It seems that, these days, cities are trying to be "bike friendly"--or to sell themselves as if they are.
Studies are done, "experts" are hired, money is spent. The results are mixed: Everything from bike-share programs to bike lanes that look as if they were designed by folks who'd never even seen a bicycle.
Some would argue that if you want a "bike friendly" city, you have to start from scratch. It seems that Thomas Yang did just that:
His studio, 100 Copies, combines his passions for cycling and art. As the name suggests, each of the works he designs is limited to 100 copies. Each copy is watermarked, and no two copies are completely identical (Is that a contradiction?), according to Yang.
Hmm...I get the feeling he could make the whole world in the image of the bicycle:
Two and a half years ago, I wrote a post about a bicycle wheel that looked as if it could have been drawn with a Spirograph set.
If you're of my generation, you might have had one. It consisted of toothed wheels and bars used to draw various kinds of roulette curves. The drawings that came out of it looked like some "dream catchers", wind chimes, stained-glass windows--and, yes, bicycle wheels--you've seen.
I don't remember whether I (or my brothers and I) got the Spirograph or the Etch-a-Sketch first. But, for a time, we had both--that is, until the screen broke on the Etch-a-Sketch. (I still miss it sometimes!) I don't know what happened to the Spirograph set, but as I recall, we had it for a long time. If memory serves, my brothers were still using it when I went away to college.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, not only some bicycles and wheels, but various accessories and art installations made from them, look like they could have been drawn with one of my favorite toys.
Here is another:
When I was in fifth grade, my class took a trip from our school in Brooklyn to an exotic land on the other side of a frigid, turbid body of water: the East River. We, of course, went to Manhattan.
In that exotic isle, we visited the Metropolitan Opera House of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which was then only a few years old. I knew nothing about opera or classical music, but the place had me entranced in a way no amusement park ever could.
What had me most enthralled were the chandeliers. I'd never seen anything like them, and few things have ever fixated themselves in my mind as they did. To this day, I don't know whether it showed that I had exquisite taste at an early age or that I was simply a magpie in a human body. Whatever the case, I simply could not take my eyes away from them.
I decided, then and there, that if I ever became rich, I would want such a fixture hanging over my dining room table.
In the meantime, though, I might go for this:
Carolina Fontoura Alzaga constructed this masterpiece from bicycle chains. Somehow it seems even more operatic and baroque than the ones in Lincoln Center. I love it!
Tomorrow Scottish voters will vote to decide whether to secede from the United Kingdom and form their own nation.
The question on the ballot is simple: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" Voters can only check "yes" or "no".
The latest polls indicate that the vote could go either way. I am not going to make a prediction or take a position on this blog.
If the "yes" voters rule the day, they might want a "trophy" from fellow Scot Reagan Appleton:
