Foldie Foodie Brommie Yummie – Folding Bike Food Adventures in NYC
2019 Ride Dates • Sunday 06/23, Sunday 07/28, Sunday 08/18, Sunday 09/22, Sunday 10/20 • To join the ride, please RSVP via email: foldiefoodie@gmail.com
Until we meet, here are some 2018 Ride Photos 🙂
Our folding bike food adventures usually consist of a group bike ride around 13-19 miles with stops in between for food, fun and interesting conversations. Annually, we organized at least 6-10 group bike rides with an average of 15-20 participants coming from different backgrounds bought together by our love of folding bikes and food. We currently have around 250 people on our email list receiving our group bike ride announcement and I am proud to say that we are one of the most friendly bike clubs/associations/communities.
Typically, Brommie Yummie is Bromptons prefer and Foldie Foodie is for all folding bikes as well as those who are folding bike curious… (this means your friend with big wheels might be able to join us if you let me know in advance to make arrangement 🙂 Time and effort is put into ride preparation, therefore a guide fee of $20 will be greatly appreciated from ride participants to support the designing & organizing of these rides. Questions or RSVP for upcoming rides, please email me at: foldiefoodie(at)gmail.com
Thanks to Tao Jones from WSJ Speakeasy, here’s my 4 paragraphs worth of fame:
I’m far from the only person to have fallen under the folding-bike spell. There’s something about folders that make them eerily addictive. Steve Huang, a graphic designer and avid folder fan, was a well-compensated but unfulfilled insurance broker when he bought his first folding bike, a $100 no-brand model from China. He quickly decided it was too clunky for his purposes, and bought a $400 entry-level Dahon Boardwalk, then moved up to a $550 Breezer i3 — a U.S.-made folder “inspired” by the Brompton. That broke his last shred of resistance.
“I couldn’t help it, I wanted the real thing,” he laughs. “But the starting price on Bromptons is $900. I went home and told my wife that I was thinking of buying another folding bike, and she freaked out. She wouldn’t talk to me all night. Finally, I sold an upright bass I had that I wasn’t playing for $1500, and bought my first Brompton.”
He now has four. He’s quit his insurance job to go back to his first love, graphic design, and to work part-time for David Lam at BFold, New York’s premier folding bike specialist store. And he organizes a regular foodie-folder outing called Brommie Yummie, which brings 30 or 40 Brompton owners together for an all-day ride around the city, punctuated by stops at different restaurants for gourmet nosh. “Our motto is ‘Eat, Bike, Fold,’” he says. Here’s a video of the inaugural ride back on May 23, 2010.
When we discuss why folding bikes are so irresistible, he’s the one who says, “It’s an Asian thing.” Folding bikes make up the majority of the bicycle market in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, driven in large part by space limitations.
“And we all grew up with Voltron and the Transformers,” he notes. “And origami. Folding things is just in our blood. It’s just a part of the Asian collective unconscious”
To celebrate my passions for Tai Chi and Brompton Folding Bike, here’s an interpretation captured by photographer Alex Bitar.
foldie foodie brommie yummie 