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Time-Lapse Video Shows Fate Of Bike Left On SoHo Street For A Year
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 18, 2012
Modified Jan 18, 2012
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 18, 2012
Modified Jan 18, 2012
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If you lock your bicycle to a CityRack in SoHo, how long will it take before mendacious thieves pick its bones completely clean? Well, judging by the poor dismembered bike in this time-lapse video, a little under nine months—or 36 seconds. The designers and "brand strategists" at a company called Red Peak locked a fully loaded bike—basket, water bottle, bells, lights, etc.—on a busy street in SoHo and took a photo of it every day last year. Here is the sad story of that bike's consumption by a city starving for water bottles, spare bike parts and scrap metal:
"You’d be happy to find that the rumors are true - New York is full of bicycle thieves," the folks at Red Peak tell us, having tossed this bike to the wolves and glibly looking on for a year while it was torn to shreds. "We call this experiment Life-Cycle - a fascinating glimpse of elegant decay." We call it the urban scavenger version of this classic video:
Tagged
bicycles
bikes
cycling
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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