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Noticed: Just Don't Let a Panda Borrow Your Bicycle
2010-08-12 04:50:28.75 GMT
By MALIA WOLLAN
(New York Times) -- BAMBOO is one of the world's
fastest-growing plants, adding as much as three feet in a single
day. That growth rate, along with the giant grass's sturdy hollow
stalks (with a strength-to-weight ratio similar to that of steel)
may explain why bamboo is being heralded by bikers,
environmentalists and social entrepreneurs as a material with no
carbon footprint and the potential to provide cheap wheels in
poor countries. Serious spandex-clad cyclists like bamboo
bicycles, as do tattooed bike messengers and thrifty Ghanaian
shopkeepers.
"There is something going on with bamboo bicycles," said Jay
Townley, a partner in the market research firm Gluskin Townley
Group. "They're catching on with urban and commuting cyclists."
Though bicycles with bamboo frames account for only a
fraction of the bicycle market, the number of bamboo bicycle
start-ups is expanding. They include Boo Bicycles, with bamboo
bikes available in shops like Signature Cycles in Manhattan and
the Pony Shop in Chicago; Renovo Design out of Portland, Ore.;
Panda Bicycles, in Fort Collins, Colo.; Organic Bikes in
Wisconsin; and Calfee Design, of Santa Cruz, Calif., a pioneer in
bamboo frames whose cycles sell in shops like Eco, a London store
owned partly by the actor Colin Firth.
Bamboo's distinctive texture quickly cues onlookers to a
bicycle's eco-credibility (and by association, that of its
rider). Unlike carbon fiber, Mr. Townley said, bamboo can be
composted.
Bamboo is also relatively easy to forage, making the bikes a
hit with the do-it-yourself cycling set. One of several
step-by-step, how-to-build-a-bamboo-bike guides on the
Instructables Web site has more than 144,000 page views.
"This is a sustainable material for sustainable transport,"
said Marty Odlin, 28, a founder of the Bamboo Bike Studio in Red
Hook, Brooklyn.
When the studio began offering workshops on building a
bamboo bike last year, Mr. Odlin would take participants on
missions to cut it from patches on the property of landowners who
eagerly granted permission to anyone willing to assist in taming
the plant. "It grows like a weed," Mr. Odlin said. Because of
high demand, the studio now orders bulk shipments of bamboo from
Mexico.
Mr. Odlin said he gets thousands of e-mails a week from
people all over the world who want to build their own bamboo
bikes. Spots for the first workshop in San Francisco, scheduled
for October, sold out a day after the class was announced.
Overwhelmed by the interest, the studio put together a mail-order
do-it-yourself bamboo bike kit.
Mr. Odlin, who is also assistant director of the Bamboo Bike
Project at Columbia University, will go to Ghana to help set up a
bamboo-bike factory, which could make as many as 20,000 bikes a
year, selling to Ghanaians for about $60 each.
In the developed world, well-heeled cyclists are willing to
pay a premium for a one-of-a-kind bike. Nick Frey, owner of Boo
Bicycles, builds and sells high-performance bamboo-frame bicycles
(like the one pictured at far left, $7,645), ranging from $3,000
for just the frame to $10,000 for a tricked-out racer. Mr. Frey
recently sold a bamboo frame to a Spanish gallery to be displayed
as art.
While an undergraduate mechanical engineering student at
Princeton University, Mr. Frey, 23, studied bamboo and designed
several bamboo racing bicycles. Everywhere he rode, people
coveted them, said Mr. Frey, who started his company last
September. "A lot of people think of bamboo as furniture or cheap
fencing," he said. "But bamboo is one of the strongest natural
materials known to man. Plus, the bikes look really cool."
Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company
-0- Aug/12/2010 04:50 GMT
