Nearly five years ago, legendary NYC bike mechanic Hal Ruzal and I walked the streets surrounding Bicycle Habitat in Manhattan and graded the bike locking ability of New Yorkers - producing many humorous and enlightening anecdotes. The resulting video
aired frequently on bikeTV and at many festivals, and because of it -
Hal is still frequently asked by complete strangers to judge their bike
locking.
I always wanted to do another, but as with most sequels you need
a new wrinkle. This time we thought we'd give Hal some company and
invited former Recycle a Bicycle mechanic Kerri Martin (and founder of The Bike Church in Asbury Park, NJ) to weigh in with her expertise.
Again, bikes on the streets of SoHo provide lots of fodder for
laughs and lessons to learn.We didn't plan to but we walked the same
loop and even used the same one-hour time frame. The results? The
grades were a little better than five years ago. Sure, still some bad
locking out there, but many more people are now sporting multiple locks
and better strategies! Good news, maybe we made a difference after
all...
