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The DAA's program is only open to artists living within 100 miles of Austin. Submissions are due Sept. 24; winning entries will be selected about a month later, and the DAA hopes to have the sculptures up at locations on the 400, 600, and (tentatively) 800 blocks of Congress Ave. by May 2009. LaBorde said judges will be looking for high aesthetic value, functionality, safety, and a low degree of maintenance. An artist's information session will be held at Arthouse, at 200 Congress Ave., on Sept. 4 from 7 to 8 p.m.
LaBorde said she hopes the three new bike rack sculptures will only be the beginning. "Eventually we hope to have dozens all over downtown and then all over the city," she said. "We'll start on Congress and then radiate out." She also hoped the racks would complement the planned Lance Armstrong Bikeway and Capital MetroRail station at the Convention Center as ways of encouraging non-automobile transportation downtown. The DAA is also looking for input on the project from bicyclists, especially to help them with a potential problem: making sure people know the sculptures are actually bike racks. "We're going to install plaques at the base of the sculptures that say 'bike rack' and take old junk bikes, paint them, and hook them up to the racks when they're unveiled," LaBorde said. "But mainly we want to get the word out and let people know it's OK to lock your bike to the sculptures. We have such a strong community of artists here. We expect the bike racks here in Austin to be even better than the ones in New York."
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These ones in New York?
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/new-bike-racks-courtesy-of-david-byrne/
None of those look very useful. What's the point of installing $10,000 bike racks when you can only lock 2 bikes at a time to them?
Purpose: Art?
If the best NYC can come up with is some stupid-looking stick figures designed by a musician that can't hold more than two bikes a piece, what the hell do you think Austin artists are going to come up with?
And WTF are they spending $10,000 a piece on Fucking Bike Racks when the library, low income housing, and schools are in shambles?
Shit. Give me some rebar and a torch and a $100 and I'll come up with some goddamn artistic looking bike racks. Just don't give me $10,000 for them because then I'd feel guilty about robbing all you gullible fools.
Maybe they can make them out of a reflective blue colored material that will illuminate the sky with a blue glow when the lights from cars reflect...oh wait, we already tried that for the same price.
DAA, Please, Please, Please find a better use for 30 THOUSAND dollars than 3 bike racks.
If you want to beautify downtown, how bout putting that money towards feeding the homeless, cleaning up all the urine, enforcing drug laws?
If you want to promote bicycle commuting, how about buying $30k of real bike racks and putting them throughout downtown and disseminating some pro-bicycle commuting information?
Please tell me Austinites aren't so vain as to blow thirty thousand dollars on something so Austin can look more like New York.
For $30,000 they could put a sign at the airport that says: "Welcome to Austin! No vacancies."
Inspiration came from the program in Louisville.
http://www.ldmd.org/streetscape/bikeracks.aspx
It's better than the one's I've seen in NY and hope their programs looks more like the Louisville one instead.