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Bespoke is the online magazine of Fourth Floor Distribution – North America’s premium Distributor of top European city bikes and accessories. This our forum to revere all things city bikes, from photo essays to actual essays.
City bike culture is exploding across North America. More and more people are realizing that the reason why they live in dense urban cores is the experience of proximity. Chances are that most urbanites live 90% of their lives within 10km of home. Within this ‘lifestyle radius‘ is the social circle, amenities, entertainment, shopping, culture, and profession of the modern urbanite. This is as true of Amsterdam as it is of New York, Chicago or even to some extent, LA.
The bicycle is clearly the most efficient, cost-effective and liberating mode of transport within one’s lifestyle radius. Multi-tasked with other transportation options like auto-sharing and transit, one can circumnavigate ones lifestyle radius without the stress, cost, and negative health effects of the automobile. Plus, cycling is downright fashionable. You can’t show off your legs in an automobile.
A bicycle lifestyle magazine is hardly a new idea. The popular blogs Copenhagenize and Amsterdamize have readerships composed largely of North Americans. These blogs report on developmental and infastructure issues in European cities while also showing beautiful pictures of men and women dressed-to-kill on sensible and stylish bicycles. Cold and snowy cities like Copenhagen, which has only recently adaptated a city bike culture, are inspirational to any North American who admires not only a good bike lane, but a dapper man or high heeled woman on a gorgeous bike. It’s hard not to be enticed by such a sight. Unlike automobiles, cyclists are not autonomously sealed off from the urban landscape but are activally engaged within it. The city becomes an interactive agora of face-to-face relations – of civility itself.
The difference is philosophical. New York has accepted the Dutch and Danish model by understanding that streets are the property of neighbourhoods, and neighbourhoods are made up of a wide array of traffic: walkers, cyclists, rollerbladers, motorists and etc.. By expanding this definition of traffic streets become the property of all civilians and not just motorists. With this concept in mind, city roads are no longer diminunative freeways. Instead space must be made for all. Cities like New York, Chicago, Montreal and even LA have seen massive infastructure overhauls with more and more bike lanes surfacing. But this is happening equally in Europe with previously motor-mad cities like Brussels, Paris, and London also taking up the bike. Brussels can learn from Portland just as NYC can learn from Amsterdam.
But its not all just about bike lanes. As cities like Paris prove, real bike cultures begin with proper bikes. Bike design, like car design, is directly correlated to the environment in which they operate. By operating with the ideals of suburbanization it is probably no surprise that Detroit never produced a compact car just as the North American bicycle industry never produced a real city bike. In any case, a true city bike is barrier free. It requires no special uniform, can be mistreated and stored outside year round, and it is comfortable, safe and very low maintenance. A city bike is neither fast nor slow, but is efficient – tuned to the pace of a city. A city bike is urbane, sophisticated and chic, like the rider itself.
At Fourth Floor we’ve been watching blogs like Copenhagenize and Amsterdamize for a long time. These blogs do well to fuel the imaginative ideals of any North American who wants to see real change. But the real change is already happening – here, now. At Fourth Floor we not only scour Europe for the best city bikes, we also distribute these bikes to a growing number of bicycle and design stores who embrace European city bikes as a metonomy for a more civilized urban landscape. We don’t just distribute objects, we distribute concepts.
In North America, riding a bike is a political gesture, but this hardly need be unfashionable. Urbanites pride themselves on their substance and style – and their bikes should be a mere extension of this. If there is a revolution to be won, it shall be done in tailored suits, couture gowns, and high heels. But this is hardly revolutionary. As any practical Netherlander will tell you, its just sensible. And stylish. Very stylish!
