A chic couple in Amsterdam.Photo: Marc van WoudenbergCheck out our Cycle Chic slideshow. Back in 2006, Mikael Colville-Andersen took a picture in Copenhagen of a group of bicyclists waiting for the light to change. One woman in particular stands out: smartly dressed, wearing a stylish skirt, she is silhouetted against the light, poised to move forward. Colville-Andersen, who blogs at Copenhagenize and Copenhagen Cycle Chic, says this is "the shot that launched the movement" of Cycle Chic (yes, he's trademarked the phrase). What is that movement about? Well, here's how Marc van Woudenberg, of kindred spirit Amsterdamize, explained it to …

The Cycle Chic movement, started by Mikael Colville-Andersen of Copenhagen, took off in 2006. It’s about the "rehumanification" of cycling. Open your closet, find something you like to wear, get on the bike, and go. Learn more.

Think you've got a good idea of what a New York firefighter is like? Or a New York biker? Well, get ready to reexamine some of your stereotypes, if you've got 'em. Sarinya Srisakul is the FDNY's first Asian-American woman firefighter (she also happens to be a vegan). She rides her bike to work 10 miles from Elmhurst, Queens, to the East Village in Manhattan, because it gets her there faster than the subway, it keeps her in shape, and she loves it. Srisakul's story is the first in a series Streetfilms is doing for Bike Month in New York …

It's pretty impressive that we're still chugging along on human-powered vehicles only a step more high-tech than a velocipede -- olde-tyme bikes look basically like the ones we've got today. Why improve on perfection, right? Well, maybe just for the sheer badassery of it. At least, that seems to be the theory behind the Alpha, a high-tech bike designed by UPenn students that is basically a jetpack on wheels. The Alpha is an engineer's wet dream. Among its features: Lightweight carbon-fiber frame (lighter than a steel frame, even with all the added gadgetry) Onboard computer and handlebar display with real-time …

No war for oil, and no action for climate, says Ron Paul.Photo: Gage SkidmoreRon Paul kicked off his presidential bid on Tuesday, in the customary loosey-goosey exploratory-committee way. As standard-bearer for the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, the U.S. rep from southeast Texas has a small but diehard following. His fans will make some racket in conservative circles, as during his 2008 run, and he still won't have a chance in hell of winning the GOP nomination, as during his 2008 run.  Paul's government-can-do-no-right philosophy leads him to oppose energy and farm subsidies -- something many green-minded people can …

This is the fifth column in a series focusing on the economics of bicycling. Libya. Bahrain. Iraq. Afghanistan. Canada. Fukushima. North Dakota. The Gulf Coast. Pennsylvania. Each of these stories stands alone as an urgent parable about our increasingly fragile reliance on affordable, plentiful energy. Take them together, and the myth of abundant fuel that our economy relies on falls to pieces all at once. What if there were some source of energy that could replace a substantial part of our current consumption? One that didn't rely on coal, or on corn, or on fast-track investment in renewables? One with negligible …

Speeding to its destination.Photo: Mikael Colville-AndersenSo the Danes do bicycles better than just about anybody else in the whole wide world. We knew that already, thanks in large part to the efforts of Mikael Colville-Andersen, who blogs at Copenhagen Bicycle Chic and Copenhagenize, documenting his city's stylish and sensible bicycling populace. The latest entry on Copenhagenize takes bicycle culture to a whole new level. It is a cargo bike custom-designed for a local sperm bank in the shape of ... a sperm cell. Colville-Andersen writes: Nordisk Cryobank (European Sperm Bank)is one of Europe's leading sperm banks and the company was …

College acceptance letters should be piling up right about now, and the League of American Bicyclists has put out a list of the country's most bike-friendly universities. Here's the top 12 (the ones they rated Platinum, Gold, or Silver): Platinum: Stanford University Gold: University of California, Davis University of California, Santa Barbara Silver: California State, Long Beach Colorado State University Portland State University University of Arizona University of California, Irvine University of Minnesota, Twin Cities University of Oregon University of Washington University of Wisconsin, Madison So while the ivy-covered halls of academe on the East Coast tend to dominate academic …

There's more of this in Tokyo these days.Photo: Byron Kidd Shortly after last month's disastrous earthquake and tsunami in Japan, we posted a dispatch from Tokyo by Bike blogger Byron Kidd (@tokyobybike) about how more people were biking to work in the quake's aftermath. Today, The New York Times has a story about how the uptick in bicycle commuting seems to be persisting in the weeks following the tragedy: [Shigeki] Kobayashi, director of [a] bicycle advocacy group, regularly counts the number of bikers passing by a busy boulevard that leads to downtown Tokyo. On a day last November, he counted …

Well, if supporters of the Prospect Park West bike lane in Brooklyn are a bunch of terrorists (as some bike-lane opponents might have it), they are very effectively disguised as cute little kids and their parents. Streetfilms has the evidence. Yesterday, hundreds of bike lane supporters showed up to ride the controversial lane, which has become the target of a lawsuit filed by neighbors seeking to have it removed. (Full disclosure: some of the material filed as part of the suit consists of nasty comments from Streetsblog, a website where I used to work.) The lane's opponents say it is …