Keeping It Wheel
It’s the season for swapping and this weekend Walk Oakland Bike Oakland is putting on its Bike Love Festival and Swap Meet. As is the fashion with swap meets, you can search for that rare part you need or buy a whole new bike. There will be bike builders, shops and lone sellers hawking their goods. Dubbed a “swap meet plus,” people can also do an alleycat ride or chip in with the raffle. All proceeds go to Walk Oakland Bike…
Only a dedicated bike lover would forever stencil their body with a bicycle tattoo … and they’re a lot more common than you’d think. I’ve been searching around to find people with bike-related tattoos to put here on Keeping It Wheel. Below are a few recent photos I took of bicycle tattoos and their proud owners. If any of you have some you’d like to show off, please send in your photos.
Every Tuesday evening, dozens of roadies suited up in spandex and cleats head down to the Port of Oakland for the “POO ride.” This ride is not for the everyday bike commuter or even avid weekend rider. It’s as close to a bike race you can get without being in an official race — there are breakaways, sprints, and people getting dropped left and right. The ride entails several loops around the Port of Oakland, a 2.4-mile loop, and the…
Think group garage sale but with a bunch of nice and eclectic bike paraphernalia. It was pretty crowded down at Mosswood Park this weekend as folks set up blankets and laid out their gear to sell. There were a lot of good deals to be had, like bike jerseys for five bucks, but also some serious expensive gear, like the mint condition vintage steel Merckx and Pinarello frames for $900 each.
Once used mostly by messengers for identification in alleycat races, spoke cards have blown up. Although you still get them in alleycats, I now see all sorts of different decorative cards, birthday cards, and gang membership cards. In its bio on spoke cards, Wikipedia has this hilarious explanation on why non-messengers put cards in their spokes: “Other city riders sometimes fix spoke cards to their wheels as an affectation of messenger culture.” The next two weeks the Missing Link is…
From quite a distance down Adeline Street in West Oakland, I could see this multi-wheeled contraption covered in plastic ribbons. It was slowly creeping down the very center of the road, making it easy for me to catch up. I pedaled alongside the man, snapped a few photos and asked him some questions. His name is Milton Butler and he lives in North Oakland. He built up this multi-wheeled bike for fun and last year it won a prize at…
Scraper bikes and their loyal followers (including me) took to the streets of Oakland last weekend. Over 100 people (this is my own unscientific guess) got on bikes and joined the “Healin’ from Killin’” bike ride for peace. With 60 murders in Oakland so far this year, the scraper bike crew wanted to come out and ride against gun violence. We met up at Lake Merritt, circled the lake and cruised up to Broadway, where Baby Champ (aka Da Scraper…
The sun was blazing in San Antonio Park on Sunday as bike polo players wrapped up their games, alleycat racers crossed the finish line and the scraper bike crew blasted Biggie. This group of eclectic bike riders along with many others jumped on their bikes and headed over to Alameda to watch the film festival. Here are some photos of the group ride:
The bicycle film festival hits San Francisco this week. Besides watching movies about bikes, there’s going to be all sorts of other fun, like parties, concerts, art gallery crawls and bike games. Oakland gets its day too—on Sunday, July 19. Down at the Michaan’s Auctions Movie Theater, people can see film shorts like “Bike Ride,” which is about a guy who rides 50 miles to see his girlfriend who dumps him and then he rides home, or feature length films…