Sign, Fabers Bicycles. San Jose, California. December 26, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Brightly painted red, yellow, white, and black wall on the old Fabers Bicycles building in San Jose California.

The next few photographs are going to represent something a bit different from what I’ve posted recently – e.g. not natural landscape. Today my son and I went out for a two or three hour urban walk in San Jose, California, wandering through some interesting areas around the downtown area including some old neighborhoods and some very old industrial areas that were originally clustered around long gone railroad tracks. To add to the “sport,” I shot only with a 50mm prime. This photograph is a detail of a brightly painted wall on a very old bicycle shop near the downtown area. It is locally famous for its “bicycle mountain” – a huge pile of probably hundreds and hundreds of old bicycles that used to fill the small fenced yard behind the shop. I understand that the city finally made them do something about this rather interesting eyesore, and today there are still lots of old bicycle frames, forks, wheels and other detritus in the yard but it is now more or less organized on tables and hung overhead.

If you are familiar with my landscape photography and this seems a bit jarring, I think of this sort of thing as “urban landscape.” Although it may seem a bit odd to some, I approach this stuff in a way that is not all that different from how I do landscape photography.

This photograph is not in the public domain. It may not be used on websites, blogs, or in any other media without explicit advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

keywords: fabers, bicycles, bikes, shop, schwinn, chicago, yellow, red, white, black, paint, sign, wall, wood, panel, siding, old, historic, downtown, urban, street, california, usa, pedal, wheel, spokes, frame, chain guard, stock