For urban ladies with small apartments I offer a vintage folding option, the Raleigh Twenty. It's cute, it's small, it will fold up and fit in a closet, a balcony, a stairwell, whatever you have.
This folding bike is inexpensive (I've seen prices hovering in the $200 range) and can be made to look really sleek, or really cute.
In his completely charming way, Sheldon Brown loved his and provided a lot of useful information on maintaining Raleigh Twentys.
Chloe Sevigny's bike sure looks a lot like a Twenty.
