A Bike Campaign Not Approved of By Cyclists
February 5th, 2008
In time for fashion week, clothing company DKNY has chained up a number of bright orange bikes emblazoned with their logo around the city. The idea was to promote cycling in New York City as an environmentally sensitive and healthy means of traversing the city. But the reaction to the campaign was less than positive, with a bit of an online uproar. Many cyclists were none too happy with the fact that some of these bikes were chained to trees, which damages them, and a lot of them felt the painted bike idea was offensive to the white painted ghost bikes meant to memorialize cycling deaths. The idea of trying to get models to ride bikes seems to BikeBlog like “something more out of Zoolander.” And a photo of one of the bikes in the trash on NYCBikePolo does a good job of summing up their feelings. Even the NYPD wasn’t a fan, as this photo of them hauling off of a number of the orange bikes would seem to suggest. In the meantime, the city has seen the highest number of cycling deaths in at least eight years, but Streetsblog has some questions about the numbers released by the city.
Image from rollingrck’s photostream.
By Mike Muller on February 5, 2008, 2:41 pmIn category: Environment, Health, Transportation
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February 6th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Sigh.
I try not to let guerrilla marketing keep me up nights, but bike parking spots (and trees) are hard enough to find in this town. I don’t really need to share space with DKNY gimmicks.
I also try not to get too stressed out about bikes locked to trees, but it is really hard on the tree. The Parks Department does a good job of explaining why it isn’t okay. It isn’t.