One of the design objects we really appreciated at the NY Design Week 07 was the Jorg & Olif City Bike on display in the Earnest Sewn store in Meatpacking. So much retro these days looks back at a late 70s and early 80s but there’s also a growing movement that looks back at far away simpler times. Earnest Sewn takes its fashions cues from a pioneer era and these bikes make us think of gentler times before cars.
Jorg & Olif took the classic design of a Dutch bike built for the flatlands of Holland and tweaked it for for North American cities "without compromising the original European aesthetic" (we guess that means, they added gears). Here’s a nice quote from their site about living ‘The Slow Life’:
We believe that our lifestyles should reflect our values and communicate who we are. The choices we make ultimately shape the way we live, and like most, we are always seeking new ways to make an improvement.
The jorg&olif collective embodies the essence of modern living by taking a modest, conscientious, design driven approach to building a company. The two partners – Rob and Jane – continue to develop the brand based on vision, fun, and good old-fashioned hard work. Did we mention fun?
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
If this is what it takes to get more people on bikes, HOORAH! But I suspect that this is more of a, “oh you bike?” kind of cultural furniture, like a big ass coffee table book.
If you buy one of these and discover that your childhood passion for cycling has carried over into a practical and enjoyable adult hobby, I would bet that the first thing to go would be this bike…
I understand that this is for slow people, but when you’ve gotta butt full of traffic trying to intimidate you off the road, you may just find yourself in a temporarily fast frame of mind…unfortunately the bike is not so adaptable.
All that said, the bike is attractive and I would like to ride it around in a bicycles-only slow-dance club.
Cheerio etc.
May 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 pm
You bring up a good topic, Eric. J&O’s bike counters an American ideology held since the 70s: that bicycling is “cycling” – reserved for aspiring pro cyclists, i.e. an intense cardio workout. This has stigmatized the idea of a bike from the universal mode of transportation that it is, to a limited one reserved for those wearing spandex and touting 21 speeds.
Why can’t we mosey in the bike lanes of nyc? They certainly get away with it in much higher populated and congested cities. Then again, these cities benefit from power in numbers.
May 23rd, 2007 at 11:35 am
I ride in LA (with no spandex ;) and we mosey all the time, bike lane or not. We mosey on mountain bikes, fixies, cruisers, racers, tourers, tall bikes and small bikes. The bike doesn’t make the rider, the bike can only amplify or retard the rider’s input.
A consistent trend that I’ve observed over the last year has been a surge in cruisers. The vast majority of cruiser adoption is done by beginner cyclists who want an alternative to driving. They buy the cruiser, ride it for a month and go, “Holly crap, I need a real bike, this thing’s killin’ me!” Why didn’t they buy the real bike in the first place? Advertising.
I’m not talking about direct, in your face cruiser ads, but suggestive piggybacked cameos with cruisers have been appearing for some time now in fashion, electronics and even food advertising. And why not, the cruiser has a lot of that old school cred’ that advertisers love to use. But ask the cruiser adopter-turned-dropper and you’ll find out that cred’ isn’t worth anything when it comes to functionality.
Wheww!! Better wrap this up.
Restoration Hardware can market an old-school fan because fans, as objects of function, have matured; the only thing left for them is to endlessly vary the appearance. The bicycle, on the other hand, is still in a stage of refinement and experimentation, to fall back on old-school now is to say, “I’m out of ideas, but here’s a 100 year old idea that matches your furniture.”
That’s all I have to say about that.
May 23rd, 2007 at 2:42 pm
I’ve got to disagree a little with the previous comments. Having owned everything from fixies to ATBs, freestyle and trikes, I’ve got to say that these Dutch bikes are hands-down my favorite. The riding position is perfect, and they’re built like tanks. Bakfiets can even carry lots of groceries. Seems to be a trend, but old is good, because they last. My daily commuter is a single-speed Swiss Army courier bike (circa 1947, and still going strong.) The roadies stay on the wall until the weekend.
I don’t get this fascination with carbon-fiber and spandex everything. What’s wrong with moseying to work on an old bike? Anything to get folks out of cars and supporting the need for more bike lanes.
July 27th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I second Emil too. The upright riding position is not only more comfortable but also gives you a better view of the traffic making it easier to navigate. The solid steel frames are not only tough but also gives ride a real sturdy feel. They all make the Dutch bikes the best commuter bikes – you really don’t know them until you’ve tried them. (One point I concede is that they are thus heavy too, so it’s not for the speed conscious cycler with spandex, mindful of only flying down bicycle tracks.)
October 5th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
in the case of J & O its moot….. they are out of business. Like golf and skiing, one product won’t do it all. There are clubs for driving and clubs for putting. You wouldn’t race a bike like this just as you wouldn’t run to the market on a 6,000.00 carbon race bike.
Its all about choice of ride. If you assume these bikes were sold as commuters, your missing the point.
November 17th, 2008 at 8:29 pm