An occasional update on items from the Velo-city.
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LOVE AND LOSS
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“Bike ♥”, an affecting short film by Rick Darge, follows a woman through the city with the object of her affection: her bike. Using music by Françoise Hardy and Daniel Johnston, Darge and actress Dee Dee K capture the spirit of the close relationships that cyclists develop with their bicycles.
Looks and sounds French. Shot in Santa Monica, I’m guessing.
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ROOMS OF THEIR OWN: Bike Storage in NYC
Bike rooms arrived in the biggest way with an announcement in April by Malkin Holdings that the landlord would open a bike room at the base of the Empire State Building. The announcement came during New York’s debate over bike lanes and less than two years after Anthony E. Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, started a $550 million renovation of the Empire State Building to make it environmentally friendly.
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ECONOMICS OF CYCLING
Ah, data. Expect more of it related to cycling and the economy as it fully registers that 2008 marked a turning point in our civilization, rather like 1929. Here’s an Australian study that looked at what cyclists spend.
Lee’s findings are remarkably similar to a study from the Dutch city of Utrecht which found that whilst bicycle-based consumers spend less per transaction, they make more visits and spend the most collectively. This isn’t the only connection – a German study found similar results, calling cyclists ‘better customers’ due to them making eleven trips per month compared to seven for motorists. And the Swiss are in on it too, where research into parking space profitability found that each square metre of bicycle parking generated €7500 compared to €6625 for cars. This seems to confirm basic logic – devoid of any significant storage space, cyclists are likely to spend less and shop more.
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