Bike Hugger 

KOMO TV, Seattle’s ABC affiliate, reported tonight on the 8K (and growing) bike commuters on Seattle streets and how that’s expected to grow with high gas prices or downed overpasses like in San Francisco. It was a good report, especially on the eve of Bike Month.

Are you riding to work more now because of gas prices? What’s your BIke Month plan? And how are our San Francisco readers?

In another clip from our Blogging Beijing by Bike videos, we ride during rush hour. In a city with 13 million people, 3 million cars and millions of bikes, riding is a chaotic experience. We just rode, found a way through it, and joined the flow in Beijing.

Less than a month after Mayor Nichols released Seattle’s Bike Master Plan to the city, it seems political pressure is already derailing some of the key components. Released this week in Cascade’s Braking News:

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has backed down from a project to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety because of what appears to be political pressure from a minority of business owners on Seattle’s Stone Way North.

I was at the Javabean getting espresso and saw a postcard for Bike + Art = Skatepark. I’m still trying to figure out what that is, but the site says,” we’re having a bicycle decorating party, a bike parade, an Art Walk, AND a benefit for River City Skate Park.”

That sounds def like something Bike Hugger would want to do. They’ll decorate bikes, then parade them, and tour South Park all to raise money for the River City Skatepark. River City must mean the Duwamish? And maybe they’ll put a bmx track near the park?

The NY Times published an article today about Fulfillment by Amazon and how Amazon is developing other ways to make money. I’m quoted with other merchants in the article about how well the program is working. We use FBA to fulfill Clip-n-Seals and hopefully soon our Bike Hugger shirts.

Both of those products have done well from Bike Hugger traffic and we’ve got more products on the way.

“Whoa!” I opened up the Design within Reach catalog and on page one there’s a Biomega AMS 8 Speed Bicycle. Being sold at DWR, is probably the epitome of bikes as a designer item and it’s a commuter bike at that.

The Biomega @ Design within Reach follows the UM by Puma, another designer concept bike. We’ll have to post on this further, when I see one of the bikes at DWR’s stores, and then start thinking about who’s going to wrench the bikes for them?

Schooner Exact, the makers of Bike Hugger Brown are having a brewers night tonight at the Beveridge Place Pub. According to Marcus, the Minister of Propaganda for the microbrewery, “This is going to be a special one, we were able to take a little taste of it the other day right out of the fermenter and we could not put it down!” The West Seattle blog also noticed the arrival of a new beer from Schooner.

Found on Untitled Name while searching for the term “bike pile” on ">Google and Flickr.

Ahead of the ">antler-design trend by months and way more stylish with the whole global warming thing are antler bikes (stylish and saving the environment, like Sheryl Crow!). We first spotted one at Interbike, Bicycle Design posted on 8 point handlebars, Razor Apple has got the furry antler version, and the then there’s the King of the Road, which was ahead of it’s time.

Of course, there’s a blog about the Secret Life of Antlered Girls, who also ride bikes.

The NYTimes picks up the story about the Fisher-Price Smart Cycle – we posted about the child-size trainer earlier this year. We still like the idea of training next to your child. While they “whack-a-mole,” you can do your sweaty spinervals.

Unsure if Fisher-Price has dropped Richard Simmons from their marketing – the bloggers had fun with that odd choice of a spokesperson.