Ride or die don’t. via Transportation Alternatives
Brooklyn, despite some dangers, is a great cycling city. Part of the reason for that is because there’s so much great stuff to see. Unfortunately, you’re usually too busy dodging cars to really appreciate the scenery. Which is why the Tour de Brooklyn, a large group ride through a section of the borough, is so nice. This year it falls on June 2, and registration just opened for it. So go on, git, and register so you can ride with your thousand closest friends. (more…)
Zaarly is your online marketplace for local food, services and handmade goods.
Drinkers of Mombucha, the kombucha-style tea brewed in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, will have more to feel good about than their healthy beverage choices this month and next. Through May 31, all Mombucha “storefront” sales on Zaarly.com will go directly to fundraising efforts for the AIDS Lifecycle Ride to End AIDS. Mombucha creator and master brewer Rich Awn will join friend and Lifecycle team leader Tim Lee for the 545-mile ride, which will go from San Francisco to Los Angeles this summer.
Awn said the fundraising effort was influenced by a Facebook post by Lee and, indirectly, an uncle’s active role in the LGBTQ community. “My whole family is ultra liberal,” he said. “I want to give back to the gay and lesbian community, be active in that community.”
For Awn, starting his Mombucha business wasn’t quite such an arduous feat. In 2005 at age 20, he began brewing a recipe appropriated from his mother.
“I’ve always been a tinkerer, a doer,” Awn said. “Then I started using different infusions and teas.” To prepare for the race, in addition to a training regimen of 20 or more miles of bike riding a day, Awn created a special passion-fruit-infused Mombucha tea titled “Team Wino,” the name of his and Lee’s riding team. “You can drink it while you’re riding and it’s an awesome boost,” he said. Awn hopes to arrive at the race with a contribution of $10,000—an amount that depends on Mombucha sales, and a contribution from Zaarly, which will match up to $5,000.
Rich Awn, founder of Mombucha
“Before, I was donating half of the proceeds because I couldn’t figure out how to sustain business,” said Awn, who started offering the deal at a Zaarly Bazaar event in Brooklyn earlier this month. “Now I can be one of their top fundraisers. It’s been satisfying creatively and physically.” To try Mombucha while supporting the fight against AIDS, visit the brand’s Zaarly storefront. Or, meet Rich Awn and other Zaarly storefront owners at the local Zaarly Bazaar on Sunday, April 28 at The Space, 50 N.3rd St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, from 3 p.m. – 6 p.m.
For all of you brokesters avoiding the Lower East Side because it’s too expensive, Transportation Alternatives is sponsoring the first Bike-Friendly Business Bike Tour this Saturday. TA tour guides will take you to some of the 150 businesses that make up the city’s first “Bike Friendly Business District.” Those are businesses that support safe riding and better bike infrastructure in the city by offering discounts and freebies to bike riders.
Surprised that the city’s first official bike-friendly business neighborhood is in Manhattan? So are we, especially since this writer sees the area as second only to Sixth Avenue in near-death experiences on his commute to Midtown. But TA does great work all over the city (remember free bike valet parking at Googa Mooga?) and you can still get other bike discounts in BK through BikeNYC. It’s also a chance to get great discounts at restaurants, salons, and art institutions and support business bike love. Did we mention there’s free food on the tour? (more…)
You can see these demo stations around the city, but still no bike stations.
The Citi Bike bike share program has been building up its buzz campaign for months now, as you may have noticed them outside events such as the Brooklyn Flea just about every weekend. So we asked one of the reps at the Flea on Saturday: what gives with the ambiguous July launch date? He told us the launch isn’t going to happen until at least August now. The manufacturer of the program’s custom-made bikes has fallen behind schedule and the city only has about half of the bikes it needs to launch the first phase of the program in the initial 600 stations. Streets Blog today points us to Twitter messages confirming the program is still weeks away from launching. So we wait and wait, because even that Citi Bank sponsorship money wasn’t enough to get them in on time. (more…)
While we’re all waiting for the city’s bike share program to launch (still no official date, btw), here’s another alternative. Spinlister is a company that basically takes the Airbnb model and applies it to bikes: you search on the site for a bike near you and see what people are willing to let you use it for. And if you’ve got an extra set of wheels you don’t use that much, you can put it on Spinlister to make some cash off it, instead of letting it rot tied to your front gate. (more…)
Either this is the start of some awesome Batman-esque samaritan vigilantism, or an absurdly elaborate scheme to take your wallet along with your bike. Our friend Alan Belsky spotted this on Court Street yesterday, and he says the signs are posted everywhere between Schermerhorn and Atlantic. (more…)
Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but your bike is broken, so tweet @ me maybe?
The Occupy Wall Street movement has brought to the forefront the idea of community-based self-governing and a rejection of the status quo. But aside from a few Manhattan-based (blech) campsites and “government” meetings oscilliating between turbulent and tepid, not much seems to have changed for the Brokester. So when something special like the OWSBIKECOALITION comes about, we get excited. The OWSBC spreads cycle love by holding weekly pro-bicycle meetings and mass rides — and by offering free bike repair services to everyone, everywhere. (more…)
London’s Mayor Boris Johnson (who looks … quite British) sat down for an interview with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate today and had this to say about NYC’s largest-in-the-world bike share program, launching in July. Johnson then described how London’s bikeshare program has transformed street life in Great Britain’s capital city, and what New Yorkers should brace for.
Johnson: I think drivers have got to learn to recognize they are going to find bikes on the streets. It’s just a fact of life, and it will civilize the place. It will improve the atmosphere. There’s nothing more immediately redolent of a village than loads of people wobbling around on bicycles.
A village?? Is that like some kind of fancy suburb, Boris?
Click photo to watch a video on how Learn to Ride classes work.
We were poking around for news on the Pop-Up Pool at Brooklyn Bridge Park — opening in July, oh yeah! — and stumbled upon this useful nugget: parents can bring their kids to bike-riding lessons at Pier 1 for several upcoming Sundays, starting with this one (5/27). Details: (more…)
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