Anna Brones is a journalist and author of Hello, Bicycle, Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break, and The Culinary Cyclist.
Theme music is by Will McKindley-Ward.
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Elly Blue traveling Portland by Bike.
Bike activist, writer, and previous Bicycle Story interviewee Elly Blue has a new project in the works called PDX by BIKE. She and business partner Meghan Sinnott are working to create a bicycle travel website and publish a companion guide book that helps bicycle tourists rent bikes, see the best sights, find the best way to get to said sights on bike, and attend the best bike events around Portland, Oregon. In their own words:
It’s a travel guidebook, but with a twist. You know all the good stuff at the front of most guide books about local history, catching the bus, which bridges you can bike over, and tips for doin’ it like a local? That’s what’s in our printed guide–but geared towards bikers.
Meanwhile, all our specific listings—like where to rent a bike and what awesome events are going on while you’re in town—will be on the web where they’ll never be out of date. Don’t worry, the printed version tells you the places you can go to use the web.
If you want even more tips for your trip, we’ll send you a custom itinerary based on your interests, complete with bike routes to get there.
The guidebook will be locally printed and full of gorgeous images by local “drawist” Matt Gauck. It will be bursting with our years of observations and collected tips. It is our hope that with this book on hand anybody on any budget can hop off the train in Portland and immediately be biking like a local.
Elly and Meghan are currently crowdsourcing funding for the publication of the companion travel guide. Check out their Kickstarter page, watch their pitch video, and see if this is the sort of bikey project you want to support.
Posted in Advocacy, Bike Industry, Everything Else
Tagged elly blue, PDX by Bike, portland oregon bicycling travel guide
Photo by Jim Parsons from cycleandstyle.com
Elly Blue is a bike activist. She also writes a column for Grist, contributes to BikePortland, writes and edits a zine she started called Taking the Lane (the first issue of which I reviewed for PubliCola this summer), went on a nationwide speaking tour, and organizes bike events, meetings, and conferences. She paused for a moment to tell me about her foray into bike activism, some of the barriers women face in cycling (and in life), and why Portland isn’t always the biketopia it’s cracked up to be.
Posted in Advocacy, Interviews
Tagged activism, bike advocacy, bikeportland, elly blue, grist, taking the lane