laser bike | keith haring | click > enlarge
65 years ago famed Italian cyclist, Cino Cinelli, retired from professional cycling and founded his eponymous bicycle manufacturing company. Credited with setting the standards for frame and component design, “Cinelli has led the evolution of professional cycling and defined the ideal of the classic bicycle: from the classic Supercorsa racing frame to the cutting-edge MASH fixed-gear pursuit bikes ubiquitous on the urban riding scene.”
Cinelli has remained at the forefront of parts manufacturing with boundary-pushing products like the first plastic racing saddle and the controversial Spinaci handlebar, which was banned from professional competition. The company has also sought input from well known cyclists, designers and artists such as Keith Haring, who contributed the record-breaking Laser bike.
The company, now located in San Francisco, has just released a tribute to Cinelli’s legacy. Published by Rizzoli, Cinelli: The Art and Design of the Bicycle, includes a conversation between fashion designer Sir Paul Smith and Cinelli president Antonio Colombo as well as over 200 pages of two-wheeled eye candy.
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It’s been difficult for tokyobike fans not living in Japan to get ahold of one of the company’s well respected city bikes, but on May 17th their London shop will officially open. To celebrate Dezeen is giving away a single-speed tokyobike worth $840. To enter, just show up to the opening party in Shoreditch this Thursday night. The winner will get to ride home on the bike that evening, and five runners up with get Gropes leather handlebar grips worth $40 apiece.
If you’re unfamiliar with tokyobike, it’s a small, independent bicycle manufacturer founded in 2002 in Yanaka, a suburb of Tokyo. The name references the bike’s purpose. “In the same way the mountain bike was designed for the mountains, so tokyobike was designed for Tokyo.”
So what makes a bike suited to zipping around the streets of a congested city like Tokyo? “Smaller 650mm wheels and slim, compact, steel frames make the bikes easy to handle and light to ride. More about slow than fast, tokyobike is as much about discovering your city and enjoying the ride as it is about the destination.” It might not be best choice for a bike messenger, but it will do quite nicely for the rest of us.
Before setting up shop in London, tokyobikes hit the streets of Milan for Salone del Mobile – watch a cute video of design week goers biking to events.
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Anyone who uses their bike to commute to work or for more than just a leisurely Springtime spin knows that peddling away, even in the Winter, often means arriving to the office with a sweaty back and pits (and, let’s be honest here, sometimes a sweaty butt, too). It’s not the greatest way to start the day. But for many bikers, myself included, our road warriors are badges of honor, and replacing them with an electric or electric-enabled bike would be the ultimate ride of shame. Now, however, it looks like we can have our cake and eat it, too with DK City’s dbRevO, a wheel that automatically converts an ordinary bike to electric simply by replacing the front tire.
The wheel houses a motor, battery and controller that operates with a wireless console, allowing the rider to communicate with their bike and record information about their ride. It can go for 25 miles when fully charged, enough to take you from the southernmost tip of Manhattan to the top of Central Park and back again – and then back one more time. It comes in two sizes and a variety of colors with more options coming soon.
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