All right. Since it's Saint Patrick's Day, I'll show you a nice green bike--one that's not Vera, anyway.
I found this image of a Freddy Grubb track bike on Megadeluxe Sports. You'll find other interesting stuff there.
If you're involved in any sort of endeavor or follow any sort of passion for long enough, you see all sorts of trends come and go. So it is for me (and, no doubt, some of you) and cycling.
What inevitably happens is that some people cop the style rather than the substance of the trend. That turns the trend into a parody of itself.
I fear that may be happening with Porteur bikes and racks. When I first started seeing them here in the US, I thought "Great! People are actually going to ride to work and shop."
I'd say that more people are doing those things, at least here in New York, than were doing them a few years ago. Also, not everyone who commutes or rides to the farmer's market is a racer or wannabe, or simply a "bikehead." I see more and more people who are primarily commuters and who might, on occasion, ride for fun.
But then the look of Porteur bikes and accessories became fashionable, and those items became fetish objects for some. Now, if someone has the money and really intends to carry the loads, I can understand spending over 200 dollars on a Porteur rack. On the other hand, the fact that such racks and bikes are now fashionable makes them more inviting to thieves. I'm not so sure I'd want a fancy rack on a bike that was going to spend large portions of every day parked on the streets.
Perhaps the solution is this:
The bike is a Bridgestone from, as far as I can tell, the early '80's (pre-Grant Petersen). I think the rack came off an old pizza delivery bicycle.
For me, that begs the question of whether something can be called "Porteur" (or even "utility") if it's shiny and new.
A series of neighborhoods dangles along the banks of the East River like a cedille from Astoria Park to the Williamsburg Bridge. They include Astoria and Long Island City in Queens and Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. There may be more cyclists, per capita, in this corridor--in which I happen to live--than in any other part of New York City. In fact, I doubt many American urban neighborhoods outside of Portland (and, perhaps, Seattle) can rival the concentratration of bicycles and cyclists found here.
So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see this near the Long Island City (Queens) side of the Pulaski Bridge.
The first time I saw it, I wondered what all of those bicycles were doing in a bus kiosk. Then I saw the sign.
On the block before it, there is a row of bike racks that's almost always full.
The bike at the front makes me wonder just how good an idea unsecured open-air bike parking facilities actually are. On one hand, I'm glad to have dedicated bike-parking spaces. On the other, I can't help but to think that maybe they're targets for bike thieves and cannibals.
Maybe I'm just too accustomed to locking to parking meters and such--or not parking my bike and not doing business with stores that don't allow me to bring my bike in.
Anyway, I got in a quick ride after work the other day. At times like that, I'm thankful for Daylight Savings time, and Tosca likes rhe photo ops available on the Greenpoint (Brooklyn) side of the bridge:
