It Folds. But It Won’t Come Tumbling Down.

 Last week, I wondered whether the folks at the World Meteorological Association were joking when they named a storm that dumped eight inches (20cm) in a day after a Shakespeare character who drowns.

Today I am going to question another naming choice.  Specifically, I have to ask why someone would name a folding bike after a structure whose walls came tumbling down.

No, I am not talking about Jericho.  And its designer isn’t named Joshua.  Nor is he named Donatien-Alphonse-François.

That last name, however, leads to a clue about the designer’s identity. D-T-F was the Comte de Sade, better known as the Marquis.  One of the world’s longest-running urban legends has it that he was in the confines of those walls when an angry mob stormed them.This myth has persisted even though he was transferred to another facility ten days before the revolt, probably because his most (in)famous work was later found in the rubble.

That facility is, of course, the Bastille prison. The bike in question is one that I might want to try:  It folds but, unlike Dahon, Brompton and other portables, the Bastille velo has full-size (27.5 inches, a.k.a 29ers). It would thus avoid one of the problems with smaller-wheeled bikes that caused me to sell my Dahon a year after I bought it:  getting caught in potholes.

To be fair, designer Gilles Henry—who also created the Voyo folding baby stroller—probably was thinking of the Bastille’s seeming indestructability:  It was a fortress before it became a prison.  Or he may realize that to many people, the name evokes the Place and Opera named for it and the fashionable cafés and shops that surround it.