The Evils of the Kickstand

Ah, beautiful order.


So you have a kickstand on your fancy little bicycle, and that's cool. Lets you prop up the bike and all. The thing is, it lets your prop it up just about anywhere, free standing. Why would you want to do that? Bikes locked to just themselves get stolen, friend. The 1950's phoned up, and they sound pissed. I think they want their trust in their fellow man back.

More importantly, sometimes people don't know what's good for them. Or maybe it's that they don't know what's good for other people. Or more likely, they're just being inconsiderate. The second problem with being able to deploy a kickstand is that people tend to leave their bikes right smack in the middle of things and clog up the works. Bike racks (and I work on a biking campus, there are thousands and thousands of bike racks) are formed in nice little lines that would please the fire marshal if ever there were some sort of crazy outdoor bicycle parking fire. Even if there are no racks handy, there's nothing wrong with leaning your bike up against a wall or a tree. Not only do you eliminate 2 lbs of unnecessary metal from your ride, but leaning your bike against existing objects helps keep it out of major pathways.

This all sounds very authoritarian, I'm sure. However, people have proved to me time and again that they can't be trusted to do it right, at least not on this score. Here are a few instances, just in the space near my office:



Nice choice of location jacktard.


200 bikes, and 2 idiots blocking access to all of them.

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This is about as thoroughly in the middle of nowhere as it gets.

My first solution to this was to disallow the use of kickstands on campus, or at least in areas where there are available bike racks. This is pretty much everywhere, as it turns out. Alternatively, we could treat the symptom rather than the ability to park stupidly by just removing bikes parked in dumb areas. This requires a lot more case-by-case enforcement, though. There's also that pesky issue of policing people's personal property when they aren't necessarily doing anything wrong, ie saying you can't have a kickstand when in fact you are one of the many responsible bike parkers around.

Fair enough, policy isn't really my style anyway. I'm much more of a vigilante justice kind of kid. And I know how to use JB-kwik. Henceforth, repeat offenders will have their kickstands welded into the 'up' position, or will be simply relocated to better commune with the local flora depending on how I am feeling and how well prepared I am.

Guilty!