Closing Bell: Bamboo Bikes
[nggallery id=”35599″ template=galleryview] Red Hook’s Bamboo Bike Studio has been popping up in the media recently, as in a recent piece by NY1, and so we thought we’d check it out. The studio holds weekend classes for the public, where you can design and build your own bicycle from bamboo harvested in the tri-state area….
[nggallery id=”35599″ template=galleryview]
Red Hook’s Bamboo Bike Studio has been popping up in the media recently, as in a recent piece by NY1, and so we thought we’d check it out. The studio holds weekend classes for the public, where you can design and build your own bicycle from bamboo harvested in the tri-state area. The studio is part of a larger collaboration with the Columbia University Earth Institute-based Bamboo Bike Project and the Millennium Cities Initiative to establish bamboo bike factories in South America and Africa, to provide transportation and promote sustainable entrepreneurship and light-industry development. Bikes and activism—who could ask for anything more? GMAP
Photos by Joe Zorilla
What a bunch of negative morons you all are. Every idea you parasite off on a daily basis, including the tech you use for this blog, had to go up against people like you. It always amazes me for some reason, though I should get used to it by now, I’ve seen this attitude around me so often. For every thinking person out there, there’s a thousand not just uninformed and inflexible people, but down right negative and destructive ones.
Thanks for the info on this. I’ll be curious to see the effects of ideas like this in the coming years.
Happy labor day. hope you get bed bugs in your critic’s couches.
That bike has brakes, which means we are talking about single gear, not fixed gear.
Here’s a pic of bamboo scaffolding for an office building in Hong Kong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BambooConstructionHongKong.jpg
Here’s a pic of bamboo scaffolding for an office building in Hong Kong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BambooConstructionHongKong.jpg
Bamboo is actually quite strong. You go to Asia, they use it all over the place for scaffolding in the same way we use steel.
I am curious to know how much of the $1250 actually goes towards the cause. Just by looking at the pics on their website, the hardware/rims can’t possibly cost more than a few hundred bucks and we’re talking about fixed gear bikes here.
“to establish bamboo bike factories in South America and Africa, to provide transportation and promote sustainable entrepreneurship and light-industry development. Bikes and activism—who could ask for anything more?”
Great. One more thing we can’t make here.
I think by ‘stronger than steel’ they mean ‘pound for pound stronger than steel’. But since it’s for a good cause, no need to mind the details, right?
From their website:
A great bicycle frame must be rigid enough to optimize the power you put into each pedal stroke, yet flexible enough to absorb the bumps, divots and vibrations of the road. Inside every bamboo plant, stronger-than-steel “power fibers†run through a matrix of flexible, foamy tissue.
Stronger than steel? Really? I doubt it would be up against a hacksaw. But would it split up and impale someone?
This seems like to much of a niche business for anywhere. Im am just thinking of questions people would ask if I bought that.
You bought that where?
why?
why bamboo?
huh?
$1250!! (they are thinking…..crazy……)