight of a bundled-up biker pedaling his way down Dearborn two weeks ago during a snowstorm. One of my fellow bus-stop loiterers gave a “Woo!” of excitement and encouragement and the biker cheered back. I thought, "You have to be crazy to bike through slush, ice, and snowfall in the midst of Chicago city traffic." Less than ten minutes later a second bicyclist rolled by.

About a week later, I was browsing ads, looking for a part-time job, and stumbled upon a post from the Chicago Messenger Service looking for bike messengers. “Large downtown courier service adding to biker fleet,” the ad read, leaving out the “in the dead of winter” part. Although the weather has been nice the past couple of days, I doubt I would be up for delivering packages and letters at breakneck pace, when the weather could deteriorate at the change of a traffic signal.

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Thursday, January 26, 2012

Heritage Bicycles opens this weekend

Posted by Julia Thiel on 01.26.12 at 03:09 PM

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I first stopped by Heritage Bicycles last fall on Park(ing) Day; the store wasn’t yet open but owner Michael Salvatore had set up a bench, several plants, and a couple of the bikes the store would be selling on AstroTurf outside. Salvatore showed me the inside of the Lakeview shop, which was still a work in progress: the bike repair room, the spot where the coffee bar would be, and the long table for customers to sit and sip their beverages.

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Wednesday, December 7, 2011

On Bicycles release party at Cole's

Posted by Julia Thiel on 12.07.11 at 12:37 PM

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Local authors and cycling advocates Greg Borzo (Where to Bike Chicago) and John Greenfield (Bars Across America: Drinking and Biking From Coast to Coast) read their contributions to the anthology On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life at Cole's bar (2338 N. Milwaukee) from 8 to 10 PM Thursday. The new book, edited by Momentum magazine cofounder Amy Walker, features 50 essays on cycling. Topics include the environment, cargo bikes, folding bikes, electric bikes, biking with kids, riding in the rain, and designing cities for bikes.

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Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Rainy biking on the Lakefront Trail

Posted by Julia Thiel on 11.08.11 at 12:44 PM

Biking in the rain can be kind of fun in the summer, but the colder the weather gets, the less pleasant it becomes. For the last couple hours of work yesterday, I had the same internal debate I always have when the weather's dicey: to bike or not to bike (in this case, from the Reader office in River North up to west Rogers Park, then home to Ukrainian Village later in the evening). As usual, this involved obsessively checking weather.com (even though I know how often it's wrong) to see what the odds of rain would be later in the evening, as well as figuring out possible routes via public transit. I also considered going home to get my car first, how much longer that would take, and how much sitting in traffic on the way up would make me hate the world. And as usual, biking was the fastest and most convenient option, so I took my chances that my ride home would be rainy.

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Friday, October 14, 2011

Does how cyclists dress affect how drivers treat them?

Posted by Heather Kenny on 10.14.11 at 07:39 AM

An article in Crain's Chicago Business posits the existence of the "Mary Poppins Effect," in which people who dress up a little when they ride their bikes, as opposed to wearing bike or athletic gear, experience better treatment from drivers. "It helps drivers realize bicyclists are people too," Dottie Brackett of Let's Go Ride a Bike is quoted as saying. Other items that may help include helmets and child trailers (even if they aren't being used to cart infants around).

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Monday, October 10, 2011

Photos of the Racketeers at Bike Fall

Posted by Julia Thiel on 10.10.11 at 02:42 PM

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I stopped by the Hideout on the early side Saturday for the Bike Fall festival—too early, as it turned out. It was supposed to start either at 11 AM or noon, depending on which website you chose to believe, but at quarter to 1, things were still being set up and the crowd was pretty small. Eventually John Greenfield sang a few bike-related songs (with some pretty entertaining lyrics), and the Racketeers performed. Now a year old—they celebrated their birthday last week with an alleycat ride/scavenger hunt and party—they're a BMX dance troupe that performs at bike events like Critical Mass and this year's Tour de Fat. Other activities and demos were scheduled for later in the afternoon, with bands and a bike film festival in the evening, but I wasn't able to stick around for those. More Racketeers photos after the jump; all photos by me.

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Monday, October 3, 2011

Open Streets on State Street

Posted by Julia Thiel on 10.03.11 at 02:24 PM

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The first Open Streets on State Street shut down seven blocks of State (from Lake to Van Buren) to vehicles on Saturday, opening up the streets to pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters. From 10 AM to 3 PM, there were break-dancing demos, yoga and zumba classes, a dunk tank, bouting by the Windy City Rollers, play areas for kids, a skate park, and activities like foursquare, hula hooping, and relay races. Even the Bucket Boys were out, drumming away. I don't know if they were part of the official lineup, but they drew a pretty good crowd—as did the event overall. It was a cool, sunny day, and people seemed to be enjoying wandering the streets. More photos after the jump.

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