David Byrne reinvents the wheel

August 13, 8:46 AMSF Bicycle Transportation ExaminerBen Marks

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Would you buy a used bicycle rack for between $10,000 and $20,000 from this man? That's what Pace/MacGill Gallery plans to charge for each of the nine mildly amusing, generic cutout shapes that David Byrne "doodled" in his capacity as a judge for a competition to choose bike-rack designs for the sidewalks of New York. As The New York TImes noted, "much as when George W. Bush asked Dick Cheney to find him a vice president, Mr. Byrne ended up landing the job for which he was leading the search team."

Unlike Cheney, the nation will only have to suffer Byrne's bike racks for a year (364 days, to be exact), after which the winner of the competition will get his or her turn. Which is a good thing, since Byrne's designs are as uninspired as the art he was making a few years back using PowerPoint. They lack the wit of any number of designs by Creative Metalworks, whose Bike Circles (people in Arlington, Virginia, call 'em "lollipops") can be bolted to obsolete coin parking meters that have been replaced by electronic ones. They lack the vision of this car-shaped bike rack in Toronto, which resembles Byrne's "Jersey" but has room for six bicycles and is installed in a parking space, leaving the sidewalk clear for pedestrians. And they lack the general bad-ass attitude of a number of racks in Durham, North Carolina.

Yo, David: Stick to Psycho Killer and playing buildings.

Amount of carbon dioxide not produced since July 10, 2008 thanks to commuting by bicycle: 142.37 pounds