My good friend Amy from mom go green included a great link in her comment to my working bike post. The blog she linked to is Copenhagen Bicycle Chic, and it’s a site I visit regularly for biking inspiration. Here is a city that knows how to bike. Certainly not the only city – there are plenty of places in the world where the bicycle is actually viewed as a very reasonable form of everyday transportation. But shoot – these folks have some style! You have to check it out. There’s more bike greatness to be found at The Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog.
Here in Marin, where I live, there seems to be some unwritten rule that you cannot possibly hop on your bicycle without a minimum 95% lycra content to your clothing, not to mention loud endorsements printed all over said clothing. So I get great pleasure from photos of people around the world, riding their bikes with umbrellas, high heels, building supplies, pets – you name it. Why not put some style in your ride?
Some of my other favorite bike fashion/attitude sites are:
The Sartorialist’s bicycle section. I’m no fashion plate, but I love seeing people who have a great sense of style. This hugely popular blog posts photos of people with terrific style, and it’s fun and inspiring even for someone like myself who is not really connected to the fashion world at all.
The Velocouture pool over at Flickr is good fun too. Just folks on bikes – but again, with less spandex and more style!
There’s a family in Seattle that keeps a great blog called Car Free Days, and I love their family biking attitude. Now that I (finally!) have an order in for my own xtracycle, I get lots of inspiration from this family – you should check out how nicely they tricked out the Mum’s bike. It’s beautiful!!
And finally, here’s a photo that should really inspire us to think about our car/bicycle ratio. It’s from, surprise surprise, Amsterdam – courtesy of a great bicycle parking post on the David Baker + Partners Architects website. Check out this parking garage:
NOW we’re talkin.