The Green Yellow Bikes

[Elderberry]

Here's something I didn't know until reading it today. What a great tip for people flying in and buying their bike if they plan on just leaving it on the playa after the event.

If you’re going to bring a bike to Burning Man and ditch it immediately following the event, buy a Huffy Cranbrook Cruiser 26″ (Men or Women’s). At BRCT Yellow Bikes, we only use this bike because 1) it streamlines our maintenance process, 2) minimizes the number of parts we need to order, and 3) they deal relatively well in the environment. These bikes are cheap and available nearly everywhere. Post event, you can donate these cruisers to the Yellow Bikes. (Please drop it off at the shop at 5:30 & A, not in deep playa.) The population limit was just raised to 68,000 people. While we’re steadily working on increasing the fleet, we currently only have around 700 bikes for that many folks. This is one way you can help us grow with the city

[9ah]

Great info!

[lemur]

we need LOTS more.


hard to find one most of the time

[theCryptofishist]

This is fantastic.
I can't wait till next year's prep, when we can spam the bike threads with this info.

[lemur]

the recent blog post said the effort is down to roughly 700 bikes.. from the 1000 it started with in 2007.

if every butthead who wants to buy a bike just for the burn ..only to ditch it (along with, very likely, the rest of their entire camp) after the event at least knew about this..... getting the word about what bikes they use out could end up being useful.

i might even stop my often suggested way to deal with the 'but i NEED a bike!!!' threads: and stop suggesting 'just walk'

because, ya know, having shitloads of yellow bikes would be pretty awesome for those of us who can and want to ride one...but dont want to/cant deal with getting a bike to the playa and back

[theCryptofishist]

I can't use one, and I think it's totally worth offering as advice whenever appropriate.*



*And sometimes not. 'Cause that's the way I roll...

[Canoe]

If Huffy made an airplane, would you fly in it?

[Elderberry]

If Huffy made an airplane, would you fly in it?

I don't get it.

[theCryptofishist]

If Huffy made an airplane, would you fly in it?

I don't get it.

Me neither, but I didn't want to call attention to myself, but saying so.

[Canoe]

If department stores made airplanes, would you fly in them.

[theCryptofishist]

Ah. The yellow bikes are cheap and not trustworthy.

[Canoe]

The right direction, but not necessarily.
Just that real bike riders that ride real bikes regard department store bikes as cheap and unreliable. Like the Mongoose Beast that comes needing regreasing and torque adjustments to most bearings, and many reports of poorly welding joints that require replacement forks or frames, bare bones features and a coaster brake that's almost guaranteed to fail.
For example, one of the major Fat Bike forums have many horrified observations about the $200 beast, where most of the real Fat Bikes are $1,200 to $3,500, and above. True that the beast is not Mountain Bike quality for actual mountain biking (to start with, it's just a cruiser), but the miss that they do get from A to B, and that the owners have so much fun with them, both tinkering and riding.

If Lada made an airplane, would you fly across the ocean in it.
If SmartCar made a bus, ...
If the Playa had a subway, ...
If Pershing offered free lawyers, ... did I say that out loud?

[Captain Goddammit]

If SmartCar made a bus, ...

I guess that'd be the long bus.

[theCryptofishist]

If Macy's told Gimbel's...

[lemur]

The right direction, but not necessarily.
Just that real bike riders that ride real bikes regard department store bikes as cheap and unreliable.

For example, one of the major Fat Bike forums have many horrified observations about the $200 beast, where most of the real Fat Bikes are $1,200 to $3,500, and above.

when it comes to BRC and a bike sharing program id rather have the 20 department store bikes that one could have bought with the money to buy 1 'real' bike.

[trilobyte]

Great thread! I'm nudging it over to the Transportation board.

If memory serves, they tested using a better bike one year, but found that the nicer bikes were getting routinely swiped.

[Elderberry]

Thanks for explaining. I understand why I didn't get it. It totally missed the point of why the green bikes are there to begin with. Who takes a "real" bike to the playa?! (Well I do, but that's because I bought one and ended up never riding it, so I figured what the hell.)

BTW I love The SmartCar.

The right direction, but not necessarily.
Just that real bike riders that ride real bikes regard department store bikes as cheap and unreliable. Like the Mongoose Beast that comes needing regreasing and torque adjustments to most bearings, and many reports of poorly welding joints that require replacement forks or frames, bare bones features and a coaster brake that's almost guaranteed to fail.
For example, one of the major Fat Bike forums have many horrified observations about the $200 beast, where most of the real Fat Bikes are $1,200 to $3,500, and above. True that the beast is not Mountain Bike quality for actual mountain biking (to start with, it's just a cruiser), but the miss that they do get from A to B, and that the owners have so much fun with them, both tinkering and riding.

If Lada made an airplane, would you fly across the ocean in it.
If SmartCar made a bus, ...
If the Playa had a subway, ...
If Pershing offered free lawyers, ... did I say that out loud?

[Canoe]

when it comes to BRC and a bike sharing program id rather have the 20 department store bikes that one could have bought with the money to buy 1 'real' bike.

For sure. Always get the appropriate tool for the job. And if you choose carefully, and maintain it...
But you wouldn't get Huffy to make you an airplane.

[Captain Goddammit]

I once broke a Huffy frame in half.
Of course, I was 17 at the time and had just come down hard from a big jump.
Sorry to hear that (apparently) Mongoose quality went down. My next bike was a Mongoose BMX that was a tank but took anything I could throw at it. It was even run over by a '68 Chevy 3/4 ton pickup, didn't hurt it. Didn't even hurt the old-school "Tuff Wheel" mags.
That was 30 years ago and I still have the bike!

[Martiansky]

The first bmx bike I had was a real Mongoose bike. Mongoose made good bikes back then.
I agree that they've become the "new" Huffy/Murray, Scha-wing(schwinn) has gone that way, too.

I switched over to Redline...in fact, I still have my Redline bike that I used to race bmx with back in the 80's.
No way I'd get rid of it. I take it our for a ride every once in a while.

But like almost anything, if you do some preventative maintenance on the lower cost bikes they will last for a while.
I looked at the Cranbrook cruisers but decided on a Beast.

[sjsjsj23]

Is this donation program still active?