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| Mad scientist of the bicycle
world, Søren Sogreni |
| Photo by Kevin Lambert |
In London, you can walk across town at four mph,
noticeably faster than a taxi (2.9 mph). It’s
so congested with cars that the Lord Mayor has just
initiated an “entrance fee” for cars coming
in. These are the sorts of conditions that brought
about bicycle messengers.
In Copenhagen, everybody goes as fast a bicycle
messenger. You can bike across the entire city in
45 minutes. In Copenhagen there are over one million
bicycles, one for each resident.
Bikes are used for light transport; the special
“Christiania Bike” has a carrying space
built in the front, which carries cargo or children.
(Two fit inside easily.) Bikes are used as taxis
-- they’re called rickshaws and they look and
function exactly like those in South Asia. There
is a new, German-made fiberglass bike that is covered
against the rain, and looks like a snail. In a new-age
version of skywriting, bikes are even used to pull
advertising poles. Every new street must have a
bike lane built in. Even in the smallest town there
is a bike repair shop.
Bikes have their own lanes and traffic signals,
and everybody obeys them. Stop in a line and you’ll
see little old ladies, adjusting their hatpins,
business-suited bureaucrats with their briefcases
in baskets, tourists almost giddy with delight,
as though they are being initiated into a tribe
of aliens, young women wearing short skirts and
families on tandems. The minister of Environment
has an official bike that goes with the office,
and is parked in a special slot inside his building.
Denmark has a horrid automotive rush hour coming
into the city from the suburbs and countryside,
but once you’re in the city, it seems to lighten.
Cities like Copenhagen and Odense may be the only
cities in the world where the pollution lessens
inside the city limits.
There is even a company that designs bikes with
Viking horns on the handlebars.
Sogreni of Copenhagen designs, develops and markets
the avant-garde in handmade bikes to the “aesthetically
conscious bicyclers.” Their customers are generally
architects and designers, who make up a sizable
portion of Denmark’s professional class.
They sell 150 bikes a year, tops. “We sell
a lot of bike equipment, export a lot,” says
Søren Sogreni, CEO and bike mechanic. “Nice
items in designer stores, for gifts and the like.
We are not snobbish and we repair any bike. It’s
so complicated to make these, and Danes are not
prepared to spend the money. Germany is our biggest
customer, and quite a few individual bikes go to
the United States.
“None of the parts are standardized and they
don’t get stolen,” says Søren Sogreni.
“We make a lot of things ourselves. No brand
names -- without that, the thieves cannot sell them.”
“We have two on display on Louisiana (Modern
Art Museum),” he says. The company is coming
up with a sidecar that slides off to become a baby
stroller.
Recent immigrants are not noted for cycling. This
won’t help the immigrants with their natural
allies, the liberals, but it’s true. It’s
also understandable. Coming from what Aldous Huxley
called “the classical view of nature,”
which sees a beautiful landscape as merely an obstacle,
and products of impoverished societies where a car
is not seen as a smoke-belching dinosaur, but a
prestigious triumph of design, they will skip lunches
for years to be able to ride around in one.
City bikes
Copenhagen has a city bike program, like the white
bicycle program Amsterdam has sponsored on and off
since the 1960s. The state sets up parking areas
and stocks them with 2,000 specially designed bicycles,
with spokeless wheels and (allegedly) puncture-proof
tires. The traveler puts a 20-kroner coin into a
slot that releases the key. Then one is free to
ride it anywhere. Journey’s end is another
hitching area (Copenhagen has 125 of them) where
it is locked up again. The coin is returned when
the bike is locked.
Bikes make a big city, so often unappealing with
traffic noise, an engaging place to stroll and live
in. But even Copenhagen isn’t a bicycle fairyland.
You’d never think it, looking at a rush hour,
but only three percent of the entire country bikes
to work. The important thing, though, is that you
can do it if you want to. It’s perfectly safe
and acceptable to be seen pedaling. Nobody thinks
you’re having cash flow problems or some kind
of a health nut.
One of the most prominent people in the country,
U.S. Ambassador Stuart Bernstein, describes bicycles
as “Fabulous. I love to see them and ride them.
My entertainment is watching the bikes. It makes
you happy.”
Visit Sogreni online: www.sogreni.dk
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