With gas prices at a record high and environmental awareness growing, bike use is on the rise in the city. Since 2000, the number of riders has increased 75 percent, according to the city Department of Transportation.

Some new businesses are popping up to help meet the demand. Meet the self-proclaimed “Drug Dealer of Bikes” – a bus driver whose side business is also in transportation. Meanwhile, the folks at Recycle a Bicycle in the East Village are taking donated bikes, fixing and selling them – with profits going toward the group’s education programs.

After a cold day of handing out pamphlets for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, three New Yorkers swapped ideas about how to better reach people in a city where so many people are in a hurry and going door-to-door isn’t possible with most people living in apartment buildings.

Their solution: Pub crawling for Obama.

A handful of Obama supporters toured bars in the East Village on Friday night. They talked up the senator’s better points to fellow New Yorkers over pints of Guinness and Stella. They even made a few new friends – and picked up some supporters along the way.

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Get the latest Flash Player to see this player. Download QuickTime Video AUDIO REPORT: Tango, the Argentinean dance, has found an unlikely home in a Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village, attracting a multi-cultural, multi-generational crowd. Ana Toro reports on this only-in-New-York scene.

On Friday nights, tango moves out of its Argentinean confines and into a comfy little Ukrainian restaurant in the East Village, aptly named The East Village Ukrainian Restaurant.

There, a group gathers off to the side of the restaurant to dance and listen to the music. These milongas, as the tango parties are called, attract a variety of folks.

One cold February night, there was a former New York Knicks dancer, Rebecca, with her Wall Street-type boyfriend, Steve; couples from France who could speak very little English but were eager to talk about their love for tango; another couple, Ivan and Sara, who met dancing tango, as well as first-timers from the former Yugoslavia and long-time tango lovers from Argentina and Ecuador.

They all have their own reasons for gathering at the milonga. Some want to make new friends and do something out of the ordinary; others just want to dance the night away.

Listen to the sounds of tango and the voices of the dancers as they tell the story of how they ended up in an East Village Ukrainian restaurant dancing to Argentinean music surrounded by people from all over the world.