People’s Design Award and some stuff you should buy

A recent post at Streetsblog mentioned that quite a few bike related products were nominated this year in the People’s Design Awards, an online competition sponsored by the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Over 276 products were nominated and, as Streetsblog points out, “five were folding bicycles, and four others were related to cycling.”

In particular, I want to mention the Strida 5.0, which was the 8th most popular product based on online votes. The People’s Design Award website just lists the designer as “STRiDA”, but most readers of this blog are probably familiar with the name Mark Sanders. Mark is not only the designer of the Strida but he is responsible for many other very interesting bikes and consumer products. You may also remember that Mark happens to be one of the judges in the commuter bike competition that is currently running on my blog. Anyway, congratulations to Mark on this distinction and also to the other designers whose bike related products were nominated by visitors to the website.

Changing subjects a bit, Fat Cyclist is one of the bike blogs that I read on a regular basis. This morning, I noticed that Elden (aka Fatty) had posted something somewhat design related. Good post, but that is not the real reason why I want to link to his site today. Those of you who read his blog regularly know that his wife Susan is battling cancer and that her condition has deteriorated lately. After reading a recent post (one that I found to be very sad but also inspirational), I decided that I should help in a small way by placing a link to the Fat Cyclist store in my sidebar. If you haven’t noticed the link, it will take you to this page on the Twin Six site where you can buy Fat Cyclist jerseys and other merchandise. Even though the new designs just came out last week, many of the jersey sizes are already sold out. Still, some jersey sizes are available, so take a look. There are also other items like t-shirts, socks, shorts, bottles etc. that you can still pick up to support the cause. You will notice on the Fat Cyclist gear page that 100% percent of the proceeds from certain items go directly to the family to help with medical expenses. On top of that, as Fatty himself pointed out, last week Twin Six donated half the purchase price of ANY Men’s XL-and-larger and Women’s L-and-larger jersey directly to Elden and Susan. Pretty amazing.

On top of the fact that they are obviously very generous, the guys at Twin Six design some really nice looking jerseys. I encourage you all to support them as they are supporting a member of the bike blogging community. Personally, I am as impressed with their graphic design skills as I am with their generosity, so I can assure you that I will be placing my own order very soon.

Posted

November 10, 2008

Commuter

James

Tags:

design competition, Fat Cyclist, Mark Sanders, Strida, Twin Six

Comments

8 responses to “People’s Design Award and some stuff you should buy”

Ron

November 11, 2008

Congrats to Mark on his achievements. He’s got some fantastic looking objects on his website. I’ll have to take a closer look at them. For today, that industrial valve concept has impressed me.

About Elden – its amazing how he can keep his wits about him through the trying times. Understood he may need to keep up with his blogging, but as a husband, she needs his fully dedicated support at this point, which he may very well be providing. Hey, just a thought.

On a whackier note, whats with all the Camelbak related poststhis week? I assure you this is complete coincidence.

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B. Nicholson

November 11, 2008

Most cancer should be curable with low-dose epigenetic drug therapy and a human pheromone. Take a healthy adult male, make sure he’s drug free, has clean blood (no HIV, no Hep B or C) and intact facial skin. Wash your hands and get a dinner plate. Take 1 pack of wrigley’s spearment gum and unwrap all five pieces and put them down on the clean dinner plate. Now take them one at a time and rub the piece of gum all over your donor healthy adult male’s face. Repeat for all 5 pieces of gum in the package. Rewrap each piece. Wait 12-24 hours and repeat. After 3rd human pheromone collection, you probably have enough to improve most cancer outcomes. It’s face grease, it’s normally passed in kissing, and it’s incredibly good for you. You know how your immune system improves when you visit home? This face grease (getting your family’s) is the reason why. The goo has sebaleic acid, found nowhere else but on human mugs, and more than seven hundred other chemicals that also have the weird and wild stereochemistry of butterfly pheromones. The many components work synergistically and species-specifically. It’s face grease, so what could it hurt?

Well a lot. Your cancer victim may avoid the pheromone donor for the rest of her natural life. Your cancer victim’s hubby WILL get jealous and suspicious. It turns out that intuition is a chemosense. So, after your cancer victim takes the chewing gum (if gum isn’t handy just use any food, unleaven bread is good, I hear), take a sip of wine and swig it around. The ethanol cuts the pheromone and should reduce the jealousy side effect.

The epigenetic drug therapy undoes what pheromones have done. The kissing pheromone (your father’s blessing) is amazingly curative. It puts autoimmune diseases into ‘spontaneous’ remission, it cures criminal/delinquent/drug-seeking behavior, and it alters homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation. Even I didn’t see that last one coming.

Hey, it’s not bicycles, but neither is cancer, eh? Cost? 3 packs of gum. Although I went 4 years to medical school, I’m not a physician and do not charge for this advice.

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nbibbins

November 12, 2008

Although I have friends who love their STRiDA’s, I personally think one major design flaw devalues most of the other benefits: The taller the rider, the closer they get to the handlebars. So riders with long legs and torsos cannot possibly establish a comfortable riding position.

This is inverse to almost all other bicycle designs, and even a six-footer such as myself has to ride like a hunchback once the seat has been adjusted to anywhere near where it should be.

It’s cool, but only for people who have the proportions to maximize the design.

Neil

Reply
Ron

November 12, 2008

Interesting Neil. James here seems to be a on the tall side but he didn’t apparently have any trouble when he reviewed one last year.

Reply
rose

November 13, 2008

I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed

reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Sarah

http://www.thetreadmillguide.com

Reply
James

November 13, 2008

Neil, Ron is correct that I am also fairly tall (6′ 2”) and that I reviewed a Strida last year. I did feel like I was a bit big for the bike, but that was before the larger XT models with 18 inch wheels were available. The position was very upright compared to the bikes that I usually ride(see the picture here), but I didn’t consider that to be a problem considering the intended use of the bike.

It is worth noting that mark Sanders, the designer of the bike, is also tall. You can see his bike and read his thoughts about setting up a Strida for taller riders here.

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Human_Amplifier

November 15, 2008

Hi Neil, Rather than words pictures show how Strida aims to fit people of all sizes:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/MAS.DPL/StridaPix#5268825746884796322
and others:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/MAS.DPL/StridaPix#

Conventional: No, Comfortable: Yes, more like urban Dutch bikes rather than sports bikes.

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Anonymous

December 24, 2008

Australia’s Choice magazine – the local equivalent of Consumer Reports – tested a Strida recently and rated it the worst among a range of folders and other practical bikes.

I remember riding an early version when I worked retail in the 80s and it was an appalling piece of unsteerable, flexible garbage back then too.

Design wankers get all moist about the Strida because it looks cool. Pity it’s junk.

Reply