I know some commuters are not at good fixing bikes, but who else sees riders with a 6 " contact patch? Totally rusted squeaky chains? Cranks that hit a chain guard every revolution?
How do they ride like that? Boggles the mind sometimes.

I see hundreds of people on bikes every day, so yeah, I see this stuff daily. Some people are not attuned to their bikes. The most surprising thing is when these people are on high end bikes. I would have expected more awareness there, but I'd be wrong. Lots of squeaky chains on racing bikes.

I can't help but to assume they have been forced to ride a bike, that bike, due to their circumstances and not by their choice. It just makes me sad. Not just for them at that moment but also for the idea that as this is their primary cycling experience they are less likely to develop any love for riding.

I have come across this phenomenon with a lot of my kids young teen friends. They are usually riding an old hand me down bike that has never had a lick of maintenance in 15 years. When they are at my house with their bikes I make of point of fixing, tweaking, and lubing, and letting them know what I did so they can understand the concept. Turns out they like riding a lot more and do it more because their bikes work well.

Dui?

No, a lot of people here ride bikes by choice, having weighed the options. They can afford to commute other ways. Cycling just makes sense for many people here. The bike share program here called Citibike is successful beyond anyone's predictions.

So Tom with your new perspective, would you say beat up utilitarian bikes like that are the majority of the commuters you see?

No, not at all. The variety of bikes here is huge. I can't even begin to describe it.

My perspective on why people commute by bike isn't really new since I moved from suburban NJ to NYC. Very few commute by bike in NJ, but only a fraction of bike commuters there do so for lack of alternatives. The fraction is bigger there than here, but I'm not sure it's as high as half.

Fascinating, and glad to hear citibike is working!

I've seen the high dollar bikes with squeeks and rattles and chains begging for a lube. Boggles my mind. I guess if you can afford one you can afford it's replacement due to neglect.

And I've seen the people on bikes that don't fit, with tires in need of air and literally rusty chains. I'm also of the mindset that these are people who are bike commuting out of necessity, because they have no other options.

Here is a sample of the bikes I see parked outside, mostly in my neighborhood.

Now that's some diversity.. I wonder if I can take some pics at the racks on monday without campus police hassling me... I'll have to see if I can, we've definitely got an interesting mix of bikes there.

Are you seeing the same ones over and over, or maybe just noticing the guy who's too fed up at the moment to fix a problem that popped up, and would rather risk a bit more damage and pedal harder to get home rather than walk the bike all the way to his tools? (Or to his favorite LBS, I guess.)

When I would ride my old IronHorse AT20 around Dallas, there were times I'd just ride a couple miles on a flat rather than fight with the non-QR wheels using a Crescent wrench, or let the brake or derailleur drag and squawk until I got home to do a proper adjustment.

Your question indicates you may not have an idea of how densely populated New York is. I can't make an accurate estimate, but I would say that on foot, on bike, and in motor vehicles, I see literally thousands of faces a day. I won't even know when I see a duplicate face from one day to the next.

I work at a university and often see students who buy a BSO, ride it to school until a tire goes flat or a pedal falls off (which seems not that uncommon) and then abandon it in the bike rack. I don't know if they then get another bike or just start taking the bus.

A typical day in Manhattan:

Care to hazard a guess as to most common wheelsize? (I'd be guessing 26" mtb size myself)

Oy! Again, I see lots of bikes! The most common sizes are

20" (406)
26" (559)
26" (590)
700c (622)
27" (630)

There are plenty of others, too.

Sheesh Tom, it's like you haven't been studying for the test at all.

I feel like I should take a video myself to show the mayhem and variety.

There is a surprising number of old English 3-speeds. They have proven their worth as durable, reliable bikes, more than any other kind.

I have a theory that chain squeak is much like body odor -- you can detect it when it's coming from someone else, but you're strangely immune to it when you're the source.

Lol, my old boss bikes to work sometimes. He was complaining that his bike was more and more making horrible noises, coming from a whole bunch of places. Did he need a new wheel? A whole new bike? Etc. I told him he probably just needed to oil the chain. He looked at me dubiously, like it couldn't possibly be that simple. But he said he'd love to figure it out.

Over lunch I bought some bike chain oil. Walked out with him to his bike at the end of the day, put oil on the chain, enough to cover the whole chain. All of the noise completely disappeared. He gave me the money for the oil and left.

I rode for years just not realizing what the source of the problem was, or thinking it would be complicated to get it fixed. You just don't know. :-)

No, I definitely know it when any part of my bike is making noise. Chain squeak in particular is like nails on a chalkboard, except that nails on a chalkboard don't really bother me but a squeaky chain drives me crazy (it's a short trip, though).

I've often wondered how rude it would be to offer a fellow cyclist some chain lube.

There's a group of young guys I see around the local regional airport who are always riding around on cheap X-mart bikes and their chains are always squeaking. My suspicion is that they just think their bikes are noisy because they didn't spend a lot on them. I'd really like to tell them that a $3 bottle of chain lube would fix the problem, but I don't quite live close enough to Portland to be unable to control the urge to give unsolicited advice to complete strangers.

Leave that up to bikesnobnyc.

Raleigh built those bikes to last 100 years. So far so good.

Lies.. a loud chain on my bike makes me nuts!

Around here it's mostly people who can't afford to fix the bike until it's totally broken, they usually also have big bags of bottles that they are carrying to the bottle depot for some $...