Popped down to do some shopping in Albuquerque over the weekend and saw a really dumb bike rack, a somewhat dumb bike rack and a couple of bus loads of smoke jumpers. See if you can figure out which one is which!
Click pics for more info...
5/14/2008
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6 comments:
I kind of like the dumb rack. We'd been to Uptown Yuppity Shopping Centre many times before we noticed another cyclist lock his bike to one. Otherwise, maybe we'd never have seen it. Very stealthy.
Did you get a Frontier burrito? Those are yummy!
That second one is so stupid it makes me angry. I've been documenting some sucky racks in Spokane. None are as sucky as that second one though.
Chad,
that, in my opinion, worse of the two is the really dumb rack that is at the uptown crappy center, thats the one that looks like the ring through the bulls nose. I would love to know what they were thinking. In reality, I think the stealth aspect is exactly what they were thinking. How can we include bike racks that no one will ever notice or use? THis is a outdoor shopping mall that should be ped only, but compromised by placing parking where the nice wide pedestrian walkways go. Aaaaarrrrgggghh.
Additionally, no burrito at fronteir, 100 smoke jumpers got in line ahead of us, so we went to el patio...
John,
I was hoping you would pipe up. I figured you would hate on them a bunch. But which one makes you angry? The second pic or the second rack? The bull ring or the happy man? I think the happy man is more useful as it allows at least one bike to lock to it with a u lock. The bull ring is freeking useless for a u lock. In other news, you hate wave racks, but I like them. I think if you are worried about your bike sliding down the rack, you should get a kick stand. But mostly I agree with you on the dumb rack issue. I did learn a tidbit that the wave racks that look like this:
nun
are sold as 5 bike racks, and this from a SARIS rack guy who designs these. crack pipe on man. That is a 3 bike rack at best.
Uh, so John, thanks for reading, which one is stupider to you?
Chad, did you use the bull ring racks ever? Can you even ride to that mall hell, even using the ABQ bike map of the gods?
Laters
On occasion, we go to Border's in uppity center. We never noticed the rings until about the fifth time we went and saw someone unlocking their bike. We use one U- and either 1 or 2 cable locks to lock a frame to the ring and the other bikes/wheels to each other. Once found, it works fine unless you only have a u-lock and want to lock a wheel with the frame. I agree that the pseudo-pedastrian-outdoor mall was poorly executed.
Riding there is easy because Indian School has a bike lane. What's more irritating is that most bike shops are on the major roads w/o bike lanes. Why?
The happy man makes me angry.
The wavey racks are lame if you have racks or otherwise useful crap (like, say little brass submarines) attached to your bike. I had a fork mounted light on one bike that got crushed when I rammed it into a wavy rack. I know that really, that is my fault, but I'm one of those people that blame my reckless destruction of stuff on "bad design," especially when the simplest cheapest non-happiest rack design is done. The problem has been solved with this beauty.
Hitching ring!
You need more hardened-steel chain reins for your iron/aluminium/titanium/carbon-fiber horses.
Boston's Newbury Street cries out for old-timey hitching posts for bike parking.
The neighborhood association hates everything but I think they could be convinced to have iron posts with horse-heads at least.
Apparently parked automobiles and double-parked automobiles are more historically correct than bicycles.
And the goldanged Boston Bicycle Club was on that street!
Any bike rack that reminds me of Kokopelli makes me angry.
Thanks John for the link, I bookmarked it.
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