Hmm...Even though I know it wouldn't have fit the meter or rhythm of the poem, it might've been better if he'd written, "I think that I shall never see/A bikestand as good as a tree."
Certainly a parking meter isn't quite as nice a stand--although it's a lot easier to loop a chain around it:
The paint job tells me someone was trying to make that bike unattractive to thieves. However, if that was the owner's/rider's intention, something else on the bike counters it:
Now, if you're going to so much trouble to make the bike unappealing, why would you announce, in screaming red letters, that it's a Colnago?
Of course, the bike is not a Colnago. (I know; I owned and raced on one and have seen many others.) Could it be that it's some kind of post-modern irony (translation: a joke)? Could this cyclist be saying, "Ha, ha, it's not a Colnago?"
Who'd've thunk it--putting the Colnago name on a bike would make it less valuable? What if people put Mercedes-Benz stars, or blue-and-white BMW shields, on their 10-year-old Hyundais? Would that make them less of a target for car thieves?
Actually, the basket almost made me wish it was a Colnago. It reminded me of the bike someone I met once in Williamsburg (where else?) about ten years ago: a vintage Cinelli track bike (not the ones sold today with the Cinelli label), with equally vintage Campagnolo Pista components and Mavic SSC rims--and a flowered basket strapped to the handlebars.
None of those bikes, though, will ever have a stand as good as that tree on which I leaned Tosca today.
