
Orange bikes like this one in front of an Apple store began appearing in town a couple of days ago. It is fashion week and DKNY is using the bikes to bring attention to themselves and their "Explore the City" campaign, which has something to do with bicycling.
While that is all well and good, chaining painted bikes to poles around town is misguided at best. Since 2005, Visualize Resistance has installed Ghost Bikes, bicycles painted white, as memorials to bicyclists that have died in traffic accidents on the city's streets. Since it's start the Ghost Bike Project has grown to a couple dozen locations in the United States and several other countries.
Regretfully, there are way too many Ghost Bikes in the city. Forty-two are listed on the Ghost Bike website. Some of the Ghost Bikes are in neighborhoods where designers from DKNY would frequent. There are also two Ghost Bikes within a couple blocks of the DKNY offices. Given this you have to assume they didn't come up with the orange bike idea in a vacuum. Someone clearly saw the white bicycles and decided orange would make a great ad campaign.
Adding to their cluelessness is the photo on their web page about riding in the city. They mention safe bicycling and the city's free helmet program. The accompanying photo shows a woman sitting on the handlebars while a guy in long pants rides a bike across a bumpy Belgian block street. Neither rider is wearing a helmet. What is the message we are supposed to take away? Beautiful people do not need helmets? Helmets are not necessary for models because they can't suffer brain injuries?
Although the NYPD usually turns a blind eye to it, it is illegal to chain bicycles to trees, and the police have been removing the DKNY bikes.
Recent Comments