So, I’m in the market for a bike. I’ll basically just be tooling around the neighborhood; I doubt I’ll ever take more than a ten mile round trip. The grocery store is a half mile away, my favorite record store is a mile and a half, and my two favorite bars are two and three miles.
I was in Amsterdam in the spring, and I really dug the looks of the archetypal Dutch utility bikes (though I never had the stones to actually ride around on one of them while I was there.) A bit of Wikipedia research as left me a bit confused regarding the differences between a city bike, a utility bike, a roadster, and a cruiser. What gives?
Rather than go out immediately to drop five or six bills on something that I may or may not stick with, I’ve been digging around on Craigslist for rides in the sub-$100 range. Most of what I’ve come across that fits that bill seems to be 60’s/70’s era cruisers. Such as this. Assuming the frame’s about 21", would that be good for a 6’1" dude who’s hasn’t been on a bike since before he got his driver’s license?
Why not talk to a bike shop? If you don’t know the difference between all the bike they can show you the difference. Plus you can usually test ride the bikes before you buy.
They have a LOT of cruisers now a days that are not five or six bills. Probably two or three, but it depends on what you are looking for.
I know exactly the type of bike you are talking about when you talk about Amsterdam. The last time I was in a bike shop they sold these bikes and it was a total deja vu moment from when I spent a bit in Holland.
Not an expert but my experience is that a little bit of extra cash on a bike equals tons more comfort and quality of equipment.
There may be some objective definitions that can be ascribed to these terms that differ meaningfully, but they are basically just used as marketing terms. Forget them. Although I suppose a utility, city or roadster bike is most like what you want. You do not want a cruiser, unless you are into sacrificing practicality for style.
Your joke location field means I have no idea where you are, but you probably just want a bike with a simple diamond frame, flat bars, mudguards probably, lights, maybe a stand, and a good rack. You’ll want some gears; the more hilly the more you’ll want them and the more of them you’ll want. You don’t want knobby tyres, you don’t want suspension.
The bike to which you have linked is fine in basic form. Be aware that brakes and gears have come a long way since that thing was made. Compared to a new bike its brakes won’t be very effective particularly in the rain and they will need more adjustment. It will have non-indexing gears which are much more fiddly to operate, and parts of the gears will wear out and need to be replaced and parts may be a problem. In fact the ad says they’ve replaced the chain and nothing else and usually you have to replace the chain and cluster together when they are worn, so there may already be a problem.
Supermarket bikes have parts that will wear out and need adjustment more quickly.
If I were you I’d buy the most basic modern flatbar bike with slick tyres and no suspension in a good bikeshop brand that I could, new or second hand.
You’ve got a ton of options. Here’s an old school 10 speed on Craigslist for $50.
For around town, I’d spend $50 more and put on some upright bars and compatible brake levers. Voila, a $100 around town bike, plus you are recycling! An old ten-speed with narrow tires is wicked fast. Just make sure that the rims are moderately true, alloy and as circular as possible.
On the other hand you can buy a pretty serviceable brand new beach cruiser for about $100. Here’s a seven speed Schwinn beach cruiser at Target for $119. It’s really nice to have the gears if you have any hills at all in your town.
Your local bike shop will be able to give you a lot of information. That said, bike shop employees tend to be a bit arrogant and they creep me out.
But you don’t want this. It’s got curvy bars to add weight and lose strength. It’s non-standard shape so you may struggle to get racks and guards to fit it. Do not want. If you want practical, get something simple, standard diamond shape.
I dunno, my around town bike is a beach cruiser. I actually live on a hill. There’s about a 7% grade going up to the local city college on the way home which I can climb even in my advanced age and horrible physical condition. Admittedy, I usually take the more scenic and mellower beach route. However, it is an aluminum frame with a Shimano 7-speed internally geared hub that has a really nice spread between gears. It did however cost $400 ten years ago. Yesterday, the gears were getting wonky, so I priced a new set of wheels which cost more than the whole damn bike. Fortunately, I screwed around with the adjustment and it seems to be working fine.
Shit, the OP just wants to cruise to the grocery store and the local bar. I just prefer the aesthetics of the cruiser frame and bought my bike specifically because it really looks like a Schwinn Typhoon. I don’t know about the Schwinn, but my bike has standard welded lugs for a normal mountain bike rack.
I was going to buy a bike and store it at my friend’s co-op in NYC. Manhattan is pretty damn flat, but the bike I was going to buy was exactly that 7-speed Schwinn cruiser.
An old ten-speed can be a great solution (it’s what I ride!) , but you’ll need to take it to a shop or at least a friend who knows how to fix bikes to get it tuned up and fitted to you. You also might want to invest in alloy wheels if it has old-fashioned steel wheels (the alloy is much lighter, more importantly brakes work a little better on alloy wheels). So in addition to whatever you pay for the ten-speed itself, you need to add $50 for the tune-up/fitting and maybe another $150 for new wheels. Still, for $300 you’d have a much much better bike than the Target bike.
I’d be wary of buying a bike from Target. They’re going to be cheaper (i.e. lower quality) to begin with, and then they’ll have been assembled by some target employee who might not know anything about bikes. And while bikes are simple enough that you can learn to do almost all maintenance yourself, they’re complicated enough that they can be screwed up by somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing (especially assembling them).
Well the thing about dutch bikes is that they are pricey bought new even in Holland. There is a reason for that, though, they hold up like nobody’s business, as long as they don’t get stolen. Which mostly they do.
My first bike in Holland was a granny bike, though it was what they here call the largest girl’s size as I am too small for the smallest women’s bike. It cost all of 16 euro at the secondhand store, but very nice kid bikes are easy to get secondhand for obvious reasons – at your height I don’t think that’s an option for you. After that one got stolen, I got a nice new bike which cost enough to cause me to have it insured. However, it was my exclusive means of transportation so I suppose it was worth it. Still, the 16 euro bike was also fine.
My experience has been that bike shops have the best secondhand deals on bikes that you can be fairly sure have not been entirely trashed. You do have to put up with bike shops, though. My experience has also been that a completely ignorant person who has not sat on a bike in over 25 years can, having read a couple of web pages, tune up and fit a bike. It’s not rocket surgery.
Please don’t buy a cruiser. Cruiser bikes are incredibly ugly. Their ergonomics are completely awful, they’re incredibly impractical for any manner of riding that’s not ‘a straight line down a perfectly flat perfectly paved road’, and they’re stupidly heavy. I have a hybrid bike which cost about $250, is comfortable to ride, can handle steep hills and slightly rough terrain, and weighs probably half of what a cruiser weighs.