It's your $1500 track bike, but you want to ride it in Manhattan. What're your tricks to disguise yer purty purty. Best one's I've seen are the super-thrashed, old school Selle Italia saddle missing a chunk off of the nose. Sitting on top of a very nice but inconspicuous vintage Italian steel-frame roadbike.

Give me your tips!

How about not spending $1500 on a bike you are leaving on the street. Spend $1300 for your nice bike and $200 for the daily rider.

clean it with a dirty diaper!

ride it for 8 minutes in the snow

then never clean it again

carry a gun.

how would that work?

Bulletholes. For lightening.

It's like the 21st century remix of 80s-style drilling. Urban *and* retro. Tres chic.

If you're going to put duct tape on it, just one layer, please. Know a guy who put two pounds of tape on his frame and wondered why it felt dead. No, really.

I ride my bike in the city all the time. ....I just never leave it out of my sight.

I always make a big production out of licking my seat and bars when I park my bike, and have found I no longer even need to lock it up.

I wrap a layer of innertube around various bits followed by electrician's tape. It's practical too 'cause it protects the fragile paint on my italian job...

peeeee on it....mark your territory

potenital theives will be intimidated by your essense, while females will be thrust into heat searching for the man who marked that bike.....sweet

Okay, to clarify, I don't have a $1500 track bike; I don't even have a track bike. I was just looking for ideas for my girlfriend's shiny, $300 city hybrid.

And plus, I thought there might be something new and creative out there .

just park it next to a nicerer bike with a smaller lock

just don't lock it anyplace dumb (empty streets, overnight anywhere, bushwick, etc), lock it well (both wheels, frame, krypto chain), take some precaution to prevet theft of easily removable parts like the seatpost and stem (epoxy/glue/wax/glued BBs in the allen bolt holes), and don't be too paranoid about it.

you can wrap the tubes up, but i'm of the opinion that while most any bike will get stolen, many thieves know what they're stealing and are not just monkeys who think "hey, it looks shiny."

sometimes i think wrapping the tubes draws even more attention to a bike than riding something with no logos at all.... as if to say, "i'm hiding something!"

just lock your bike up on west broadway just below canal. there's always a steamroller locked up there with a dinky little hardware store chain and padlock. the thief will surely grab that one first. most likely by biting through the chain with his teeth.

Carry a decoy $6000 bike and lock it with a lousy lock next to your bike.

street cred son.


and seriously, just dont be a *****in idiot when you lock your bike, and it wont get stolen. no need to mess up a piece of beauty.

pull some condoms out of the trash and drape them feng-shui-ishly on your bike.

but seriously ppl who know what they are doing usually dont take bikes that look like messengers bikes. i mean messers usually never leave bikes for more than five minutes, plus if you do steel one, they are all over, and they have radios. a messenger in DC got his bike stolen adn they found it and the guy in two days.

That is really the best strategy. Any bike can be stolen, but if you make it more difficult to steal than the next bike, the thief will just take the easy way out.

For example, my dad chains his car up. He parks it in the parking garage where he lives and it has been stolen in the past (different car - they burned that one). So he has this long chain that wraps around a pillar of the garage, and he locks the car to it through the towing eye. Now, somebody could cut the chain, but wouldn't they just steal the other car next to it instead, all other things being equal?

i guess if it gives him some peace of mind...

that was my logic! i built up a cheap fixie so i could ride that instead of the casati i have built up right now. i have this deep personal relationship going on with the casati, and i think it'd get all offended if i didn't take it out every day.

when it comes down to it... i cant resist the nicer bike unless the weather is just awful. unless i start playing bike polo any time soon i'm just going to sell that beater, one bike is all i can handle.

god knows you need some.

ouch. that really hurt.

...but how can you get to know and love your bike when you're not riding it every day?

I say this: quelch your rampant consumer lust and buy a sensible fixed gear. Something you love and appreciate, something with respectable quality-- but something you won't lose sleep over. A bike whose beautiful finish you don't have to tape / tube over. A bike you actually use, as opposed to a bike that just looks cool.

I find that owning really nice stuff can be a pain in the ass. Use it, love it, or sell it to someone who will. Perhaps that means your track bike will finally see the track...