Yup, walk into a Walmart now and see what they sell. In the interests of full disclosure, my kids ride Huffy’s. I paid $36 a piece for them and when they rust or get outgrown, I’ll not worry about it. My kids are 5 years old and I figure for driving up and down a flat street and learning how to balance, they’re sacrificial bikes.
Huffys and their ilk get a bad rap amongst bike stores because the manufacturer makes ALL of the parts. Since they do so, there’s no parts availability. If they get a good price for 22mm hubs, they make a bajillion bikes with 22 mm hubs. When those run out, they might get a deal on 20mm or 19mm. In the meantime (and I’m just making numbers up for the sake of argument), the industry uses 24 mm hubs. You can get a bottom bracket for a Specialized or a Haro, or a Trek, you won’t find a bike shop that likes working on Big Box Store bikes.
You really shouldn’t buy a bike at the Walmart or other such store. The bikes are put together by the store staff, and they usually don’t have a clue what they are doing. There was an article in Dirt Rag, a mountain biking magazine, about discount store bikes. They did it very non biased. They bought bikes from different places (walmart, toy store, other bike shops etc…) and took them to a bike shop to be given an inspection without being told where the bikes were bought from. It turned out the bikes from the discount stores and the like were put together incorrectly and were basically unsafe to ride.
They did mention that if you do buy a bike from such a store, take it to an actual bike shop to be looked over for correct assembly and safety issues. Any decent shop will have no problem checking it over and fixing what needs fixing for a reasonable charge.
I got my mountain bike at a local bike shop for $250- clearance price. It had been over a decade since I had ridden so I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on it in case I absolutely hated it.
I didn’t hate it and I have been replacing components on it: handlebars, grips, shifters, front fork, derailer, pedals, tires, rims, hubs, seat, seat post and added a odometer/trip-odometer. The bike is probably worth four times what I paid for it. I’ll probably get a better (lighter) frame for it next year, seeing as I have all the trick parts for it now.
Another thing to keep in mind is that, at 14, if he’s a typical teenager (there are exceptions) within two years he’ll be looking at cars and even getting within 20 feet of a bike may be harmful to his sense of manliness and he will swear up and down that he’s never seen a bicycle and bicycles are forkids and very uncool, and will only get over this once he’s out of college, unless he hangs around with a serious bike nerd crowd. A mountain bike might help because that’s sporty and less transportation-inflected.
If he’s typical, that is.