David Byrne, long a bike enthusiast and proponent of this auto alternative, releases Bicycle Diaries, a new book described by the Los Angeles Times as "a two-wheeled travelogue from a keen cultural observer." He also begins an eight-city panel tour—Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around—to discuss these issues. As New York magazine explains, "If the conventional idea of the artist is as a kind of highly specialized genius, Byrne prefers to be an omnivore."
As many a New Yorker who's kept an eye out for such things might tell you, stranger things have happened than to see David Byrne go riding by on his bike now and again. Byrne has long been a proponent of the man-powered means of transport as one of the better ways of getting around town and through the city's congested streets. In the past few years, he has, among many other things, made a bike-cam video of his ride through New York to participate in a New Yorker festival discussion on bike use (watch the video in the Nonesuch Journal); appeared on the Sundance Channel's Big Ideas for a Small Planet talking up efforts to make cities more bike friendly; put his own spin on public bike rack designs; and just this summer, given a concert in Brooklyn's Prospect Park that included the first-ever large-scale bike parking area at a New York cultural event.
And now he's published Bicycle Diaries, a new book described by the Los Angeles Times as "a two-wheeled travelogue from a keen cultural observer." For Byrne, the bike is both a literal and figurative vehicle to comment on the many places he's been and the many interests he's explored along the way. For as New York magazine's Hugo Lindgren writes in a feature profile of the singer, songwriter, artist, and biking-evangelist, "If the conventional idea of the artist is as a kind of highly specialized genius, Byrne prefers to be an omnivore." Read the article at nymag.com.
To mark the book's publication and expand the conversation on biking, Byrne begins an eight-city talking tour of cities across the United States and Canada tomorrow evening in his hometown of New York, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble. After New York are dates in Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Ottawa, and Toronto. Each stop on the tour, titled Cities, Bicycles, and the Future of Getting Around, will feature a panel discussion among a civic leader, an urban theorist, a bicycle advocate, and Byrne, followed by an audience Q&A. For the list of cities and venues, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Back on the music front, David Byrne's appearance on the UK performance show Later...with Jules Holland airs this evening on Ovation TV. For more information, visit ovationtv.com.
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