You, Too, Can Ride An Air Donkey

A week and a half ago, I gave some examples of oxymorons.  As I mentioned in that post, some people would argue that "carbon fiber Brooks saddle" is one.

How about "Air Donkey"?

No, it's not a no-frills airline.  (Please click the link:  the clip is precious!)  Nor is it a cheaper version of a sneaker teenaged boys of all ages (and genders!) wait hours on line and spend whole paychecks to get.  And it's not a game in which people deemed to unstable for military service or the police department work out their aggressions.

Rather, Air Donkey might be described if you created a bike rental service by crossing Uber with Airbnb.



An bicycle outfitted for Air Donkey

At least, that seems to be the vision of Erdem Ovacik, who recently co-founded the Copenhagen (where else?)-based startup which has just opened a Kickstarter appeal to fund their project. 

Essentially, Air Donkey would involve people renting out their bicycles by the day or week to tourists, commuters or whoever else is looking to get around the city on two wheels.  The firm behind Air Donkey--Donkey Republic--says the system has been tested around Copenhagen and is ready to go.



The Air Donkey starter kit.

Members will purchase a starter kit that includes a special rear-wheel lock that can be released with a phone app (and can go 500 days between charges), stickers to mark the bike and a listing on the company's website, which keeps track of available bikes via the locks. 


Users simply have to find a bike, pay the rental fee and use the app to unlock the bike.  Air Donkey recommends a rental fee of 10 Euros a day; it's estimated that the one-time cost of the starter kit will be 80 Euros.  Thus, it shouldn't take long for a member to recoup his or her outlay.



The Air Donkey lock

It all sounds good. However, being the cynical (!) New Yorker I am, I found a problem: the lock. It only allows the bike to be locked to itself or tethered to an immobile object with the attached cable.  The "leash" on the lock is flimsy, especially for a bike that's supposed to be parked on the street so that would-be renters can easily access it. Crooks who aren't particularly enterprising have broken much thicker and stronger cables, chains and locks. Also, I have to think that if thieves found ways to steal Citibikes from their ports, they wouldn't have much difficulty in stealing an Air Donkey bike without cutting the "leash" or even breaking the lock.

On the other hand, as Ovacik points out, the system is intended for everyday, utilitarian machines--the kind people typically have in their basements and storage rooms--not fancy racing bikes.  The bikes people would rent are more likely to have baskets or child seats than heart rate monitors.  Hence the "Donkey" in the name.

Even so, Air Donkey would make a greater variety of bikes available than any municipal bike-sharing system like Citibike could.  A bike shop could rent out, say, a Dutch-style city bike, a three-speed, a low-level mountain bike and other kinds of machines in the Air Donkey system.  And, many riders could find and return bikes in and to more convenient locations, particularly areas of cities where bike-share ports are difficult or impossible to find. 

Whatever its flaws or drawbacks, I hope that the program succeeds and, as Ovacik plans, it's expanded to other cities in Europe and beyond.  Anything that can get more bikes on, and more cars off, city streets is a good thing!




 

The Messenger Who Didn't Come Back

I'm sure I don't have to tell you what happened fourteen years ago today.

Here in New York, it seems that almost everyone knows someone who was touched by the events of that day.  If we don't know someone who's alive today because he didn't go to work-- or whose mother, father, brother, sister, lover or friend went to work and never came back-- we know someone who's somehow connected to such a person.

Before the Towers fell, they were magnets that pulled in and propelled hundreds of messengers every day.  For over a year, I was one of them.  I, and they, picked up letters, contracts, invoices, receipts, lease agreements, work orders, certifications, resumes and other testaments to the daily fugue of moments lived in anticipation of returning, again, to the sanctum of the familiar.

Most people go to work every day and expect to return home safely.  Among the exceptions are firefighters, police officers and other first responders:  All of them know, or know of, someone who went to work one day and never made it home.  Most lawyers or accountants cannot say that.  Nor, for that matter can most bike messengers:  Even with the crazy drivers hurtling through the maze of city streets, most who pedal through the urban jungle can expect to make it through the day intact.

One of the reasons, I believe, why the events of 11 September 2001 left so many people in various states of shock and grief is that it was one of those rare occassions on which so many people who expect--or are expected--to be home at the end of the day didn't make it.  In other words, it's one of the few times so many people could truly understand what it's like to live with, and love, a first responder who, on any given day or night, might not come home again.

The families and loved ones of those who didn't make it back have their own mementos and monuments: photos and the like.  And there are also those tactile but mute testimonies to those whose fates we may never know--like the messenger who was riding this bike when making a delivery to Cantor Fitzgerald or some other organization in the World Trade Center:

Photo by Anthony Catalano

This bike was still parked by St. Paul's Chapel a month after the Towers fell.  The rear of it faces Church Street, directly across from the east side of the World Trade Center site.   It seems that family and friends turned it into an impromptu memorial for the messenger, who was never seen or heard from after parking it. 

A Bronx Bike Dealer

This is a Bronx bicycle dealer:

Believe it or not, this photo came up when I typed "bicycle Bronx" in Google.  I know the Bronx fairly well--though, I admit, not as well as I know Brooklyn, Manhattan or Queens--and could not recall seeing anything that looks like the shop, or its locale, in the only New York City borough that's part of the mainland United States.

But, really, they are a Bronx bicycle dealer. Granted, that photo is from 1948, but the shop in question--L.J. Stronnell Cycles--is still in business, in the same location in Buckinghamshire.

Buckinghamshire doesn't sound like a neighborhood in the Bronx, does it?  Well, it shouldn't:  I don't think there's any place in the Bronx with "shire" at the end of its name. 

Those of you in the UK know that it's where, for ages, rich Londoners have spent idyllic holidays.  And not without reason:  Much of it is quite lovely, with its rolling hills and rivers.  But it's becoming more developed, as more and more of said Londoners are moving there and commuting into the city. 

OK, so what does all of this have to do with the Bronx?, you ask.  Well, it turns out that Stronnell sells Bronx bicycles.  No, they're not airlifted from the Grand Concourse or Fordham Road.  Bronx Cycles, believe it or not, is a line of bicycles available in the UK but not in the US (at least, not to my knowledge).

It's interesting that with all of the cachet the Brooklyn brand, if you will, has gained all over the world, a popular line of bicycles in England would be named for New York's most maligned borough.

I guess whoever came up with the name was trying to evoke images of toughness.  Or, perhaps, that person (or those people) actually spent time in the Bronx and realized that it has a number of interesting places besides the Zoo, Botanical Gardens and Yankee Stadium--and some good cycling and fine people. 

Perhaps they know what I have been telling people:  One day, anything related to the Bronx will be just as hip and fashionable as anything connected to Brooklyn is today. I can't say exactly when it will happen, but the day is certainly coming.  When it does, will hipsters be wheeling their fixies to craft-beer cafes on Bruckner Boulevard--while English cycle-tourists roll across the countryside on Bronx bicycles?

This Bike Share Program Could Come Up Roses

Portland, Oregon is often called the most "bike-friendly" city in the US.  I have never been there, but from what I've read and heard, it probably deserves that designation.

Ironically, it doesn't have a bike share program.  That may soon change.  Today, Mayor Charlie Hales and Commissioners Nick Fish (great name, huh?) and Steve Novick have announced a proposal that could make 600 bikes available for public use.

Sometimes "coming to the party" later can have its advantages.  Bike share programs in New York, Paris and other cities had a "learning curve" that Portland won't have:  They had to work out technical problems and find ways to combat problems such as the theft of the programs' bikes.  The folks in Portland will be able to draw upon what their peers in the Big Apple, the City of Light and other places have learned from their experiences with their bike share programs.

One of those problems is what deters folks like me from using Citibike, Velib or other similar programs:  What to do if there's no bike port in sight.  In Paris, I noticed, it probably wouldn't have been much of a problem, as the ports seemed to be everywhere in the city and in points beyond. (Still, I prefer to have a bike for which I don't have to think about such things.  I'd rent again from Paris Bike Tour or bring my own bike.)  However, here in New York, the ports were found, until recently, only in lower Manhattan and in the Brooklyn neighborhoods closest to Manhattan (e.g., Williamsburg).  So, if I were to ride, say, from one of those places to my apartment, or to work, I would almost certainly exceed the time limit.  Taking longer recreational rides would almost certainly be out of the question, let alone using a Citibike to go to museums, galleries and such.

In Portland, I imagine the problem I described would be even more acute, as it's more of a sprawling city than New York or Paris, or others--like Boston and Montreal--that have bike share programs.

Cyclists departing Boston's City Hall plaza to help launch Hubway--the city's bike share program in July 2011.

According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, there are 3000 bike racks in the City of Roses.  According to John Brady, the PBT's Director of Communications, the bikes in the program would include a locking technology that work on any of those racks--in effect turning them into docking stations. 

That, I think, could go a long way toward turning a bike share program in Portland--or in many other cities--into a truly viable part of the transportation system.  A city that doesn't have many bike racks could probably install them for a good deal less money than special bike ports.  Also, there probably would be less objection to regular bike racks than to the ports, which take up a lot more room.  Their smaller size and relative ease of installation would also make them easier to build in, or next to, train and bus stations or municipal parking lots.

 

24-Karat Stupidity

A few months ago, I wrote a post in which I related something a police commander told me once:  "Lucky for us that most criminals are stupid."

Citibike--the bike-share program in my hometown, New York City, is fortunate that at least one thief was foolish.

Yesterday, when I was on my way to meet a friend for lunch, I saw a bike propped against garbage cans in front of a row house.

I took a photo of it which I, unfortunately, deleted accidentally.  However, the bike looked very much like the one in this image:

The perp took a Citibike and sprayed it with gold paint.  Said crook covered the serial number and anything with the Citibike logo  However, he (as a former male, I am assuming--not unreasonably, I believe--the thief is male) did not spray the front of the bike.  Thus, the head tube and fork showed the familiar Citibike blue:  a shade not found on very many other bikes.

Also. as you can see from this photo, the frame's distinctive shape, as well as the integrated front baskets and fenders, make Citibikes difficult to camouflage, even with a heavy spraying of paint.

As if the ham-fisted paint job wasn't vain enough as an attempt to hide the bike, the voleur chose one of the worst possible colors for the job:  metallic gold.  In the first photo, I spray-brushed the bike with the color, of the ones available on my app, that came closest to what I saw on that bike.  The hue is about right, but the thief used a brighter, more metallic, version of it.

I thought about calling Citibike when one of their vans pulled up.  I'm guessing that someone saw the bike before I did and called.  I wonder whether that person was chuckling, as I was, about the thief's color choice and lack of painting skills.