This issue comes to you from Berlin! I picked up my son & daughter at Schiphol Saturday morning after a wonderful dinner with Erik from Old Man Mountain & Koji & Kyohei Japanese distributor Intertec the night before.

Well, Otto & Mira's flight was delayed; we missed some trains & ultimately missed Mini Bike Fest. 😭 Quite the bummer, but I've been excited to help promote this show as the groundswell for smaller cargo bikes and, frankly, small wheel bikes in general has been

So, despite missing our trip's initial highlight, we decided to keep our spirits high for the night & rolled on our Bromptons directly to Rad Race. Sharing events like this with my kids is something special to me & appearing in some finish-line cameos is super sweet. Shout out to Kasia & Bregan for making sure our tickets were ready when we arrived! Awesome to see so many friends, new & old there, too! Kudos to the Rad Race team for staying fixie & keeping this event alive!

I'll be largely offline today & tomorrow, exploring Berlin with my kids to then return to Amsterdam together by night train on Tuesday. So far, we hit up the Mauer Park flea market for vinyl, Greifswalder DIY skatepark, and, of course, the Brandenburger Tor. Snaps & clips from our trip are here.

Thank you for reading & wishing you a nice start to the week!

Jon

p.s.

I'm looking forward to attending Cyclingworld later this month and hope to see you there there. : )

March

• 🇳🇱 23 Cycle-Run-Cycle w/ Gregario
• 🇳🇱 27 Movie Night at Gregario
• 🇩🇪 28-30 Cyclingworld Europe (Let's meet there!)

April

• 🇳🇱 5 Wheelrunner New Location Opening Party
• 🇳🇱 12 12hr Alleycat
• 🇪🇸 24-27 Border Bash Aragón

May

• 🇪🇸 1-4 The Traka

Bikes

The Bike Industry Is Broken – It Needs More Density and Less Sprawl

The Dust-Up: The Bike Industry Is Broken – It Needs More Density and Less Sprawl

As the bike industry deals with the post-pandemic trials and tribulations, John’s penned a Dust-Up in which he believes it is broken and begs it to learn from its mistakes as we enter a new era of tariffs and potential economic uncertainty. Read on for a reflective piece about the things he learned during his architecture education and how they apply to the current paradigm of extractive consumerism in the cycling industry. Urbanism: On Sprawl Versus Density I feel like a broken record when I talk about how this website came about. In 2006, I first started documenting cycling culture…

The RadavistJohn Watson

"Prior to the pandemic, no one went into the bike industry in hopes of striking it rich. These talented people were running the industry because they really loved bikes. Anyone willing to take their industrial design, engineering, marketing, or business degrees and seek employment in the bike industry isn’t in it for riches. They work in the bike industry because they fucking love bikes." – John Watson

Serotta Cycles: The Ride of Your Life

Even More Mini Bike Fest Snaps from Josh Meissner

Ideas

Could 2025 be the breakthrough year for the longtail in the Netherlands?

Could 2025 be the breakthrough year for the longtail in the Netherlands? - International Cargo Bike Festival

By Jos Sluijsmans, Director of the International Cargo Bike Festival [...]

International Cargo Bike Festival

NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider 'Scientific Exile,' French University Says

NASA, Yale, and Stanford Scientists Consider ‘Scientific Exile,’ French University Says

“We are witnessing a new brain drain.”

404 MediaEmanuel Maiberg

Is your Instagram video making money for anyone apart from Instagram?

Friends

The Standert Bicycles Story on The Business of Cycling

Congrats to Escape Collective on Their 2 year Birthday!

Speaking of Escape, Caley's Op-Ed on why Outside’s failures don’t suggest the demand for quality journalism is dying.

There’s a wildfire outside

Media veterans are demanding their names be removed from Outside Magazine’s masthead. How did we get here?

Escape CollectiveCaley Fretz

Radness

Announcing Wildcard Cycling Rally

Thank you very much for reading!
Here's to spinning smaller wheels this week!