No matter where you live, work, walk, or ride throughout the City, you must have noticed the recent installations of many more bicycle parking racks on sidewalks everywhere. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition has made significant progress working with the SFMTA to make it much easier to request bike racks for specific sidewalk locations that you may particularly notice need more bike parking.
While it’s FANTASTIC to see such progressive municipal cooperation in the name of expanding bicycle safety and ridership, am I the only one who’s getting tired of the utilitarian standard grey bike rack design? Don’t get me wrong; they are clearly sleek, strong, and functional but I feel that a jazzier design would not only help further excite the population about cycling, but would also look way cooler!
A recent trip up North to visit our Canadian neighbors in Vancouver presented a colorful and stylish alternative. I walked up and down city streets for two days and could not even find two bicycle racks that looked alike! Perhaps some criticism can be leveled at the apparent flimsiness of those triangles, but no doubt San Francisco’s intelligent creative artistic community can come up with some aesthetically pleasing marriage of form and function.
H&R Block Bike Racks
Also, to the business-minded folks out there: countless potential branding opportunities!
More examples of bicycle rack awesomeness (and a locked up lawnmower) after the jump . . .
I guess they would rust and change color faster, but that just makes them looker even radder!
Lots of riffing on the “Triangles Hanging from Handlebars” theme
And “Hoop Corkscrew” features prominently as well
Whoa! Someone actually parked a bike in that one! That’s not all they parked, though:
Previously:
The problem with these racks are that the hanging loop design assumes you won’t have panniers or a rack– and you can’t easily lock a wheel and your frame. Also, that thinner metal is breakable than the think tubing of SF’s racks.
When it comes to bike parking, I’ll take Function over Fashion any time.
I too will take function over fashion, but before Andrew’s time, MM reported on some pretty snazzy ones as part of the Valenica revamp: http://missionmission.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/coming-soon-valencia-streetscape-improvements/
They’ve already put grates around the trees with similar designs, so hopefully these will be on there way soon.
yo, excellent picture post! If we had racks like those in the Mission, I’d dust off my bike, lock it up, photograph it, and then toss that shit back in the basement.