Ghost bikes taken down?

Advance apologies: new to the community.

A while back in December I was biking to various ghost bike locations. A friend of mine started cataloging personal stories and encounters with ghost bikes in San Fransisco and I was looking to do the same in Chicago. I found a lot of ghost bikes up north still up, but a lot of the south-side bikes seemed to have been taken down. I was told by a Steven from streetsblog Chicago and Oboi from Slow Roll that usually the city policy was to have a hands-off policy, so I'm guessing that these were perhaps taken down by local establishments. (The ones I visited were Hector's at Western/Ogden and Frederico's at 18th and Racine). If anyone can shed some light on this, let me know.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tom A.K. on January 29, 2015 at 5:48am

Bonnie, hi, and welcome. I don't know why these things happened. Hopefully, other group members might know. Possible reasons might be: city work/relocation, nearby business establishment displeasure, family decision to suspend the memorial, damage/desecration by bike hater, scrapper/grinder-thief, etc. . .

I don't know what can resolve this. The Ghost Bikes are out there at the mercy of all visitors. Some people are disrespectful. Someday we may have to consider using 'Ghost Bike Plaques' in some situations. They might look something like this.
- view attachment -

Attachments:

BobbyMemorialPlaque.jpeg, 34 KB

Permalink Reply by Andrew Bedno on January 29, 2015 at 6:39am

Are you reporting that Hector's and Frederico's are missing? I'd be interested in confirmation.

I doubt that Hector's is missing. It's only 13 months old and his mom actively loves it. Maybe double check the location.

As Tom mentions, reasons are as diverse as the bikes. In particular I suspect some families have no expectation beyond a brief memorial. I similarly choose to see them as impermanent, as the alternative would require growing and unending maintenance. Despite that, and other threats, I think they endure pretty well.

I try to keep this map updated:

http://bedno.com/body/bike/ghostbikes/map

And I maintain a page of removed ones:

http://bedno.com/body/bike/ghostbikes/retired

Permalink Reply by Tom A.K. on January 29, 2015 at 8:04am

Picture of location on 5/21/14 - view attachment below -
h' 1.0 said: