Talking Heads eclectic front man, and NYC bike advocate, David Byrne has used a bicycle to get around New York for the past 30 years. Last year, he designed a series of bike racks for the city and next week, has a new book out called the “Bicycle Diaries”. Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne’s book is a journal of his observations and insights, what he sees and whom he has met pedaling through Berlin, San Francisco, Istanbul, Sydney, Buenos Aires, New York and Manila. Byrne is completely fascinated by cities and has a lot of ideas on the way art and music and urban planning interact with one another.Recently, Byrne collected his thoughts for the Wall Street Journal to outline the perfect “livable city”. So what is the perfect city?

“There’s an old joke that you know you’re in heaven if the cooks are Italian and the engineering is German. If it’s the other way around you’re in hell. In an attempt to conjure up a perfect city, I imagine a place that is a mash-up of the best qualities of a host of cities. The permutations are endless. Maybe I’d take the nightlife of New York in a setting like Sydney’s with bars like those in Barcelona and cuisine from Singapore served in outdoor restaurants like those in Mexico City. Or I could layer the sense of humor in Spain over the civic accommodation and elegance of Kyoto. Of course, it’s not really possible to cherry pick like this...”

 - Read the full story on David Byrne in WALL STREET JOURNAL

Just in case all this David Byrne talk has you craving the giant suit…here ya go…(I think I used to wear a suit like that in college…its like 60 minutes on acid)

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