This guy wins. And no front brakes to boot.

Yo dawg, I heard you liked bar-ends, so we put bar-ends on your bar-ends.

i wonder what's stopping him from going to a 3rd tier of bar ends.

it seems to me that attempting to steer such a contraption would be awkward, but perhaps it's not.

I go for somewhere around 2-10° above the horizontal I reckon.








Controls on the barends by Lester Of Puppets, on Flickr

I just shake my head when I see bar ends pointing up; it's popular in the ghetto here, so it's just 'pimped'. (The big pullback bars on old-style cruisers get pointed straight up, too....)

The MTB 'style' is to forgo bar ends with MTB riser bars; I say, STFU and ride your own bike.

My bar ends angle up about 5-10 degrees, whatever the angle is that's natural to the hands when standing and pedaling.

I won't hate on those of you who pimp your bar ends, but I will shake my head after you've passed. I know that just kills you....

Look at these I came across today. I need to fine tune the adjustment on them. I can't find anymore like these that are this adjustable.

i see plenty of people commuting on road bikes with their dropped 'tour de france style' bars (sorry don' t know the real name) turned upwards to look like mtb bar ends in order to give them a more upright position. looks pretty funny until you see it on ten different bikes a day and then you get used to it.

A friend of mine has something like five sets of bar ends going at once, and on a pair of north roads to boot. Three of them have been kludged together to create something that resembles a drop north road, and the other two are positioned as aero-bars. It all works out a lot better than it sounds, but it does look pretty messy.

Another winner.

+1 and a high five on that one!

....or by older/out of shape people that need a more upright position. Let's all make fun of the old fat people, it's so easy......at least they are still out there riding. Let's leave the bike snobbery to the other forums, this is one of the few cool ones left.

no one is laughing at old and/or fat people (or even skinny young people) for desiring a more upright riding position, we're merely laughing at folks who use up-turned bar ends to accomplish that end; using a riser stem and/or riser bars would be a much more appropriate solution.

my father has a late 80s nishiki hybrid that had a relatively forward riding position. it worked fine for him in his 40s. he's now in his 60s and when i saw one day that he had flipped his bar ends vertical and was riding on them for a more upright posture, i had to scold him a bit. i went out and got him a 6" riser bar and switched it in for the flat bar and he's now much happier on the bike.

Looks like antlers. Maybe that's what he's going for.

Nah, it's not snobbery as much as it is an issue of practicality.
There are many ways to obtain a more upright position. Proper bike fit has more to do with practicality than elitism, and impractical solutions to a simple root cause (bad bike fit) can be funny looking. In the case of vertical bar ends my first guess is that the bars are too low. Better options exist (riser stem, shorter stem, riser bar, more bar sweep, etc etc etc).

To me it is akin to someone cutting a hole in the roof of the car and installing a bubble skylight in order to have enough headroom. My sense of practicality tells me that perhaps the person has chosen the wrong vehicle, or at least a poor solution.

Hey, just sayin'

I'm sure he's stoked to have easy access to brakes and shifters once again!

I think for a lot of these people it is uncomfortable to ride in any one position, even the correctly fit one, for too long. I know that's what my mother says. Slapping some near vertical bar ends on is just about the easiest and cheapest fix you could make. Sounds pretty practical to me. If you're stacking bar ends on bar ends on bar ends that maybe a different story.

<---doesn't have bar ends and isn't old or fat, I just don't like to see anything but love in the commuting forum...

I Agree with this (I made the edit on your basis that the bike fits properly in the first place). This being the case, vertical bar ends are not necessary and can be installed properly (i.e. more comfortable/useful than vertical). WIN!

On the notion that vertical bar-ends are more practical, I'm open to see exactly how this is possible, but any application I've seen has been a compromise at best (less control, non-optimal hand positioning, etc).