Bikes as sculpture

The eyes of 1,800 people were big and slightly glazed at the World Forestry Center last weekend in a small, dim hall, where they joined together for some milling and grinning, waiting patiently to try and get just a little closer for a look, and maybe even a touch of the art on display.

Touching was okay at the first Oregon Handmade Bicycle Show, though almost all the displays were so shiny and expensive that it seemed a little risky at first.

The event came just four days before the third annual BikeCraft expose–a type of bazaar for bike lovers. At the forestry center in Washington Park, visitors were already talking about touring bags, fanny packs and felt gloves they wanted to buy for winter touring.

Portland loves useful art, from craft cupcakes to fine home-brewed beer. The life-size Zoobomb sculpture near the door, which included information and invitations to sail down the hill from the zoo with helmets and lights, was one of the displays that received the most attention. The Dropouts, who also stole the limelight with their dinosaur-tall bicycles and re-created bin fire, then hung around answering questions from several elderly women who wanted to know just how one gets on and off that bicycle.

Last week, the whole cycling community was buzzing after the New York Times featured Portland bicycle builders and the incredible nature of a place that can survive financially on an art, when it room for only small businesses of one or two employees.

Several of the builders present at the show are just starting in the field. Jordan Hufnagel, a builder who moved to Portland three years ago, smiled and waved happily as people streamed into his display, admiring an exceptional small-framed yellow track bicycle with classic low drop bars.

Sweetpea builder Natalie Ramsland started her business about two years ago. The waiting list for her products is now nine months long. In October, Patagonia arranged to have some Sweetpea bikes on loan for their display cases downtown (there’re still there!) Elevated on the walls inside the store, the bicycles look like artifacts of a steeped tradition, which is an interesting take on Ramsland’s bicycles. They’re custom-built bikes for women, and meant to commute and haul-or act as a model for how to totally replace motor vehicles.

The stance is a radical one, important to many of Oregon’s custom builders. Iran Ryan, another builder who started in 2005, displayed carefully detailed bicycles with throwback elements that incorporate the French idea of touring bicycles as a total picture of frame, accessories and panniers in functional and stylistic harmony.

Near Ryan’s display was John Ahearne, another Portland custom-bicycle builder, who got started making a flask holster, which was so immediately popular that Ahearne started designing and building a wide series of frames. The frames cover everything from mountain to track bicycles, and they all have unique touches of the builder who agonizes over every detail from his shop near the Wonder Ballroom on Northeast Russell Street in Portland.

When I visited Ahearne’s shop a few weeks ago, he had a dusty pricelist on the wall for tiny brazing feats, such as $10 an eyelet or small fees for paint retouching. His custom racks, with sustainable hardwood bases and smooth U-lock holsters, have a four- to five-month waiting list. Even so, Ahearne’s still ready for small jobs such as shop brazing, which is a huge service for people trying to alter their own bicycles, because many who can not afford a custom frame with functional trimmings still rely on two wheels to handle all of their transportation and hauling needs.

Oregon custom builders and designers make bicycles that integrate art, life and politics, but they come at a cost. Complete custom bicycles usually hover somewhere between $2,000 to $4,000, and some of the displays at the forestry center had price tags as high as $6,000 and $7,000. Even a company such as Co-Motion, in Eugene, which started as a small maker of tandem bicycles and now ships a full line of bicycles made by a shop of employees, have custom prices on their standard models.

Bike Friday, also out of Eugene, makes portable bicycles. The models are nothing like the appealing eye candy of stylish designers who build one bicycle at a time for an individual. But they do encompass the spirit of adventure and livability that Susan B. Anthony noted when she famously wrote that bicycles have done more for the emancipation of woman than anything else.

At the forestry center, Bike Friday staff were excitedly demonstrating the “Tikit,” a model that flips from open to folded and back again with the flick of a wrist. It has a convenient handle for wheeling the folded contraption onto public transit. The model is specifically designed for people who live just far enough not to walk to public transit, but have lifestyles that don’t allow them to go out every day totally outfitted for riding, which is most people, especially outside Portland. Bike Friday’s other models on display were set for air travel or long tours incorporating train rides, with the idea that bicycles are viable for everyone and can help people utilize other non-car forms of transit without needing a ride to the bus stop or the airport.