The classically styled and ubiquitous Flying Pigeon is (thankfully) becoming more and more accessible for purchase in the United States!

I was just sent word today (by way of Daily Candy) that a new bike shop in LA, Flying Piegon LA, is currently importing FPs! Flying Pigeon LA joins the ranks with Flying Piegon NYC and Guanxi Trading in New York and Austin, TX respectively

So happy to see people taking interest in the humble practical Pigeon, warms my heart in fact to see this colossal shift in the industry from flashy sport bikes to utilitarian people movers.

Check Flying Pigeon LA out, and if you’re in LA you should go join one of their Dim Sum rides, sounds like fun

Flying Piegon LA : http://www.flyingpigeon-la.com
Source: Kung Fu Pigeon - Daily Candy

As much as I dearly want to hate everything Walmart, especially their sorry excuses for bikes (or bike shaped objects), this bike, the Mongoose Paver, actually seems halfway decent!

It doesn’t have any of the typical heavy worthless suspension, has 700C wheels, nice swept back bars, simple drivetrain with single chainring up front and a rear rack. For a little over $100 bucks, this may be a good choice for extremely frugal bike buyers; whatever it takes to get someone on a bike I say.

Despite this bikes advantages over previous bike models sold by the big box stores, this bike will still suffer from the drawbacks. The first glaring deficiency of this bike is that it will still be assembled by minimum wage cashier jockeys at your local Walmart store who, in all honesty, have no CLUE how to put together a bike properly. I’ve serviced bike shaped objects at my shop that have had forks put on backwards, fasteners mysertiously missing, brake pads that are a mile apart and derailleurs that cant even shift because the limit screws are all wrong. Although this bike has potential, it ultimately is only as good as the lackie at Walmart who is putting it together.

Link to Walmart product page for Mongoose Paver

Article: Walmart opens a “real” bike shop in Texas

Discussion about this bike on Bikeforums.net

What the hell?! 2,865?! Talk about a problem…

The perp, Igor Kenk, and his mental patient taskforce seem to have been snatching up bikes in the Toronto area for some time now; he had even been known as the place to look for your bike after it was stolen. Well, apparently he was finally taken down and his grotesque collection of stolen bikes in his “shop”, home and 10 remote locations across the city!

What’s especially curious is the rationale here for such a insane number of thefts and the stockpiling that accompanied it. Seems to be three theories: a) He would sell the bikes through his illegal shop operation, b) He was a known metals speculator and was waiting for metals to spike again so he could melt the bikes down or c) he anticipated an energy apocolypse of sorts and wanted to be ready (or control the market). Seems to be c is actually the most likely. No way one person could ever sell that many bikes and its hard to imagine melting down that many bikes, especially disassembling them and sorting the metal types. Glad this nutjob is finally behind bars but also disappointed it took this long…

Read full article:
To Catch a Thief - Eyeweekly.com
In a Cyclist-Friendly City, a Black Hole for Bikes - NYTimes.com/Toronto Journal

Bikes on California Ave, UC Davis, originally uploaded by amsthirty.

Here’s a USA Today article citing some examples of high schools and universities looking to deter students from bringing cars to campus through various changes and incentive programs. The crown jewel example is Ripon College’s precedent setting program where they’ve agreed to offer incoming freshmen a brand new Trek mountain bike in exchange for not bringing a car to campus; pretty sweet deal if you ask me. What I find interesting about this type of incentive program is that the school may actually save money by giving each student a $300 bike; get everyone to ditch their car and you won’t have to build new parking lots/structures. I know at my local university one single parking space comes at the cost of $11,000…ELEVEN THOUSAND!

Other programs listed to discourage car usage and/or encourage bicycle usage are on campus bicycle shops, loaner bikes (ie bike library), more bike racks on campus, pathways and more.

Check out the full article: Schools move to eject cars from campuses - USA Today

If you couldn’t tell, this post is purely satire to go along with the satirical video about traffic here:

Sorry for the bombardment of videos, hope no one minds (I like videos :p)
Today we have a tutorial from Epicurean Cyclist that shows you how to wrap just about anything with twine. Very slick method. My only recommendation is to run your “loop” of twine underneath the bars so that when you finish and cut the ends, the little nubs of the cut twine are on the underside of the bar and don’t show. It should also be mentioned that twine, like cloth tape, takes well to shellac and provides weather resistance, makes the twine stay in place and adds some color to it.

Source: Epicurean Cyclist: How to twine stuff

Pretty gross actually but funny none-the-less.

Slightly conflicted though since I’m not a person to downplay the importance of walking over bicycling.

Haha, absolutely brilliant! People like myself often wonder “what can we do to really encourage people to accept bikes into their lives?”. Well here’s a smart ad that hopefully does just that.

Here is the translation:

Lady: Would you like some tea?
Man: Yes, that would be lovely, thanks.
Telltale noises from the other side of the wall.
Lady [muttering under her breath]: You should rather be biking, too, Rezso.

This comes way of one of my favorite blogs, Copenhagenize

Moutlon bicycles have always fascinated me. Why do we build bikes the way we do? Its interesting to see another take on the age old bicycle concept. The video was fairly informative about what a Moutlon bicycle is all about and lends an interesting insight into Alex himself and the design and production of the bikes. The video is older but still relevant

Jerseys aren’t really my thing but I do honestly want this one

Link: carsrcoffins.com