If you’re not familiar with TED, you should know that it’s the best television on the web. You feel smarter after watching it but it’s not boring like C-SPAN. Here’s a video featuring Robin Chase, the founder of Zipcar, a company that rents out cars by the hour. And if you like it, there’s plenty more on the TED website.
Okay, I need to wrap this story up by Monday, so this is a last call for commentary. So far the thoughts have been extremely helpful and have taken me in directions I’d never have gone on my own, so thanks.
One thing I’ve noticed is that for us practical pedalers, not all shops are created equal. Some do an excellent job of stocking parts for practical bikes (things like schwalbe tires, racks, good bags, steel frames, etc.) and other shops are more tailored for fitness enthusiasts. In a town with a great practical bike shop, it’d be easy to support the LBS. But in a town with nothing but a carbon-fiber wonder warehouse, the internet can be a saviour. So my last two official question for this story are:
What features does an LBS need to be considered a practical bike shop?
Are there any practical LBSs in your area and who are they?
Twitter with: #lbsvgbs
It’s bikes like these that I like to see (and these). Commute warriors with the chops to get you across Tajikistan if need be.
The Banjo Brothers (not brothers but rather makers of bags) have hosted a fictional bicycle story on their Twitter feed. The feed is over but the story remains in one collected location, here.
Speaking of Twitter. The Practical Pedal now has its own Twitter. Follow here.
And finally, don’t forget to participate in the discussion about local vs. global bike shopping. Details in this post and this post. Also, if you’ve written some great piece about this topic somewhere on the webs, send me a link and I’ll add it here.
Okay, first a few housekeeping items:
Here’s a Twitter hashtag for this discussion. #lbsvgbs
This post is a continuation of this post.
And I’ve got a wiki page for thr development of this story at Convivial City, our city guide for cyclists. That can be found here. It’s mostly just a place for me to keep notes and thoughts right now, but it will become more organized as the story develops over the course of the week.
Now, to focus some of the awesome commentary thus far and propose a few angles on this story that I find interesting.
Buying Direct From a Manufacturer
The internet makes this feasible from both a customer and producer’s perspective. Aside from test rides and maintenance, what value does an LBS add to this transaction? (i.e. why do we need the middleman?) Perhaps by acting as a distributor for local manufacturers of niche products.
What Does Buy local mean, Anyway?
SamH has this to say:
Often the argument that would say an online shop is ‘evil’ is one that says people should be shopping locally. In the global economy one must define what local means. Does local mean within a certain number of miles from your home, or does local mean buying and selling amongst friends or like-minded individuals.
The argument for local buying also often states that when you buy local, more of your money stays in the community instead of going to a business (chain store or internet store) that is owned elsewhere. While I think there’s merit in this when it comes to chain stores, it makes less sense in the context of internet shopping because while online sales do take money out of a community, there’s no good reason that the same effect can’t be reversed to bring money into the community. If your LBS has an online component, they’re enriching the local economy.
Many people say that the LBS needs to compete by leveraging their expertise, but of all the advantages an LBS has, information and expertise is not one of them when compared with an online entity. This isn’t to discount any shop’s expertise, it’s only saying that a handful of employees don’t have the breadth of experience that the internet can deliver. But if an LBS has an online presence, they can act as an organizer of that vast sea of information, something that I see as being highly valuable.
Is It Wise To Fight the Inevitable?
The internet is changing business models in almost every industry, bikes are no exception. Even the Girl Scouts are affected. If you read this story about a girl who set up a website to sell GS cookies, you’ll see a disconnect between people who think the internet is some kind of specialist super-technology that confers unfair advantage onto its weilders, and those who see it as empowering and common (an amazing combination.) I side with the latter and think that there’s no good reason (aside from an unwillingness to learn) that’s keeping the LBS from taking advantage of online sales.
The next issue really is coming, but I’m working on a story and I need your help. That is, I want to try an experiment and, if the experiment works, I’d really like to retool the magazine along new lines. Here’s the experiment:
That’s really it. The interesting part to me is that instead of sitting down and saying “What do we want to write about for the next issue?” we instead ask, “What questions do we want to attempt to answer with the next issue, and who out there can help us answer them?” To me, that’s a much more interesting model to build a magazine around because to me, a magazine is all about building a community of people to solve problems.
The other interesting part to me is that this model will merge the online and print versions of the magazine into more of a whole, with the magazine being the culmination of the ongoing discussion happening online. The website will essentially produce the magazine.
The Experiment
Like I said, this is an experiment and so, for the first issue, we’ll try this out with just one story. So here it is, the big question:
Are online bike shops evil or can they fit into our notions of strong community and livable places?
To kick things off, I’d recommend reading this post by Molly Cameron which reposts an open-letter from River City Bicycles in Portland and this response by Matt Haughey. And I encourage thinking that comes from outside the realm of cycling as well as from within it.
John has updated the fixit blog. How to use your eyes to stay alive.
Thanks to Taylor at the Bozeman Bike Kitchen for the link.
Original Video - More videos at TinyPic
What is the future of efficient transportation and energy with cheap oil?
The last year and a half Wiley and I put a fair amount of effort into building a couple of electric bikes. Not only because we believe in efficiency, not only because we belive in using the right tool for the job, but also because those bikes we built are a hell of a lot of fun- more fun than driving a car around town.
Personally, I love the bikes and I hope to build one for myself someday. But I am conscious of how high transportation costs spurred much of the electric bike popularity and development these past couple of years. And now, it appears that cheap gas can (or did) nip green tecnology development in the bud.
But is it that simple? Doesn’t seem to be. At least one expert believes that it’s not the price of oil that is limiting innovation in green tech, but the overall economic situation and subsequent resistance to investment. Said Joe Wiesenthal at Silicon Valley Insider:
“But the fundamental question facing any technology hasn’t really changed: Does it save you energy? If it does result in greater efficiency, then that’s compelling even with oil at $15 a barrel. If it doesn’t achieve that, then even $500 oil can’t save it.”
What do you think?
Summer Issue for the ipod touch/iphone
The link above should, if you’re reading this on an iPhone or an iPod Touch, automatically launch the free Stanza book reader (install it if you haven’t, it’s rad) and load the summer 2007 issue of the Practical Pedal.
It uses the epub format, contains only words (for the readers in the house), and is a much nicer reading experience that the safari web browser that comes with the iPhone because it allows single-tap page turning and renders gorgeous text on screen.
We’ll be releasing all of our future issues (including the one due out this month) in this format as well as in good old fashioned newsprint, rss feed, and html.
I seriously can’t describe how awesome it’s been to use this device as a book reader. I’ve already read three full-length novels on it and, I swear, it’s a very pleasurable reading experience.
