Sorry I have been away for a little wide my dear readers but I have been feverishly trying to finish the edit process of by auto-biographical book called ‘Another Kind of Normal’. I have been working on it for the last 8 years and I have learned so much in the process. Writing a book isn’t like doing a homework assignment where you go home, sit down and bang it out until its’ done. Writing on this level it is a process of reflection, inspiration, and research! Anyway, I came across this chopper styles design for sale in Europe. The company is called Nirve’ and they have some OK designs I must admit. When I 1st saw this design, I thought to myself ‘Ugly Paint-Great Frame!” However, I was intrigued by the shape of the Seat Tube and the way it is bent to coincide with the rear fender. Although it seems harsh, the paint is ugly and it shows what I have believed for a long time, the focus must turn from just putting the ‘Same Old Same Old’ out and get imaginative about this process.

In one of my earlier posts I featured the new generation of Chrysler 300’s and the switch in thought process at Chrysler in this particular instance away from trying to create more gadgets to go in this widely popular design to focus more on aesthetics. I often look to the fashion industry for design inspiration and what I noticed is that fashion is rarely about ‘Function’ but about looks! In understanding the urban mind set a bicycle designer also has to come to the reality that there are many bicycle owners who do care about the gadgets such as shocks and suspensions, off-road mountain biking, road racing, etc. But the average bicycle consumer in urban areas wants “THE LOOK!” Black bicycle designers need to be reminded of this simple fact, your urban riders are seeking, attention! Why do young adults and teenagers with cars ride around with there music so loud?

Since I used to do this I can tell you it sure ain’t so they can better hear their music, it is so they can be noticed! ‘Spinner’ rims on cars are for one thing, to be noticed! You get my point. Bicycle design has to go from focusing so much on functionality and more on getting the rider noticed. What would I do to supe this particular design up?

• 
  This particular color of green is really obnoxious to look at. A pearl color would look great here!
  Let’s loose the doo-doo brown colored seat and hook this sucker up with a suede colored fabric. Cover the saddle (seat) springs with a solid chrome color that features the company’s logo facing outwards!
• 
  Suede colored fenders on the back and front trimmed in pearl to match the frame.
  ‘Nirve’ spelled out in Suede colored (This is a good font) costume jewelry on top tubing.
  Hand grips are suede with pearl colored tips. ‘Nirve’ written in the same font and same style jewelry (But larger) on the chain guard and shifted from the back of the chain guard to the middle and centered. Chrome sprocket trimmed in pearl! Spokes and tires look good.
  
  I can only imagine yall!

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After many months of railing on Wal-Mart brand bicycles my dear readers, I am forced to admit that I saw the "Funk" there the other day! Now keep in mind there are no less than 45 or so designs on their bike racks at any given time, but one jumped out at me. It is a brand of bicycles for little girls called "Bratz" The branding on the bicycle is pictures of four little cartoon girls with very big domes (heads). This brand has such things as dolls, calendars, web backgrounds, etc. I was so excited by the design that I pulled it off the rack and was dragging it around the store looking for my wife to show her this HOOOTTT bicycle. I eventually found my wife, hitherto known as Sister Dale, and she said "Wow, that's cute!"


Just so you all know, Sister Dale speaks her mind and I know if it was ugly, she would have let me know so I do indeed trust and value her opinion in such matters. Pictured to the left is the design that made me say "Now that's tight!". What is most amazing about this bicycle is the simplicity in the design, the angles of the top tubing and how it flows to the rear of the bicycle and forms into a rear fender. The color is a powder blue and the designers do a great job at matching the colors scheme throughout the bike
without over-kill.

From the top of the seat to the bottom of the crank, from the tip of the rear fender to the tip of the front fender, this bicycle was very well done. You will rarely hear me say this but for this price point ($69), there isn't one thing I would change about this design as it appears now. Remember I said awhile back, "When it comes to bicycle design for youth and children, sometimes more is just that, MORE!"

While checking out other 'BRATZ" product offerings, I came across this image to the right of another 'BRATZ' style chopper bicycle. Now, I didn't personally see this one on the rack but it is for sale on a 'United Kingdom' website for around 150 pounds, that is around $300 (roughly) to you and I here in America. Hmmm, where do I begin? The only way to describe this design to you is to say call it like I see it TACKY! This bicycle is ugly yall. Let's start with the seat- I am assuming the seat is trying to imitate fur. This doesn't look like fur at all, it looks like a purple sheep who had a 'Bad Wool Day'.

This material needs to be chopped down to present a 'Slicker' more flowing look. The back seat bar which arches up above the back of the seat looks ok, but the chrome on the bar looks tired! Why not stripe this sucker with the frame color of purple mingled in with a swirl chrome. The tires need to be a little thinner and the handle bars just make me say YUCK! Enough of all that. I will keep my eyes open for future bicycle designs from BRATZ and keep you all posted.

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I was doing a little more research on the internet in my constant search for an Urban Bicycle Design and I happened across a guys blog who emailed me a few weeks back named gwadzilla (Please see comments page on this blog). His site lead me to another website called urbanvelo.org and I must share with all of you that I saw 2 designs that made me scream out "Those are nasty!" Nasty being a good thing where I come from. My heart is still racing at this very moment that I write because for the 1st time since I have been working on my project I actaully saw some designs that made me think "Now why didn't I think of that?"

These designs hail from a 'Handmade' bicycle design show and are very creative. The design to the left was simply titled 'Roark' and as you can see, from a distance it looks very bland. When one takes a closer look at this design, it is creative in very simple ways. The 1st being the handle bars which are some sort of 'Ox Horn' imitation. These handle bars are worthy of the monikor of 'Funk'! I do not propose to you that these handle bars should in anyway be produced on a mass scale because when we take a closer look at the Handle Grip section, they come to a point, a sort of stabbing point, which can be very dangerous if one's body is thrust into these bars somehow. The fork also resembles some sort of brown and white tusks! Once again dear readers, 'I saw the funk, and it is good.'

This next design is from that same handmade bicycle design show. This is a girl's bike and after you look at those "Butterfly" style rims, need I say more? My point to all this is very simple. Why can't you and I go to our nearest bicycle retailer and have the experience of seeing these kinds of designs on the shelf? The reason is what I stated many months back on this same blog. The 'Big Boys' are lazy and worried more about saving a few pennies than getting the market excited! As a matter of fact readers, the only Urban Bicycle Designer you know, namely me, is going to write to Pacific Cycles, Huffy, Phat Cycles and a few more and ask them what I have always wanted to know, where is the creativity? As stated above, I think I know, but until I actually hear it from them, how much do I really know?

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Companies such as Chrysler and Pacific Cycles are now openly holding so called 'Spin it your way' and 'What kind of bike would you like to see' suggestions. They want you to email in design suggestions,send them a sketch or even send in a 3-D Model of your hot idea! Now readers correct me if I am wrong, don't those companies and many like them PAY PEOPLE to come up with hot designs?

I guess that is beside the point. I understand the need for these kinds of contests but the point of a contest is that there they are supposed to be for a limited time, they should have a close date, and there should be two winners, the company gets free publicity and the contestant usually gets a valuable prize. The way these two particular contests are set up is they don’t have a close date, I can’t find what the prize is that either company is offering and IF anyone submits a hot design or suggestions for improvement, the only clear winner is Pacific Cycles and Chrysler!


Readers, I speak from experience when I tell you that any designer has to be careful putting their ideas, sketches, etc out there for a company or general public consumption. On this very blog that you are reading, I had a guy who owns a Bicycle Company come across my blog and ‘Steal’ one of the sketches I posted. Not only that he emailed me back the design when it was finished and asked me “What do you think of my design?” Now that was bold!
I said all of that to say this, a designer has to understand the value of their ideas and designs. Instead of just giving your ideas to someone who undoubtedly will make MILLIONS off your ideas if they are hot enough, package and sell them yourself!


Even if you don’t package them and sell them because you don’t have the financial wherewithal to do so, your expertise and experience makes you a consultant. Why should you help companies like these improve their products for free when all they will do is turn around and charge you to buy a product that you designed? Remember this, if they haven’t thought of it and you have, IT HAS VALUE! An example of this is the mail service that most of you use called ‘Hotmail’. This service started off as a guy wanting an easy way to electronically communicate with his colleagues. It grew a little and at that time in the 1990’s, the software giant Microsoft didn’t have such a service. The entrepreneur sold Hotmail to Microsoft for a reported amount of $400 Million dollars! That guy didn’t give his idea away for free or submit it as part of a contest. His idea had value and so does yours!

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As a bicycle (for youth) enthusiast, I have been really surprised at the lack of consideration that has been given to our inner-city youth as it pertains to bicycle design. These urbanites have a unique sense of fashion, Hip-Hop music, unique hair-styles, their own lingo and culture. Yet, their bicycles, 81% of which are purchased at 'Big Box Retailers', look like everyone Else's. For those of you who do not follow this culture, fashion, music, and culture usually start in urban areas and spread out from there. These consumers are demanding, as was I, yet there is a huge disparity between what they wear, how they talk and the bicycles they ride.

All of the way up to about 1988, there really was no choice for these particular consumers when it came to fashion. Jordache, Levis, and Wranglers were the order of the day. Right about 1989, a company called FUBU (For Us By Us) came and the scene in the fashion world and changed everything! Over the next 10 years and right up until today, all sorts of Urban clothing lines have sprouted up with names like Karl Kani, PHAT FARM, BABY PHAT, Sean John, Rocka Wear and many others. These brands represent somewhere in the neighborhood of $2.3. Billion annually in sales. While this may seem like a 'Drop in the bucket' of total fashion revenues yearly, consider this: The minority population in this country represents 100.2 million people as of the end of 2006 and is growing at a clip of about 4% annually with a combined spending power estimated at $1.8 TRILLION dollars.

If anyone of you are wondering "Where is this guy going with this?" The answer is, there is a huge vacuum in the bicycle market that has to be filled by someone. The big boys, Pacific Cycles, Huffy, and others are sleeping on this market! Not only that, as most of you may know, the Wal-Mart brand of bicycles, created by the big boys 'Next' are very poorly designed and constructed and have lousy mechanical records to boot. I have seen only 2 designs at these stores in the last 10 years that I believed to be hot. One is the ever popular 'Sting Ray' and the other was a bike for junior girls called 'Daisy Diva'. There are a few companies that I believe have nice bikes like 3G Bicycles and Phat Cycles. However, I think there is a level of 'Funk' that has yet to be achieved in design.

I would really like to know if there is anyone out there truly impressed by the product offerings currently on the market. When you respond, remember that I am strictly talking about Bicycles at Big Box retailers, price points between $60-$280.

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2008 Chrysler 300 Royale

I saw a commercial for a car yesterday and I was simply blown away. So much so that I literally yelled out “You’ve got to be kidding me!” Chrysler came out with a Model called the 300 in 2003 and it was the hottest production model car seen in years! It won Motor Trends car of the year award in 2003 and 2004. 2008 brought another evolution in the 300 Series. The commercial for this car has African-American people in it and it shows at least 3 different 300’s with this just funked out, 2 tone paint jobs, nicer rims than before, bigger front grills and they are just nice! As usual I thought to myself “Why can’t a bicycle design exude true Urban nastiness like that?” Fear not my loyal readers, they absolutely can and I promise you that I am in the process of sketching something right now that will be the equivalent of this car.

Nevertheless, take a look at this car yall. In my mind, this is not only funky but elegant especially for the price range it is in. The designers could have gone to far and made it look tacky (Remember in design sometimes more is just that-More), but the beauty of this design is they STOPPED adding stuff at the right moment! Ah my heart longs to see a bicycle design that flows with the FUNK like this car. Wait a minute, the time is very near and if you my readers, have just a little patience, I promise to show you some stuff you’ve never seen before!

For those of us who thoroughly enjoy the retro 1970’s style Hood Ornaments, most prominent on Cadillac and Chrysler, this 300 Cerebus with the hood ornament will definitely ‘Float Your Boats’. When I saw this Hood Ornament all I could say was “I saw the funk, and it was good!” Remember I told you all in an earlier post that I had a ghetto style Pee-Wee Herman when I was a kid and the highlight of that was an Old School Cadillac Hood Ornament I fixed to the front fender by punching a hole in it and securing it was a piece of a clothes hang.
Some bad news on all of these pictures that are posted here folks. All of these were presented at an Auto Show so they are known as ‘Concept Cars’. It is very common for a concept car to look a little bit different from the production model of the same cars, which is what winds up at your local dealerships.

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