Tonight, December 5th from 6:30-9:30pm is Recycle a Bicycle’s Annual Benefit. Tickets start at just $25 and go to a great cause. Join us tonight at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe at 126 Crosby Street in SoHo, NYC MAP Click here to purchase advance tickets, to make a donation, or to become a member of RAB.

December 14th at 7pm, join us for our #bikenyc winter edition meetup at Bicycle Habitat. We’ll be making mulled wine and catching up with the lovely cycling community here in NYC. RSVPs are now open!

We’ll be meeting up at Red Lantern Bicycles (345 Myrtle Brooklyn NY, 11205), a new cafe & bike shop in Fort Greene started by the guys at Brooklyn Bike and Board. Google Places is sponsoring the happy hour and two $50 gift card giveaways. Details below. A big thanks to both of them!

Enter to win a $50 gift card to Red Lantern Bicycles!

Sunday 8/14 there are two rides to City Island in the Bronx.

Ride with the Bike Nerd and meet at Meet at Continental Army Plaza at 10am. More info on FB.

Or head over with Nona Varnado at 10:30am.

“Prizes for the most gnarly bike attire… wear your kit, old school gear & much more!”

BOURBON, BEER n’ BIKES
NYC Cyclist Appreciation Night & FREE OPEN BAR!
Thursday, January 27th

Cyclist Owned Bar/Restaurant
Billy Hurricane’s & Idle Hands Bar
25 Avenue B . Between 2nd & 3rd Streets
East Village, NYC

Open to all cyclists; Road, Mountain, Track, BMX, Commuters & more!

Doors at 6:30pm
Open Bar* from 7:30pm-8:30pm
No Cover!
*Open Bar Upstairs; Well-Drinks, Coors Light Drafts & Lil’ Hurricanes
*Open Bar Downstairs; Select Bourbons & Canned Beer

Deejays spinning the best in 80′s music both up and downstairs!!!

[via Streetsblog]

I should start with a disclaimer. I am in love with Barcelona. It was by far and away my favorite of the cities I visited and cycled in on my trip. I arrived with some dreamy stereotypes in my head (ahem Vicky Cristina Barcelona – yeah I said it) and what I came away with was even more lovely than one Woody Allen film could depict! Ok so now that is out of the way, cycling culture!

I started my trip by meeting up with Txell from Barcelona Cycle Chic and Steven, a friend of hers from Pedal Messengers. They took me to rent a bicycle from My Beautiful Parking, a very cool bike shop in Barri Gotic (C/ Cervantes 5) where I got a lovely Fuji single speed for the next three days (15-35 Euros per day).

My new cycling friends and I went out for a night tour of the city where we mostly drank and ate for the next few hours…just my type of ride! We got to discussing the growing bike culture in Barcelona. The city installed Bicing, a bike share system in 2007 which helped launch bike culture in the city. Now Barcelona accounts for 10% of all Brompton sales!

You can see bike lanes and increasing numbers of cyclists around the city. Not to mention, Barcelona is the perfect size for commuting and has year round cycling weather. Because the culture is so new and fairly small, cyclists seem to unite together. I was hanging out with a a cycle chic blogger and a messenger and it wasn’t really a big deal. This is something you don’t find in NYC very often. It’a shame that we have our own pockets of bike groups here – commuters, messengers, racers, etc and very rarely do they intersect. One of the goals of my rides has been to bridge this divide!

I spent the next few days on my bicycle getting lost, cycling from one mountain to another and eventually to the beach. Everything in Barcelona is easily accessible and within 20-30min on a bicycle. Along the way I noticed that cars generally pay a little more attention to cyclists in BCN than in NYC and that cyclists here pretty much ride where they want. Bike theft is a problem just like any other city but people generally get away with using cable locks. To give you an example Steven locked his Cinelli frame to my Fuji and leaned it against a tree and we had no problems.

Overall Thoughts:

Barcelona is at a very exciting crossroads when it comes to bike culture! The newish bike culture makes for friendly cyclists and they ability to cycle in the narrowest of the old city roads…one of the coolest ways to get lost and see the city! But because the culture is new, look out for motorists who aren’t used to sharing the road.

I’m always going to recommend you spend a day on a bike in any city, but you should REALLY spend a day on a bike in Barcelona. It’s a smaller city with the perfect weather and great for cycling.

For more photos from the trip check out BrooklynbyBike on Flickr.

First up, we rode 3 miles on relatively safe and moderately hilly Orrs Mills Road to Storm King Arts Center. Storm King is a 500 acre sculptural garden that has a strange bike policy. You are allowed to park your bike inside the center but cannot ride it around. However, at $10/hr you can rent beach cruisers and ride around the garden. Needless to say we skipped that park and hiked about for a few hours until our legs gave out and then jumped on the tram. The park is beautiful and highly recommended.

Afterward we biked 4 miles south to Palaia Vineyard. The route was pretty hilly this time, but not painfully so. There were a whole group of cyclists on a vineyard tour when we arrived which was fun to see. The server there was stuck in the 50′s with his jokes but they had free wine tastings and lots of good bottles for sale…2006 Merlot FTW! They also have live music every night. Too bad we missed Meatloaf’s band this particular night to get back for the last train.

After the vineyard we decided to bike to Harriman Station 7.5 miles away. I expected this leg to take about an hour but since it was mostly downhill, we made it in around 30min. This route was along a highspeed road, through the outlet mall intersection and down a 4 lane curving high speed road. It isn’t the safest route, but it is the fastest and most direct way. If you are looking for something safer, head back to Salisbury Mills rather than Harriman.

Price of Trip = $34.50 also know as a cheap and fast getaway from New York City!

$22.50 – 2 way train ticket

$8 (student)-12 (regular) admission to Storm King

free wine tasting

Map Route - Click for directions

Thanks to Dan for the photos!

“Summer Streets takes place on consecutive Saturdays August 7, 14 and 21 from 7:00 am – 1:00 pm. The 2010 route connects the Brooklyn Bridge with Central Park with recommended connections along low-traffic streets to the Hudson River Greenway, Harlem and Governors Island allowing participants to plan a route as long or short as they wish. This event takes a valuable public space – our City’s streets – and opens them up to people to play, walk, bike, and breathe. ” via NYC DOT

Don’t forget this year there will be dumpster pools on the streets! Three Dumpster pools will be located on the east side of Park Avenue between 40th and 41st Streets. The pools will be open 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. via NYT

I was immediately drawn to the visual aesthetic of Brush and Spoke much like Hufnagel Cycles and found quite a few items I’d like to purchase. Check it out for yourself and find the rest of my interview with Ed below.

Why cycling art?

My reasoning behind Brush & Spoke was pretty simple. I love art, bicycles and the internet. I own many genres of bicycles, and have been riding since I was a little kid. I was recently looking to decorate my office with some wall art, so I looked online and ran across a bicycle print by Anthony Cozzi titled Drop Sequence. I immediately purchased it, and continued searching online to see if there was a resource that feature that type of art elsewhere. Since I was unable to find one, I decided to build my own.

How do you find the art work you feature on your site and do you get a commission?

The process involved in finding the art that is featured on Brush & Spoke, is pretty hit or miss at the moment. I have a growing list of sites that I scour, looking for the latest bicycle related updates. From art blogs, to personal portfolios, to flickr groups, to twitter updates, I find myself looking anywhere and everywhere. There is also a submission form on the site, which I encourage my viewers to use as much as possible. It’s with their help that I have found out about some amazing art, and without them, I wouldn’t have had nearly as much content on the site, as I do now. There is currently no commission, or advertising system on the site.

Anything else to add?

If I could thank some of the sites/people that have made Brush & Spoke possible that would be great! UPSO @ http://upso.org ,Chris @ http://chrisforrette.com, Mikey K, and everyone @ http://yayhooray.com.

You can also find Brush and Spoke on Twitter @brushspoke.

[More photos are on Flickr. Were you on the ride? Add photos to our group pool! Our map of the ride is on Ride the City.]

That's MIT Mike on the right.

We learned a little something, got to watch the 20 lap races and meet some fantastic people on our way. Post ride we even had our second #bikenyc tweetup at Berry Park. As one of our riders put it, “cycling must really be marginalized if this is the big state event and you can’t even get a sandwich.” It’s true. We could all stand to support our local cycling community a bit more and I definitely recommend you check out the Kissena velodrome. They have some upcoming labor day events. It’s unlike anything you’ve seen.