Motorists line up in the bicycle lane to get cheap gas at the ARCO station with no care as to the inconvenience and potential harm they cause to cyclists who must go around them into the speeding traffic on Fell Street.

Now the city transportation department is improving the intersection with the same basic design as the cyclists had painted a year ago, with the addition of a green bike lane at the request of the SF bike coalition

and then there’s always waterworld…

All pumpkins and tan lines aside, here’s about half of CCA’s fall lecture schedule. Let’s go! Afterwards, we can walk through the rainy mission drinking whiskey from a vitamin water bottle – forgetting our pasty legs.

Textiles: Crossing the Line
Group Exhibition
September 30–October 9
Oliver Art Center, Oakland campus
Reception: Thurs., Oct. 2, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Hours: Mon.–Fri., 8:30 a.m.–noon and 1–4:30 p.m. (closed Wed. morning)
Info: 510.594.3747
One of the oldest aesthetic traditions in the world, textile art is currently on the cutting edge of contemporary art practice and critical inquiry. Rooted in material and process, the discipline is expanding to include intellectual discourses based on rich cultural meanings and the poetic nuances of the medium.
Faculty, staff, and students of the CCA Textiles Program use conceptual approaches, materiality, and craft processes to expand the traditional boundaries of the field.

Anne Wagner
Graduate Studies Lecture Series

Dear San Francisco,

You lured me in with your painted ladies, your suspended bridges and steep hills. You wowed me with the wiggle, pleased me with the Panhandle and made me giddy with Golden Gate Park. Your streets are teeming with cyclists; your festivals abounding with bikes. But the closer I looked, the more baffled I became: not only were your cyclists pushing single speeds with single brakes, but 1 in 3 bikes I saw was TOO big!

It’s easy to look cool with a bike- bikes are sexy, bikes are hot, bikes look good with anything outfit. And of all the bikes out there, it is the vintage steel frame that is the most pure and sexy. But there’s a problem…. Your bike is TOO big! And that, my two-wheeled vixens, is not hot.

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Is your seat perched right on top of the frame?

2. Do you have to tip your bike horizontally to touch the ground?

3. Do you stretch out like Superman to reach your handlebars?

4. Are you 5’4″ and riding a 56cm?

4. Do you find yourself walking your bike more than riding it?

If you answered yes to any of the above, I have news for you…

YOUR BIKE IS TOO BIG!

So trade it in. Put it on Craigslist with the other 61cm frames and find one that fits. If you’re riding a fixie, know that it should be smaller than your road bike. I am 5’11″ and my fixie is a 56cm- it’s compact, it’s agile, and best of all, I don’t hit my lady parts on the top-tube.

An easy way to measure: Take your height minus 5 and get your bike. I’m 5’11″ and I ride a 56. My partner is 5’9″ and rides a 54. It’s not an exact method, but it’s a rough rule of thumb.

Go get ‘em tigers–weave that compact frame through the tourists’ Blazing Saddles. And when you get to a light, relish in firmly planting your feet on the ground with plenty of clearance between the cold steel of your top tube and your family jewels.

For those of you complaining that there isn’t enough open space to ride or enough car-free turf to explore, I would like to introduce you to Sunday Streets–an organization that opens urban roads for play time.

This Sunday, August 31st, San Francisco joins the ranks of other great cities like New York and Portland by holding a Sunday Streets play session. The route follows the waterfront from Bayview to Chinatown, areas of the city that sorely lack open space.

So grab your bike, hula hoop, rollerblades, sneakers or any number of car-alternatives and enjoy the roads. There’s plenty of activities planned and best of all, it’s free. The city play session happens from 9:00am to 1:00pm.

That said I welcome advice on best and worst places to ride in the city.  I am living near 3^rd Street.  I have found that 3^rd is too busy and narrow to accommodate bikes well.  However, Illinois St. runs alongside it for many blocks and is far less congested.  I have not yet figured out whether bikes are allowed on the Third Street Rail (T-Line).  I know that regular Muni buses have a bike rack on the front.  However, I don’t think that’s the case with the rail lines.  The rail seems like it might be big enough to accommodate bikes at non-busy times.  However, I’m really hesitant to just try it out, because Muni drivers can be incredibly surly—probably for some good reasons—and I’m not usually in any mood to be yelled at in front of a large group.

Also, even though my wife and I found a nice place to live and our street seems pretty quiet, the overall Bayview/Hunter’s Point neighborhood has quite a bad reputation.  I haven’t had any problems yet, but I welcome tips about safe commuting in and around the neighborhood—aside from avoiding the most obvious: rough housing projects and intersections in which drug deals appear to take place or a lot of loitering happens. 

Outside of my immediate neighborhood, I am eager to find good places to ride in the city just for fun.  Any street that has a bike lane and isn’t too terribly steep is a welcome route to explore as far as I’m concerned!

I did, however watch the olympics and thoroughly enjoyed the BMX coverage. Having some insight of my own on the sport made me realize that the coverage of all olympic sports is probably riddled with errors. I think I heard someone say that E.T. invented BMX.

Not true. The answer to the standing question as to whether clipless pedals make BMX racing uncool (posed here) is: yes. Well, yes clipless pedals do differentiate the current crop of BMX racers from both their racing ancestors and modern day freestyle counterparts. But it isn’t limited to that. What makes the attire of freestyle BMX appealing is that you could conceivable hop off your bike and walk into a bar or restaurant relatively unnoticed, whereas if you were a racer you would look like a pointy toed astronaut with your full race leathers, goggles and fullface helmet.

I think BMX racing has found a nice home at the Olympics. The athletes train incredibly hard and generate excitement from the spectators that synchronized diving or curling just can’t muster. BMX racing is the root of all things BMX, and also a doorstep to the wider world of cycling. Two of the women’s podium finishers are world champions mountain bikers by day, and many BMX world Champions have gone on to dominate mountain biking and even velodrome racing.

If you are interested in the history of BMX I can highly recommend the documentary JOE KID ON A STINGRAY, which premiered at the Bicycle Film Festival a few years back. And if a documentary about little kid’s bikes sounds dry than try to find a copy of RAD,the BMX feature film that debuted in 1982 and should come with the purchase of any new bicycle of any kind. It’s so cheesy you could put it on your macaroni.

And if you interested in the future of BMX stay glued to your TV, (great thevillagebicycle advice, right?) cause we are only four years away from the next really big race. (Actually if anyone is interested in BMX racing I encourage them to look up their local BMX track here).

________________________________________

From the East Bay Express:

Oakland Bike Rally for the Athletics

Image by Harry Campbell, NYT

I love that biking has become cool. This month’s Paper Magazine features a spread of some of Brooklyn’shottest hipster cyclists. And to be one of those lanky, scraggly two-wheeled riders, you have to have the token hipster bike…the fixie. Only problem is that many of the citie’s “fixies” are actually single speeds disguised in fixie clothing.

There’s no shame in riding a single-speed. Your legs have to be extra tough to summit SF’s hills without the power of the ever-revolving cranks of a fixie and the bikes are still pure and beautiful looking. But there is danger. Serious danger.

So many of the single speeds dresssed as fixies have only ONE BRAKE. The single brake is helpful on the fixed gear, but DEADLY on the single-speed. Hipsters, don’t allow your ego to put you at risk of sailing over the handlebars.

Either flip that hub around and ride it like a fixed gear, using the front brake as a rescue or aid in the steep grade, or apply another brake. In a city where cyclists are killed annually, don’t put yourself at excess risk.

Don’t worry, you’ll still look just as hot with two brakes. Better yet, the messengers won’t make fun of you for posing with a single brake and limp cranks when you wheel it into Zeitgeist.