Urban Velo

On my last trip to Brooklyn I visited Red Lantern Bicycles, a combination bike shop, coffee shop and bar located in the Fort Green neighborhood. A large, inviting space with the bar service area located up front and the bikes in the back, Red Lantern is striving to be both your repair shop of choice and [...]

Oh man, I so WANTED this to be real. Crappy park jobs are everywhere, but they seem to be especially offensive in Russia, which led The Village , a Russian blog, to create this fictional app that allows you to take a photo of the offending car’s license plate, and attach it to internet ads that pop up [...]

State Bicycle Co is a web based, mail order fixed gear bicycle company offering bikes in the competitive $430-$650 “serious entry level” category. Their bikes are most likely going to people putting real money down on a bike for the first time after deciding that bikes are for them and they want something reflecting the [...]

Mission Workshop recently unveiled their Arkiv Field Pack. Bags start at $209 and accessories begin at $30.
Visit http://www.missionworkshop.com for more info.

Your Classic Bicycle is a London-based company that will rent you a classic bike to cruise the streets of London for a day. For 20 pounds they will drop off and pick up a bike of your choosing at any overground station throughout the city. The price includes a lock and helmet after the 100 pound [...]

Tokyo Bike opened a shop in east London and to build the hype had six artists give custom paint jobs to their rides for the opening. Nobody went too nuts and the bikes have a nice restrained aesthetic that seems to fit the boutique shop’s approach. You can see photos of the shop and opening night here. [...]

All-City makes some really nice single speed hubsets, and has now introduced Deputy hubs with 48h drilling for polo use. High flanges have been all the rage for some time, but there is reason to believe low flange hubs like these are stronger and more impact resistant and spokes are plenty strong enough these days to [...]

Keen is launching the Harvest III series this summer, adding to the Harvest series of upcycled bags with a line made from excess, damaged, or obsolete pre-consumer car airbags. The pictured backpack will be available for $120, with a messenger bag, tote bag and wallets also available made from the same repurposed airbag material. Available [...]

The fundraising trio, A Family Affair , are continuously raising money for the MacMillan Cancer Support group. Starting June 15th they will be cycling from John O’Groats to Lands End, which is somewhere in the UK and we’ll trust is a very far ride. In addition to this ride, they have asked extended family and friends to create bike-themed posters [...]

The North American Cycle Courier Championships are this weekend in Richmond VA, with people from across the continent fighting it out before the World’s touches down on our shores in August. May 24 – 28, more info at http://www.naccc2012.com

The League of American Bicyclists has released their 2012 Bicycle Friendly State rankings , with Washington taking the top spot for the fifth year in a row. States are judged on a number of categories including legislation and enforcement, policies and programs, infrastructure and funding, education and encouragement, and evaluation and planning. The top five: Washington, Minnesota, Massachusetts, [...]

You too cool for slow-paced group rides, but still, there’s that eentsy weentsy part of you that wonders what it’s like? Well, my friend, retain your uber-urban street cred while getting a feel of riding en masse, slowly, via this time lapse video of the 5 boro bike tour that went down in New York earlier [...]

BTB is a new brand of sunglasses which was started in part to fund the BTB Foundation , a 501C non-profit whose mission is to fight childhood obesity. A percentage of all web sales goes directly to the foundation. In addition to the deserving charitable aspect, what attracted me to BTB was the price of their sunglasses. The 110 [...]

The group Transportation Nation in New York has begun a mapping project where they’ve asked participants to send photos and locations of abandoned bikes around the city. To be qualified as an abandoned bike, they must meet a certain criteria, but once met they are to be removed by the city. Transportation Nation is submitting the images and locations [...]

A short video featuring State Bicycles riding Phoenix.

Antonio Bigarini shot the cover and L’Eroica feature story in Urban Velo #29, and recently sent me a link to his photo gallery site. He has a large gallery of images L’Eroica, black and white work from Rio, the 2012 Paris-Roubaix and more. Great stuff, I love Antonio’s style.

For touring cyclists, or people who just want to be prepared for anything, anytime, a portable cassette removal tool has always been an issue. Break a driveside spoke and you may need to remove the cassette just to extricate the broken spoke, let alone replace it. Carrying a chainwhip and cassette tool is a bit [...]

Ok, that title is, admittedly, a little Americanized. Still, I remember my experience with training wheels as if it was yesterday, probably because I’m so emotionally scarred from the experience. Thanks a lot Dad! I remember impatiently waiting for my dad to install the trainers so I could jump on my bike and speed towards freedom, [...]

Budnitz Bicycles are made in the USA, and come from an urban riding upbringing. Their latest high end offering in the pictured No. 4, a gloss black finished steel frame featuring large volume 24″ wheels, disc brakes and a belt drive with either a single speed or 11-speed internal drivetrain. The split top tube and swooping [...]

Here’s a short video that tells the story behind the Giro ad in Urban Velo #31. It’s a profile of artist Chris McNally, who has done work for Puma, Levi’s, Ibis Cycles and more.