In March, nationwide sales of bicycles, equipment and repair services nearly doubled compared with the same period last year... By the end of April, many stores and distributors had sold out of low-end consumer bikes....Great (though I picture some of the bikers imagining the city as their biking paradise and intimidating the pedestrians*).
In April, New York [City] announced that it would temporarily open 100 miles of roads to pedestrians and cyclists — a move that may lead to permanent closures, officials say....
“We are already seeing people who hadn’t biked before are trying it for the first time,’’ [said Polly Trottenberg,** New York City’s transportation commissioner]. “We are going to see a lot more of that as the city starts to come back to life.”...The article proceeds to talk about the crazy dream of turning Americans into bike commuters.
In Portland, which has the highest percentage of cycling commuters of any American city, only 6.3 percent of commuters ride bikes. By comparison, in Copenhagen nearly half of all trips to work and school take place on bicycles.America is not going to become Copenhagen, for a lot of obvious reasons. And if NYC came "back to life" with half its commuters on bicycles, it would be a hellscape. Refer to the video in my footnote. Set in Portland, by the way.
But since the pandemic upended daily life in the United States, cycling has taken on a crucial, sanity-saving role: bikes are a way to exercise while gyms stay closed and an inexpensive means of getting around cities where more than 90 percent of riders have abandoned public transportation....But they're not commuting. Right now, they've got the streets mostly cleared of cars. It's a paradise created out of a deadly disease.
“There is no way to keep inventory for sub-$1,000 bikes,” said Lee Katz, co-owner of Turin Bikes in Chicago. “We’ve got a few right now, but it’s a matter of scrambling for them. We really don’t expect to see much in the way of inventory like that until July.”This is a great article for getting out the message that if you're in the market for a bike, you'd better plan on spending more than $1,000.
But... some customers wait weeks for new shipments to arrive or scour secondhand sales online....I'd like to see some discussion of bike theft. Demand is huge, bikes are expensive, and you can sell used bikes on line. I used to commute by bike in Manhattan in the 1970s. I bought what seemed at the time like an expensive bike — a 10-speed — and it cost $110. Riding it, I was highly conscious that I could get killed at any moment, and when I got to work, I locked it up with an expensive "titanium" contraption and took off the front wheel and brought it with me up the elevator into my office. I was so worried about getting my bike stolen. And getting killed. What a fine combination! City life. I think I made $165 a week at that job.
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* "I'm on a bike!":
** Peggy Trottenberg is promoting biking but, based on her name, I think she trots through the burg.
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New Yorkers will, at some point, get out of the fetal position they've been in since Nov of 2016, and get on with life as it used to be. For now there may be a flurry of people getting bikes. In about 6 months there will be a flurry of ads for used bikes showing up on Facebook Market.
Love the Portlandia reference. Great show.
I've been biking almost every day in NYC. Sunday, I rode through an almost empty Times Square at 6:45 PM. The bike paths, on the other hand, are choked with cyclists--so much so that I've started avoiding them.
Local bike shops have a pile of empty bike boxes in front of them every few days. A larger shop had a line a block long to get in.
THere are a thousand or more abandoned bikes on a college campus near me. Students left before spring break thinking that they would return in April, so they just left their bikes locked to a bike rack. But sometime (soon??) the authorities will cut them loose and auction them off.
I'd like to see some discussion of bike theft.
There’s a whole movie about that. Bicycle Thieves. Italian, post World War II. Quite good. I watched it without subtitles and still understood everything that was happening. I speak no Italian.
The cardboard bicycle that was talked about a few years back is my version of the flying car. Where is that recyclable bicycle that could sell for under $30, support over 400 pounds and not get ruined by the rain like other cardboard products? I want one. I thought maybe the reason why we don't have them here was because they came from China. But no, they were invented in Israel. Is that the reason it never got here? Probably not. They were intended for the poorest countries, but no one seems to have one anywhere.
Local bike shops have a pile of empty bike boxes in front of them every few days.
I think I got one of those for Christmas one year and frantically searched inside for a bicycle.
Odds are that there will be a lot of used bikes for sale in a year or two. Bicycle commuting may loose it's allure when it's 40 degrees and raining or -10 and the streets are snow-packed and icy.
Early on, as the reality of what lockdown would mean started to sink in, I began gathering essentials. I biked to a local brewery, and brought home a 20 L keg of beer on my trailer. A full keg makes you slower up hill, and faster down hill. Stopping distances increase.
I used to commute from Berkeley to San Francisco, by riding my bike to the Rockridge BART station in North Oakland, then locking it up thoroughly and taking the train to SF — only to return to find that my bike seat had been stolen, day after day.
By the end of April, many stores and distributors had sold out of low-end consumer bikes.
The bike display at Wal*Mart looked the same as ever a couple of days ago.
Maybe They will end up arresting someone for making a profit by importing bicycles from civilization into NYC.
Entry-level sewing machines are in short supply, also.
The movie Serial (1980) opens with Martin Mull and a bunch of other bike commuters doing the Tour de France in Marin County on their way to the ferry boat.
Don't get me started about the new bikers. I walk a lot. Then in January I get a feet problem
and no more long walks. By March I'm driving around at night to see what's what. And what it is is wobbley bikers out and about. And a lot of them don't have rear reflectors. Hello people, a rear reflector is a nice thing to have if you're bicycling at night. Especially if you've color coordinated your clothes to match the asphault. One guy, big guy, no reflector but a front light, which got required by law a few years ago. Guy was so big you couldn't see that light til you were past him. Ok, maybe this only happened 3 or 4 times, but where are the reflectors? Rusted out hulks tossed in the dumpster still have their rear reflectors.
Was that biker Maynard G. Krebs?
"It's a paradise created out of a deadly disease."
Not deadly for healthy bikers under 50.
Last night, we were watching an episode of Castle, where a bicycle messenger was madly weaving in and out of Manhattan traffic, until a contract killer, waiting for him, took him out, and then took off. I can just imagine that with a lot more biles weaving in and out of traffic. No thank you.
I am a bit surprised that Portland ranks above Boulder. Probably more blue sky days a year of good biking weather there. Boulder is bike crazy, and has been at least since the 1980s. My kid lived with 4-5 other grad students throughout grad school there. First year, there were five in a condo that had a garage. Each had two bikes, while one girl had five. The two were invariably a road or commuting bike and a mountain bike (those are real mountains visible from town, with at least one over 14k feet). The girl with the five bikes had to keep three in her room. The garage was filled with their bikes, with the overflow in the living room. Which left the walls for hanging all the ski equipment (everyone had at least two pair of skis that first year too). At formal graduation, I was talking to their advisor’s wife, and they inadvertently let out that my kid had been on crutches the previous winter for having crashed on the way to school - in the snow. Quizzed, they admitted that more often than not, most of those in the house tended to bike, instead of drive, to/from school in light snow.
Just another reason why I wouldn’t want to live there (Portland though, for me, would be far worse, with worse weather combined with an out of control homeless problem).
If there are a lot of bikes on the street, there are a lot of bikes available for stealing. Hence no shortage.
If there are a lot of bikes on the street, there are a lot of bikes available for stealing. Hence no shortage.
The article proceeds to talk about the crazy dream of turning Americans into bike commuters.
Today's high in Houston is 95. Happy biking!
Oh, and if you think 95 is miserably hot; just think how that feels to the COVID virus.
“ And what it is is wobbley bikers out and about.”
So yesterday, one of my neighbors stopped to talk as he drove by. He asked if the bike that had spent last winter on my back porch was for sale. I told him that while it looked like a mountain bike, it was really a bottom of the line Walmart special. I use it a couple times a year when I take one of my vehicles into get worked on. I will throw it in the back, drive there, and bike back home - which is maybe 3 relatively flat miles. Then reverse it the next day. In any case, later he admitted to having turned 81 last winter, and just wasn’t as nimble as he had been. No, I am not going to sell him that bicycle. I wouldn’t sell it to him even if it hadn’t gotten more use last summer, after we took the keys to the Polaris away from the almost (last summer) 16 year old grandson. If this grandson wanted to get to the convenience store a mile away, he could walk or bike. He biked - multiple times a day. I like the old geezer to much to want any of his blood on my hands.
I had wanted to bike more here, but this is just not good biking territory, here in NW MT. The road through town is a state highway with one lane either way, and there is usually only a foot or two of pavement outside the road edge line before you hit gravel. Fine for cars. But not so much for bicyclists (motorcyclists, unless in a big group, done fare that much better). You have a good mixture of full sized pickups and SUVs, along with semi trucks, with the occasional wide load or farm equipment. With everyone doing a bit over 70, except in town, or in one section where they are trying to protect the bighorn sheep. Until you come around a corner to find slow moving farm equipment in your lane, a wide load in the other, or bicyclists moseying along talking together, maybe 60 miles below the speed limit. Did. Mention that the huge evergreen trees often tend to obscure things, at least until they are cut back?
“ Oh, and if you think 95 is miserably hot; just think how that feels to the COVID virus.”
Not sure which is worse - Houston heat and humidity, or COVID-19.
In late March I got an electric bike off Ebay ($550) and have been riding it every night since. In our neighborhood I,at times see more javelinas than cars. It is good exercise but not too much exercise. I have no rear fender to put a reflector on but I have plenty of LED flashing lights.
I guess locking up the bike thieves is out of the question. Right?
When I was a kid I used to ride my bike to school in the snow, as it was still faster and easier than walking. It was no big deal.
That's good knowledge Sydney. When I was taking film studies back in the day at UCSB it was pretty much consensus that the Italian film "The bicycle thief" was the greatest movie ever made according to socialist libtard professors at college.
I was so worried about getting my bike stolen. And getting killed. What a fine combination! City life. I think I made $165 a week at that job.
Yes but the slim chance of being profiled in the NYT makes it all worthwhile.
Houston heat and humidity, or COVID-19
We had flash floods last week.
America is not going to become Copenhagen, for a lot of obvious reasons.
Thank you, Althouse. Nice to see at least one left-of-center person who recognizes that comparing the large and demographically heterogeneous United States to small, demographically highly homogeneous countries with a high work ethic and good social trust is a non-starter.
When will bike-jacking become a thing? Imagine the victims walking around in those cycling shorts with the special shoes without their bikes.
As presently configured, no American city could become Copenhagen or Amsterdam even if the public wanted it. In the Netherlands, the bike path is either its own separate path between the road and sidewalk or a lane completely prohibited to car traffic at all times. Bikes have separate traffic signals so they can start crossing an intersection before cars can move. Drivers are taught in driving school how to check for bike traffic and even how to open their car doors to prevent hitting a passing cyclist. If a car and a cyclist do get in an accident, the car driver is assumed to be at fault by default unless they can prove otherwise. And yes, bike theft is probably the #1 crime. I would commute by bike occasionally when I lived in the US but I don't think most cities would want to adopt a Dutch-style cycling infrastructure and it wouldn't even be desirable in most locations.
If the object is to get a little exercise and have a good time, don't buy a cheap bike and risk splattering yourself all over the road. The Specialized Rockhopper is a great street/trail bike with 29" wheels, single chainring and disc brakes with the downside being a heavy steel frame and a front shock that functions as a pogo stick. And it's sub-$1000 but not available at Amazon so in this case Althouse won't get the love.
Next thing You know they will be adding motors to bikes. Progress marches on.
Yes, thefts have probably sky-rocketed in the last few weeks.
When I lived and worked in Brooklyn I would do the 2.5 mile commute each way on roller blades. Had the increased speed of wheels without all the extra space a bike takes.
I can understand how for much longer commutes and to transport items a bicycle would be better.
"When will bike-jacking become a thing? Imagine the victims walking around in those cycling shorts with the special shoes without their bikes. "
Bike Jacking is definitely a thing along the Chicago lakefront trails. You get pushed over by a few 14 year olds. (that weigh 200 lbs.)
I moved to Portland recently and there are a lot of bikers here. A couple of things I've noticed about them. One, many of them will stop to let pedestrians cross the street. I never heard of such a thing. In Boston, where I grew up, not even cars stop for pedestrians. Two, a lot of bikers don't wear lights at night and expect drivers to have superpowers that allow them to see bicyclists in the dark. Idiots.
Bikers: tough dudes and dudettes rocking choppers and hogs and hang out in biker bars. I think the the ones in funny clothes on bicycles are called cyclists. I used to ride to work at my Dotcom where we had a shower, first across lower Manhattan and then over the Williamsburg Bridge, the mouth of which was a daily disaster area, but that was before morbidity and mortality figured into the calculus.
"I'd like to see some discussion of bike theft." The three big deterrents to bicycle commuting remain (1) conflicts with motor vehicles, (2) inclement weather and (3) no secure place to store the bicycle.
In regard to the last, I remember buying a barely usable, trashy used bike for $20. figuring that if I at least locked it no one would take the trouble to steal it. Of course, I was wrong.
But Manhattan is not all that big (and most of it is quite flat) and if you consider subways and buses unreasonably risky, getting around by bicycle seems an attractive alternative. If you're not threatened by drivers, riding through a nasty, cold spring rain and it doesn't get stolen, of course.
I've been biking a few times a week during lockdown, but I'll have to be more careful about my routes, because weekday traffic is getting back to normal even in the Bay Area.
"...the bike path is either its own separate path between the road and sidewalk or a lane completely prohibited to car traffic at all times."
This describes the bike paths in much of Manhattan (and, presumably, throughout NYC): most are separate paths between the road and sidewalk, but the bike path running the length of Manhattan alongside the Hudson River is a lane separate from the roadway, and cars cannot access it (though walkers and runners do also use it).
only to return to find that my bike seat had been stolen, day after day.
San Francisco, where else can you can sit four men on a bar stool!!
Too bad. I thought Fred was smarter than gauged ear lobes.
I have fond memories of my childhood at Christmas time, searching through a pile of pony shit that had been left by Santa, for that promised, special bicycle.
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