My new bike rack (with pictures)
 

So, I just moved to the awesome city of San Francisco. I got a new apartment, and a new roommate.

Just for fun, here's a couple pictures of the view from the roof of my apartment:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/150/3...6b3a9e1778.jpg

And if you look a little farther to the right, you get to see a certain large red bridge:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/125/3...f8b436cf87.jpg

Unfortunately, you don't get quite the same view from inside, instead you can barely even see the water:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/158/3...3917de385a.jpg

The water is close enough that when you're falling asleep at night you hear the waves crashing on the beach, which is awesome :)


But anyway, this thread isn't about my view, it's about my bike rack. So, I'm new to the city. I got a job here, and needed to find a place to live. Unfortunately, I knew exactly two people in the area, neither of which needed a roommate. I didn't want to try to find a place by myself, partly because everyone knows how expensive SF is (the 2 bdrm apt I ended up getting is $1800/month) and partly because I don't really like living alone, especially in a new area where I don't know very many people yet.

So, one of my friends in the area put me in touch with a friend of his who was looking for a place. We met once and got some food and chatted for a while to see if we got along. He seemed like a pretty good guy, and we decided we'd find an apartment to share.

It turns out, he's a bit of a cyclist himself. We each brought two bikes to the new place. Coincidentally, each of us brought a fixed-gear townie/commuter bike, and a cross-country mountain bike, which I found a bit funny, that we'd have such similar taste in bikes considering we'd barely met before.

Now, having four bikes in the house is awesome, but they tend to take up a bit of space, so we decided to make a rack for them. Well, my roommate went out to home depot to purchase some track-making supplies, but found a pre-manufactured rack kit, and bought that instead. He brought it home and tried to install it, but got stuck and had to go out somewhere, so I decided I'd put up the rack.

Anyway, here's our new bike rack:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/166/3...00470088b2.jpg

Woohoo, all four bikes neatly stored in an otherwise unused part of the room. It kinda makes the living room look like a bike shop, but I like bike shops, so that doesn't bother me at all :)

Anyway, there was a ton of extraneous information in this thread unrelated to my bike rack, but I hope you liked it anyway.

Best use of a dining room I've seen lately! Are either/both of you commuting in your new town?

can you tell me the name and model of that pre-manufactured rack kit you mentioned. thanks. I was in the "Bay area" as people in San Franciso likes to call it, for the first time. Unfortunately, I only biked once over the Golden Gate on a crappy rental. Next time, I'm going to make sure I ship my own bike to really explore San Francisco.

Nice set-up. I like the idea that the bikes are central to life and shoved in some corner of the basement.

I have something similiar in my garage and I've found that the tires mark up the wall quite a bit. You might consider a protective cover where the lower tires hang.

Dave

I will be. He works 15 miles away and drives to work, and just rides the bike when he's going somewhere in town.

Nice rack but that rent is not bad for 2 bedrooms. My sister pays north of $3,000 for a 1 BR in Manhattan.

Ohh I would have to go on a diet,
Tour bike
Mountain bike
Utlity bike.
I could store my ghetto bikes outside.


Good roomates are hard to find!

Yea that rack looks awesome.

Very nicely done!! :)

Yes, please do, notfred. Also, how much was your setup?