Artist Damien Hirst has used the bodies of real butterflies on the frame of a Trek bikes for Lance Armstrong’s final stretch of the Tour De France 09. He spread the butterflies across the bike’s frame and onto the rims.

Green activists have been asking the rest of us to repair, reuse and recycle for years now but it looks like it’s had to take a recession for us to listen. A car parts chain called Halfords in the UK says that it’s growing sales in this economy is due to people deciding to fix their old cars or save money by jumping on a bicycle. The Telegraph reports:
Chief executive David Wild, who has been in the top job for almost a year, said the company will be increasing its focus on bikes as more people use cycling as [...]

Team PSFK joined the commuters and traveled across London this morning by train, then Tube then taxi. On our way we were amazed to see how many of these fold up bikes people were carrying and/or riding in the capital. The popular brand seems to be Brompton Bikes.

Theft and vandalism are threatening the success of Paris’s Velib bike rental scheme.  Eighteen months into project and over half of the initial 15,000 bikes have vanished.  Despite being used over 42 million times, JCDecaux, the company behind the project, is warning the high costs of replacing bikes lost will force them to terminate their initial ten year contract.
Velib Extreme is another force spurring the Velib bike vandalism. The BBC reports:
Various videos have appeared on YouTube showing riders taking the bikes down the steps in Montmartre, into metro stations and being tested on BMX courses.
Remi Pheulpin, JCDecaux’s director general, says the [...]