Rock The Bike: BLOG
Gabe from Shake Your Peace reveals plans for his Soul cycle
This is gabe’s schematic drawing of the P/A he built for his touring rig. It includes a ported plywood box, a big 10″ woofer, a tweeter, a 200 watt car amp, and a rechargeable battery.
Gabe chose an amp that is bridgeable, meaning he can put the full power of the amp into one speaker. Also, take a look at the steps from the amp to the speaker. First there’s a crossover. That splits the bass from the treble so the tweeters don’t get damaged by bass freqencies. Then on the way to the tweeter there’s a LPAD. That’s a knob that allows gabe to turn the tweeter up or down to dial in the balance of woofy bass to crisp tweeter notes.
Here’s wishing Gabe luck on his tour to Utah this April!
Let’s Greenwash this city
Why, when suggesting that riding a bicycle is an important part of building a ‘greener’ city, does PG&E pick a recumbent bike with a big flag sticking out the back? Why not an everyman’s bike that readers will see and say to themselves, “Oh yeah, I could do that.”
Why is he all alone, trying to stay between the MUNI rails, with a car about to pass him on the right? Isn’t this the exact situation that my friends have in mind when they say “I don’t feel comfortable biking in the city”?
Why do they say “Green is this guy”? They might as well write “Green is that guy”. ‘This guy’ puts him at a distance from us, the mainstream reader.
What if, instead, PG&E chose a younger, sexier — no offense — model, maybe a woman, on a stylish city bike, in one of the bike lanes that SFBC has fought so hard for, with three other bikers flanking her in the background (as is often the case on Market St. in the morning hours)? Instead of saying “Green is this guy,” they could personalize it by saying “Green is Karen Jones”.
If you’ve seen “Who Killed the Electric Car?” you know that, just because a company advertises a product, doesn’t mean that they necessarily want people to buy the product. In the case of the electric car, there’s strong evidence that GM and Toyota wanted to kill their electric car programs and were only advertising them to fulfill the legal requirement in California.
In the case of PG&E’s Let’s Green This City campaign, they are advertising individual action such as bicycle riding, but obviously not doing it in the most persuasive way they could.
Should a chopper bicycle have a fake gas tank, fake tailpipe, or fake engine?
Hey bike people,
There’s an awesome discussion of an amazing chopper bicycle over at chopperbicycle.net.
Part of the discussion get into the issue of whether a beautiful chopper like this should have a fake engine that is purely cosmetic and offers no functional benefit to the rider.
So what do you think? Yes chopper bicycles do owe their lineage to chopper motorcycles. But on the other hand, a chopper bicycle is a beautiful thing, a bicycle thing. It’s a different experience to be on a chopper bicycle from a chopper motorcycle. Don’t direct motorcycle visual cues like fake engines and tailpipes stick out like an “I’d rather be riding a motorcycle” T-shirt?
I guess I’ve made my own views clear, but wait! What about gas tanks? Of course, they’re just like fake engines and tail pipes, right? Well, maybe, but c’mon, did you look at the swept back ‘tank’ on the ‘NostalgiaRider’s’ chopper above? Holy *&y$! It’s freaking beautiful!
Drop a comment below!
SomaFM.com helping me get through the night
Yo what’s up bike people, people of the bike!?
I just wanted to say that SomaFMis helping me get through the night. I highly suggest you check it out. They’ve got 12 different flavors of electronic music, all available in 128bit Mp3 streams. So if you’re stuck in front of a computer tonight, put that on and you’ll be happy.
I’ve been working all day on the new Rock The Bike web site. I’m so psyched. Drupal has come a long way in the last year since I’ve been learning it. Or maybe it’s that my knowledge and comfort level have improved also. But everything is clicking tonight, my bike brothers and sistas.
Rock the bike is going to feature a network of cool cruisers in dozens, no hundreds of towns and cities across the country and stretching out to Holland and Japan too. You can see a bit of that future in the current site. Check out the upcoming Southbay Cruisers community ride, for example. It’s been led by my man John Silva of Redondo Beach. Right in the heart of car culture USA, John is going to lead a cruiser ride with his new Soul Cycle. He says the reaction locally has been great so far and he’s got the support of a few different bike shops.
Well some new improvements we’re uploading soon, the whole process of organizing cruiser rides will be a lot easy and fun. You’ll be able to put together an email list using the ‘organic groups’ section of our site. And you feel like putting a ride together, just click a button and your people will get the message. The BAM 12 people show up at the cafe ready to cruise. How cool is that? It’s all about the impromptu. How can you really plan a cruiser ride if you don’t know you’ll have cruising weather? I’ve struggled with that a lot at the San Francisco Cruiser Ride.
Peace,
Fossil Fool
Introducing my fleet/my wish list
Ahhh, those days when you can just let your imagination go. Today, I’m in the mood to dream about some bike stuff. For those of you that know me, I don’t have one bike!! I have one FLEET of bikes. Too many to store in one place. So, I started out with my original Schwinn Predator BMX from my childhood, bought a Diamondback Beach Cruiser Islander 7 speed, a Schwinn Grey Ghost single speed coaster Stingray (for sale!!), a Grey Ghost 5 speed stingray, Specialized Sequoia elite model road touring bike, Marin Muirwoods citybike with Xtracycle Freeradical (the soon to be Soul Cycle), and a Kulana 7 speed green beach cruiser (stationed in Honolulu Hawaii). The fleet is 7 strong! Its a funny feeling when your friends come over to visit, just hang out and someone gets the idea of taking a cruise around town to get some dinner or drinks, they rush the garage, grab every bike off the wall or cieling hook, your ride down the street, look around and EVERY BIKE AROUND YOU IS YOURS!! I will post pics up soon!!
My wish list. Well 2007 is full of new projects endeavors and bike life.
Paul Cumpian Rocks The Bike
Paul is a Dunun playing Xtracycle rider from the Bay Area who has been a presence on Critical Mass rides for as long as I can remember. He’s also supported Worldbike’s work in Kenya by raising funds from his music community. He was recently captured by the San Francisco Chronicle doing what he does best — shaking it up, baby!
Squirrel Riding Companion
Riding Squirrel by Max Chen
Had a chance to go riding with San Francisco Bike Culture artist Max Chen last week. He created this magical riding squirrel to keep him company on his city jaunts. Check out Max’s other bike artwork .
See the video .
Thanks SF Veloswap!
Thumbs up from the next generation for Rock The Bike!Thanks Everyone for a great Veloswap and an auspicious Rock The Bike debut! Nate, Katie, Jojo, Erica, Mike, Thao, and I had great time meeting so many of you. Thanks for all the positive energy. Hopefully you got one of our holiday gift guides. If not, I’ll post it soon on this page. You can always call us at 888-354-BIKE for helpful answers to your questions.
Rock the Bike!
