Chrome Metropolis Messenger Bag review

I briefly mentioned in a February post that I had a new messenger bag from Chrome to try out. Now that I have been using that bag, their Metropolis model, for a couple of months, I can say that I really do like it a lot. Previously, I was commuting with a North Face messenger bag, which you can see in one of the pictures below. I was fine with that old bag until I got the new one from Chrome, so I want to point out a few of the reasons why I prefer this new bag after a few months of use.

First, I have to say that I love the way this Chrome bag looks. The two tone color scheme, the reflective straps, the black and red logo, and of course the distinctive buckle all make for a really nice looking bag. Certainly aesthetics are subjective, but I think this bag looks a lot better than my old one. Quite a few color combinations are available to choose from. I chose black with the white interior and accent, because it is not too flashy and still looks stylish. Once I get to work, I basically use the bag as my briefcase, so I didn’t want one with really bright colors. Still, I think the white accent stripe improves the visibility a bit over a solid black bag. Speaking of visibility, I added the flashing light that you see in the pictures. There is a strap sewn in that spot, so transferring over one of the clip-on lights from old bag was pretty easy to do.

You can see from the pictures that this bag is quite a bit wider than my old one. With a capacity of 2000 cubic inches, it will definitely hold a lot of stuff (and it gets pretty heavy when that stuff is beer…or so I have heard). Chrome’s Kremlin messenger bag is even larger at 3000 cubic inches, but this Metropolis holds more than I need for my average ride to work. The bag is about 26 inches wide, considerably wider than my North Face bag, so I like the fact that I can fold my work clothes and pack them side-by-side. I usually have file folders, my sketch book, and other items for work stashed behind the clothes, so it is nice to be able to pack everything as flat as possible. Once the bag is loaded, and secured with the cross chest stabalizer strap, it wraps around my back nicely. It took a little getting used to, but I prefer the stabilizing strap, which passes under my arm and buckles to the shoulder strap, to the traditional waist strap setup on my old bag. The North Face bag shifted on my back from time to time, but that has not been an issue with the Chrome bag. Trust me, stability is a big deal for anything that is strapped to your back while riding, so that is a big plus to me.

One feature that I didn’t consider before, but have grown to like, is the white interior of this bag. My old bag had a black interior, and it sort of became a black hole. I would put something small in it a work, forget about it, and then not notice it when I opened the bag at home. With the bright white interior (and I assume it would be the same with some of the colored interiors) the contents of the bag are more visible at first glance. It is also worth noting that the thick tarp material, which makes up the weatherproof interior liner and the accent stripe, is really tough stuff. After a few months of use, I expected the white interior to get dirty, but it wipes clean and still looks like new.

As you can tell, I really do like this bag. It is one of those products that I like more and more as I continue to use it. There was one thing about it that bothered me when I first started using it though…the absence of a handle on top. I was used to carrying my old bag by the handle after I arrived at work and changed clothes. Now that I have used this bag for a while though, I don’t mind always carrying it by the shoulder strap. If you feel like you need a handle in addition to the shoulder strap though, Chrome has other products like their Laptop bags and the Messenger Packs, which do have handles on top.

I haven’t tried Chrome’s other bags, but I can say that the one I have is a nice design that is very well made from quality materials. I would recommend it without hesitation…and I definitely plan to keep using this one.

Biomega Bamboo in Milan

I am home in Greenville right now, but I really wish I were in Milan for design week. Around the time of Salone Di Mobile and Euroluce, the Italian city is the place to be for anyone with an interest in design. Though the Salone is a furniture fair, at least a few bikes seem to make an appearance each year. In fact, I have posted about bike related products at the show quite a few times on the blog; here, here, here, and here are just a few examples.

Starting this week in Milan, from April 22nd to 27th, Biomega will be displaying the Ross Lovegrove designed Bamboo (pictured here). It will be presented at the Design Library, Via Savona 11, 20144 Milano from 10 am to 10 pm each day. Furthermore, Biomega extends an invitation to all cyclists for a special event this week:

“On Thursday 23rd, Ross Lovegrove, Jens Martin Skibsted, founder of Biomega, and a group of fellow designers will take some of the world’s most beautiful bikes out for a ride - inviting you and all bike enthusiasts with a bike of their own to join them in experiencing Furniture for Locomotion at it’s best.

This spectacular bike ride will start off at the Design Library at 11am and end the same place, where there will be time to have a bite to eat and a drink while discussing the designs of Ross Lovegrove and Jens Martin Skibsted.”

Sounds like fun to me. Let me know if any of you attend the ride and the discussion to follow.

In other bike design related news, Mark Sanders alerted me to an article in the UK Design Council magazine about the Shimano and IDEO research that lead to the Coasting group and bikes like the Trek Lime. It is a short article, but pretty interesting. Take a look here (registration required) or you can read the copy that Mark uploaded to Issuu if you prefer.

Lastly, since I just linked to Mark’s Twitter profile, I will mention that Bicycle Design is now on Twitter as well. I can’t promise that I will update the Twitter feed consistently, but it does seem like a good way to occasionally pass along quick links and ideas that I don’t have time to post on the blog. Follow along @bicycledesign if you are interested and we will see how this twittering (or is it tweeting) thing goes for me.

Zoomla folding bike

Many of you will recognize the name Eric Stoddard. He is the guy who recently wrote three excellent guest posts here at Bicycle Design about his impressions of the Taipei Bicycle Show. Eric has an interesting new design that he just added to his website. It is a small-wheeled, lever-driven folding bike called the Zoomla. He points out the Zoomla folds in 2 seconds and fits in a school locker. I particularly like the optional integrated backpack, which attaches to the frame below the seat. You can read more about the design and see additional renderings on Eric’s website. While you are there, check out some of the other bike and trike concepts on his site, Speed Studio Design. The Trik.E concept is my personal favorite.

In other bike design related news:

Kinya sent me a link to a YouTube video of a Mitsubishi electric tricycle. This design has a roof similar to the one on Torkel Dohmer’s “This Way” concept. The roof on this Mitsubishi trike has integrated solar panels though. Pretty interesting! I wish that I could understand the commentary (in Japanese) on the video.

Speaking of solar panels, Yanko Design posted the Solar Man electric bike concept by designer Chen Weiping. I also spotted this one at Cyclelicious.

Byron, from Bike Hugger, let me know about a design exhibition that many of you may be interested in. The exhibition called “aLIVe: a Low Impact Vehicle exhibition” will take place in Seattle in August. Registration is open now and they are looking for “Functional mechanical prototypes, design drawings, or digital renderings of low impact vehicles.” They want to see new ideas, so “products already widely marketed are not eligible” and “you are not required to have every detail resolved.” Download the pdf here to learn more.

A Pro-E video and assorted links

It is another hectic week for me, so I don’t have time to collect my thoughts and write the post that I would like to write. Instead, I will quickly pass along a collection of links that have come to my attention recently.

Richard, aka Yokota Fritz from Cyclelicious, sent me a link to a Pro Engineer promotional video that uses the mechanical design of a Santa Cruz bicycle to demonstrate the software. The full video is 25 minutes long, but I thought it was pretty interesting.

Kinya sent me a link to this page. He explained that, “in Japan, until recently it was against the law for a bicycle to have more than 2 persons (usually a parent and a child) on it, but that has changed and now it is legal for a parent to have 2 children on a bike.” The bikes in the link all address that ion some way, but Kinya feels like they are “lacking in aesthetic qualities” and could be improved from a design standpoint. He thinks the Danish Nihola is a good design, but that it wouldn't be very practical in urban Japan where storage space is a big issue. Does anyone have any ideas for a compact (maybe folding) bike that can hold an adult and two kids?

Mike forwarded a link to the site for this lever driven bike, which immediately reminded me of the old Alenax bikes. It is also reminiscent of the Lunar Lander design, which I have previously written about on the blog. I have expressed my opinion about lever driven transmissions in the past, so I won’t rehash that here. I did, however, think that it was interesting to see “Bicycling Science” author David Gordon Wilson riding this one on the webpage.

Juan sent me a link to Jud Turner’s Bio-Cycle sculpture, which I also spotted recently on designboom.

Brinkman sent a link recently to an interesting lean steer trike built by Sean Kerrel.

These Spoke POV custom wheel lights are sort of old news, but I spotted them again recently on Cool Hunting. Here is another recent bike related post from that site.

Some of you may have seen the news a couple of weeks ago that Cannondale will no longer be manufacturing any more frames in the US. The plan is to make the Bethel, Connecticut factory into an “Innovation Center” which you can read about in the press release from Dorel.

Finally, I will close with a creativextreme post, which features questions, comments, and a few bike design ideas from a group of 3rd graders. Good stuff from a blog that I think is always worth checking out.

GM/ Segway P.U.M.A.

I am sure that you have all seen the Segway P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility) vehicle by now. The vehicle, which is basically a seated position Segway with an enclosed shell, integrated wireless navigation technology, and a top speed of 35 mph, is slated for development by General Motors in the next few years. It was all over the news and the web yesterday, but take a look here, here, here, here, or here if you somehow missed it. Yeah, I know it is not a bike, so I am venturing a bit off topic with this post, but I think there are a few points about this concept vehicle that are worth discussing here.

To be honest, I was surprised by the overwhelmingly negative comments that I heard about Project P.U.M.A. yesterday. I understand that this design may be an easy target for some people to poke fun at and I certainly was not surprised to hear a few people yesterday mention the failure of the original Segway, code name Ginger, to change the world (as some of the originally leaked hype had foreshadowed). I won’t get into the details of this new design here, but I will say that I am very excited to see that GM is at least realizing the need to think about personal mobility in this way. Obviously though, not everyone feels the same. Someone told me yesterday that Rush Limbaugh talked about the P.U.M.A. on his show. I guess that probably fueled a few of the crazy comments about how this project is a leftist attempt to control the population or something along those lines. Sure, those types of comments are pretty easy to dismiss, but a few of the other recurring comments that I heard and read on the web bothered me a bit.

Quite a few people seem to be focused on safety issues with their criticisms of this vehicle. Even on websites with an environmental focus, comments about crash test data, lack of airbags, and the general danger of driving such a small, slow vehicle seem to be very common. Unfortunately, those types of comments reflect the “survival of the fittest” attitude that many Americans seem to have about driving on our roads. If you want yourself and your family to be safe, you simply buy a bigger SUV, all decked out with airbags and other “safety” features. That way, in an “accident” you can kill someone else instead of them killing you. Yes, it sounds cold when stated that way, but really…how else can you put it. The fact of the matter is that a shift toward smaller vehicles and lower speed limits would make all road users, including cyclists and pedestrians, much safer. In my opinion, criticizing a small urban vehicle because it lacks airbags, crumple zones and whatever other supposed safety features are common in modern cars, just completely misses the point.

As I already said, I can get past many of the negative comments that I heard or read yesterday. I certainly expect some people to resist change as they hearken back to the “good old days” of big cars from GM with chrome bumpers and gas guzzling V8s. I didn’t expect to see such opposition to this idea from cyclists though. OK, scratch that statement- unfortunately I did expect it, but I certainly don’t condone or understand it. There are always those within the utilitarian cycling fold who, in response to a concept like this, adamantly voice their opinion that a bicycle is much better, more efficient, whatever. They sometimes go on to say that anyone who is not willing to ride a bike everywhere (as they do) must be lazy, out of shape, etc. We all know that cycling can be a great way to get around, but I can’t even begin to count how many comments about the P.U.M.A. concept I read yesterday from fellow cyclists who just came across as elitist jerks. Really, does it make sense to criticize an efficient, environmentally friendly vehicle that could be a viable transportation option for much of the population simply because it is not human powered? I doubt that anyone reading this loves bicycles more than I do, but if we don’t realize that there is a need for other safe and efficient forms of transportation, we are only going to continue to alienate ourselves and marginalize cycling as a viable transportation option.

I could probably rant on this subject quite a bit longer, but I had better wrap it up. I will just close with a couple of questions for some of those people who were quick to point out on the web that their “cool fixies” are already way better than this “dumb invention”. Great! I like to get around on a bike too, but does your grandmother also ride a “cool fixie” every time she has to pick up groceries or make a trip to the pharmacy? All I am saying is think about other people before you pass judgment on ideas that don’t appeal to you (at this point in your life at least). Also, would you really rather share the road with a 3-ton SUV or a 300-pound P.U.M.A.? If you disagree, let me know, but I really just don’t understand why so many cyclists seem to feel threatened by ideas like this. Personally, I say kudos to GM for making this project a priority.

Custom Bicycles: A Passionate Pursuit

As Cyclelicious mentioned in a post earlier this month, the 2009 North American Handmade Bike Show was the biggest one yet. That is great news, but it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Notwithstanding current economic conditions, it seems like interest in custom bicycles is at a high point (in recent memory at least). There are many more custom frame builders working today than there were 10 or 15 years ago, and it seems like they are collectively creating a greater variety of bicycle types and styles than ever before. A new book by Christine Elliott and David Jablonka, Custom Bicycles: A Passionate Pursuit, celebrates the work of 39 of those builders from the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, the U.K., and Australia. The book has not yet been released, but you can preorder a copy at Amazon if you are interested.

I have really enjoyed looking though an advance copy of the book over the course of the last few weeks, so I want to share my impressions with you. First, let me say that I do not at all profess to be an expert on the subject of custom bicycles. I have never brazed or welded a complete frame and all of the bikes that I have ever owned, even the old lugged steel ones that were made by hand, have been standard production geometries and sizes. I certainly have an interest in custom framebuilding though. For several years I used to subscribe (mainly as a lurker) to the framebuilders list at phred.org. I was always interested to see how the builders on the list openly shared information with each other. It was also cool to see the exchanges between the well-known master framebuilders on the list and some of the relative newbies who posted questions. It has been several years since I have been subscribed to that list, but my interest in hand built bikes is still very much alive. Anyway, when I first flipped though this book, it was great to see many of the names that I remember from that email list as the featured builders.

If traditional lugs and steel tubing are the only things that come to your mind when you hear the term “custom bicycle”, this book might surprise you. Certainly the book contains profiles of several builders who are primarily (or exclusively) known for creating lugged steel road bikes, but in this book you will also see many very interesting mountain bikes, cruisers, commuters, kid’s bikes, utility bikes, etc. The custom bikes from the featured builders are made from a variety of materials including steel, aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber, and even bamboo. Each of the 39 builders are profiled in separate chapters with a write-up and several pages of pictures. I found it particularly interesting to read how they each got started in framebuilding. In fact, getting to the root of that “passion for the craft” seemed to be a common theme throughout the book and it is something that I think the authors’ did well. In each profile, the reader gets a feel for the builder’s personal philosophy and sees how that philosophy influences the builder’s techniques and material chooses.

Needless to say, I enjoyed seeing the photos of completed bikes, but some of the pictures that interested me the most were the ones of bikes in various stages of the construction process. I also really enjoyed seeing photos of the different workspaces where these frames are created. Not every builder’s space is shown in the book (it is mainly a celebration of the final product after all), but it was interesting to get a peek into the workshops of many of these custom builders.

My only minor criticism (well, really more of an observation) is that the quality of the photography in the book varies. Based on the photo credits, it appears that the builders themselves provided many of the images of their completed bikes. Many of the framebuilders obviously do recognize that good photography makes a huge difference in how their work is perceived, but I was surprised to see a few pictures of custom frames and bikes that were not much better than snapshots. I won’t call out any particular builder, but I certainly would have taken the time to represent my work in the best possible light for inclusion in a beautiful book like this. That said, the vast majority of the builders profiled did submit nice photos, like the shots of the Vanilla that was featured on the cover and in the sample pages shown with this post.

All in all, I think Custom Bicycles: A Passionate Pursuit is a great book that anyone with an interest in bicycles and design will thoroughly enjoy. Of course, that is probably exactly what you would expect to hear from a bike fanatic like me. True, I like to look at bikes more than some, but everyone else who has picked up my copy, cyclist or not, has found it to be quite interesting. Phil Liggett made that same point in his foreword when he wrote; “You will love browsing through this book, even if you have little or no interest on cycling.” In addition to those of us who already love bicycles, I really do think this book will appeal to other who appreciate art, design, and craftsmanship. Who knows? It may even introduce a few of those people to the joy of cycling.