Both... Or Neither?

Was this ever a functioning bicycle?

Or was it intended as a bike rack?

Could it be that whoever created it is laughing at people like me for spending time--and a blog post--on it?

When You Need Them

You know how it is:  Whenever you need a paper clip, you can't find one.

Same goes for a place to park your bike.  Whenever you really need to lock up, it seems all of the usable lamp posts, parking meters and such are taken.


But what if you need a paper clip and a parking space at the same time?

It just figures that this rack is in Washington, DC!

A Parking Performance

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about strange and interesting bike-parking racks.


Well, I came across another--this one in Lawrence, Kansas:

From Ride Lawrence

These were installed behind the new Theatre Lawrence.  The local Rotary club donated the materials.  Blacksmith Kate Dinneen turned them into a structure that suggests actors holding hands and bending forward in a company bow at the end of a performance.


She should join in that bow!

When Your Rack Is Not "U"

When I first started cycling "long" distances (i.e., 40 km) four decades ago, you locked your bike with some combination of a lock with a chain or cable.

And you crossed your fingers.

Locks could be picked or broken; chains and cables cut or snapped.  Thieves figured out that the loops at the end of most cables could be twisted off almost as easily as a cap off a bottle of Coke.

Then, much as Drs. Montagnier and Gallo did work that got each of them credited, by different groups of people, with the same discovery, a bicycle mechanic and an MIT engineering student each created a different--and, each of them claims, the first-- version of something nearly every urban cyclist uses today.

I'm talking about the U-shaped lock.  One legend has it that the original Kryptonite lock--which looked, more than anything else, like a medieval torture device--was conceived in the brain of a young bike mechanic as a young female customer complained of having her bike stolen.  The other says the MIT student conceived of the Citadel lock as his senior thesis project. 

The ubiquitous U-shaped lock influenced another aspect of urban cycling:  parking racks.  For a time, it seemed that all newly-installed bike parking racks looked like Citadel or Kryptonite locks missing their crossbars.  Or, if you like, they looked like Breuer-inspired tombstones rising from concrete sidewalks. 

But now it seems that those bike racks are taking on new shapes:

At Grand Hope Park, Los Angeles

Should you lock your bike or hitch your horse to them?  

If they installed this rack just a little bit further to the left, there'd be no need for a lock:


That was a University of California-San Diego student's project.  Hmm...I wonder what sort of career this portends.

On the other hand, some designer took the slogan, "Make Love, Not War" to heart:



If love is your thing, maybe you want to ride on a covered bridge--or, perhaps, an un-covered one:

Or, perhaps, it could be Breuer's take on a certain Norwegian's painting.

When it comes to turning utilitarian objects into art, leave it to an Australian to come up with something new and interesting:

But, if you prefer that your bicycle storage racks unambiguously announce their function, here's one for you: