Box Dog Bikes
My almost-daughter Cara started working this past school year at the Oberlin College Bicycle Co-op, and has discovered she loves getting greasy & fixing bikes. This summer, she was talking to her friend Gabe, who recently started a bike co-op in San Francisco called Box Dog Bikes. As Gabe was telling of some frustrations of being 5 recent college grads opening a business, Cara mentioned that my work is in helping teams & organizations collaborate better. Gabe was interested. So I visited the shop, we talked, and agreed that I’d join their board as their first outside director.
Earlier the next day, before my first Box Dog board meeting, I was teaching a Brands & Branding class at the Miami Ad School (SF campus) and my class needed a new client for the last 4 weeks’ assignment. So I gave them the co-op. The brief? Box Dog Bikes believes cycling can change the world.
The co-operative entrepreneurs at BDB combine bikes & sustainable business practices "to have a net-positive impact on the world" They promote cycling because bikes are better than cars for the air, for traffic congestion, for building local community, because oil = war. BDB’s radical political agenda is to convince students & office folk to commute by cycle. They are happy to be experimenting with an alternative to capitalism.
Its exciting that my class had a real client to present to, and great for BDB to have 6 creative teams working for them. We’re all kind of blown away by how its come together.
Personally, I share BDB’s politics, and I love bikes more than any other way my body can be in motion. So we made a deal about compensation…
They’ve made me a double high bike — yes, two bike frames, one welded on top of the other, so that the seat is almost 5′ off the ground. You have to get it rolling, then climb up like its a ladder, then start pedalling. We agreed my new bike should be ready today, so I can take it to the week-long desert art event-cum-experiment in temporary community called Burning Man.
I love tall bikes, and have been coveting one for years. I picked mine up just now. I can’t wait to attach mylar streamers to the back & ride it hands free into the sunset…