This month our favorite bridge celebrates her 75^th birthday. There are many attendant festivities. Our contribution is the introduction of PUBLIC Bikes painted in the exact color and finish of the bridge (International Orange). We have a limited number of these 7-speed bikes ($750) – so, if you are interested, act quickly.

It’s easy to be a little jaded about a 75^th anniversary: 50 is impressive, 100 epic. But jaded just doesn’t work with the Golden Gate Bridge; we love it so much we’d support a yearly celebration. In fact, I consider this bridge to be one of the greatest pieces of modern design – ever. Like all classic works, it just seems to grow in stature and grace every time we look at it.

What makes it so great? So many things. Astounding engineering – when completed in 1937 it was the tallest bridge in the world and the longest single-span suspension structure. Majesty – a man-made structure that holds it own even set against the dramatic natural surroundings and wonders of the bay. Beautiful design details – like the elegant ‘pyramiding’ columns. It’s heroic – reflecting our highest ambitions and speaking well of mankind. It transcends politics and brushes aside traditional design categorization. Although often billed as a triumph of the Art Deco style, its essence is too powerful, honest, and modern to be assigned to a bygone era. So purposeful, so optimistic, The Golden Gate Bridge is like a dynamic living creature, you even feel it move when you walk or ride over it.

Even with all these assets, its color might be the most defining feature. There are many stories about how its color came to be. If the US Air Force had its way the bridge would have been done up in red and white horizontal stripes (for visibility). The Navy was pushing for yellow and black. Others argued for a neutral grey to blend into the landscape. There were varying schemes to paint the railings and cables in colors contrasting the columns. But when the steel arrived with a reddish orange lead based primer in 1934 it became obvious to architect Irving F. Morrow that International Orange was the right choice.

The name of the color is also elusive. The way the light reflects off the surface gives it a somewhat indefinable patina and character. The color changes with the day and time, light, and perpetual aging and exposure to weather. More than a color the surface is like a breathing skin. A great fast paced read on the subject is Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of an Icon, which has wonderful drawings and illustrations by Donald MacDonald that give a proper context for the bridge – purchase info below.

I was just in NYC for the ICFF show. There was a Californian Design booth and the backdrop for the booth was a huge photo of the GG Bridge.  It is perhaps the greatest symbol for California and perhaps for modernism overall given the power with which it combines form and function.

BOOK: Golden Gate Bridge: History and Design of an Icon ($16.95)
A fascinating study for those interested in architecture, design, or anyone with a soft spot for San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge is a fitting tribute to this timeless icon. This accessible account is accompanied by 70 of MacDonald’s own charming color illustrations, making it easy to understand how the bridge was designed and constructed.

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

Bikes and Art have an illustrious history and intersection. The bike itself is such an elegant and iconic form that lends itself so well to abstraction and play. When the two collide magical things can happen. From the colorful lithography posters of the late nineteenth century to conceptual installations of the twenty-first century the bicycle has been an instrument for artistic freedom. Iconic artists, like Marcel Duchamp, have used bicycle parts for sculpture. Picasso constructed Bull’s Head (1942) from the handlebars and seat of a bicycle. Forever Bicycles (2003-present) by artist Ai Wei Wei uses the bike form to create labyrinth-like installations that comment on China’s shifting social environment. In 2011 the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) asked artists to tailor products into symbols of art – Damien Hirst came back with a voluptuously painted bicycle called Psychedelic Spin Hollander (2011).

Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913

Donald Mitchell, Untitled, 2012

Klari Reis, Pedestal Bike, 2012

Cyrus Tilton, Fossil Fuel, 2012

Ken Kalman, Chariot of Fire, 2012

We have some modest examples of our own. This year we have collaborated with several artists and community groups to use bikes as a springboard for artistic expression. These range from simple expressive painting on a bike frame as with artist Donald Mitchell that was auctioned off to support Creative Growth, to several radical artistic of bikes for the San Francisco Art Fair (opens this weekend in SF).

ArtBikes at San Francisco Fine Art Fair

The third annual San Francisco Fine Art Fair takes place May 16-20, 2012, at Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion. Proceeds from the sale of the art bikes benefit the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The unveiling of the ArtBikes Auction signals the start of festivities for the San Francisco Fine Art Fair on May 16 at 7:30 pm. 7 renowned artists and sculptors convert seven PUBLIC  bikes into unique works of art. ArtBikes brings awareness to cycling as a healthy and efficient form of transportation. The bikes will be unveiled on opening night May 16th by members of Verasphere’s drag queens led by David Faulk and Michael Johnstone.

ArtBike participating artists include Ken Kalman (George Krevsky Gallery, San Francisco); Gino Miles (Ten472 Contemporary Art, Nevada City); Michael Osborne (Hamamjian Modern, San Francisco); Gustavo Ramos Rivera collaborating with Kathryn Kain (Westbrook Gallery, Carmel); Klari Reis (Cynthia Corbett Gallery, UK); Moe Thomas (McLoughlin Gallery, San Francisco); and Cyrus Tilton (Vessel Gallery, Oakland).

Klari Reis’s “Pedestal Bike”, featured above, embeds a deconstructed bike in a colorful multi-layer pedestal. By displaying the manufactured object as art, Reis takes an approach that directly plays with the definition of the exhibition.

Cyrus Tilton’s “Fossil Fuel”, also featured above, applies the artist’s interests in anatomy and natural history to the multiple forms found in the bicycle. “I see many similarities between the anatomy of a bicycle and that of an animal,” says Tilton, who was born and raised in the Alaskan wilderness northeast of Anchorage.

Ken Kalman’s winged “Chariot of Fire,” featured above, refers to mythological messenger gods (Hermes, Mercury, the Thunderbird, and Ezekiel), who “rode like the wind.”

Read on for more info on ArtBike. A lot can be said about these pieces and their meaning. But the images speak for themselves. Check out the show if you are in SF. And we’re always loking to partner with other arts groups, so let us know if you have a similar opportunity.

Volunteer

We are looking for volunteers to work an 8-hour shift from 11am-7pm on May 17, 18, and 19. Volunteers will receive a $200 voucher off a 2011 PUBLIC bike, plus a One-Day Pass into SF Fine Art Fair. Please contact dan@publicbikes.com if interested in volunteering.

New PUBLIC Valencia Store – Grand Opening

Join us on Saturday, May 12 2-6 p.m.
We’re excited to celebrate the grand opening of our PUBLIC Valencia Store on Saturday, May 12 from 2-6pm. Please join us and invite your friends. We’ll have some special deals at the opening celebration and samples of our new colors.

Also This Week:

Mother’s Day Reminder – Free Rack and Basket
This offer is good between now and May 14th and is worth $120. Put Mom on a roll for the season. She deserves it.

Lights Up to 20% Off
The Danger Zone taillight is the brightest bike light we offer. After the sun sets it will keep you safe and visible. The LED lights blast super bright beams through the darkness. Built to withstand rain and everyday wear and tear.

SF Chronicle Sunday Style Features Pink PUBLIC!
The Chronicle’s Sarah Adler wrote: “Riding in skirts and high heels is no problem with the Dutch-style step-through frame C7 bike.” This is true. Also true is that we are offering Pink this year based on so many customer requests. Our new Black V7 is hot too. And we have a new orange bike to go with the big anniversary party of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Bike to Work Week on May 14-18
The official Bike to Work Week is May 14-18, but here in the Bay Area our official Bike to Work Day is this Thursday May 10. You can find plenty of “energizer stations” across the Bay Area in support of bike commuters and fun parties throughout the day.
Find info here.

We’re excited to celebrate the grand opening of our PUBLIC Valencia Store on Saturday, May 12 from 2-6pm. Please join us and invite your friends.

Our Valencia Store is a 8-month pop-up “store within a store” inside Harrington Galleries on 599 Valencia at 17th.

We’ll also be debuting our new color 2012 bikes, including our new PUBLIC C7 in Pink and Royal Blue and PUBLIC V7 in Light Grey and Black. These new color bikes will be added to our existing collection of “lickable colors” in Orange, Cream, Powder Blue, and Green. You’ll get to see these new bikes in person for the first time at our grand opening.

We’ll also showcase Limited Edition Golden Gate Bridge International Orange PUBLIC bikes that we’ve produced in recognition of the 75th Anniversary of this iconic bridge.

There is no better bicycle-friendly corridor than Valencia Street that draws both locals and visitors alike. While we’re growing our local presence, PUBLIC is also developing a national brand with our bikes shipping all over the country through our e-commerce site and our bikes sold through a network of 35+ bike shop dealers in other cities.

Our PUBLIC Valencia Store Grand Opening will feature:

Complimentary snacks & drinks

Affordable food for sale by a few of our favorite bike-related vendors, including tacos from Hot Bike, Malaysian street food from mamakSF, and handcrafted all-natural popsicles from The Pop Nation.

Buy any PUBLIC bike between now and May 14th, and we’ll include a rear rack and picnic basket. Check out our new bike colors which include Pink, Royal Blue,Light Grey and Black. These are just arriving next week. This offer is good for any orders placed between now and May 14th even if the bikes don’t arrive in time to ship for Mother’s Day.

Since we launched two years ago, we’ve seen a growing trend of parents, especially mothers, buying bikes and kids seats. So many parents tell us one of the greatest joys they experience is getting to discover the world with their child on bikes. That’s why we’ve carefully expanded our  product offerings for parents and kids.

We’ve also seen this trend reinforced with organized bike rides for parents such as Kidical Mass, a ride that started in Eugene but has since been replicated in other cities like Napa. Kidical Mass has a simple goal of getting more kids and families excited about bicycling.

And we’ve seen more bloggers sharing their experience riding with children. One of our favorites is Elka Karl, CasaSugar editor and PUBLIC bikes customer. Elka rides her PUBLIC bike with her child and has documented her experience in many blog posts

The other trend we’re seeing is more pregnant women riding to stay fit during early pregnancy. We’ve had expectant moms buy our bikes, particularly our step-thru PUBLIC C7 that allows them to safely get on and off easily. Here’s a good summary about bicycling during early pregnancy.

Valencia Store Grand Opening May 12th

We’re excited to celebrate the grand opening of our PUBLIC Valencia Store on Saturday, May 12 from 2-6pm. Our Valencia Store is an 8-month pop-up “store within a store” inside Harrington Galleries on 599 Valencia at 17th. We’ll also be debuting our new color 2012 bikes so come join our party and invite your friends.

Also This Week

$100 OFF PUBLIC V3 – 3 SPEED INTERNAL HUB
The PUBLIC V3 is our 3-speed internal hub gear, all-purpose, lightweight steel-frame urban bike. The three gears provide plenty of range for moderate hill climbing and are ideal for flat topographies.  Comfortable enough for everyday trips for casual riders and reliable enough to be your everyday, rain or shine, commuter workhorse.

UP TO 20% OFF BAGS: BALLARD MARKET SINGLE PANNIER
This is the most versatile bag we have found. The Ballard Market Pannier was designed with city living in mind. The distinctive prints are just as beautiful as the fresh produce you’ll haul home.

Join PUBLIC in the Mission at Sunday Streets May 6th
We’ll be in front of our new Valencia Store at Valencia and 17th Streets between 11 and 4.  Ride on by and grab a cup of homemade lemonade!

The growth of bikes as basic urban transportation, and the overarching “livable cities” movement, is acknowledged internationally and becoming tangible in many major urban areas in the US.  Mayors like Richard M. Daley and Michael Bloomberg have spearheaded these changes in our biggest cities, and large-scale bike share programs are expanding in Washington DC, New York, Chicago, and later this year, in San Francisco.  The positive trends are unlikely to be reversed.

Poster by Gerardo Gonzalez

Gerardo Gonzalez

Sandi Milford

Less obvious are similar trends in smaller communities that rarely show up on the radar. Take Edinburg, Texas, for example way down in the state’s southernmost tip. I just returned from a trip to the University of Texas-Pan American (UTPA), aka “Panam,” where I gave talks to a diverse group of faculty and students with majors in art and design, engineering, and business. These faculty and students are all a part of the same livable cites movement that we see in larger cites, just handled more modestly. I came away optimistic that the progressive alternative transportation movement is definitely not just an elitist phenomenon limited to large urban areas.

UTPA is located in the second poorest county in the US. There is a large immigrant population and for the most part English is a second language. The wide roads are filled with big US trucks and lined with strip malls and fast food joints.  (We ate lunch at Monster Bar & Grill Carwash).  The flat sprawling urban plan is the polar opposite of what we have in San Francisco.  But bike culture is on the rise and highly visible. In my 24-hour stay I saw a bike art exhibition, numerous bike lanes, and a diverse biking crowd. I had many conversations with young art students, senior engineers, department heads, librarians, and architects that reminded me of the conversations I have everyday in San Francisco.  Special shout out to two young artists Sandy Milford and Gerardo Gonzalez whose stylish fashions designed with recycled material and cool graphics made the art show especially compelling.

One of the UTPA staff owns a PUBLIC bike and lent it to me for a half day. I rode for ten miles between UTPA and McAllen, TX where my hotel was located.  I was directed to a winding eight-mile bike path that offered one of the most pleasant and relaxing rides I’ve ever had. Signs along the path educated me about the native birds that raucously serenaded me along the way.

Yerberia Fragrance

On a bike you can easily cruise an entire downtown like McAllen. I pop in and out of the unique retail stores mostly of Mexican heritage. I found cool and quirky products, unique visual compositions, and colorful signage. My favorite store was Yerberia (pictured above) where I scored some amazing candles and some unique oils and fragrances, all with terrific and seductive packaging.

Exploring the streets of South Texas and McAllen on an orange bike made me feel like an ambassador of joy. Bikes help bridge economic and cultural differences and make people smile. This trip was as inspirational as my recent trip to New Orleans.  A bicycle turns out to be the ideal way to get to know a small(ish) town in a short time. And we’ll do more of this.

Details from McAllen and Environs

Rob is the Chief PUBLIC Servant. He founded PUBLIC because of his belief that well-designed PUBLIC spaces are the bedrock of civilization.

For one week, we are offering 10% off our most popular bike model, the dutch style PUBLIC C7. The upright riding position and easy on-and-off geometry make this bike a great choice for basic transportation. Enjoy your community a little more from the vantage point of a bike. And feel like a kid again.

GREAT PUBLIC DESIGN FROM THE US GOVERNMENT?

A friend of mine gave me a sheet of stamps last week that made me rethink the positive influence government can have in our daily lives. The “Pioneers of American Industrial Design” forever stamps feature some pretty well known designers, like Russel Wright andHenry Dreyfuss, but they also pay tribute to some designers who are not exactly household names, such as Greta von Nessen and Peter Muller-Munk. Who would have thunk it – learning about design by looking at a (not so) common postage stamp? It’s a subtle, lickable education.

The US Government does not get much support for educating the public in the areas of art and design or related cultural activities. The National Endowment for the Arts, Public Broadcasting and our National Parks are forced to perpetually justify themselves in their quest for their tiny share of tax dollars. When the government does (or contributes to) something big, like the Vietnam Memorial or great museums like the National Gallery and the Cooper Hewitt, we tend to take it for granted.

These stamps reminded me to think more kindly about our government, and also to send a few more personal letters. They can be a welcome oasis in the hot landscape of modern modes of communication, such as digital newsletters…

If there is one neighborhood that has really come into its own in the last decade in SF it’s the Mission District. Referred to by the NY Times as a Hipster Hunting Ground it is home to the oldest standing building is SF, Mission Dolores, has some of the newest cool restaurants, and is a centerpiece in the city for its progressive street designs which include bike lanes on both sides of the street. The bike culture is like nowhere else in the city. The streetlights are timed to the pace of the bikes, not the cars, and there are generous bike racks all along. So we’re thrilled to be opening up a pop-up store in the classic Harrington Gallery at 17th & Valencia and thrilled to join the other great bike stores on the street: Mission Bicycle Company, Valencia Cycles, and Freewheel.

Valencia Street is known for food as much as bikes. On our one block alone you’ll find a range of destinations that includes some of the most chic cafes in the city (Bar Tartine, Locanda, and Frjtz just to name a few). Cinco de Mayo insipred iron grates around trees and legendary graffiti can be found on almost every block. With a street character and diversity that you will not find elsewhere, it’s a prefect place for us to set up shop.

We just moved in last week, and we’re still fixing the place up, but please come by and meet Dave, Justin, and Jillian or apply for a job yourself. You can test ride our bikes and check out some cool new gear such as the new Detours bike bags and Spokelit featured above. Also check out the new Nantucket Lightship Basket and new assortment of the popular Nutcase helmets. It’s worth browsing Harrington Galleries, which has an amazing range of vintage and eclectic furniture. Store hours are Monday and Tuesday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm, Wednesday closed, Thursday – Sunday 11:00 am – 7:00 pm.

BIG Thank You to Our 1st Valencia Customers

We enjoy our job most when we send a new rider off on their maiden spin. Their smiles alone make our job worthwhile. Erica, pictured on the left, spruced up her bike with one of our new Detours Panniers.  And don’t be surprised if we ask to take your picture when you stop by.

“Dear PUBLIC,
Please stop making your bikes so amazing. I’ve been chased down the streets of Atlanta three times now to be questioned about my bike. One person tried to buy it from me, and by the time I finish going over how light the bike is, how easy it is to slide up hills with the internal hub, and how simple the ready-to-ride assembly was, mixed in with complements on how stunning the bike is in person, I’m late to work. This must end. But in all seriousness, thank you for finally signing a dealer in Atlanta. Hopefully with a few more of these bikes on the road down here I’ll catch a bit of a break. Keep up the good work.”
- Tim in Atlanta

“. . . thank you for signing a dealer in Atlanta.”

We have an ever-growing list of bike shops around the country where you can jump on a PUBLIC, purchase a bike, and develop a relationship with a local bike shop for regular maintenance services. We select these stores because of their high level of service and friendly attitude.

We’re pleased to announce new dealers in Seattle, Portland, Washington DC, Atlanta, Palo Alto, Chicago, St. Louis, Cambridge, and many others. If you have a favorite local bike shop that you think should carry PUBLIC, let us know the name of the bike shop and what city. Check out our full list of dealers.

We love customer comments.

Not much pleases us more than receiving unsolicited notes and photos from our customers, like the note we recently got from Tim in Atlanta. We’re flattered, entertained and proud. It reminds us that we are succeeding in our mission to help improve our communities, put smiles on faces and create some love out there. We keep many of our customer stories on our website and photos in our office. And we’re always looking for more, so don’t be modest – send them along.