Sitting in a car, no one can see what you've got on. For better or for worse, on a bicycle you've got nowhere to hide. Here's how we dress when on our bicycles in Toronto.
We wear stripes on our tall bikes:
And we wear solids on our small bikes:
Sometimes we wear all black (to not be seen "salmoning"):
Or we wear all blue:
And then we also wear some other primary colours:
To be seen we wear our safety vests:
And we sometimes wear clothes that are meant not to be seen:
And sometimes we wear no shirts at all:
And when it's warm, we wear shirts to show off our pregnant bellies:
And we wear skirts and motorcycle helmets:
Or we wear silly animal helmets:
Or we wear boxes:
Or we wear no helmet at all because we have cool hair:
And we wear halter tops when taking our other bike out for a walk:
Or we put on our summery Canadian Tuxedo:
And we carry sparklers in summer dresses:
And play the horn in our sharp vests:
When it rains we put on our bright rain jackets:
And when it snows we simply cover up more:
Or cover up completely:
And we sometimes show that we support Toronto cycling-related charities in our I Bike T.O. T-shirts:
All photos from the BikingToronto Flickr Pool
Labels: bicycles, style, Toronto
On Sunday, August 30, 2009, I hopped on the subway and ended up at Yonge and Dundas Square.
I took a quick walk around at the Live Green Toronto Festival, saw some reps from the Toronto Cyclists Union and couldn't help but notice a few interesting bikes like this one:
Vert catering had their Pickle Cycle on hand as they were cooking up vegetarian poutine and organic burgers. The bicycle is a Pashley Baker's Bicycle and they will deliver catered lunches to you office, if you ask kindly.
You could win this bike if you signed up for a mailing list I believe:
And Courier Co-op Toronto had a cargo bike chained to the ring on this lamp post. No one was around, so I never found out what was in the giant bag.
Labels: bicycles, Events, Live Green Toronto, Toronto
Before I gave up my car I can remember thinking to myself, "Without a car, how will I carry things?"
How would I carry a 24 case of water home?
How would I carry all of my groceries home?
How would I carry my latest IKEA purchases home?
I soon discovered the answers...
Don't buy water in bottles, you've got a tap.
Don't buy all of your groceries at once, and stop buying heavy frozen junk.
Don't buy more stuff from IKEA, unless you're with a friend with a car.
Just because a bicycle doesn't come with trunk space it doesn't mean that we, as Torontonians, are left unable to take anything with us when we ride. Here then are some of the ways we carry stuff by bicycle in Toronto.
Sometimes we like to keep an eye on our stuff and use a basket mounted up front:
Sometimes we want to see the potholes ahead of us and mount a basket on the back:
Sometimes we like to carry more stuff, and have baskets both front and rear:
There are times where we like to improvise the type of baskets we use:
And then sometimes we fill our baskets with keytars in Accordion City:
To keep our stuff dry we sometimes use panniers that match our helmets:
Sometimes we rent trailers to carry even more stuff:
Sometimes we carry other people on our bikes:
Sometimes we improvise how we carry people on our bikes:
And then we sometimes like to carry our children on our bicycles:
Or we take the whole family on a four-wheeled bike while visiting Toronto Island:
And then sometimes we have a really big family, but we still travel by bike (click for larger version):
How do you carry your stuff on a bicycle in Toronto? Share your tips in the Biking Toronto Forum.
Photos via the Biking Toronto Flickr Pool and photographers in Toronto on Flickr
Labels: bicycles, commuting, stuff, Toronto
Bicycle Inflation in Paradise?
Portland, Oregon, the current darling of America’s food and environmental writers, is arguably the county’s most bicycle-obsessed city. Bike use was up 28 percent in Portland between 2007 and 2008, and on the Hawthorne Bridge, a main thoroughfare, bikes now make up 20 percent of all vehicles. The New York Times estimated in 2007 that there were 125 bike-related businesses in Portland employing 600 to 800 people. There’s even a store in the city that sells only tricycles.In Toronto, when I was first looking at used bikes on Craigslist in 2007, the price was around $100 for a 20+ year old beater bike 10-speed. In 2008 I didn't notice much of a price jump. This year, prices have certainly jumped. However, the quality of bikes for sale has also increased as Craigslist Toronto has transformed from an online yard sale to a trusted way of selling high-end used (or new) items.
...
Still, what’s up with this bike micro-inflation? Why does there seem to be no market in Portland for used bikes that are actually cheap? Portland is otherwise a pretty cheap city. Beer is cheap. Used clothing is cheap. By major urban standards, housing is cheap too, unless you compare it to the strip-mall-type cities. And certainly there are plenty of people in town who can’t afford to spend $475 — never mind $1,000 — on a bike.
Have you noticed inflation in bike prices with the growing popularity of cycling in Toronto? Share your thoughts in the Biking Toronto Forum.
Quote from the Freakonomics Blog
Labels: bicycles, Craigslist, Toronto