Anybody out there see commuters on the $ 47. Walfark special known as the Roadmaster Mt. Fury Mountain Bike ?

I have seen people riding this bike around town more than once. I wonder if the brakes still work and such....

PS, the one I see most often is the womens version... looks like this:




???

I've seen a great many of them.

In fact, I know a guy who's been using one to commute all over town for the last year. He's gone through four of them so far because he doesn't do even the most basic maintenance; he just rides it till it dies and then walks to Wally Worm and buys another, ad infinitum.

I keep telling him that he could've had a real quality bike by now, with all the money he's been spending by replacing those turd bikes every three months.

There is one in the bike locker here at my office. It is red and silver with a matching helmet. It was locked to a rack about a year ago and hasn't moved since. It is one of three bikes in the locker that are about the same class and never move. One of the others is a blue and silver mongoose full suspension and the other is a black and yellow magna. I joke that some coworkers should take them for a street race around a park up the road, but I would be pretty leery of actually riding those bikes hard.

I see DUI commuters/day laborer types on them all the time.

See them a lot. I don't look down at people who ride them because if it gets you riding, more power to you.

A coworker at my old job used to ride one. He lined the tires with tuffy liners because he got so many flats. Also, even though it had multiple speeds, he settled on one gear because the shifter didn't work after awhile. A fixed gear Roadmaster! He also replaced the original seat because the stock one pretty much disintegrated.

Despite their low-end quality, those Roadmasters are a rather pure expression of the bicycle as a useful form of transportation as opposed to an expensive toy. All of the people I've ever seen riding them do so for purely practical reasons, and the bikes seem to hold up well enough for that(At least for a little while).

I should start snapping pics of the ones I see around town. It could be a photo essay on "The Practical Bicycle".

We had an intern last summer who bought one to ride to work. She expected it to be disposable because it would have to live outdoors (dorm rules, roommate rules or something).

Almost made sense when she explained it like that.

Roadmaster? More like RoadSLAVE! hahaheehee...