Stadsfiets

Built around an alu­minum frame, this Dutch bike fea­tures a single-​​speed, coaster brake, inte­grated solar pow­ered LED head and tal­lights and not much else.

“We were inspired by the good old-​​fashioned Dutch bike,” explains the 28-​​year old Dutch designer Sjo­erd Smit, “we stripped the bike from whims that can only break or cause frus­tra­tion and added inno­va­tion and style”.

The VANMOOF is a thor­oughly mod­ern town bike, and looks noth­ing like the old stads­fi­ets my Old Opa would have built at our fac­tory, (though that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing!) It cer­tainly res­onates with me: I sus­pect cycling is in my blood.

VANMOOF promises a new model every six months, and this is a firm I’ll con­tinue to watch.

Update: Portland-​​based, Specialized-​​owned, Globe Bicy­cles looks to have a small, but grow­ing col­lec­tion of prac­ti­cal and not-​​so-​​practical mod­els for sale. More inter­est­ing than their offer­ing, how­ever, is the run­ning com­men­tary on factory-​​built/​imported bicy­cles vs. locally built by a skilled frame­builder in the post com­ments at the NAU blog. (via Luke Dorny/​@luxuryluke.)