Freak bikes

Creative Commons-licensed freak bike images from Portland-based Flickr user Megulon5, who captioned this bike “Pick-Up Sticks, the Pennyfakething, um the, Rattyfarthing, ah, whatever…”

Previous freak bikes on Bikejuju.

(Leave a comment by Sunday to be entered to win a t-shirt).

A freak bike t-shirt from Etsy seller DarkCycleClothing in honor of this week’s t-shirt contest. Leave a comment anywhere on Bikejuju before March 7 and be entered to win a t-shirt! (Not this one)

Previous Bikejuju freak bike posts.

Spotted by Meligrosa outside Pier 23 on Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Previous Bikejuju freak bike posts.

This photo was reprinted in the Seattle Times this week and definitely caught my eye. An unidentified cyclist rides down Laurel Street in Richmond, Virginia through the heavy snows that paralyzed parts of the southeast last weekend. Photo by Kevin Morley, Richmond Times-Dispatch.

I like the 45-degree back rack, and the two-tone tires!

Previous Bikejuju freak bike posts.

Tim Woody submitted this image to the Bikejuju Dark Days photo contest, and it seems like the perfect way to inaugurate a new Bikejuju feature: Freak Bike Fridays! (Inspired by, but not to be confused with GoMeansGo’s ever-wonderful Penny Farthing Fridays).

Previous freak bike posts:

• Velopunk Adventuring On Tallbikes Through Indonesia
• 1952 Freak Bike
• Bikes of Burning Man 2009

I have never attended Burning Man, which is always the week before Labor Day weekend, but every year the pull grows stronger. Art, bikes, freakery – what’s not to love?

Photo © Tristan Savatier

Photo © Tristan Savatier

Photo by Flickr user albany_tim

Photo © Tristan Savatier

Photo © Tristan Savatier

Check out Tristan Savatier’s whole incredible Burning Man 2009 photo collection.

So you’re with a few of your friends riding your tallbikes around Indonesia. You’ve just invaded the Venice Bienniale on a flotilla of beautifully intricate handcrafted junk-assemblage-art-music-boats, and this is a well-deserved break: overpaying the airline to get a few tallbikes to Indonesia, fighting Jakarta traffic and smog, skirting giant rats, perusing street vendors selling water snakes in plastic bags, sneaking extra folks into cheapo hotel rooms, and generally having a good old time.

Sound like a crazy dream? Dream on: Photographer Tod Seelie is there.

My favorite part? Yogaya.

We finally get to Yogya, and feel like we’re home:
- Getting in to Yogya late at night and meeting up with friend-of-a-friend Maya, who lives at the Performance Klub house. She welcomes us and promptly sets us up to stay at her place, which is really nice (open courtyard/garden thing, guest room).
- We meet her cat, who first bites you and then sucks on the spot he bit. We can’t remember the cat’s name so it’s promptly branded “Viper Suckle.”
…
- We go to the tourist-shopping street later to look for a hat for Greg. As soon as we get off our bikes a posse of punk kids on crazy tall bikes ride past. We yell at them, but they just smile, wave and keep going. Later we head out on our bikes and pass the same group of kids hanging out at the end of the street. We stop and tell them how we had heard of them and came to Yogya to meet them. They had heard we were coming, but didn’t know when. We rounded up a posse and went for a long nighttime ride around town.
- The next day, Atom (one of the local bike gurus) helps Chloe make her mountain bike into an Indonesian-stye tall bike.

See all the images and follow the adventure on Tod’s amazing blog Suckapants, or just enjoy his gorgeous photography at his website or on Flickr.

(Photos posted with Tod’s permission. Thanks Tod!)

Ever since I first saw the link to this Fixed Gear Gallery “Grocery Getter” contest winner, I have not been able to stop thinking about it.

I am experiencing one part jealousy that someone has the skills to make a bike like this, one part jealousy that someone has the time to make a bike like this, and one part jealousy that they ended up with this bike to take to the store!

David Mahan of Ojai California took this:

and turned it into this:

But the craziest most awesome part is that the back wheel/seat of the bike detaches leaving the front to be used in the store as your shopping cart!

Nice work, David! (The other entries in the “grocery getter” contest are here).

Chicago Freak Bike posted this awesome clipping from a Bicycle Journal 1952 issue, reprinting this photo from the LA Examiner, showing a kid on a tall bike. I like how the caption calls it a “freak bike” even in 1952.