Thursday, August 21, 2008

luaka bop bicycle racks

CityRacks is a design competition in NYC to develop a new standard bicycle rack that will replace the old standby loop rack that is currently used throughout the metropolis. David Byrne was involved in the competition as a judge (who knew he was a big cycling enthusiast?), and he also got in on the design work, creating temporary, bicycle rack art pieces:

I think that some of these could be much more fun as clustered objects, such as a group of the people bicycle racks standing around or the same with the cars. And shouldn't there be at least a pair of shoes? One of my main complaints with bicycle racks is the lack of quantity. In San Francisco I felt like I was always hunting for the one bicycle rack on the block, and this would be in areas like the Lower Haight where you have a ton of bars, bicycles, and, of course "The Wiggle". My other pet peeve with bicycle racks, especially with commercial box developments, is that they put them in stupid, out of the way places. Or if they don't do that, then they only leave about foot of space between the rack and the wall of the building. Clearly the people designing these things don't ever park bicycles themselves.

Anyhow, back to CityRacks. I'm not blown away by the finalists, but then again that's the case with most racks I ever see in site furnishing catalogs. My favorite was this one:
They did a good job with the NYC branding, and they thought about locking folding bikes and even unicycles for god's sake. What's your favorite? And do you have any favorite bicycle rack designs you've seen or perhaps you have a gripe about bicycle parking? Please share.