The Chainlink

Chicago + Bikes = Sucks

   After living in Chicago for almost a year I've come to the conclusion that biking here sucks and you should all just give up, join the winning team and buy an SUV. Never been to Portland or Copenhagen or shitty places like Dallas and Houston, but I've bike messengered, toured and commuted all around Boston and New York. I don't want to just trash talk, but you have it pretty rough here.

Cons

1. Potholes? The streets are literally carpet bombed. NYC has mostly shoddy road work that can be a hassle, but here the roads are just disintegrating from within. Roads in Boston are pretty good.

2. No room on the roads for bikes. You're always in the way of the cars, even if your in the bike plane.

3. Guns. You honestly have to worry that the driver you're about to curse out might be packing.

4. Cell phones. Drivers consider it their right to talk and text and the police don't seem to enforce any ban on it. You rarely see NY drivers with a phone to their ear.

5. Speed? What is the speed limit in Chicago, 45, 60?

6. Lakefront Trail? Either too windy and cold or too crowded. It's nice for a cruise but taking a road bike on it is just too much. Is there any place for a good road ride?

7. You have to dress like a OSHA inspector. Sit on Milwaukee at rush hour, all you see is reflective vests, helmets, lights, mirrors and cuff protectors. Unfortunately being safe and visible is your only protection against the drivers whose heads are too far up their asses to see you.

8. There's no cycle chic. Because you have to wear all that OSHA safety gear you don't see many hot moms on their Danish cruisers riding to the farmers market. All you see in New York is model chics riding old cruisers that they paid way too much for, that and Chinese guys on e bikes.

9. Bike theft is pretty common in Boston because of the college students and their inability to properly secure their bikes. The Lower East Side of Manhattan is pretty bad for bike theft too. But here you are totally screwed because the poles just come out of the bases.

10. What happened to 3 feet? Yellow cabs in Manhattan give you more room than the drivers here. Safe passing distance here is, well I didn't hit you did I?

11. Fixed gear conversions and Walmart fixies. Come summer you'll start to see them by the hundreds, shitty road frames from the 80's stripped on their non essentials and turned into a fixie, SS or worse a coaster brake. If not that then it's a white and lime green color coordinated walmart fixed gears, SF Drafts or whatever.

12. No hills. There's no hills, hills are fun.

13. Sirens, the fire trucks and ambulances here have sirens that can be heard from no less than 3 miles away. Their horns can cause you to have a brain hemorrhage and or permanently loose your hearing.

14. Salt destroys everything.

15. Headlights, are they optional after dark or are the drivers just too stupid to turn them on?  

16. Rust bucket specials. Missing mirrors, lights dangling, severe body damage, this describes 95% of the cars on the streets of Chicago

In conclusion, riding here gives you several options, getting run over, getting doored, going deaf from a firetruck, getting shot or a slow death by salt. It's a humiliating experience fraught with danger and day glow vests. I think it's hopeless

Pros

1. Potholes. They act like speed bumps and slow the drivers down.

2. The cars are way more patient, really. People are in much less of a hurry. Of course they will tailgate you, but it's not so bad.

3. Trails, they might be boring but you can go pretty far north just on trails.

4. Tickets, police don't ticket bikes here, not too much at least. I paid over $1,000 to the NYS DMV for running red lights on my bike. Cops in New York love to ticket bikes.

5. Easy. Biking here is easy, sure you get buzzed by every other car but there's not too much to contend with, ie double parking, pedestrians. Plus no hills, so it's perfect for a crappy fixed gear conversion.

6. No wrong way cyclist, ie salmon. NYC has it's lovely bike lanes but it's full of delivery guys going the wrong way and pedestrians blindly stepping out. 

7. Safety in numbers. The rush hour peloton on Milwaukee is pretty empowering. 

8. No car service Lincoln Town car homicidal maniacs. I still have nightmares about town cars. Livery cab drivers make yellow cabs look like saints.

So 16 cons and 8 pros.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on March 7, 2014 at 3:18pm

You're awesome Steve.  That was good.

Steve Courtright said:

Never mind.

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on March 7, 2014 at 3:21pm

Taken from a recent post of TK's. I liked it and wanted to share. 

Permalink Reply by Matt Talbert on March 7, 2014 at 3:30pm

I have to say, this literally made me LOL

Davo said:

+=

Permalink Reply by Vilda on March 7, 2014 at 3:32pm

BRAVO Jimmy! Bravisimo! You have trolled a bike forum and folks "keep feeding you and feeding you"*. *WU-Tang Style.

Permalink Reply by T.K. 3.5 mi on March 7, 2014 at 3:40pm

Julie, here is the credit - http://www.bri-lance.net/category/visual-explanations/

Lots of weird emotions flying around here. 


Julie Hochstadter said:

Taken from a recent post of TK's. I liked it and wanted to share. 

Permalink Reply by Simon Phearson on March 7, 2014 at 3:42pm

The only comparison that matters to me is: do I want to bike today, take mass transit, or drive? Driving's always my last resort. I avoid mass transit as much as I can. So it may not be a windless, seamless, flat, quiet, perfectly safe ride from my home to my office, but I do it day after day.

There's no need, really, to counter all of your cons. If you seriously would rather drive an SUV than bike in this city, then maybe you weren't cut out to be much of a biker, anyway.

Permalink Reply by David Altenburg on March 7, 2014 at 3:47pm

Where do we get on board the bike planes? Sounds like fun to me. 

Permalink Reply by Vilda on March 7, 2014 at 3:52pm

"Brilliant! A Masterpiece!" Chicago Tribune

Jeff Schneider said:

Artisinal trolling. Well done.

Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on March 7, 2014 at 4:02pm

Geez, I guess that much of your riding isn't in parts of town where I ride, and that's okay with me. I'd rather make lemonade out of the mix of stuff I encounter than sit around sucking on sour lemons.  Happy Friday!

Permalink Reply by Jimmy Baham on March 7, 2014 at 4:02pm

Maybe using some artistic license but I'm not trolling, I believe all those things in my deranged little mind. 

Permalink Reply by Mike Zumwalt on March 7, 2014 at 4:08pm

They use salt in NYC and Boston too I bet.

Manhattan is easy to ride around and it's trail circling the island makes north/south an easy commute and it's 2 miles wide at best.

Outside of Manhattan is terrible, Queens, Brooklyn are mish mash and without a grid I could never get it.

street, place, ave. all with the same number! Why?

The women here have jobs alot of the times!! and really aren't concerned with being seen in some DKNY outfit and NYC has 3 times the population of Chicago and we don't have to go Brighton/Rockaway or Long Island to the beach.

But if you don't like Chicago you can always leave.

Have a nice day.

Permalink Reply by Bob on March 7, 2014 at 4:17pm

speaking of hot moms riding chic danish bikes, doesn't Jimmy's profile make you ladies swoon at his hotness?!!!! like Brad Pitt on a bike! don't you agree ladies???!!!!

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