We recently wrote about Brooklyn’s Bamboo Bike Studio, and now the Guardian points us to a similar venture lead by  Craig Calfee, a California based bicycle designer and early pioneer of carbon fiber, who since 2005 has begun to turn his attentions to the use of bamboo in frame construction. Given bamboo’s numerous advantages – lightweight, flexibility and when grown under the right circumstances, sustainability – as a raw material it is virtually unmatched. Not to mention, it requires a less energy-intensive (and environmentally intrusive) process to harden. So why has it yet to catch on as the smarter alternative to [...]

The Bamboo Bike Studio is a Brooklyn-based venture which teaches people to create their own bike frame out of the renewable and “performance-positive” material, bamboo.  Working in collaboration with the Earth Institute at Columbia University and the Millennium Cities Initiative, the studio offers a two-day course where bike enthusiasts can learn building techniques and when the weekend is over, ride away on the finished product.
The BBS customises each bike to it’s rider, and attendees of the course can work off two bike body styles – ‘Local‘ for the casual, ‘mellow’ rider; and ‘Express’ – suitable for intermediate, urban cyclists who [...]