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In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

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Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#81

Post by cgrealy »

notatoad wrote: post #32
causality0 wrote: post #10

I don't understand why many of the stands he calls useless are useless. Sure most of them are less economical but as long as there's a loop of metal anchored to the ground how is it useless?

Securely locking your bike means locking both wheels and frame to the rack. Any rack that doesn't reach all three of those things is impossible to securely lock to.

I think that, in practice, locking the frame and rear wheel is enough to deter most bike thieves.

Yes, they could steal the front wheel, but it's hardly worth the effort. It's difficult to sell, and you can't get away quickly.

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#82

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

blamazon wrote: post #31

In my car-centric city (southeast USA, population ~125k) when I visit private property with no bicycle parking, I try to find the owner and offer to install one of these just for the cost of materials. The idea being, they can put in another one when they see more than one customer on a bicycle at the same time. It's very cheap, less than 100 bucks typically as I have the requisite tools in my garage to make them fro…

To be appropriately secure, these really need installing in concrete as shown in the initial tweet. Still, better to have one less secure sheffield installed than zero.

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#83

Post by II2II »

dividedbyzero wrote: post #36
notatoad wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Securely locking your bike means locking both wheels and frame to the rack. Any rack that doesn't reach all three of those things is impossible to securely lock to.

Though if your bike isn't expensive or rare and you're in an area with tons of such bikes, secure locking isn't all that important. Just have some sort of lock so it can't be wheeled away inconspicuously. At least that's what everyone here does and it seems to work well enough.

I live in a city where bike theft happens, but you're reasonably sure to come back to an intact bike if the frame is locked to something attached to the ground. The security aspect of the Sheffield stand may not be necessary, but I still prefer them. There are a couple of reasons for that.

Spacing is one reason. While you may share a stand with someone else, the next stand is going to be two to three feet away. I don't have to untangle my bike from other bikes, and I don't have to worry about damaging the bike of somebody else.

Support is the other reason. Bikes are easy to knock down and relatively easy to mangle. There is a reason why the article referred to some of the racks as wheel benders. I have also seen bikes that were mangled by cars after falling onto the street. That's not a concern with the Sheffield stand.

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#84

Post by deadbunny »

tasuki wrote: post #58
dang wrote: post #35

Url changed from https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1493299809574342659 , which points to this. It's fine to posts links to alternative views in the thread, but please submit the original source (per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ).

But... Twitter is unreadable! I get all these weird popups and it requires enormous amounts of effort just to follow the thread. We probably can't fix Twitter. Would it be possible to reconsider the guidelines to allow for alternative views of websites that have absolutely atrocious usability?

I've never had this issue with Twitter threads. Granted I'm signed in and viewing with Firefox + ad blocker.

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#85

Post by nicklaf »

You'll see these stands [0] at Stanford and UC Davis, and they seem pretty good.

(Although I made the mistake of locking up a nice LeMond bicycle at Stanford with a cable lock and it was stolen in broad daylight. [1])

[0] https://www.groundcontrolsystems.com/product/undergrad-wheel...

[1] https://bikeindex.org/bikes/49705

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#87

Post by b4je7d7wb »

ghostly_s wrote: post #63
mrsuprawsm wrote: post #37

For most bike "racks" here in NL it seems like the primary purpose is not security, but just having somewhere to lean bikes against and give people a sensible place to park their bikes (as opposed to "in a huge pile") Most people don't bother physically locking their regular city bikes to anything (only using a ring lock on the bike itself), primarily cheap beater bikes but also there's a guy in my street with a €200…

No one locks their bikes in Japan, either. According to Wikipedia this is thanks to "strong policing and general public disregard for stolen items." I can certainly say I've never heard of a US police department doing anything proactive in response to a reported bike theft.

You also have to to do some paperwork for buying a bike. I assume you have to transfer ownership when selling, so stolen bikes probably cannot really be sold on the open market.

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#88

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #37

For most bike "racks" here in NL it seems like the primary purpose is not security, but just having somewhere to lean bikes against and give people a sensible place to park their bikes (as opposed to "in a huge pile") Most people don't bother physically locking their regular city bikes to anything (only using a ring lock on the bike itself), primarily cheap beater bikes but also there's a guy in my street with a €200…

And if you do want to lock your bike to something immovable, the standard seems to be a chain that locks into the ring lock, with a loop on the end- which gives you a lot more flexibility than a D-lock.

The other factor, though, is that standard Dutch city bikes are not designed to be easily dismantled. If you have quick release wheels, you want to be able to lock the front wheel as well as the frame (and ideally also the rear wheel).

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#89

Post by woodruffw »

b4je7d7wb wrote: post #87
ghostly_s wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one locks their bikes in Japan, either. According to Wikipedia this is thanks to "strong policing and general public disregard for stolen items." I can certainly say I've never heard of a US police department doing anything proactive in response to a reported bike theft.

You also have to to do some paperwork for buying a bike. I assume you have to transfer ownership when selling, so stolen bikes probably cannot really be sold on the open market.

Out of sheer ignorance: what are the implications of not having the proper paperwork? Do Japan's street policemen take note of suspicious looking bikes and follow up with their owners?

Re: In praise of the humble Sheffield stand

#90

Post by jeffbee »

wffurr wrote: post #62
jeffbee wrote: post #16

There's an American firm called Forms+Surfaces that has a whole catalog full of terrible, weird bike racks. They must have a lot of mindshare among architects apparently because their junk keeps popping up all over California. Nobody who has ever used a bicycle would choose them but they keep showing up anyway. Here's a fun tweet where local well-known cyclist rips them out of the pavement with his bare hands. https:…

Those particular racks don't seem awful other than the way they're (not) secured to the pavement.

"Can be permanently secured to the ground" and "Can be temporarily secured to a bicycle" are the only two requirements!
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