Behind the handlebars
A trip through some of Downtown Portland’s custom bike racks
By William Morton
Scattered throughout the Portland area are a series of non-traditional bike racks.
An eye, a whisk, a car with a steering wheel and even the Fremont Bridge complete with little cars towing boats and trucks cruising the double-decker pavement.
A majority of these custom bike racks are manufactured by long-time creative metalworker Merrill Denney, who, according to Scott Cook and Aimee Wade in their book, “Pdxccentric: An Odyssey of Portland Oddities,” is credited with creating the first artistic bike rack in the United States.
Denney’s bike rack production journey began in the small town of Scholls, Ore., where he frequently biked. His first bike rack was conceived in 1992 while talking to Tom Petrich of Petrich’s General Store in Hillsboro.
After laying his bike on the concrete in front of the store as he had done countless times before, he cheekily asked Petrich when the store would install a bike rack.
“You work with metal, Merrill. Why don’t you make one for me?” Petrich responded.
So he did. His first design, titled “Cruiser Meltdown,” featured the front half of a big yellow handlebarred bike protruding from the side of the general store. A bike rack designed to look like a bike.
Denney remembers thinking that an ordinary bike rack simply wouldn’t fit Petrich’s General Store. “He’s got a cool, funky country store, and needs a kind of retro design for it.”
Since then, Denney has been manufacturing bike racks with his company, Creative Metalwork LLC, that enhance community livability and to increase curb appeal as wells as deterring theft.
Denney’s bike racks have made it all around the United States, from Washington to California to Massachusetts to Florida, but Portland remains home to some of his most interesting creations.
Fremont Bridge
“A lot of my work doesn’t scream bike rack,” Denney said, and the Fremont Bridge bike racks are no exception. It’s easy to look at them and think “urban sculpture,” “artistic rendition” or even “wow, the Fremont Bridge looks so small from here.”
Originally, there were five Fremont Bridge bike racks, but one has since been removed. They were installed throughout the Pearl District as part of a revitalization project in about 2001.
Denney explained that he wanted the bike racks to emulate the sense of flying over the Fremont Bridge in an airplane.
“You’d look down, and you’d see the cars and trucks on a smaller scale going each direction on the different levels,” Denney said.
Along with the double-decker traffic, he installed blue puddles on each end of the bridge to represent the Willamette River.
Denney included small differences in each design, with the goal of eventually partnering with the city and creating a scavenger hunt around the bike racks of the Pearl District. Some of the differences include cars driving the wrong direction, boats towing cars and trucks with a varying number of smokestacks protruding from their roofs.
The four Fremont Bridge bike racks are located in front of the Ecotrust Building, the corner of 10th and Northrup, and two are on Lovejoy between 12th and 13th avenues.
Cool Car
Another rack installed as a part of the Pearl District revitalization project is a 1950s-style car Denney aptly named the “Cool Car.” Conveniently located in front of a parking lot, the Cool Car rack comes fitted with a steering wheel, a non-functioning dashboard and headlight and window holes that look perfect for locking a bike.
He makes all of his bike racks with longevity in mind, but the bumper on this rack pushes that characteristic to the extreme. About 25 years after its installation, the polished stainless steel bumper still shines as if it were brand new.
The Cool Car bike rack is located on Northwest 12th and Hoyt.
Lovejoy Eye
Some of Denney’s bike rack designs appear more traditional.
“Everything I’ve done comes from the perspective of first and foremost a cyclist,” Denney said.
And the Pearl Eye bike rack, as he calls it, is a great example of a bike rack designed by a biker. The Pearl Eye is the third type of rack installed for the Pearl revitalization project, and is based on the age-old “U” rack design. The two base poles sprout from the cement and inside is Denney’s stylized version of the former Pearl District logo.
Denney believes there are about eight to 10 Pearl Eye bike racks, most of them on Lovejoy Street.
Whisk
Unlike the Cool Car, the Lovejoy Eye and the Fremont Bridge, the Saint Cupcake Whisk was privately commissioned sometime before 2011.
Elanor M., an employee at Saint Cupcake in downtown Portland, explained that people take more pictures in front of it than lock their bike to it. Some people find non-traditional uses for the rack, including one resident used the enlarged tines for push-ups and stretches.
The Whisk bike rack is located in front of Saint Cupcake on Southwest 12th and Morrison streets.
Thank you for telling the story about these bike racks/pieces of art.
These delightful bike racks are truly public art! Now, we need to increase our bicycle mode split from a current low of around 2% and make full use of the bicycle infrastructure in Portland.