Mark Lewman our CD at Nemo who works on the Nike 6.0 brand came up with the idea of freezing the 6.0 shoes into blocks of ice, so Nike found a rad ice sculptor guy to come out and carve an 8 ft tall Mogan Mid. See below.

Then the kids had at ‘em to see who could be the fastest to thaw out the shoes and win a free pair.

More pics here.

Stop 3 of the AST Dew Tour is in Portland this weekend. And if you are 21+ you can come to the AST After Party - click here for info and to RSVP.

Earlier this year, Portland enhanced its bike-friendly status by becoming the first US city to be designated a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community. In 2006, then Commissioner now Mayor-elect, Sam Adams had launched a nine-part strategy to win that status and called together advocates and community leaders to work toward achieving the goal. Mission accomplished as they say.

There is a problem though. In Portland and across the nation as more people are affected by the high price of gas and switch to the bicycle for their commute tensions are rising between car drivers and cyclists. Along comes a timely new book - ‘Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do’ by Tom Vanderbilt which has been reviewed by Mary Roach, who admits to a map-reading-while -driving induced fender bender in Portland a few years ago. Reading this book may help understand the psyche of the person behind the wheel - human nature is at fault.

For anyone interested in the way traffic flows and why you find yourself sitting in many traffic jams this book seems to be a good read. What follows are bullet points that I’ve pulled from Roach’s review:

01. Traffic jams are not caused by flaws in road design but by flaws in human nature.
02. Gawkers cause a 12.7% increase in traffic slowdown after a crash and the rubberneckers themselves are so busy gawking that they often slam into the car in front of them as it brakes for the driver to get a better look.
03. Drivers will slow down to look at anything, even a couch dumped in a roadside ditch.
04. Starbucks places stores with drive-through lanes on opposite sides of the road to spare drivers the “agony of having to make a left turn during rush hour.”
05. In a 15 block area around UCLA drivers logged on an average day 3600 miles looking for a place to park.
06. Add a new highway and drivers will defect from others to clog it up.
07. Americans won’t accept congestion charging to help reduce traffic.
08. They will accept a surcharge for peak-travel time hotel rooms and airfares though.
09. We think we are good drivers and that’s a problem as we base that on the number of accidents we’ve been in instead of on the number of accidents we narrowly avoid.
10. In ancient Rome, Caesar declared a daytime ban on chariots and carts as traffic was so bad!

And how does this affect bicyclists? Well, Vanderbilt’s research has discovered that drivers pass bicyclists more closely on a road with bike lanes than on one without. And pedestrians can’t win either - more people are killed while crossing in crosswalks than while jaywalking.

The solution appears to be that we should separate cars, bicyclists and pedestrians and also implement a congestion charge on drivers to reduce the amount of cars in cities. Portland seems to be the best candidate for this experiment. Go Sam.

Nike 6.0 at StudioNemo from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

Video of Josh Letchworth shooting 6.0 athletes Ben Horan, Nigel Sylvester and Trevor Jacob at StudioNemo.

Art 4 Life at StudioNemo from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

There’s never a dull day at Nemo but when kids come in the energy level always kicks higher. Here’s a bunch of kids from Art4Life art camp putting together a poster for their class with the StudioNemo crew.

Here at Nemo, we were lucky to be graced by the VP of Business Development at Ning, Rachel Masters on Friday (read Dave Allen’s account here). What’s notable about Ning’s web-based platform is that it that allows you to create your own social network for anything and is fully customizable in almost every way imaginable.

One of the most beneficial elements of Ning I discovered is the option to use your own domain name. In essence, Ning can be built to function as your main website and many corporations and bands have leveraged this option with fantastic results. The band Good Charlotte uses Ning as their main site while Saturn has created an official gathering place for fans and employees of their line of cars.

Speaking of Saturn, they are a sponsor of the Bravo hit show, Project Runway. Now on its fifth cycle, this season features Portland alum Leanne Marshall of the chic Leanimal label. Though she first auditioned for the show in 2007, waiting out a year turned out to be to her advantage. She took the downtime to further develop her point of view and refine her designs and it shows in the crisp yet voluminous designs.

It’s true that Portland is a hotbed of creative talent. And, as the success of Ning and other social networking platforms have shown, connecting with like minded individuals needn’t be a chance encounter any longer. Whether you’re a fan of Saturn cars, Project Runway (or anything else for that matter), the odds are that a social network is only a click away.

An oil rig off the coast of California

Here in Portland I am seeing signs that the price of gas is making a difference in how people get around the city. Bus ridership has spiked, there are less cars on the road during the commuting hours and bicyclists seem to be everywhere. Yesterday as I walked my dog along the banks of the Willamette River, I noticed far more sailboats than the motorized variety. Maybe the price of gas is making Americans think twice before getting into the car? Maybe.

I carpool to the Nemo warehouse and it’s still a drag to see that of those cars that are on the road I’d guess that 95% of them are occupied by only the driver. And don’t get me started on the hypocritical Prius owners who fly past at speeds that exceed the legal limits. And on Sunday’s the Hillsdale Farmer’s Market is filled with people buying fresh, locally-produced organic food while the parking lot and the surrounding streets are crammed with their cars. None of this makes sense. If you’re concerned perhaps you can leave a comment on their blog.

It seemed that once gas went through $4 a gallon and the $100 fill up entered the public’s economic equation we’d see a marked change in the way we would use our energy. Unfortunately that’s really not the case.

Portland is one of the more environmentally-friendly and green cities in North America. If we can’t break the automobiles stranglehold on our city then what hope for other cities that are less friendly toward buses and bicyclists? Portland has also shown strong support for ending the war in Iraq. If we disagree with the Iraq war, and the inevitable future Middle East wars that will be fought over oil and water resources, what will we Portlanders do at home to reduce our dependence on foreign oil?

I argue that if we are unwilling to drastically reduce our gasoline use then it is hypocritical of us to oppose off-shore drilling in California and drilling and exploration in Alaska. We simply can’t have our cake and eat it.

Today, President George W. Bush plans to lift a presidential ban on offshore drilling to combat soaring energy prices, a largely symbolic move unlikely to have any short-term impact on the high cost of gasoline.

Who will stand in his way this time?

Related Post: I’m Sick of the Co-Opting of Green