For those who live "urban"...
 

How many bikes do you own? And more importantly, where do you store them?

I'd love to have a fleet of bikes to choose from, and while cost is slightly prohibitive, space is much more of a concern. We don't have a kitchen table because the bikes are there (and that's only 2 total, me and my husband's)...

Do you have somewhere outside you can store them? hooks on an outside wall maybe?

i live in an apartment on long island...it's really a converted garage. I have 3 bikes. One in the living room, one in the bedroom, and one by the door. I've considered those hooks that hang the bike by the front tire on the wall, but haven't gone for it yet.

I keep mine in the kitchen under the rest of the art.

Mine are in the hall and on the wall.

I have 4 functional bikes that I need to be easily useable. 2 are on the floor on their wheels, ready to go. 2 are hanging from hooks in the ceiling, a little slower to bring to action, but still able to be used without much fuss.

I have 17 others, from bare frames to nearly rideable bikes that would require significant work to bring out of mothballs.

I have 3 but only keep 2 in my apartment. I am going to get one of these, http://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...torage%20Racks
Otherwise I have kept them in the hall for the past year.

I am moving to a much smaller apartment in the fall. Thankfully I am living on my own at that point. The bikes (2 currently, maybe another and the trailer, when it gets built) will probably sleep in the bedroom and out of the way. Now they sit on the balcony or occasionally the living room (If I am lazy) of our current apartment.

I have a gravity rack with two of my bikes on it. I have a PVC bike rack that holds three others, and the last bike in that room uses a kickstand. I keep one bike by the front door also. Eventually I am going to have two Gravity racks that I will modify to fit on one wall that will hold four bikes total and then the fifth bike will be by the front door. The wall that I am trying to put the two Gravity racks on is too short to fit both bikes side by side because the wheel base is too long so I am going to cut one set of arms shorter so the bikes with sit slightly diagonal to the wall and one set of bikes rear tires will actually sit behind the other set of bikes front tires.

Two
 

I lived in a Washington, DC apartment for ten years... which meant I could never build up a stable full of bikes. I had to keep it to two, plus one for my wife. I used to have a mountain bike and my old racing bike from the 80s. After moving to DC I couldn't mountain bike anymore (no bikes allowed on unpaved trails in DC, and I didn't have a car to drive to the trails). I replaced the mountain bike with a touring bike that is still my primary commuter today. I still have the old racing bike as well.

Our apartment was around 700 square feet, and we had far too much stuff for that space. I barely had room for bicycles. We had a storage area in the basement that was just big enough for two or three bikes, but I stopped storing them there after neighbors had their bike stolen from their storage unit. The basement was not very secure. So two bikes lived in the second bedroom we used as an office, and the other bike leaned against the wall by the front door.

Now we live in a house with plenty of room for more bicycles, but unfortunately I can't afford any new bicycles at the moment thanks to mortgage payments much higher than our rent used to be :notamused:

So I say cram them in while you can afford them. Someday you just might have enough space. Until then get creative. Hang some from the ceiling, hang them vertically from the front wheel (with the rear wheel resting on the floor)... I did that for awhile.

Sean

Let's see... I've been riding bikes for over 40 years, on a regularly basis, and I've never had more than one bike at a time unless I've been trying to sell an extra one. Seems to me that there's plenty of money that can be spent on one good bike, plus the shoes, the helmet, the clothing (for all the different weather conditions too), the tires, the maintenance, a floor pump, a frame pump. I don't really know why so many have to have a stable of bikes (unless you have a specific need for a mountain bike, a good road bike should suffice).

But, anyway, I do live in a downtown urban area, in an apartment, and we already have 3 bikes in it: mine, wife's and daughter's. It's a small apartment, so one bike lives on the balcony except in winter, one is in a hallway, and the other moves around from room to room depending on where I feel it's safest at any given time. That's mine, and the small apartment gives me an excuse to keep it in or near the living room most of the time just like back in my bachelor days.

I have 5 bikes and live in a studio apartment. How does that work? Four bikes are in the walk-in closet, one stays in the room.

I barely have room in the walk-thru closet in my efficiency, so no bikes are in there. ;) Four bikes, all leaning against the "main wall" in the main bedroom/living space, paired up two-deep. I have the barely-used MTB and hybrid against the wall, and the roadie and rain bikes leaning against them and within easy reach.

I have a garage, too (a rare commodity in my neighborhood), but it's got my car, race tires, summer wheels & tires, exhaust, intake, and suspension parts, etc etc etc... :o

Living room

http://www.brucew.com/gallery/albums...2953.sized.jpg

I could hang two more in the bedroom if I had two more...

Same problem here. My wife and I in a two bedroom apartment. The "spare" bedroom has a gravity rack, but right now it's holding the two halves of Sears Tote/Cycle. My [bike, not car] and hers are in the living room. Since we got her bike, we've had a one-bike-in, one-bike-out policy, which I broke with Tote/Cycle, but it was collapsed under a table for the first few weeks, so that made for a convincing argument that it didn't take up too much room. Then there's the Rog folder. That's in pieces in a suitcase in the closet and has not been discovered yet. So that's the answer: One full-sized bike, and folders stashed in every nook and cranny. ;-)

I talked the owner of the building into letting use store them in the basement, it's dirty, damp and full of cockroaches but it beats the street. We had two now we have six and the pile of parts keep growing, not sure the owner knew what he was getting into. Before I kept in it our very small office, I had to move the bikes to the kitchen to work on the computer.

I have one in my apartment, and another in my parent's garage. I only really use the one at my place, the one at my parent's place is kind of a spare.

I put mine by the door. It has a kickstand, which is a lot cheaper and more useful than a silly bike hanging rack that costs $100.

I'm certainly not anti-kickstand. All my bikes have them, but place to hang a bike has it's place, especially if you have more than one bike. Right now our bikes are in the living room because a) we're lazy and b) half of the household believes that it's bike riding season. But when that half feels that bike riding season has come to a close, their bike will hang up and out of the way, and when we need more space, my bike will hang below it. Two bikes in space that one would normally occupy. And I find the rack keeps them more snug against the wall than leaning on a kickstand. Two points for the rack, especially when you're low on space.

I have 5. They are parked in my dining area and living room of my apartment. The bikes I ride the most are on the outside, the ones that don't get ridden as much are against the wall. I also have a ghostbike in my storage across the street with my bikes at work trailer.

When I went to live in the dorms I knew I'd have trouble storing multiple bikes in one room. I built a bike lift that lifts 1 or 2 bikes and holds them horizontally against the ceiling, completely out of the way (20 bucks worth of 2by4s, padding, and barn hinges). It clamps to door frames and can be raised and lowered with one hand. When lowered, bikes can be lifted off as if it was a car-trunk rack and when raised you can easily walk underneath your bikes (depending on ceiling height of course). Aside from head room, almost no space is lost. I don't have any pictures, sorry. For my everyday bike, I screwed a hook into a wall stud and hang it by the front tire. In this way I was able to keep 3 bikes in a small room that I shared with a room mate.

My current place is spacious enough that my bikes stay on the ground but I'm just now moving to a tiny (and cheap) efficiency so the bike lift is getting set up once more.

I have "vigas" on the ceiling ... guess where my bike and my roomate bikes hang?

You have TWENTY ONE BIKES man?! lol...I thought I was bad having ~7 guitars! If I had that many of anything, my girlfriend would have my head on a stick! lol

I'm going to probably end up keeping mine in the living room or something. We have a spare room but that's for the guitars! >-D

Three, resting comfortably right now.

My and my flatmate have four. His bike, my bike, and our "shared use" bikes. We got two really old single speeds from the 50's that we got for 30$ total.