Clever Cycles - Bikes for Living, Not Just Recreating

Funny how things merge and morph. In days of yore we told you about the :Bakfiets cargo from the Netherlands that can also transport kids around. And in the some month we highlighted the Stokemonkey assistance motor for Xtracycle. Last month the two became one. Well, sort of. Cleverchimp, who made the Stokemonkey have gone into partnership with one of their customers for that product, to form Clever Cycles, and together they are importing the Bakfiets to the USA. They plan to open a store in Portland Oregon next month. As Todd of Cleverchimp puts it on his blog “We all want our children to see and understand what we do for a living, to understand that turning 16, or 21, or 42 doesn’t mean you need, or need aspire to a car (if it will even be an option in 2020, 2025, or 2045), and to build a business they can someday run, if they choose. We’re doing something that’s either unprecedented, or whose previous attempts to do in this era, in this country, have failed in silent obscurity. We’re selling bicycles designed squarely to replace car trips, or render cars entirely spurious within town, even for larger households, as a matter of pleasurable, enlightened self-interest instead of frugal compulsion, hairshirt eco-guilt, or body-sculpting fantasy. Exclusively."

"Bikes you can haul your sweetie to the movies with, that he can haul you back home on, and that you’ll both haul your kids to the grocery on. There’ll also be folding bikes for their ability to permeate the smallest interstices of your mobile life, be it under the table at a posh restaurant, through the aisles of local shops, between the seats of a train, or in the trunk of a shared car or cab. Soon there’ll be more hub gearing, generator lighting, center stands, mudflaps, bells, and steely plain-clothes cargo goodness than under maybe any other roof on this continent.” ::Clever Cycles.

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