I have to say I spent a lot of time in the car, as one might expect from such a car-centric city.
However, one evening we did visit the more bike-friendly area of "Oak Cliff"
We stopped by the Oak Cliff Bicycle company. This neighborhood, which is close to downtown seemed to have a walkable/ bikeable core, although the area we were in was mainly restaurants and boutiques. The Oak Cliff Bicycle company carries a variety of city bikes (Pashley, Linus and Bobbin) as well as a handful of refurbished touring bikes/ mixties.
My sister in law has been wanting a Linus for a long time, and until now, they've never had the one she wanted in stock. Of course they had it on this trip, but she's 8 1/2 months pregnant and didn't feel comfortable doing a test ride. Hopefully she can go by after the baby is born and they will still have it/ have another one.
I didn't get to chat as long as I'd like to with the people at the shop, but they seemed very nice. They had an amazing vintage (US production) Trek, which they'd fitted out with a serious touring rack, an Edeluxe dynamo light and hammered honjo fenders. The amazing thing was that they'd had the frame nickel plated- which was just stunning.
I only realized after I'd left that I didn't get a picture of the whole bike, just the custom badge that they'd attached to the seat tube. We were late for dinner, and although we hoped we'd get back during my trip we didn't make it.
I saw lots of bike parking and signs of bike culture in the neighborhood though.
One really cool thing was this row of wall-mounted bike hangers along the alley side of a popular restaurant:
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| What a cool idea for limited space- they had 8 or so of these along the wall |
There were also regular sidewalk racks:
Bikes used as displays for a fancy florist:
And a whole bay of parking blocked off for bikes. Too bad it had super lousy wheelbender racks!
Hopefully I'll get another chance to drop by on a future trip to talk to the people who run the shop, get my S-i-l her bike, and ride around a bit on my own!
Cool to see a different perspective of the great "Eastern D." Next time, say hello if you get a chance and we MUST take the TRE. I'll do the same, though my next trip is likely to be NW rather than NE.
ReplyDeleteThose wall mounted racks are really cool - I've never seen anything quite like that. I don't lock outside much though - I got a Montague bike a couple years ago, and take it inside most places I go. Still, a clever solution.
ReplyDeleteAlex, I use similar racks at my house for bike storage, and I think they're really useful
ReplyDeletehttp://bikinginheels-cycler.blogspot.com/2010/09/bikes-in-spaaaaaace.html
Oddly, the bikes in the photo above were not locked AT ALL.
I would never leave my bike while I ate dinner out of sight of it without locking it at least to itself.
Locking to these wheel racks would be a bit tricky- I would probably self-lock and ideally then run a cable lock through the wall hanger/ wheel.