Each Wednesday The Mercury brings you one hot Portland bicycle and a mini-interview with its equally salacious rider. This all-organic, locally-grown beauty showed up in my garden a few days ago.

This Week: The Watermelon Bike

Rider: Angela Previdelli
Bike: Fixed gear with chlorophyll green Miata frame, Masi saddle, clipless peddles and Deep V bubblegum pink rims
Spotted: In my garden

Pink rims, huh?
I got those at Velo shop when they helped me put this bike together last summer. It was going to be an all green bike, but then I went for the watermelon look.

Is riding the watermelon bike as good as eating watermelon?
Yeah yeah, it’s a tasty treat. It’s a flashy ride.

How do people react to it? Do they ever try to lick it?
Not consume it, perhaps touch it. And yeah, I get hollered at. It has been dubbed The Watermelon Bike by people I don’t even know.

What do you call her?
Lily, that’s her name. I name all my bikes. My old Schwinn is Leonard.

Is it tough to choose between Leonard and Lily?
Nah, she’s a lot lighter, a lot springier.

** BONUS! **
photo of the pink drive chain for the gearhead commentors

Posted by Sarah Mirk

Every Wednesday, the Mercury hunts down a sexy bike and conducts a mini-interview with its sexy rider.

This week: Goosefeathers

Riders: Nicole Lavelle (left) and Elizabeth Jaeger
Bike: 1970s French Motobecane Grande Jubile with silver and red frame, red brake pads and goosefeathers.
Spotted: Under the Hawthorne Bridge

I like this bike because it looks like it’s been ridden a lot.
Nicole: So my former roommate’s ex-girlfriend’s step dad gave it to her. But she’s really short, so I think it was ridden before her. Then she left it in our shed and moved to Berkeley and our other roommate, uh, appropriated it. She took it. It’s hers now. But now it’s Liz’s because then that roommate went to Austin.
Elizabeth: So it’s been around, I guess.
Nicole: But I think it’s original because everything’s in red and in French. So I suspect that it’s very old.

Do you think someone brought it over on a ship from France?
Nicole: That would be amazing.
Elizabeth: I think it flew here.
Nicole: It’s from the seventies. Maybe they didn’t put bikes on planes then.
Elizabeth: I meant with its feathers.
Nicole: Oh, sorry.

How has it been riding it around town?
Elizabeth: Oh well, the brakes don’t really work right now, but it feels nice.

Why did you put the feathers on?
Elizabeth: Because there were here.

posted by Sarah Mirk

In case you haven’t heard, today is the first day of Pedalpalooza, one of the many events occurring this summer to end in the unfortunately anachronistic suffix, -palooza. Join your fellow bike hipsters and lycra clad commuters tonight at Jamison Square (NW 10th and Johnson) at 6:15 for the Kick-Off Parade. If you want to be super-cool or at least mooch a free t-shirt, come to the Mercury offices (605 NE 21st Ave, off of Sandy by Club 21) at 5:30 and bike there with us.

Today’s schedule after the jump.

The new issue of the Merc will be landing at a drop site near you any minute now, and it’s all about bikes, in conjunction with the Pedalpalooza bike festival that kicks off tomorrow. The days ahead are packed with exciting bike events, with literally something for everyone, but my pet favorite is Sunday Parkways, which is gringo for Ciclovía. If you don’t feel like popping over to wiki-world, Ciclovía was started in Colombia in the mid-’70s, and is a community event happening every Sunday and holiday wherein huge swaths of major cities (Bogotá has the largest) are shut off to motor vehicles and everyone walks or bikes. If you can spare 10 or so minutes, this video lays it out pretty comprehensively:

One of the things I love about this idea is that it’s a way of encouraging people to get some exercise, with dance and aerobics classes in addition to the walk/ride/run encouragement. I also think it’s funny (is it bad that I think this is funny?) that when a Colombian congressman (and heavy smoker) tried to pass a restriction limiting the hours of the Ciclovía because it held up traffic, he suffered a cerebral hemmorage during the hearing and died later that day. Haha… heh… er, never mind.

Portland’s pretty proud of itself these days for its flashy Platinum bike city status, but our Ciclovía is puny compared to to Bogotá’s (or Guadalajara’s, Quito’s, Sydney’s, or even El Paso’s), but it retains many of the same elements, with entertainment (DJs, the Sprockettes), food vendors (so many), and yes, exercise classes (yoga, martial arts… I so wish the Sprockettes were teaching an aerobics class. Maybe next time?). Everyone I know is feeling so stressed out and beleaguered right now that this kind of utopic event feels like a lifeline of hope that the future can be more than a big pile of doo-doo butter. It goes down in N Portland on Sunday June 22nd, and you can peep the deets here.

Today is this first installment of our new blog serial: Sexy Bike. Every Wednesday a new Sexy Bike featuring a mini-interview with one sexy bike owner and an untold amount of high-quality bike porn. Please mark your calendars appropriately.

This Week: The Whole Shebang

Rider: Ian Shadle
Bike: Bianchi Brava with Shimano 105 set throughout, Brooks saddle.
Spotted at: New Season’s on NE 33rd and Killingsworth

How did you acquire this bike?
I saw it on Craiglist. My frame cracked on my other bike, so I was just going to get a new frame but then I found the whole shebang. I like the color scheme: black and celeste green.
I think the two sexiest things about this bike are the seat and the toe straps.
The saddle was a present from my dad. The pink toe straps I got in San Francisco when I was a barista. If the saddle was pink, that would be good.
Are you protective of your bike?
Yeah, I’ve never had a bike stolen and I don’t want to. My other bike I won’t let my friends ride.

posted by Sarah Mirk

On this cloudy day last year, a car hit bicyclist Tim O’Donnell on a rural Washington County road. The car’s driver was not only uninsured, the state had suspended her license, she’d gone to Idaho and surreptitiously obtained a new one, then been in an accident with the new license before finally fatally crashing with O’Donnell.

Now, O’Donnell’s widow, Mary, his friends at the Bicycle Transportation Alliance (B.T.A.) and some supportive lawyers have drafted a law to try and close the legal loopholes that keep drivers with suspended licenses on the road.

Here’s Mary at B.T.A’s press conference this morning - that pin is a photo of her husband.

Oregon is one of only four states without a vehicular homicide law, which means that if a “witless” but not technically “reckless” driver (in the words of BTA’s lawyer, Ray Thomas – “reckless” has a precise legal definition which includes drunks and drag racers, but not a driver whose license has been suspended multiple times or is uninsured) runs over a pedestrian or biker, the courts can’t charge them with homicide or manslaughter.

The B.T.A’s proposed law would change the legal code so that drivers with no insurance or suspended licenses who kill bikers or walkers would be charged with a class B felony – the same as criminally negligent homicide. ”Death, fault, driving without a license – those things add up to vehicular homicide,” explained Thomas, simply. Basically, the Bike Alliance wants the legal system to recognize that cars themselves have seriously dangerous potential, so driving one without a license or insurance could potentially be considered homicidal.

“Right now, the situation is if you have a suspended drivers license and you get pulled over, the penalty is, they suspend your drivers license. And then the second time that that happens, they suspend your drivers’ license. And it just keeps going like that,” said BTA government relations director Karl Rohde at this morning’s press conference announcing the idea for the law, “We need a law that takes these drivers off the road… they need to be taken out of society.”

Right, so it’s great that O’Donnell’s family and bikers around Portland are being proactive about changing a situation they think led to his death, but will a law like this which is punitive rather than preventative actually help keep bikers safer? Or will it just funnel more people into our (overcrowded, expensive, dehumanizing) prisons?

In preparation for next week’s Bike Issue, here’s a cool video about bikes:

Thanks to local blogger My Dog Is Chelsea for the link.

Last week you may remember, the Reverend Phil Sano made an appearance on Blogtown with his bike made from the door of a police car. This week, he’s sent me the trailer for his Bike Porn event, which will be taking place at the Clinton Street Theater on June 13th. I just watched the trailer, and, well, “boundaries will be crossed,” indeed. It’s not safe for work. Or your lunch. But click here to check it out, when you eventually decide curiosity trumps restraint. Ah, just click it already…YOU CANNOT WIN.

It’s supposed to hit 90 degrees this week (!), meaning bike season for even the fairweather fans is right around the corner. Right on time to start catering to the higher number of pedaling people on the roads is Bike Farm (1303 NE Roselawn), a bike repair collective that is having its grand opening this Saturday from 11 am-6 pm, a block party with beer, bands, food, and workshops. Operating on membership fees ($50/yr, $20/mo, $5/hr, or $100/lifetime), the space provides easy, cheap access to tools and bike repair education in a relaxed environment—there’s a profile of the founders, and their mission, on BikePortland.org. They hope to expand quickly to a more permanent location and more hours (they’re only open Sat-Mon out of the gates), so if you’re into what they’re trying to do, now’s the time to show your support.

May is Bike to Work Month. There are festivities throughout May, including tonight’s Mocktails on the Bridge. From 4:30 to 7 pm on the eastbound span of the Broadway Bridge, sip delicious drinks—courtesy of Shift—while perched on your two wheels.

Throughout the month, there are events like a free breakfast in Pioneer Square, a beginner’s lunchtime ride, a party at the downtown Bike Gallery, tea on the Steel Bridge, and a breakfast on the Steel and Hawthorne Bridges to cap off the month. Check it all out below—but more important, dust off your bike and ride it!