The bike racing world has a tradition of attention-getting designs, but some spectators at this year's Tours of California or France might have done double-takes at some of the art on Lance Armstrong's rides. As it turns out, Trek and Nike have commissioned custom designs promoting Livestrong, and as I write this Lance is cycling into Paris on a bike covered with butterfly wings, courtesy of Damien Hirst. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on Jul 26, 2009 - 50 comments

BauBike
posted by ardgedee on Jun 12, 2009 - 63 comments

A new generation of bike rental is here, where you pick up the bike where you start your ride and drop it off at the destination. Vélib' and Vélo'V are the high-profile, wildly successful products of the JCDecaux ad firm in the cities of Paris and Grand Lyon. Velib' provides 10,000 bikes for cheap hourly rental beginning this past summer. In exchange for fully underwriting the €90 million of expenses, JCDecaux wins exclusive rights to all the city's billboards. JCDecaux' rival Clear Channel beat them out of the gate by a couple months, opening Bicing in Barcelona to similar success, although at a smaller scale. [more inside]
posted by ardgedee on Oct 8, 2007 - 17 comments