A personal custom bike garage. But of course.

 

A guy in Portland, lacking a garage, has installed a bike storage unit in front of his house:

https://bikeportland.org/2025/03/14/is-this-bikehangar-a-residential-parking-solution-for-portland-393224

It's interesting. It's big. And it's expensive.

After watching the video (Pet peeve warning: the owner is a Millennial who uses terminal "up-speak," ending every sentence as if it's a question - UGH), I was saddened to find that my first thought was to look for a weak link in the design so you could steal the bikes inside.
My second thought was that bike thieves looking at this were also thinking the very same thing.

Previous bike locker designs have been installed in Portland, going back at least twenty years. Some were simply heavy fiberglass shells on a hinge that swung up and down. Thieves figured those out in a New York minute and a lot of them were destroyed beyond repair within the first three years.
Later lockers were large metal boxes. Stronger than fiberglass, but also easy to destroy with the right tools and the right mindset. (A guy lost his fancy bike in a Bay Area storage locker when the locker next to his was converted into a tiny meth lab, which exploded and destroyed the contents of the lockers on either side. The resulting fire melted his tires and plastic fixtures, bent the fork into a pretzel and baked the paint off the tubes.)

Bike lockers lost some of their appeal when the homelessness situation here reached crisis proportions about ten years ago. Desperate people were breaking into the lockers, emptying the contents and setting up house inside. In a few cases, when the locker's rightful renter came back, they were chased off by the homeless guy who'd moved in. Several of those lockers were subsequently removed.

At this point in our urban history, I can't see these lockers taking off here. Many cities -- including Portland -- are operating at huge budget deficits, unable to provide the most basic safety and health services. There aren't enough public defenders, there isn't enough jail space, there isn't enough affordable housing. Installing a bike locker that costs $5,000 seems rather tone-deaf, even if you install it on your front lawn. Maybe especially if you install it on your front lawn.

Also, while I understand that the UK-based designers tested them with everything but the kitchen sink, There are homeless guys in Portland using a sawz-all to cut through bike racks in order to steal bikes. Why wouldn't they try to blow up one of these to get at the bikes inside?

As my friend Sam Tracy used to say, "If they want your bike badly enough, they'll gank it no mater what."

Also, while I get that when you don't have a garage it's nice to be able to store your bikes securely without having to drag them into your house at night, I wonder at the unwitting message being conveyed by setting up one of these things right outside your house, next to the sidewalk. Yes, it's great to be able to have your bikes handy so you'll want to ride them more; but erecting a five-thousand-dollar structure for that purpose kind of screams privilege in a way that I'd rather not see when it comes to promoting a bicycle-centric way of life. I've hung my bike inside in the entryway of my house for over twenty years, and I know my house is a lot smaller than the one in the article.

I just can't see this making sense right now, when there are more pressing issues on the table.

It sure looks like they’re coming for Social Security. I won’t take it lying down.

I interrupt the bike love to bring you the latest from the Musk and Trump Circus Act:

https://www.facebook.com/1449804979/posts/pfbid02TuhidFKPmsGpLc4sgKYivGStgp5Nh4R7S9yg2mkyDuCK3qPig9RjnjmBSXcYashPl/?

They are coming for Social Security, SSDI (Disability) and SSI (Supplemental Income).

The Democrats are rolling over and playing dead. (Want proof? Schumer just urged them to join him in approving the GOP’s bill to stave off a government shutdown, kicking the can down the road for another six months.)

Millions of Americans PAID INTO the Social Security system over the course of their working years, supporting those who were retiring at the time — and ensuring that when they needed help in the later years, the money would be there for them. 

Elon Musk isn’t satisfied. He wants everyone who can work for crap wages to do so until they drop, and he wants anyone who can no longer work to simply die.

So he’s going after Social Security, by making up complete lies about the “millions” who are defrauding the system (when in fact, the incidence of purposeful fraud is quite low) and saying that by “tightening up” the rules for who qualifies for Social Security he can save the federal government untold billions of dollars. 

Elon Musk doesn’t want anyone to benefit from Social Security, calling it an “entitlement.”

Musk is riding Donald Trump’s increasingly senile coattails in order to remake the country into an oligarchy, and to pave the way for a nation ruled by White Christian Nationalists, for White Christian Nationalists.

GOP congressmen and senators do not dare oppose this plan, under threats that include political and even real death.

Democrats are rolling over and playing dead, hoping no one will notice. (Chuck Schumer chose to go along with the GOP’s plan, going along to get along, and delivered enough votes to help the GOP’s budget plan to succeed. Obviously, a rock and a hard place; opposing the agony would simply give DOGE more leeway to gut federal spending another way. But still, he should’ve fought out loud.)

Social Security is not an entitlement! We paid money into it every week from our paychecks for years.

I am now on Social Security Disability. I was disabled by multiple medical conditions that were exacerbated by Long Covid, and can no longer work. 

Just so there’s no confusion, let me be clear:

IF THE FEDS SHUT DOWN MY SOCIAL SECURITY, I WILL DO WHATEVER I MUST IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. AND I WILL NOT FEEL A SHRED OF GUILT. Because if our leaders can ignore the rule of law, then I have no choice but to do the same in order to survive. 

I refuse to lay down on the train tracks.

I’m a woman, a Jew, a retiree, a dyke and an American citizen.

Let the White Nationalists come and get me.  I will show more backbone than the Democrats in Congress have.