My camp provided a bike rack this year for our patrons. It was filled with abandoned bikes after Tuesday making the rack useless to anybody else and creating a LARGE problem at the end of the event, trying to cut locks to free our bike rack and find room for the extra MOOP left for us to clean up.

Radical Self Reliance – it means take care of your own crap!

"Our village laminates little address location markers out of day glo, and we zip tie them to our bikes. GREAT gift to your camp! "

That is a GREAT idea.

camps at 10 and 2 would be wise to provide bike racks. other non BMORG camps do the same, why do you think the sound camps are exempt from that?

Bike racks would help but the truth is, if you want them then build them and bring them. I don't see this as being a BRC issue.

HUGE!

I hate being weighed down by my friends. They never want to do anything fun at Burning Man.

Yeah, you're confusing sex with bicycles, like the feminist expression about why they don't need men. :-)

I'm kicking ideas around with a friend to create art piece bike racks, a combo BRC civic/BRAF art project (if there is such a critter).

I think it would be coolest if there were many of these around the city/esplanade, each one unique but each one solving the problem of bike parking in a beautful, functional way. Ideally, groups/individuals would collaborate on different "teams" to create their functional art, and we'd be applying for grant $$.

I've already got a design in mind for one. Anyone else get a tingle over this concept?

Sure unlocked bikes makes it easier. Yet if every bike were locked with a good lock it might still be profitable, and so would continue. Locks are only a small part of the equation. And talk about Blame Cannons, isn't your repeated premise just blaming the victim?

Oh, I'll say one thing more. We initially toyed with a "Bike Go Round" idea, just to add a little Playa whimsy, such that sometime after you park your bike, the whole thing rotates so your bike isn't exactly where you left it. Decided that when you add that to the normal effects of inebriation and chemical abuse, that just adds up to the potential for waaaaay too many bikes left out there at the end of the week.

Fun thought, though.

All this to say that it doesn't take a double blind study to know that the biggest component of bikes being left behind and lost is fucked-up-edness.

Or, better name (drum roll, please):

OCTO-RACK BIKE-NO-GON

Thank you. Thank you very much.

"I DON'T think we can afford the luxury of going and collecting data another year before we address this civic problem. "

Okay, wha? How in the hell is that a "luxury" just exactly? The "luxury" is NOT locking your bikes, or getting high off your ass and "losing" your bikes. It's a luxury to live in a city where you don't even need a bike, never mind a car, for a week. I had a few friends who didn't have bikes this year for one reason or another, as I do every year. I guess that’s why the yellow bikes are so popular.

No one is going to die if there aren't bike racks anywhere out there next year, much less artsy fartsy ones every two hours on the Esplanade and more every three letters in. Bikes get stolen every year. Bikes get lost every year. Bikes get borrowed, and bikes get broken every damn year.

Some of you seriously need to calm the hell down (with all due respect).

>Ive heard of peoples locked bikes getting stolen<

I have to and I don't believe they are stolen. Really, do you think someone walks around with a cable cutting tool, which is rather heavy, thinking that I will go after the 5% of bikes that have a lock rather than take an un-locked bike? I would suggest that >95% ofthe bikes with locks that are 'stolen' are simply removed from things and places they are suppose to be locked to or at.

1) make your playa bike completely unique looking, so that it could not possibly be mistaken for any other bike. I'd suggest something ugly/ gaudy/ crazy, as well as a 'theme'. An orange bike with black polka dots and rubber mice gooped or wired on would be a 'swiss cheese' bike. Animals of any kind are a good theme too. Images you get from the internet or cut out of a magazine can be made into stickers pretty cheaply, of if you want to be super cheap just use wheat paste to attach the images to your bike and put transparent packing tape over these to protect them. Get a flag for your bike and customize that too. Give your bike a name based on the theme, like the 'Cheese bike' or 'The leopard bike'. =PUT THAT NAME ON THE BIKE FRAME=

2) Use tape (transparent packing tape over a label), engrave, or spray paint your name, camp and home address somewhere on the bike frame. This doesn't have to be located in an obvious place. Underneath the front of the bike frame behind where the front wheel is would be a good 'hidden', but easy to find location.

3) Take a photograph of your bicycle, as well as all it's unique identifying features. Make a photo montage of all your bike's unique features.

4) Put the photo or photo montage of your bike on a business card with your playa name and contact info. Hand out the business card to any new people you meet on the playa as a way of introducing yourself. Even if your bike is never stolen, these people will remember you and recognize you from your unique bike.

5) Use that photograph and put the image of your bicycle on a T-shirt, maybe with lettering that says "Have you seen this bike?" (or a more friendly "Have you seen the Swiss Cheese bike? Leopard bike? Marylin Monroe bike?", etc. based on the theme.)

Iron-on shirt transfers can be purchased for about $20 for a pack of 12. T-shirts can be purchased for about $2 each, so you could even make enough T-shirts for your friends or people in your camp to wear. (Note: This only works if you don't have to cross an international border to get to Burning Man.)

That way, you become a walking billboard advertisement for your stolen bike whenever you wear the shirt.

Optionally, you could put your contact information on the =back= of the shirt. It takes people's brains a few seconds to process the information they saw on front of the shirt as you/ they walk past, and by the time the light bulb goes off they might turn around to see who you are, wondering what you look like from the back amongst the crowd.

I would also put 'Metropolis' and Burning Man 2010', as well as the Burning Man symbol on the shirt too, )'( to make it valuable as a gift or souvenir.

Just bring a shitty bike to the Playa. This way if it gets stolen or mistakenly taken (like mine did), you won't cry afterwards.

just drive already, nobody's actually checking!

I'd argue that walking in BRC makes the entire thing more enjoyable. You're interacting with people instead of speeding past them and leaving your bulky two-wheeled (and likely darkwad) moop lying on the open playa, where anyone may trip or ride over it at night.

Oh, and shoes that fit = no blisters.

You could have some fun with this, while maybe catching a thief in the act:

Place a nice bike in a public place, a place where you and your camp mates can see it. Attach a very thin, but strong cable to the bike and the other end to something that won't move, like a rebar driven into the ground. 25 or 30 feet of cable should work nicely. If you can partially bury the cable in the playa dust, even better.

Now, sit back and watch what happens. If all goes well, a thief will get onto the bike and start riding. When he gets to the end of the cable, the bike stops suddenly, and hopefully the thief will be thrown over the handlebars.

Fun, huh?

"I would reiterate what a couple people here have said already. I think if you lock your bike to itself (wheel to frame) it is highly unlikely that it will get stolen. If someone is out to steal a bike, why would they go to the trouble of carrying it away or cutting a lock when there are literally thousands of unlocked bikes around that would be much easier and quicker to take? Thieves tend to take the path of least resistance. I can't imagine a thief bothering to steal a locked bike in BRC unless it is an expensive one, in which case, it probably shouldn't be on the playa in the first place. There's no way to make your bike 100% theft proof. Best you can do is play the odds, and odds are, if you have a beater bike locked it to itself, it will be fine. If not, go to the Reno casinos on the way out, because you've just scored a major longshot."

more and more thefts do this to resale the bike at the end. Think about how many can't attend to burning man because of the price. it has become a business (or just a way to pay for the ticket and the expenses to come to BM) on sunday night and the following days. So if a bike is worth it they will cut the cable or carry the bike with them. They will also take parts of bikes. The last two years i looked for my stolen bikes at the end and i saw tons of cut cables and parts of bike.