I’ve never been able to get comfortable with locking my bike to a rack and leaving it unattended. If you have a nice ride, no matter how nice of a lock you have, it always seems like you’re just asking for someone to rip it off or monkey with it. A bike securely-locked but stripped naked to the frame is someone’s really bad day.
The latest trend among bike aficionados here in Minneapolis is camouflage. The tactic is to try and out-ugly everything in sight, making other rides more appealing to the predator. It has the anti-theft advantage of riding a super-crappy, completely undesirable bike, but it’s just a facade. In many instances, layers of duct tape, rust stickers, a nasty fender, and crackled paint are hiding a couple thousand dollars worth of high-performance machine.
MAKE Volume 11 had a comprehensive article on the subject, which is available in an online format. The photo above is from the bikehacks site. They’ve written on the subject a couple of times and have a few useful tips, including an “undo” feature: wrapping the frame in saran wrap before applying stickers and paint.
MAKE V11 – UGLY Your Bike
Ways To Ugly Your Bike
Ugly Your Bike #2: A Case Study
6 thoughts on “Ugly your bike”
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There are tons of neat SMW hacks. My favorites are the “Automatic Mario” hacks, where levels are Rube Goldberg machines built to make Mario go through the level without any input. Some automatic mario hacks are even synchronized to music, here’s a video of one of the most impressive of those:
(There are a lot more great hacks on youtube, follow the related videos)
That level looks brutal, I definitely would not have the patients to complete it. Very clever level design.
Mechanically Separated meat did a good piece on this level and quantum mechanics.
http://msm.grumpybumpers.com/?p=20
my level is going to beso hard that i bet only chacarconoroy could pas it