Is it ok to vulture-pick at carcasses?

blorg

I'd take the one on the left instead, looks in better condition and already set up as a SS or fixie:

mcguiver

Whatever your opinion is it's still theft, an arrestable ofence.
Imagine getting lifted for a brake pad or something silly and then being charged with all the other missing stuff.
P.s. Gardai dont need to know who the owner of the bike is to charge you.
It's up to you to prove you had permission from the owner to take it!!

Realistically I think local authorities should remove these. Where I live the management company put a sticker on them saying it will be removed in x amount of days, if it's still there they take them away..... of course it's built into your management company rules to cover their ass.

DirkVoodoo

Well, I guess thats why SeanK suggested asking the ucd services. It's on campus so either they or admin are the local authorities, no county councils im afraid.

I would be fairly desperate to life some brake blocks off a bike that I'm quite sure has been outside since at least September and possibly longer. Bike racks are not a dumping ground for old wrecks so if I get the green light from ucd to take it then I claim "salvage rights" or whatever the biking equivalent is.

flickerx

I'd say go ahead and take it, definitely. Nobody's coming back for that.

The magazine accepted the article about this, which I think I mentioned in the thread earlier, but it has to be edited down to about half the word count. When it gets published, I'll stick it up here.

flickerx

Woo hoo... article is coming out on Thursday. I had to chop out the results from the poll regrettably.

Húrin

flickerx wrote: »

Woo hoo... article is coming out on Thursday. I had to chop out the results from the poll regrettably.

Great! Where will it be published?

Where do the city council put these old bike frames when they eventually cut them away?

flickerx

I get my antipathy towards waste from the values instilled in me by my father when I was a child in the Eighties. Myself and my younger brother were never allowed to leave a single bit of food behind on our dinner plates, even if the two of us were groaning with indigestion and hot bile coming up our throats. If a household appliance finally gave up the ghost, before its trip to the dump, it would be stripped clean of every screw, nut, bolt and washer, which were put into an unsorted box in the shed, for possible future use. The shed was also host to countless empty wine bottles, dating back years. What exactly the purpose of hoarding these was I never quite understood (this was in the bad old days before recycling), the possibility of growing grapes in a rain soaked, miserable northern Atlantic island was remote to say the least.

The bottles were kept, regardless. And although our retaining of what could be easily termed “junk” never quite reached the pitch of compulsive psychopathic obsession, it could have been described as mildly unhealthy. But I think it’s a good set of values to have – that maybe you don’t need to spend your money on something new, because you have the components lying around that can be put together which will serve the function just as well, if not better. If you have the time and inclination to put the work in yourself, that is, rather than be lazy and just go and buy it from a shop.

So when I admitted openly one day to a group of cycling friends of my practice of stripping parts from abandoned bike corpses around my native city, I was rather taken aback with some of the less-than-enthusiastic responses aimed in my direction. “A vulture”, “a grave robber”, and “a Fagin-esque scumbag dirty thief leeching off the misery of others, do you have a Swiss bank account with Nazi gold in it as well by any chance?” were some of the more polite replies; one or two others are definitely not suitable for publication in a respectable magazine such as this.

My modus operandi is pretty simple. I build up fixed gear bikes and sell them on local small ads websites, or my local eBay. I build fixies simply because I found dealing with gearing and derailleurs way too difficult to get my head around (if there’s anyone out there who needs a large box of greasy mechs and shifters by the way, get in touch). I’d usually get the frames out of dumpsters, or when people would leave the bikes outside their houses the night before a “hard rubbish” collection by the local Council. The wheels I’d either buy or build myself, and the vast majority of the remaining components came from the aforementioned carcasses littered around my city.

Did I ever feel pangs of guilt when taking brakes, cranks, forks etc from these bikes – still locked by the frame to the steel posts, but missing their wheels and other vital organs? Yes, initially. Or perhaps it was fear and shame, from being labelled a bike thief in the minds of passers by. This happened on one or two occasions, when I’d be pulling something visible off a wreck, like a saddle or handlebars. Hyperactive screeching teenagers would shout “leave that bleedin’ bike alone!!” or concerned citizens would stop and stare at me with accusing eyes. I wanted to tell them that I was engaging in a pure and morally justifiable exercise in recycling. Having had two bikes stolen on me in the past, the last thing I wanted to be identified as was a petty larcenist, like those who had caused me so much heartbreak before.

But ethically, is it really ok? Isn’t it just theft, pure and simple? There are two extremes of the argument. One runs along the lines of the bike being someone else’s property, and even if it has fallen into disrepair, the basic fact remains that it isn’t yours. Someone else has paid for this bike, and by you taking it, or any part of it, you are stealing from them. If they have chosen to leave it there, so be it – its not your place to decide that there is now open season on the property of another. At the other extreme you have the viewpoint that these bikes are only going to rust into the ground anyway, and if you don’t take the parts off them and use them in other bikes, the Council will eventually come along and just throw them all in the bin. If people aren’t responsible to look after their bike locked up on public property, then the property becomes public.

In between the two polar opposites, you have countless shades of grey, and unresolved issues. Exactly when is a bike abandoned? What if the person is just on holidays, or maybe injured, and can’t get to their bike? What timeframe is reasonable? Should you only take cheaper, smaller parts – or grab the lot? What if the components are really expensive? What if the bike isn’t abandoned at all, but some genuine thief has taken the wheels off the bike only a couple of hours ago? All of these questions and problems run through my head whenever I’m out picking up parts. An unwieldy, unscientific snapshot internet poll on this issue in a cycling forum produced the results below – with people somewhat evenly split three ways on whether the practice is good, evil, or possibly justifiable in some circumstances.

zynaps

flickerx wrote: »

This is the original article (unedited). I couldnt carry a copy of the magazine home with me last night because I didnt bring a bag and it wouldnt fit in my pocket, but I'll scan it in soon for your amusement.

Super article. While I don't agree with your strong general enmity towards motorists (I'm one, and I really try my best to drive safely for all road users), I very much agree that it's a good thing to recycle bits of bikes which have been quite obviously abandoned. I may do it myself to repair a bad bike and get back cycling after my nice Dawes hybrid was stolen 6 months ago.

The law may be vague on this position (i.e. the question of whether something is left for dead or not - when is it abandoned, and what if it might have been stolen before?) but as a whole, if you see a decaying bike which is clearly going to end up as scrap and just taking up a parking slot almost indefinitely, the greater good is served by salvaging what you need.

Someone gave me a second hand BSO (from Smiths toyshop, I believe) for my birthday recently - one of the awful rear-suspension ones with cheap grip shifters which break down, and with a back wheel which was bent out of shape so badly that it was brushing the bike frame, nevermind the brakes. Stomped on it and fiddled with a spoke key but I don't think it'll ever be straight. I can't really afford €30 for a new wheel (and I don't want to spend money on a really badly made bike which will probably develop other problems), so it's been left out the back indefinitely.
So I'm thinking (since yesterday) about taking the one remaining wheel from a long abandoned mountain bike, left upside down with an orange rusted gearchain in a bike rack in college.
If that works out, I'll have a basically working bike. Which means less unnecessary driving (it's only 4km to college) so less traffic, less petrol burned and almost zero chance of me crashing and hurting someone, better health for me, and less landfill.

Those are all unarguably good things. The downsides mentioned in this thread earlier are all "maybes": what if the owner returns after 6 months and wants his bike back? (shouldn't have left it there for that long then)... what if it was stolen? (he wasn't getting it back anyway then, was he? also, why would he want it in its ruined state?).

So the only question left really is, what does the letter of the law say? TBH, I don't care all that much. I walk at pedestrian crossings when there's a red light sometimes.

flickerx wrote: »

It was awkward enough waiting around for half an hour with a Garda with nothing to say to each other ("um... so... been to Copper Face Jacks lately?")

Love it!

Ant

Excellent article, flickerx. Very well written.

Years ago, when I lived in a gaff with a big back yard, I used to do a lot of bike repair and recyling of friends' bikes. I briefly considered recycling abondoned machines but I figured that by the time you know for sure that they've been abandoned the bikes are rusted so much that the labour required to recycle them isn't really worth it given the low quality cheap frames found on most abandoned bikes.

Check this Dublin Cycling Campaign article for photos of a Dubliner who went to great lengths to rescue an awful looking BSO.

ED E

Fair play to him:)

Gavin

Not even a reference, impolite.

boards.ie wiki wrote:

The most popular brand of lock is probably Kryptonite. They have three standards for their Ulocks, colour coded. Grey, Orange and Yellow going from weakest to strongest. The Evolution Mini (Orange lock) is the preferred lock of couriers/messengers. It's small and lighter than the larger locks. The small size allows it to be filled, leaving little space for leverage attacks.

http://dublincycling.com/node/476

dublincycling.com wrote:

The most popular and trusted brand of U lock is probably Kryptonite. They have three standards for their U locks, colour coded. Grey, Orange and Yellow going from weakest to strongest. The Evolution Mini (Orange lock) is the preferred lock of couriers/messengers. It's small and lighter than the larger locks. The small size allows it to be filled, leaving little space for leverage attacks.