Every week, we are faced with the prospect of dozens of busted and rusted wheels, frames and components.  Fodder for the dumpster, we sigh reluctantly.  Today, our friend and benevolent landlady Wenzday over at Metro Pedal Power let us know that there were some folk close by that would collect the scrap metal parts for reuse and recycling.  Hopefully, this will mean that the dumpster isn’t overflowing any longer and that we aren’t contributing to the equally overflowing landfill problem…

Everyone know recycling is a good thing.  The ubiquitous green triangle arrow signs constantly remind us of the active role we play in a finite system.  In considering our shop’s impact and position, both globally and locally, I was reminded of an Internet Manifesto (I know, I know…) that I ran across a bit back that is worth considering:

At times, we here in the OPEN shop find ourselves facing a dilemma.  A component on a customers bike is broken or damaged, and we recognize two alternative paths of action.  We could spend an hour or two disassembling the part, scrounging for a replacement pin or bushing, and inevitably one-off manufacturing something that will work (and often times work better than the original).  It generally is easier (and more profitable, of course) to toss the broken mechanism in the trash and sell the customer a new, if perhaps lower quality, part.  That sort of solution, however, lacks the personal satisfaction of  the repair and the greater utilitarian good of reducing consumption.

Is it counter-productive of me to discourage consumption?  In the end, I believe not- it’s not that I naively think that one can exist in our contemporary Western society without buying new things- the manic-depressive Massachusetts seasons require a closet full of gear and outerwear, your bike will wear through tires and chains as you put in the miles,  etc.  I don’t think that helping people spend less, consume less, and ultimately demand less production means that I’m shooting myself in the foot as a business owner- as I personally enjoy the meta-material relationship of a repairer to “repairee” more than the reductive relationship of the seller to consumer, and as people (re)learn to appreciate and support the craft and art of expert repair, I think that my business will flourish.

To this end, we are offering, as is appropriate this time of year as we are all looking for something thoughtful and expressive for our loved ones, OPEN Shop gift certificates.  These cards, unlike out standard certificates, are good only for labor and repair time.  Here’s the deal: insofar as we want to promote the repair and utility of the bicycles we so dearly love, we’ll match you dollar for dollar on these certificates.  Buy your guy a $100 card, we’ll pay $50.  Get your wife credit for 2 tune-ups for her daily commuter and we’ll cover the cost of one.  The idea here is give the gift of repair- we’re not going to look over your shoulder but we’re trying to encourage the growth of local personal human services over that of crude consumption of imported future landfill real estate.

There’s no expiration date on the certificates.  Any denomination (US$ or equivalent) is fine with us.  For the record, comprehensive tunes are $60, rebuilding your French BB about $25, and a complete service of your 55 year-old Sturmey Archer 3-speed hub about $50.  Anything else you can think of / make-up / inspire us to try: $60/hr.  E-mail me with any questions.

“Black Friday” has an ominous sound to it.  Despite the cheery dub-overs on commercials exhorting the fantastic savings and mind-blowing deals awaiting us after our tryptophan come-downs, I can’t help but feel a little freaked out by this secular consumerist ritual.

Bear in mind, I own a retail business. “For-profit”- at least that what the state corporate filing says- and the idea behind this massive push for coordinated consumption is that it will provide a burst of income to get we business owners through the tough winter months ahead.  This is all fine and good as long as we take at face value the apparently self-evident axioms of our era’s particular form of late capitalism.  Things only get tricky when we look past the 65% off DSLRs and the Goldman Sachs bailout.  Insofar as I’m participating in the melee by being a capitalist, I feel that the least I can do is be somewhat transparent and autocritical about it.

Everyone remembers the blip of generalized consumer soul-searching that occurred following the death of Jdimytai Damour.  Damour, a 34 year old Wal-Mart employee, was fatally trampled a year ago when some of the over 2000 deal-seekers awaiting the early morning opening of a New York franchise broke the doors down and proceeded to rush the store for first pick of Roll-Back-priced products.  When police arrived on the scene, shoppers refused to leave the store, complained, and attempted to keep shopping.

In the following weeks, many pundits and theorists tried to explain the incident.  We Americans, it turns out, are exposed, on average, to 5000 advertisements a day.  Is this sort of asocial behavior due to the materialistic condition we are subject to?  Are the shareholder-driven multinational corporations at fault for their relentless simplification of our existences and manipulation of our desires?  Or are we simply boorish automatons with simple and programmable brains; our inhuman capitalistic auto-organization serving as the most expeditious route to self-extermination? (insert Dr. Strangelove image here…)

These are the sort of questions that most of us let Continental theorists turn themselves inside out over.  “What,” might you ask, “does this have anything to do with sick fixxxxxies and such?”  It may seem round-about, but I defer to those that lived through the May ‘68 almost-revolution to provide the connection here…

If you are unfamiliar with the events that occurred in France 41 years ago, the Wikipedia page isn’t a bad place to start.  Suffice it to say here, it represented the most successful effort to date of the populus of an industrialized democratic country attempting to make a radical change to the form and means of its societal structure.  In a certain sense, I feel that the contemporary momentum and organization of urban cyclists represents a similar movement, if somewhat demure, as it seeks to re-organize the agendas and infrastructures of our metropolitan environments.

“Well duh,” you say.  “Every pedal stroke is my own contribution to revolution,” and etc.  What we are missing, I feel, is a focused, cognizant, and measured approach to our reforms and ideals.  Discussions and serious commitment must follow Utopian fantasy.  Do we accept progressivist compromise and baby-steps?  Do we stage Situationist protest and force our issues by throwing paving stones?  No one really knows, because no one has really attempted to bring our diverse and wide-ranging (read: strong and capable) community together to do so.

The current consumerist backlash (or bandwagon-ing) within the urban cycling community simultaneously puts a roof over my head and keeps me up at night.  Perhaps, concerning the former, not for long… one can hit up the Urban Outfitters website and order a custom color-coordinated fixed gear (built, of course, of shitty Pacific Rim components made by wage-slaves) for short money.

And what is more American that getting a deal?  In a sense, Black Friday represents the potent distillation of our contemporary moment in this global experiment (or subjugation to) post-industrial capitalism- we are offered, at unobjectionable costs, objects that amend, and ultimately describe, our sense of self and social position.  Moreover, we are urged to “give” these objects as gifts- thus allowing them to act as both personal and interpersonal social status attributors.

When I was younger and less picky in regard to the ways in which I paid rent, I was employed by a man of unspecific Indian Subcontinental decent who owned several large buildings in downtown Minneapolis.  I was hired, for not modest wage, to keep a graveyard shift watch over a structure comprised largely of air-conditioned suites full of buzzing network servers.  Owned by eager startups backed by the shrewdest VCs, these unremarkable arrays were generating ludicrous amounts of money- virtually fabricating it out of virtual air.  My boss had entrusted me with a set of master keys, so I could, from time to time, check in on the hyper-cooled rooms and ensure the encrypted profitability of the clients.  I liked to sit in the vacuous ambient hum in the bigger offices, smoking cigarettes amidst the HEPA filters and wondering if I was causing client-side errors in Asia.  In time, the dot-com bubble burst, I had exhausted the ways in which I could steal Frito-Lay products from the vending machines, and I was laid off, but not before reading, on the clock, countless tomes of cultural theory and post-structuralist philosophy that my roommate at the time had declared necessary for my personal development.

Whether this left me better or worse for the wear is up for discussion, but one of the books that ended up in my regular pre-sunrise rotation was Mark Poster’s translation of Baudrillard’s Selected Writings.  Renowned for his general unintelligibility, amorphous conclusions, and bullshit footnotes, I instantly felt a kinship with this old Frenchman with absurd eyewear.  Who else could, post-posthumously, detail for me the motivations behind Knog’s omni-sexual adverts, catalog the advances and failures, past and future, of subcultures at odds with the predominant productive forces (see: bike peoples), and give, in a single sentence, the fundamental pretense of the phenomenon of Black Friday?  In a 1970 essay entitled “Consumer Society,” Baudrillard diagnoses the outcome of the substitution of object-relationships for our historically important and ritualized social and interpersonal relationships as analogous to the somatic response of a body to an indeterminable illness- “The world of objects and of needs would thus be a world of general hysteria.”

This doesn’t sit well with me, and I don’t think that we denizens of an imagined future bike-opolis have anything to gain by skitching along the intoxicate-maneuvered import sedan of Progress.  OPEN will have no Black Friday sale that will set your pulse a-racing, nor will we try to sell you junky schlock that will bolster your self-esteem and make you momentarily more attractive to the opposite sex.  I considered participating in Buy Nothing Day, but in the end I feel that these sorts of broadly-defined enterprises miss the point.  We’ll be there today, perhaps a little late for having stayed up too late lambasting consumerism; wrench in hand, ready to assess the ravages of time and use upon your ferrite steeds, to offer assurance and bits of sarcasm meant to inspire, and to fix, the best we can, what is broken.

In Vienna, as well as many other cities with well-developed networks of bike lanes and paths – those lanes and paths are mandatory: In areas where such infrastructure exists, cyclists must use them and are not permitted to travel on the roads with motor vehicles.  The problem I experienced with this was two-fold: When using the paths (which are built on the sidewalks and are segregated from motorised traffic, à la Vassar Street in Cambidge), it is impossible to pick up speed due to the meandering pedestrians, strollers, dogs, and other obstacles.  Slow cycling can be nice, but not when one is late for work, and these paths give you no other option.

But the more serious problem is with the bike lanes on the side of the roads. Like in Boston, the lanes in Vienna are often in the “door zone”.  But unlike in Boston, cyclists are not permitted to cycle outside the lane or even on the leftmost edge of the lane in order to avoid being “doored”. This made me extremely nervous, and I am confused as to how such a layout could have been designed in good conscience. Some Europeans say that the door zone is not a problem if one practices “slow cycling”. But I just can’t get behind that line of reasoning. Personally, I would have to cycle barely above walking speed in order to notice an opening door in time to successfully stop for it.  And if I am forced to go that slowly, what is the point of cycling at all? I have also heard the argument that European motorists are more conscienscious than American motorists, and check carefully before opening the car door. But can I ever get comfortable with trusting my life to this idea? I don’t think I could. Out of the 12 persons I know in Vienna who are, or at some point were, cyclists, 9 have been involved in bicycle-vehicle collisions of varius degrees of seriousness, and that anecdotal statistic does not sit well with me.

My point here is not to deride the idea of cycling infrastructure, but simply to suggest that we must understand what we are asking for before we ask for it. I am not certain whether most Americans – when praising European systems with well developed networks of paths – realise that these systems do not permit vehicular cycling.  Cycling in Boston may seem more chaotic and “dangerous” at first glance, but my personal conclusion is that it is actually overall safer than Vienna, because it does not continuously force the cyclist into accident-prone situations.  I am interested in what others think of this subject – though please be courteous and polite in your comments.

I saw this ingenious idea that’s being implemented in Barcelona- street sign bike rack converters.  The two piece steel halves are bolted together with shear bolts and effectively transform an existent street sign post or meter into a secure bike locking point.  The brightly powdercoated design stands out and signals the availability of bicycle parking spaces.  As the Wired article notes, the most impressive feature of this very smart urban space hack is perhaps the fact that it legitimizes an activity that normally occupies a legally gray area, e.g. locking a bike to whatever permanent structure one can find on the street… Mayor Menino, Ms. Freedman: take note?

There was a time when wizened economists held court in the parliment houses and ivory towers and envisioned a world ripe with possibility.  The vast verdant forests, the broad rivers, uncharted lands; these were the raw-stuffs of fortunes and industries yet to come.  Built capital was the limiting factor for this pregnant growth- social and natural capital was abundant.

I hope I’m not stating the painfully obvious by suggesting that the world has changed dramatically.  We find ourselves in the midst of a dense human-made infrastructure- millions of miles of interstate highways, countless billions of tons of carefully shaped ferroconcrete structures, and extremely concentrated and socially stratified human populations- the (recently accelerated) urbanization of our civilization means that, in the contemporary situation, it is now precisely social and natural capital that are the limiting factors to economic development.

If there is anything that the “Great Economic Slowdown” has taught us, it is that top-down and international business and financial models only serve to fall longer and spread farther when they fail.  We look now for ways to build our local communities from within, be it locally farmed greens at the market, used books from the corner seller, or pints from the city brewery down at the bar in the Square.

The methods by which we, denizens of these recent megolithic people-piles, move around our own communally made density play an important role in the cybernetics (in the original sense: the language and design of control) of cities.  This effect on this control on our everyday lives, the vectors and future of our communites, and the less tangible element of our individual experiences is inherently tied to a sense of economic vitality, and unfortunately the measure of our economic health has been, since what seems like forever, been tied to this outmoded measure of infinite (and thus impossible) voracious growth.  We stand at a crossroads- we can reevaluate ourselves as social actors, rethink our cities, remake our habits.  In this way- bicycles can be revolutionary instruments, or not.  In this way- bike shops can be revolutionary points of social (inter)action, or not.

OPEN strives to be more than just another business doing the same thing and hawking the same stuff as everyone else.  We attempt to source as much as possible locally, and if not immediately local, made by companies committed to fair labor practices.  From hand-crafted steel straight out of Allston to LA-made cycling cut denim, OPEN strive to support small community-owned businesses and connect craftspeople, producers, and users on a real and human scale.  This isn’t some silly boutique concept- this is about building culture and creating sustainable relationships, communities, and cities.

Taking this one step further:  contemporary popular belief holds that custom bicycles are for the moneyed and trend-seeking.  We beg to differ:  riding a bike made by someone who lives down the street from you isn’t a new concept, and it’s not terribly expensive compared to buying off-the-shelf once the hidden costs of globalized consumption are taken into account.  Being able to interact in the process of designing and building a bicycle made expressly for for your body, riding style and habits affords a much richer user-producer experience that picking something out of a catalog, and the resulting machine is something that the rider will treasure forever.

This week, we’ll be interviewing three local framebuilders and showcasing their individual talents and visions here on the OPEN blog.  We support local builders because they are the future of Boston cycling-  we invite you all to share with us the wealth and history of their art and craft.  Together, we believe, we can create a unique, vital and enduring local bike culture.  Stay tuned- at the very least, we’ll have close-up pictures documenting the growth and development of Marty Walsh’s moustache.

The creative directions that I find the most compelling, then, are those that use the amorphous language of art to explore all the possibilities that we might have taken, or could yet perhaps take.  Over at the Design Interactions Studio at London’s prestigious Royal College of Art, one student has taken on this modeling of alternative reality as a exercise in considering our contemporary energy policies.  From Régine Debatty’s excellent blog, We Make Money Not Art:

The Golden Institute for Energy is a think tank from an alternative reality where Jimmy Carter, instead of losing the 1981 presidential election, had defeated his Republican opponent Ronald Reagan. According to this scenario, a think thank would have been formed to pursue Carter’s energy policies (Carter it might be reminded had created the United States Department of Energy to respond to the 1973 energy crisis.) Located in Golden, Colorado, the think thank focused heavily on devising alternative sources of power for the United States. What would have happened if Carter had been able to pursue his environmentally-friendly policy? If money and resources had been poured into geo-engineering rather than into space programs?

Sascha Pohflepp, the artist behind the Golden Project, explores a US present and future where a state of  oil reliance and impending ecological catastrophe is something that has been averted through careful and creative planning:

Project AMBER aims to use the momentum of Planet Earth, to drive a giant gyroscope near one of the poles.

Project QUARTZ would turn an area or a state (most likely to be Nevada) into a weather-experimentation zone.

One of my favorite proposals is that of recapturing the energy wasted by automobile transportation, including inertial brake zones on highway ramps and (perhaps controversially) energy-reclaiming crash zones:

Project OPAL harnesses the velocity, prevalence and potential of the car to create energy for the nation and for the individual.

I want to see one of those on every block.  Given the way Boston car owners drive, this city would be lit up like a Christmas tree without even a drop of Venezuelan crude.

The future is ours to decide.  Unlike the Choose Your Own Adventure books, however, we can’t simply skip back to the beginning and start over.  As cyclists, we make the decision to push our way over the hills and across town with our own two legs, and this simple and freeing determination can be a starting point for a common shift towards a rosy, joyous, and self-empowered tomorrow.  If you agree with me, turn to page 217…

I found this pic on the Guardian website.  No, it’s not the parking lot at the new Ikea, it’s a holding space for unsold cars in the UK, and it’s full.  Carmakers around the world have seen sudden staggering sales slumps and resultant losses, and the number of new cars awaiting distribution and sale is climbing.  Production has ground to a halt and hundreds of thousands have been laid off.  Land Rovers and electric hybrids, hatchbacks and Hummers alike are sitting in lots like the one shown above, with little prospect of a eager new owner awaiting.

According to the Motley Fool,

“Toyota said that sales fell 32% in January, with Honda and Nissan down 29% and 30%, respectively.  In the US, Chrysler’s sales fell a whopping 55% in January, followed by GM falling nearly 50%, and Ford seeing a 40% decline.”

In Europe, many countries offer a “scrappage” incentive- usually a few thousand dollars in exchange for an older model auto to encourage the purchase of newer, more fuel efficient models.  Even this (no doubt well-lobbied) government bribe, however, seems to be having little impact of the decline of automoble consumption.  I’m not even going to try to venture an opinion on the US auto industry bailout.

It turns out that new cars are not the only ones feeling lonely right now- it’s been reported that thousands of Indian and other South Asian workers have been fleeing the once-booming Middle Eastern port city of Dubai and leaving their cars behind in the airport.  So far nearly 3000 autos have been abandoned as their owners flee the economic crash and untenable debt.

On the other hand, cycling (ahem) giant Giant Manufacturing Inc. has found itself unable to meet dealer demands for many models, and ended 2008 with sales up about 6%.  Data is spotty, but this writer found similarly upbeat sales numbers from several US, European, and Pacific rim bicycle makers.  Treehugger has also reported that bike mechanics have one of the hottest “green jobs” going right now. (see here and here)  Apparently, our employment futures are looking rosy over here at OPEN.

The (very cool) shop build-out will be done soon, stop by next month and we’ll pour ya a beer- we can talk about how this crisis presents the global community an opportunity to make real social and infrastructural change, chat about local hand-built track frames, and show you an awesome cargo bike that we have in the works… you can even carry that cool Ikea desk home with it!

Eddie, Elliot, and race organizer John Dinn.  Photo via DC Courier/Hub Racing.

No entry fee, no staggering prize list, just riding to celebrate and recognize…  many of the participants continued on to inaugural rides or parked their whips with Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s free bike valet parking and stepped onto the Mall to join the 2 million people witnessing the swearing in of Barack Obama.  City officials encouraged attendees to ride, citing congested traffic condition and severe lack of parking.  Obama and bikes:

the perfect combination.

RIP Bush Administration!

Usually I head straight for the Lists, but today our friend Sarah alerted us to a project out of 826 Valencia, Eggers’ national literacy and tutoring initiative, that features elementary school children’s letters and pictures to President-Elect Obama.  The letters have been collected in a new book, “Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: A Collection of Kids’ Letters to President Obama,” and a few selected letters are up on the McSweeney’s website.  (This also showed up in today’s NY Times.)

Our favorite was (of course) this one that mentions the awesomeness of bikes:

Dear President Obama,

I want to meet you at my tutoring program with my teacher, Bonnie. Did you ever go to a tutoring program after school like me? What age are your daughters? Are they 11 years old like me? Are you going to help people like my parents find good jobs? I want to tell you that I learned to ride my bike. That is good because I get exercise and play with my friends. It would be cool if everybody rode bikes, because they don’t use gasoline and they don’t make the air dirty. If I were a president, I would give people jobs.

Furthermore,

Karla Mora, age 11
Los Angeles

Marty Walsh, the man behind Geekhouse Bikes, got a royal shout-out from Mayor Menino for his work in helping develop Boston’s grassroots green industry. (read: make beautiful, affordable, innovative custom steel bike frames)  Here’s Menino mid-praise:

and here’s Marty, looking all cool and suave on television:

We’re working on a top-secret project with Geekhouse and should have something production ready by spring.  Marty comes from a distinguished framebuilding lineage and is constantly emerging with some of the most creative designs and aesthetics while still keeping his prices PBR-  we are super excited to be working with him!