Bill Gurstelle is a Contributing Editor for MAKE magazine. His most recent book is entitled Absinthe & Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. You can follow Bill on his danger-quest at twitter.com/wmgurst. He is a guest Make: Online author for the month of August.
My friend Zina Saunders’ beautiful illustrations show a part of New York many people never see, in her wonderful website called Overlooked New York. There are brightly-rendered drawings of cricket players, urban astronomers, and rooftop pigeon keepers. But my favorite is one particular group of accomplished makers.
They are the Puerto Rican Bike Men. Zina explains who they are on her website:
“The Puerto Rican Bike Men .. .. have their own aesthetic, one that the mainstream culture knows nothing about. Their bicycles are their personal vision of beauty and art that they are always tinkering with, perfecting and adjusting and planning and applying, and then riding down the street for everyone to see.”
View all the bikes at http://www.overlookednewyork.com/schwinn/
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