Orange You Glad

Orange is usually associated with the warm and positive, but this bright orange bike was part of an enormously controversial campaign. Timed with fashion week, DKNY chained up dozens of these orange bikes (the logo on this one in the photo is only partly readable) around town. According to the DKNY website, this guerrilla marketing campaign was part of an "Explore Your City" program in support of NYC initiatives to help cyclists. You can see a leggy model riding on the handlebars of a bike on their website. The store was offering free maps in their stores and various bicycling links on their site.
Where's the controversy? Well, many found it too similar to the national Ghost Bike campaign and considered the whole thing a cheap, tacky, publicity stunt (click here for my previous posting on a Ghost Bike in SoHo commemorating Derek Lake). I've skimmed hundreds of comments on numerous blogs and many in the biking community are infuriated - click here for a sample. Many of the bikes were illegally chained and confiscated by the police department. The Gothamist ran a number of articles with photos - click here. In one of them they said: "In our opinion, DKNY has crossed the line from "edgy" to "despicable," by co-opting grassroot memorials to dead people as a gimmick to peddle clothes."
Others, however feel the campaign was not intentional on DKNY's part, just poorly thought out. A DKNY rep wrote “we are very sorry if our well-intentioned ‘Explore Your City’ program offended anyone.”
Orange you glad not to be DKNY? ...