By Mike Rougeau

It is almost impossible to travel anywhere in Boston without seeing a cyclist weaving in and out of dense city traffic.

And although some riders said Boston is not the most bike-friendly city, Mayor Thomas Menino has worked to add more bike lanes, and Beantown is becoming one of the hubs of American cycling culture.

“A lot of the major trends that the bicycle industry comes out with each year, when they release their bikes and their bike designs and clothing designs, [come from] the bike culture in Boston and New York,” said Chris Nourse, a middler English and theatre major who is a mechanic at Landry’s Bicycles located at 890 Commonwealth Ave. “The 2009 models that are coming out now are getting trendier and trendier, according to the kids who are riding in Boston.”

Nourse said cycling culture has seen a spike in recent years. Landry’s has seen an increase in business, which Norse said is a result of certain trends in pop culture that are becoming more mainstream.

“[Cycling is] certainly a habit with those who feel like going green, and a great way to get exercise,” he said.

Ryan Stanis, who is taking a semester off from his education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, works as a shop mechanic at Bikes Not Bombs located at 18 Bartlett Square in Jamaica Plain.

Bikes Not Bombs takes old and broken bicycles and repairs them, sends them to other countries, donates them to community youth or sells them at reduced prices in the Bikes Not Bombs shop, according to the organization’s website.

Stanis said one of the most important results of what the company does is waste reduction.

“We’re recycling bikes that otherwise would have been considered garbage,” he said. “We’re not just bringing new bikes onto the market, but we’re revitalizing these old ones and reducing waste.”

Stanis said Bikes Not Bombs is going a step further than other groups’ advocacy.

“But I think we’re bringing it to the next level by helping people understand their bikes better.”

Another part of Boston’s cycling culture is Critical Mass, an event that takes place in cities across the globe. Participants gather in Copley Square the last Friday of every month to “protest against car culture and for better bicycle infrastructure,” according to Bostoncriticalmass.org. The protesters cycle around the city en masse, clogging streets and slowing traffic to a grind wherever they go. Attendance fluctuates, but it is not uncommon for more than 100 people to take part, according to the site.

Some students, like Ian Headley, a sophomore music technology major, said they take part in the event out of curiosity. Headley said he attended Critical Mass on Halloween to hang out with his friends.

“I’ve never done it before, and I was interested,” he said.

Others, like Tricia Towey, a sophomore film major at Emerson College, said they take the protest aspect slightly more seriously.

“I like biking, and I have almost been killed by cars on more than one occasion,”she said.

She celebrated Halloween by dressing up as a cyclist who had been hit by a car, sporting a bloody T-shirt with the words “I was killed by cars” on the front. The back of the shirt read, “So now I bike.”

Nourse said that despite not having a lot of bike lanes, Boston is a great place to be a cyclist.

“It’s getting better and better each year,” he said.