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The hottest way to show you're an authentic New Yorker is… riding a Citi Bike?
By
Lindsay Lee Wallace
Published Oct 8, 2026
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By
Lindsay Lee Wallace
Published Oct 8, 2026
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New York City’s hottest accessory is 45 pounds, over a decade old, and can be grabbed right off the street in thousands of spots across town. That’s right — it’s the humble Citi Bike.
The bikeshare program, which was introduced in 2013 and is named for its title sponsor Citibank, lets you rent a bike at one dock and return it at any other station across the five boroughs and Jersey City. There are royal blue classic pedal bikes and gray electric ones, and they are undeniably unwieldy. And although they were originally met with some resistance for their forced ubiquity, they seem to have won the city over with their utility, becoming (at least to some) a symbol of New York authenticity.
Fashion designer Kim Nguyen said that when she moved to New York from car-centric Houston, the bikes were part of the city’s novelty.
“In our 20s, me and my girls were Citi Biking all over the place," she said. "The Citi Bike has become the trend in and of itself. The idea of you being seen on the Citi Bike is now part of the outfit.”
This summer, celebrities seemed to agree.
In August, Dua Lipa posted photos on Instagram of her and husband Callum Turner taking a ride in Brooklyn. The caption referred to “this nyc heat,” as if to reinforce she really was here, enduring the same heat wave as the rest of us.
Kim Kardashian chose a Citi Bike selfie as a vehicle to signal the seriousness of her relationship with F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, posting a video in which she nearly collides with him and falls off her bike while trying to capture the shot.
Model Kai Schreiber, daughter of actors Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, was seen being ferried to a photoshoot in the front basket of a Citi Bike last month, her polka dot dress blowing in the breeze as she flashed a peace sign with one hand and clutched her phone and mint-green vape in the other.
Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner were spotted by paparazzi and prompted at least 18 entire thoughts from Vogue on their casual June bike date, during which Chalamet also wore a Yankees cap, driving home that he really did grow up in New York.
Joining longtime loyalists like Justin Bieber, Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, and your one coworker who always turns up to meetings windswept and slightly sweaty, famous people had a fabulous time cycling this summer — and they have the candid carefree photographic evidence to prove it.
“To be on a Citi Bike is to have some sort of proximity to authenticity,” Nguyen said. “It’s become a local thing, like: You’re just like one of us. You’re just a regular person.”
A “regular person,” meaning just another New Yorker, who has a job to get to or friends to see, and who cares about saving some time and money.
And like with anything that “regular” people are doing — say, wearing Carhartt coats or drinking Modelo or reading books in public — people who may not be regular but want to seem that way, like celebrities and influencers and politicians, take note.
After all, New York City is one of the most expensive places to live in the world, but it’s not necessarily cool to seem like you have a lot of money.
Of course, seasoned New Yorkers will recall that when the Citi Bike program was first introduced, lots of people were not into it. Many were irritated because they feared the increased bike presence would make driving harder, or because they felt the docking stations would take up too much space, or because they hated sustainable travel and corporate incursion and change. Some even made their perspective known with characteristically creative acts of protest (including free, semi-nude drawing classes atop the docking station).
“I recall hearing actual New Yorkers complaining about the Citi Bikes and saying they would never ride them because it’s more of a transplant thing,” said Nguyen. “I’m not a native New Yorker, but at this point I feel like Citi Bike has become a part of New York.”
Chelsea Couto, booker at the Williamsburg dance club Gabriela and self-described Citi Bike stan, has also seen the bikes’ popularity skyrocket, especially as a key part of nights out. “Citi Bike has 100% taken over club commuting,” Couto said. “Most of our staff, myself included, Citi Bike both ways, and so do our clientele.”
Shahmeer Mohsin, a researcher at Université PSL in Paris who studies shared mobility platforms, including Citi Bike, confirms the trend, saying in an email to Gothamist that “ridership has shot up” not only this summer, but for several summers running. Citi Bike’s monthly reports reflect this: There were 64,997 more rides per day in July of this year than July 2021.
“I Citi Bike almost every day. I love it, it’s quick and easy to get around especially between boroughs,” said Greg Schotte, a Queens-based software engineer, “It feels good to go fast and get a little exercise and to explore parts of the city you don’t normally see. I’ll often turn down a new street just because.”
For regular riders and celebrities alike, bikes are not only a way to see the city, but to be seen seeing it. Schotte included a photo of himself and a friend on Citi Bikes on his Hinge profile. “I think they should make tandem ones for best friends,” he said. Couto said she and her friends are “like a bike gang.”
Mohsin said that greater climate consciousness, more bike lanes, and the impact of New York’s congestion pricing on rideshare costs are all likely contributors to the bikes’ increased popularity. Plus, with the advent of e-bikes, cycling to your destination has never been easier. While biking — especially in the summertime — would once have been a guaranteed way to muss your outfit and melt your makeup, the introduction of Citi e-bikes drastically reduces the cardio aspect of biking while leaving the whimsy intact. Mohsin said they’re a “more natural substitute to cars and the subway than conventional bikes.”
Like the unfortunate majority of Citi Bike rides, these excursions have largely taken place without helmets, although Chalamet has seemingly embraced safer biking practices since his ride with Kylie. Frequent Citi Biker and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani also announced this summer that he’d obtained a helmet after listening to constituent concerns, and Couto said Gabriela’s coat check is now handling helmets “quite frequently.”
As the number of rides increases, so does the possibility of injuries and accidents. In September, a teenage girl died and another was injured when their bike collided with a garbage truck.
According to New York City's Independent Budget Office, 66% of trips were taken on e-bikes in 2024, even though they make up only 40% of the fleet. And since 2024, Citi Bike’s own reporting shows that revenue just from e-bike surcharges and fees has grown enough to surpass everything Citi Bike makes from membership costs and casual ridership.
“[A classic Citi Bike] feels like riding through peanut butter now, because I take e-bikes so often,” said Nguyen.
The one drawback of e-bikes is their price tag: While classic bikes are included in the yearly Citi Bike membership fee, riding an e-bike will run you an extra 27 cents per minute.
“It’s getting expensive,” Schotte said. “It should be less money than an Uber to go across town and increasingly the cost is the same.” Frequent riders recently called on the city to make the bike share program more affordable, asking Mamdani to cap the e-bike fee for members at $3.
The price-tag underscores the fact that while Citi Biking may have become a signal of everyman authenticity and quintessential New York-ness to some, it is also ultimately a private enterprise, enriching and controlled by San Francisco-based Lyft. Though Citi Bike is run in partnership with the New York City Department of Transportation, it’s entirely privately funded and owned, operated, and maintained by Lyft.
But for many, the price isn’t really the point. Citi Bikes provide a charm other transportation can’t match. Whether you’re extremely famous and adopting the aesthetics of a normal New York day, or actually having a normal New York day, the ability to choose a way of traveling that might take a bit longer but lets you feel the wind in your hair (under your helmet, hopefully) is a privilege of sorts.
I recently watched a crew of three young women in jeans and going-out tops, all perched atop one Citi Bike, topple over onto the sidewalk while their intrepid friend pedaled ahead. “Wait! Stop!” they shouted to her amid shrieks and giggles as they picked themselves up off the cobblestones and encountered their friend’s iPhone in the process, “We fell! And you dropped your phone!” Far from ruining the night, the spill seemed like it added to the novelty.
Citi Bikes will likely only get hotter, even as the weather cools. October is traditionally a major month for ridership according to the city Department of Transportation, and presents exciting new bike lane-as-runway possibilities. “The long coats that I have, they sort of like, flap in the wind [when I bike]” said Nguyen. “It kind of makes me feel like a superhero.”
Tagged
Existing in New York City
manhattan
transportation
Lindsay Lee Wallace
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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