The arrival of these bikes was featured on the Eastsider LA blog on January 8, 2010, “Eastside Shopper & Diner“.
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Come ride with Flying Pigeon LA bike shop to NELA's own brewery this coming Saturday, February 6, 2010!
On Saturday, February 6, 2010 the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065) is hosting a bicycle ride to the Eagle Rock Brewery (located at 3056 Roswell Street, Los Angeles, CA 90065) to sample beer, partake in some good food (details to come or bring your own), and take in the sights of historic Cypress and Glassell Park in North East Los Angeles.
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I’m not a religious man, but I often wonder if there is a devine curriculum director up there in the sky. He/she watches over us lowly bike mechanics and makes sure that we’re always working on a string of interesting new things in miniature streaks of repetition. I don’t know why, but in our repair shop one funky repair job will quickly be followed up with other repairs of the same type within days of one another.
When we first opened up it was cracked solid rear axles on low-end mountain bikes that kept rolling through our doors. I must have done a dozen of them (or more) in the first two weeks we opened up. Then we got the “Old Roadster Flood of 2009″ – guys pulling old roadsters out of the barn and bringing them in for us to tune up (mostly adjusting the out-of-tune rod brakes), swap parts, or simply gawk at.
This month stated with a fascinating repair job. I had a chance to service a Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub on a shaft driven bicycle.
Deluxe Flying Pigeon PB-13 with basil Kavan II Bags.
Jeff Stracco, an American expat living in China, has been churning out spellbinding reports from asia on traditional chinese bikes (with forays into other Asian makes and models) on his blog Flying Pigeon Project.
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Kristen Steele astride a Nihola cargo bike - now available at Flying Pigeon LA (image by Myleen Hollero).
We’ve just received a batch of Nihola cargo tricycles from Europe, so now would be a good time to explain just what makes these bikes so special.
Fortunately, that work has already been done for us by Kristen Steele, writing “Nihola-A Sweet Kid’s Ride” in Issue #42 of Momentum Magazine:
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This is our "I Nihola LA" t-shirt design I cooked up. Hat tip to Team Midnight Ridazz.
We’re expecting a container of Nihola Family Cigar bikes at our shop today at 2 p.m. Follow us on twitter at “flyingpigeonla” as we take photos to document the whole thing as much as possible.
If you’d like a closer look at what a Nihola bike is, here is a clip from the Toronto Green Living Expo in 2008 featuring our sister Nihola dealer in North America, Curbisde Cycles.
The Nihola Family Cigar will retail for $3,299 for the 5-speed version and $3,499 for the 7-speed version, includes a rain hood (limited color selection available) and amenities for securing kids inside the carriage. Thanks to Jim (see comments below) for asking!
Charlie from Team Flying Pigeon in the 2nd race of the CBC 3 racing into a 2nd place finish.
Paul, owner of Atomic Cycles in Van Nuys & organizer of epic bike parties in the San Fernando Valley, is hosting another Coaster Brake Challenge this month (the third he’s organized to date). In the last go-round, “Team Flying Pigeon” came in 6th overall under the hard-charging DJ Chicken Leather – part-time videographer of the cycling movement, part-time volunteer for lost causes and artistic endeavors, and full-time rider of the detritus of the last half-century’s worth of department store clunkers and broken spare parts lashed together with carpenter’s hacks and guile.
After the Copenhagen climate conference concluded last month, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa went on the air with Pat Morrsion on KPCC on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 and said, “In the area of bicycling I’ve got to do a better job and the city’s got to do a better job.”
The video above (directed, edited, and filmed by Mikael Colville-Andersen, founder the “Slow Bicyce Movement“, and author of both Copenhagenize and Copenhagen Cycle Chic for the City of Copenhagen) demonstrates what probably caught Mayor Villaraigosa’s eye.
We hope to take the mayor at his word, and are trying to bring a bit of Copenhagen here to Los Angeles. You see, we’re importing Nihola cargo bikes to Los Angeles! We’re waiting to hear word from our customs agent on the precise date of delivery, but it looks like our shipment of Nihola Family Cigar bicycles will be here on January 13th, 2009.
Here you can see Mikael Colville-Andersen at it again in this short film created by Elizabeth Press of Streetsfilms during the COP15 conference. Oh, and what’s that in the film at the 1:03 mark? Computer, stop and enhance.
A Nihola Family Cigar with mini-Santa and a bakfiets stopped at a traffic light. Image grabbed from Streetsfilms' "Copenhagens Climate-Friendly, Bike-Friendly Streets".
If you’d like to pre-book a Nihola Cigar Family, shoot us an email at info@flyingpigeon-la.com or call us at 213-909-8986. We’ve got a few demonstration rides planned, and some cool t-shirt designs to go with our cool Danish cargo bikes. Our online shop has a page for Nihola bikes too – which we estimate will cost $3,299.00 (if our customs and exchange rate guesswork are accurate).
If you’re looking for a fun way to spend your Saturday evening this coming Saturday, January 9, 2010 – consider riding your bike with us in the Spoke(n) Art Ride. The Spoke(n) Art Ride is a once-a-month bicycle tour of art galleries in North East Los Angeles (organized by NELA Arts) that features as slow pace, lots of interesting conversation, and loads of art in all sorts of mediums, quality, and styles.
We’re going to leave the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop (located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065) at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 9, 2010. Our first stop will be the official start point for the ride, at the corner of Figueroa and York in Highland Park. The ride will end back at the Flying Pigeon bike shop and the Bike Oven (located two doors down the street from our shop) – where we’ll have a mini street party and bike-a-thon.
