RedDeMartini

Some guys around here have been "welding" tall bikes for use around DC. Now unlike the dead flat streets of Chicago, home of the tall bike, DC has hills. So I have seen one guy go tits up because his seat was way back over the rear wheel and once he began his ascent he was behind it and thus began to tip back. Luckily he was quick to realize and landed shaken but okay. The welds on these bikes are terrible and ripe to fail, far too much oxidation is taking place and the welds are not holding under any stress. The raw material for these projects are old broken bikes. However I am seeing perfectly good kids bikes and frames being ruined by neo-yuppie "artists" who have the money to waste. I know plenty of kids who need bikes. Why not show off your skills providing them with bikes instead of the pretentious conspicious consumption of making a tall bike. They are the hummers of the "punk planet" set and ought to be discouraged. If we ant bikes to be taken seriously and be widely used we ought to make work bikes from broken bikes instead of wasteful signs of our overflowing privilege.

Johnny Payphone

I don't think you understand the volume of waste that the cycling boom of the 70s and 80s produced. We go to the scrapyard three days a week and come home with about 120 bikes a day, rejecting another 100 for their condition. That's 1320 bikes a week being tossed in that chipper at that one location, more if you count the ones that are under stuff on the trucks. There are five scrapyards in Chicago. That's 343,200 bikes a year being thrown away! That doesn't count the ones that are fixed up, sold at yardsales, given to Goodwill, etc etc etc. These numbers have remained consistent for at least five years.

We pack them into containers and send them overseas. Kenya, Ghana, Uganda, Nicauragua, Tanzania, Cuba, Guatemala, whoever will take them. We sent a couple thousand down to New Orleans after the storm and a bunch of us bike-frame-wastin'-tallbikers went down there and fixed them up and handed them out. We're accumulating bikes faster than we can move them. Our two warehouses are piled to the ceiling and approaching a backlog of 10,000 bikes. We sell them here for $20 and can't get them rolling fast enough. I spend my days off from that fixing up kids bikes and handing them out as fast as I can.

Often times when people hear that we eat out of the dumpster they say "well you're stealing food from the homeless". Same thing, they don't understand the scale of the waste. Millions and millions of pounds of preconsumer food waste, millions and millions of bikes. There may not be as much in the alleys of DC but I know that every thrift store in this nation has a crapload of cheap bikes. The freakbike mentality is to use the cheapest junk possible, and I share your disrespect for anyone who makes a "nice" tallbike. We get our frames from the 100 rejects we mentioned earlier.

The REAL enemy- the one who keeps bikes out of the hands of those who need them- are people who buy new bikes, parts, and accessories. They perpetuate the falsehood that you need money to ride, or special shoes, or a special diaper, or a special bag. This intimidates noncyclists and provides a huge first step for them to make, when really they could just hop on a Varsity and go. A $20 bike is capable of riding just as far as a $2000 bike, the only difference is whether the five pounds comes off the bike or off your ass. Overwhelming cycling ridership statistics in urban areas show that the majority of riders are poor people going to work. Between the Sports Industrial Complex and miserable car-based urban-planning, I'm afraid the guys who are hacking up bikes are doing MORE to encourage cycling as fun and easy than they are harming it. Meanwhile, what are YOU doing to help? Can we ship you a couple thousand bikes for you to fix up and give out to the needy masses? Can we send a platoon of mechanics to assist you?

Johnny Payphone

The notion that a tallbike is conspicuous consumption is HILARIOUS. How can you consume something from the wastestream? "Conspicuous reuse" is more like it. The hummer of the cycling scene is any bike that costs more than $300, not some junk that somebody pulled out of the river and got going again. If you buy new, you're shouldering the environmental impact of that bike's creation.

Tappets

"I'm afraid the guys who are hacking up bikes are doing MORE to encourage cycling as fun and easy than they are harming it."

...nice! point well made!

brokenrobot

HOLY COW! What's the story with this? Are you buying them from the scrapyard by the item by the pound, or does the city let you take them away, or what? That's INSANE.

Knudsen

WowJP! You are awesome for what you do I agree the gold plated diaper image and smug ATTITUDE is very harmful to biking. Thank God I didn't read through the A&S forums before I bought a bike, or I would still be gaining weight and would never have discovered an enjoyable excercise my body can cope with.

Tall bikers rock.

Huh? Overflowing privilege hell! I work for everything I have and I directly support 20 unemployed lazy asses and their children overseas. I will be chopping some bikes soon and I feel good about it, thank you.

Johnny Payphone

Chicago (a city of alleys) has a very competitive scrap market. Guys in beatup pickup trucks rove the alleys constantly. The shelf life of metal in the trash is literally about 15 minutes, that is to say, put a bent wheel in the alley and it will be gone in 15-30 minutes. These junqueros line up at scrapyards to have their truck weighed, then an electromagnet unloads them and they get paid cash. Scrap runs at about $75 a ton, up around $90 since China started buying up all the world's steel. That's, what, 4 cents a pound? So a bike is worth less than a dollar to a scrapper. Some of them don't even pick them up because they're not very dense, take up room on the truck, and you get penalized for nonferrous material. We wait by the line with a pickup truck. Offer a junquero three bucks for a bike and he's happy to get it, however, never pay more than $5 for a bike because you don't want to encourage theft. Often times we'll buy lots, or truckloads, of bikes and toss half of them out just to keep the guys bringing bikes to us.

The good'uns get fixed up at the warehouse and sold to locals for $20-$100. (A hundred bucks isn't bad for a brand new Bianchi, and no they're not stolen, see below). Ten bucks ships a bike overseas (container shipping is extremely cheap going BACK to the developing world because so many products are made overseas and shipped here that the containers pile up). You can get about 500 bikes in a container and the cracks are filled with computers, clothing, and medicine. Anyone who has the ability to receive a container is shipped one.

From a material handling perspective, this isn't the best way to do it. We should really pull a container up to the scrapyard and fill it and ship it there rather than storing bikes in a warehouse. There's a surplus of bikes, volunteers, and money from sales, but the bottleneck is finding people who have the ability to move a container through customs. Bicycle parts and bicycles have different import taxes, teaming is expensive in gas-deprived countries, and sometimes graft is outrageous. There are programs like this in every city, called Bikes Not Bombs, Working Bikes, Pedals for Progress, etc etc. Some of them have discovered what we are finding out: That you can solicit donations and $10 WITH the bike rather than buying them from scrappers. We get police departments and condo associations to donate when they clean out their bike rooms. A downtown condo cleaning out the forgotten bikes from long-moved residents will net you forty Bianchis, Cannondales, Haros, etc... all with dry-rotted tires that still have the whiskers on them. A common mentality is for someone to want a bike and simply go buy the most expensive one in the store, then ride it a few times (or until the weather gets cold) and forget about it.

We haven't even started to touch the issue of the hundreds of vintage bikes, old Schwinns, Krates, Panthers, skip-tooth bikes, etc etc that have a potential collector's value. We just hang those from the ceiling.

Remember that this is just ONE of TWO warehouses! Look at this pile and say we're depriving the world of bikes if we take a few junky ones and weld them together.

MarkS

It looks like you're doing some impressive things. Around here, junk bikes go to thrift stores where they want $50 - $200 for junk bikes they haven't done a thing for. I wonder where all the bikes are going?

But to clarify, the OP was complaining about welded tall bikes -- is your organization making that kind of bike?

AlmostTrick

My father in law and I do the garbage bicycle pickup/resale thing, and it's amazing what people will throw out. Blame these people for wasting bikes... not the people who are recycling them. Even if we make some into tall bikes or lawn art, it beats letting them go to the landfill.

bkrownd

When you're done crying a river you can chew on my ripe bike shorts.

brokenrobot

That's unnecessary. Was an interesting discussion till you came in!

bkrownd

Just intimidating the oppressed masses with my male elitist capitalistic cultural imperialism or somesuch. Don't want our gentlemanly sport reduced to a mere utility for the level unwashed proletariat you know. Where did all those old cheap bicycles come from? Oh wait, somebody bought them new at one time. The horror!

cheers,
The REAL (supposed) enemy

kingpinjoel

Thanks for the Rant Red, I took those bikes out of the trash and put them back on the street. I spent no money doing it and have made loads of new friends in the process. As for my welds they are perfectly strong and oxidation or not the welds will last far longer than the rest of the bike.

Johnny Payphone

He seemed to be saying two things: 1) Making welded bikes is a waste of good frames, and 2) your time would be better spent fixing up bikes and giving them to people. I think I've demonstrated his misperception of what is actually going on out there in terms of waste, moving bikes, international shipping, and community-based programs. We've fixed and shipped thousands, and we've welded up hundreds of choppers, pixies, tallbikes, swingbikes, bike boats, grillbikes, drumbikes, trailers, lead sleds, etc etc and use them daily, shunning the storebought shortbike. Remember that these frames came out of the wastestream, not from yard sales and thrift stores. They were all trash. I simply wanted to invite the poster to participate in the very activity he said we should be up to.

Johnny Payphone

Of course our lifestyle presupposes a culture of waste. But when that waste ceases, you won't hear me complain about having nothing to do.

fordfasterr

how can we get ahold of some of the nicer frames you've found out there ? LOL

Do you have an online store ? sheesh.... look at all that money sitting there rusting away !

(oops... my capitalistic idealism just slipped out for a second ! .. )

lyeinyoureye

It seems like you two are talking at each other more than with each other.
From what I've read
RedDeMartini- Is irritated because of the use of "good" kids bikes and frames on tallbikes with shoddy construction, attributes this to .
Johnny Payphone- Seems to think that RedDeMartini thinks that And also thinks that These two positions aren't directly related, i.e. don't sync up.
-Using kid's bikes with good frames is a waste for tall bikes, and the ****ty welds, while usually independent of bike quality, may or may not be from neo-yuppie "artists". However, the welds are definitely from people who probably don't know how to weld.
-Using old broken/rusted frames is ideal for making tall bikes, however, just because the bike is "nice", doesn't mean the donor frame was. I can, say, find a rusted/broken frame, and in a half hour remove the parts that have lost structural integrity? and grind the metal down to a state conducive for welding. Then I can go down to Wally's World to pickup a can of primer, paint, and clear coat for ~$3.25, weld everything together (well) as per my desires, and have a "nice" tall bike. Thus, garnering disrespect even though I used broken/rusted components. So...

-Just because it is rat doesn't mean it has to look rat.
-****ty welds come from inexperienced welders, probably someone who went cheap and picked up a gasless MIG to start out on, inexperienced welders may, or may not be , neo-yuppie "artists".

In conclusions, long live old VeeDubs, old Schwinns, Old 'Yotas, Old Treks, and cheap beer!

P.s. Johnney, you wouldn't happen to know of any similar bike collectives out here on southern california? I used to do scrap runs and would love to sit around all day fixing old bikes, although there aren't nearly as many scrap bikes in most of california given how spread out it is.

Johnny Payphone

You have a good point. But there are a few things here that haven't been stated. One is that we have recently started up a chapter in DC, and I don't know of any other folks chopping there (though it's entirely possible). Also, there are clubs like mine in every major city and we ARE the ones who are doing this sort of bike evangelism, outside of the larger culture of bike weinie activism (you know the type: Beard, megaphone, beer belly, annoying) that seems mostly concerned with spreading its message to other rich lefty bo-bos. Another thing is that making bikes poorly is one of the things we do deliberately to challenge the notion that it has to be well made or expensive to ride. If I can ride just as much on a piece of crap whose wheels aren't even pointing in the same direction, Golden Diaper looks pretty silly dropping a grand on his bike. In my international travels I have seen bikes without tires, bikes with wooden replacement parts, bikes without pedals, bikes in all states of "disrepair" serving perfectly well as commercial and personal transport- and they are ridden more than bikes here, because they are shared. All the time that I'm shipping and working abroad I get emails from people telling me that bikes aren't good transport in the third world because it's hard to find patch kits, that road bikes are useless in Africa, that this or that activity is a "waste" of frames. It's all from folks who aren't practicing what they preach or else they'd know what was up. The very notion that there is a "good" and "bad" bike or that you can waste something that is boundlessly plentiful is a concept that exists only in the minds of the consumer. Just as you could make something well made out of poor starting materials (better spot weld those clamped dropouts), I can make something gloriously crappy out of expensive origins. There are no sacred cows.

NathanCharles

I think you are talking about my friend and I. We two of the few in DC chopping up bikes. JP is spot on. Here's my 2 cents.

Everyone has something they take seriously. If fixing up old bikes a getting them back on the street is your thing... great. Go for it. It's a nobel cause. But don't act like the entire world needs to pour energy into that motivation. We're all at least riders here, and therefore supposedly good people... Therefore, I assume we all have our arena of contribuiton towards the better. Be it restoring bikes or anything else you can think of.

So just because you see me riding around on a tall bike (aka having a f*kcing blast) made from two frames that could have been salvaged (but in all reality would have rusted away), don't attack me as some neo-yuppie artist without a sense of the broader picture of the world. If you do, in the end it's you who plays the fool, for you have no idea who i am. In the end, i may fit very snugly into your idea of a good person. In fact, i am fairly sure I do.

I've been riding bikes for twenty years, from racing x-country and DH to road crits and BMX and now riding fixed gear everywhere i go. I am pretty sure i could out ride any of you on any surface. That night that we met in front of Pharmacy, it took me about ten seconds to tell which of you really knew how to ride and which had not a clue. But i didn't judge you for it, as you are judging my obviously beginner welds. (the first i have EVER done). Everyone is skilled at something.

So take a deep breath next time, and be happy we are all different. If we were all passionate about the same stuff, the world would be a pretty dull place.

meh.

NathanCharles

Oh yea... we spend ZERO dollars on the bikes we find... and pull them all from the trash. a few are even bent. None are ever in riding condition. In our efforts we have restored maybe 3 bikes. all very very cool city single speed or three speed bikes ripe for a friend.

MarkS

But if you're making them for consumption in the U.S. ... well, the 3rd world is blessed with a dearth of lawyers.

So, where are some images of these tall bikes?

KnhoJ

If you need an example of how to waste waste bikes....

The local landfill transfer stations have hired several full time employees, (3-4 per shift) and given them sledgehammers, chopsaws, bolt cutters, and very strict instructions.

Knudsen

RedDeMartini, no rebute?

Johnny Payphone

There are two bike clubs I know of in the San Francisco area:

Crud https://crud.org/

and Cyclecide https://www.cyclecide.com/

You can find pictures of our bikes here:

https://www.rat-patrol.org

https://www.chicagofreakbike.org

Ready to Ruck

hey Johnny. I met bill when he was down in Austin. Your posts intrigue me. I already told bill that I want to go up to Chicago. In fact my yuppie art student friend, who welds daily in school, was going to come up from Ohio to join me. I've never been to Chicago, and Bill even mentioned that he would try to arrange for me to stay with at the Rat Patrol house because it was my intention to learn bunches about tallbikes (I've only seen two before first hand, both within the past 3 days oddly.) I know the Bikes Across Borders here is into tall bikes but I spend my free nights volunteering at YellowBike, just building up and painting bikes yellow for the city to freely use. Of course they all get stolen, torn apart, trashed, taken back to mexico (this I don't mind), etc etc. But hey, we try.