As perhaps the world’s most famous bike blogger, BikeSnobNYC enjoyed taking the piss out of Portland, Oregon in an article in Outside Magazinelast year.
But really, attacking Portland’s pretension to be the most bike friendly city in the world is attacking a straw man. Too easy for you, BikeSnob! I offer, as evidence, no more than a single photo from a single well-known European city. When the bicycle is as commonplace and non-chalantly integrated into urban life as it is in this picture, American cycling advocates will truly have accomplished something. Even in Portland, they just have a long, long way to go yet.
wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes?
And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty,” Maes said.
Makes you kind of wonder whether he also believes Denver mayor John Hickenlooper is Jewish?
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“’It is time that motorists learn that they must share the road with people on bicycles and that the courts will view assaults on cyclists by motorists as seriously as other assaults with deadly weapons,’ Deputy District Attorney Mary Hanlon Stone wrote in court papers.”
Radio Shack’s — sorry, that’s “The Shack” to you buster — improbably clever new multi-channel ad campaign.
The Shack is unexpectedly well positioned as a retailer of the less expensive electronics that are flying off the shelves this year — smartphones, PDAs, netbooks, Flips, cheap cameras. Why drag all the way down to the mall for something that only costs $99? Your retrograde Shack store is in some low-rent strip mall near you. And as we all keep our electronic devices just a little longer and longer, they’re also positioned as a reliable source for replacement parts, upgrades and repairs.
So it’s no accident that The Shack has suddenly emerged all over TV, with a very clever series of :15s. And no accident either that they’ve created a YouTube channel with all the executions. (We are hoping they were following Alan’s first rule of emarketing: Even if your Internet ad buy doesn’t cost a lot of money, you still have to bring your A game.) Cisco’s own Flip rebranding don’t hold a candle. From what I can glean from exactly ten seconds of Googling, The Shack’s new (as of April 2009) agency of record is Butler, Shine, Stern and Partners. While still not a Susan Boyle-level viral marketing home run, this is first-rate work, dudes.
Lance What's-His-Name Previews the Team Radio Shack Jersey
And don’t forget, either, that The Shack is now the inheritor — as name sponsor — of the US Postal Service/Discovery Channel cycling team that will feature at least 2 of the favorites for the 2010 Tour de France and other major cycling races — Lance What’s-His-Name and Levi Leipheimer. It will be interesting if they can leverage the ongoing Lance saga — especially if Lance outperforms athletically in the coming season — in ways that the USPS and Discovery Channel never did, and continue to revive a brand that until very recently was deeply mired in the past. Or worse, subject to the cruelest form of slacker ridicule.
Since she’s in the photo business, “Oh Snap,” below, is my wife’s favorite Shack execution:
Despicable Mandeville Canyon/ER doctor road rager (see our earlier coverage here) who purposefully rode down two cyclists earlier this year was found guilty on all counts yesterday in a California courtroom.
Full coverage in Velonation is here. Dr. Christopher Thompson is being held without bail, and faces up to 10 years in jail. Cyclist Ron Peterson, who still has no sensation on his nose and other parts of his face which were severed in the incident, is quoted as saying he’s “happy justice has been served,” and hopes the case will highlight “how vulnerable cyclists are out there.” For these quotes, and an excellent overview of this whole case, see last night’s NPR All Things Considered coverage here.
For too long, the notion that one could, with complete legal impunity, cause all kinds of murder and mayhem behind the wheel of a car, then simply call it an “accident,” has left cyclists and pedestrians vulnerable and legally powerless. Bus ran over your head? Oops, sorry, it was just an accident!
This case will hopefully set a national precedent, that anger behind the wheel does not translate into a license to kill. One can only hope courts in New York State are listening.
Inspirations and Aspirations 