A desk is born.

Last week I stopped by Bamboo Craftsman where Troy Susan is building the desk for the Pedal Powered Talk Show.  He had just completed the prototype so I headed over with Phillip Ross (of Metrofiets) to check it out.

(L to R) Boaz, Troy, and Phillip inspect the prototype for the Pedal Powered Talk Show.
Photo by MacKenzie Duffy

Needless to say, I was impressed with the design. I've been looking at sketches of this bike for months so seeing a three dimensional version was pretty incredible. This prototype was made of scrap wood and cardboard, but it was very helpful to see how everything fit together.

We discussed a few design additions and Troy said we should have our finished bike by the first week of November. Stay tuned for some construction photos!

Who is the Pedal Powered Talk Show?

So who are the folks behind this project? It's us, silly!

I'm Boaz - a native Portlander who moved away for ten years and moved back to town about a year ago. While I was away I worked in entertainment journalism for a while:

Then I started a project called The Un-Road Trip:

After turning The Un-Road Trip into a TV series on Halogen TV I started a Kazoo Museum in Beaufort, SC  before returning to my hometown to start my next project. If you want to check out all the other shows/projects/schemes I've worked on you can head over to GoBoaz.com for more information.

So I'm working on the hosting and booking and video production side of things, but I don't know much about building fancy bicycles. That's where Metrofiets Cargo Bikes comes in. Phillip Ross and Jamie Nichols founded the company a number of years ago and though they're usually manufacturing cargo bikes they've also been known to get pretty creative:

If you pay attention you may just see one of their cargo, beer, or coffee bikes riding around Portland (or other cities across the globe). Collaborating with Metrofiets has been a blast and I hope this is just the beginning. Stay tuned for the Hot-Tub-Casino-Cycle coming soon!

Hatching the plan...

The idea for some sort of portable talk show has been floating around my head for years, but this past summer it went through an evolution after a conversation with Phillip Ross of Metrofiets Cargo Bikes. We were shooting a few live segments for the morning news on KPTV and we got to brainstorming during the breaks. I was telling him about my idea for a folding desk that could be set up in a variety of strange locations when Phil suggested putting it on a bike. We met up for beers later that week and continued scheming and pretty soon we even had a sketch:

Now I just needed a way to pay for it. So I met up with my pals at KEEN Footwear and they generously agreed to foot the bill for the construction of the Pedal-Powered Talk Show. As I type this entry the above desk/bike fusion is being put together somewhere in the Portland area. Guests and filming locations are starting to get lined up and we're in discussions with a few more sponsors. We're launching in January 2012 and it's going to be exciting. Stay tuned.