This photo from Core77 appears to show a bike company's booth at Dutch Design Week, and I wondered in print if that bassinet-looking thing was a bike sidecar. Turns out it's a bike frontcar.
As you can see from the photo, it's labeled Gazelle, which turns out to be an old-school Dutch bike manufacturer. And that blue tent thing is the kid carrier on the Gazelle Cabby, which is Gazelle's answer to the increasingly popular Bakfiets, Holland's answer to the minivan.
According to this Dutch Bakfiets blog, Bakfiets en Meer [don't you just love the Internet sometimes?], the Cabby is Gazelle's belated entry into the boxbike market. The Cabby's innovation is replacing a rigid, wooden box with a lighter-weight, collapsible aluminum-and-nylon riding compartment. There are still two spots to hold a Maxi-Cosi infant carrier, too. BeM is not at all impressed with the Cabby, by the way, which debuted at Eurobike 2007 with a pricetag of EUR1300.
As it turns out, Gazelle's bikes are designed by the firm who exhibited at DDW, an outfit called van der Veer Designs. Which explains the stroller concepts rolling around the exhibition hall. Because if I'm reading their corporate site correctly, van der Veer is also the designer of both the Quinny Buzz and the Zapp. It's not just a small world after all; it's a small, flat world that's largely below sea level and that's filled with designers trying to take over the world with their funky bikes and strollers.
Eurobike 2007 Report 2: Gazelle Cabby bakfiets (MPB) [bakfiets-en-meer.nl]
Previously: Bakfiets: Dutch family bike for the fellas, keg-hauling bike sold separately
Bakfiets comes to New Amsterdam Times
meta-bakfiets
For US cyclists with little kids, there is the venerable Burley trailer, the industry standard. They have a model which can be converted into a jogging stroller, and they are ultra-durable. I know a man who bought a Burley probably 15 years ago, and his older son now uses it to tow the family dog to the park for games of frisbee.