Thursday, August 21, 2008

David Byrne is THE MAN

Has everyone seen this? Apparently the city of New York was holding a contest for new bike rack designs. (You can see the finalists here.) So David Byrne was slated to be one of the judges, and he randomly started doodling his own bike rack designs one day, showed them to the committee, and they told him he could have them built and put up! No questions asked, no red tape, they just let him go to work! Crazy! They went up at the end of July. You can see photos of the new racks on Gothamist and the original Byrne doodles on his blog.

They're not the most functionally-shaped bike racks I've ever seen, but they are designed per their appropriate neighborhoods. Also, if we're going to have bike racks that can only accommodate one bicycle at a time (as most of the proposed designs do), then they might as well be attractive. The racks will only be up for a year and then will be sold as art pieces. I can't wait for them to get all grimy with stickers and dents and old locks chained to them. Somebody remind me to go take photos of them a year from now.

P.S. Here is the "hipster" rack from my very own neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn:


Sweet!

(Photo courtesy NYCDOT)

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