People do that all the time in my area. It’s not because it’s “safe”, it’s because they’re stupid. Then they want to join my communities so they can spam it with their stolen bike posts and get help finding them.
Can do too, Germany, the nicer part of the city here. Left my car with open windows in the summer, with my stuff in it, over night, nothing. Wouldn’t do it in the northern city though. My seats would’ve been gone.
Reminds me of when my friend moved to Las Vegas, the shitty side of town, not the strip. And on the first day he had every wheel stolen off of his car when he stepped in a store for a couple of minutes.
I’ll raise that by the time I left my car window open for 4 days in a semi big German town. After police couldn’t get ahold of me, a neighbour covered it himself with plastic so the inside wouldn’t get wet.
Cars are seen as a status symbols in a lot of places, instead of as the utilitarian things they are. Where I’m from people will see you in a better or worse light depending on what you drive, for sure. Most young people get first in debt not for college, but for the 200.000km second or third hand car imported from Germany.
That’s a far too simple take. Everyone (yes, also you) have biases around cars. And depending on the bias, people want to have these character traits associated with them.
That is exactly, what I mean. It’s not so much about impressing other people and more about impressing themselves. They want a big car, because they think, it makes them big. Even people who care about cars don’t see every car and think how cool the owner must be.
What I wanted to point out is that these people are not too wrong in their assumptions. It is, indeed, impressive to society.
Example, if you look at a shiny new(ish) Mercedes, that’s well cleaned, and in perfect shape. What’s the first things you attribute to that driver? At least “wealthy/successful to some extent”, right? And that’s a trait that is impressive in a lot of (capitalist) societies nowadays.
It’s not about whether this is a good or bad thing. It’s just something that we need to acknowledge and understand when fighting car centricity. We can’t just deny the existence of it.
Thank you! Finally someone speaks out, too. Singapore is a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship and the closest thing we have to a true cyberpunk dystopia. It is a horrible place with clean sidewalks.
The law hadn’t been applied decades, male homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2007 and legalised in 2022.
The legal situation before that was inherited from the British Empire, a 1871 law which made all kinds of “sodomy” (oral, anal) illegal for everyone. By now you also have protections against discrimination, hate speech, etc. There’s a gazillion things to criticise about Singapore you don’t need to make shit up. Other things on the list of “don’t criticise about Singapore” include public transit, public housing (though they could ease on the mandatory ethnic mixing a bit), and the food. Oh gods the food.
Dictatorship is also kind of a misnomer… Singapore is one of a kind. Certainly paternalistic as fuck, authoritarian it depends, the PAP is actually listening to people and considers electoral results <70% an issue that must be addressed by fixing shit – and no they don’t mess with the ballot: They mess with media and election timing, as is British tradition.
Two particular things that stand out is the lack of corruption and actual respect for the law, otherwise the whole system would long since have collapsed. That is: All the authoritarianism is actually codified, there’s laws you can read, rights that you have, you’re not going to prison because some big-wig doesn’t like your face or your business idea is interfering with their kleptocracy but because you broke the law, and there’s no easily abused laws like Thailand’s lese-majeste, either. All that is highly untypical for your usual run-off-the-mill dictatorship where favours and loyalty are the only legal currency.
Things to criticise that aren’t caning for littering or insanely hardcore drug laws? Things like the abysmal status of foreign workers. Or, from a more Confucian perspective actually: The failure of the grand daddy PAP to properly see discontent coming, and address them proactively. Lack of connection to younger people who don’t happen to be PAP members.
Chewing gum is not illegal, the importation and sale is. You can bring in gum from abroad and chew it. What you do with it afterwards is also important.
I’m more wondering why someone would spend that much on a damn bike. I bought my car for 15k of course that was in 2010 but I’m still driving it to this day. Toyota Corolla before anyone asks.
Edit: I just realized this was posted under fuck cars and now I feel like a dick comparing it to the price of my car. It wasn’t intentional but still holy shit that’s still a stupid amount of money to spend on a bike. Like how can you even justify that price? It has to be a completely insane amount of markup.
Entry level racing bikes are about $3-5k these days. That’s a top end Pinarello with custom paint. It might be $15k, but it’s probably closer to $10-$12k with those wheels.
I’m the guy who puts my $8k mountain bike on the back of my 20 year old shitbox Honda when I drive to the trails
Singapore has some of the best mass transit in the world. It rivals Japan and Spain in quality. And in a city as dense as it is, it kinda has to be or the metro area simply couldn’t function. If everyone in Singapore needed to own a car to get around, the city would be in permanent gridlock 24/7.
I think most people forget when you get these bikes it’s like buying an f1 car in motorsports. That 15k bike is probably nearly identical to what the pros are running, like maybe they use a different hand grip or seat but for the most part that’s a completely custom chasis, redesigned from the previous year and up to spec to compete in a professional capacity right off the bat.
Probably a status symbol to some extent. And some people are so rich they will spend a lot more for very slight, incremental improvements. For them, the difference between $5k and $15k might be more like $5 and $15 for an average person.
Someone who spends 10k+ on a bike is probably fit as fuck, so biking 10s of miles to get somewhere is nothing, plus you can take it on the train. New bottom bracket every couple years, maybe 200 in tyres, maybe 100 in brake parts. Cost of getting around, it only takes a few years to pay for itself even at those prices when you add on the actual costs of running a car, saying all this as someone who drives. If you don’t need to move a bunch of stuff or other people around, in terms of transport cost even an expensive bike is cheap of you use it.
Almost certainly competition / training. A bike like this is your exercise, leisure, hobby, your source of competitive spirit, your hobby, and of course its your baby who you love and keep tuned up. A 15k car is a great value, a workhorse. Is it your baby? Maybe it is if you’re still driving it.
Definitely not my baby. Just a cheap reliable source or transportation in a city that you have to own a car to get anywhere. Paints chipping off and it has rust but still gets me to work everyday so I don’t care. I’m a tightwad so spending like this will never make any since to me. I’m just not a person that wants many material things.
These bikes are at the same level as what is being used at professional levels. You can always get a cheaper bike if that’s not what you are into, but it’s like looking at an f1 car and saying it’s overkill for the road, well no shit, it’s made for the extreme end of the sport. Calling these bikes crazy is like conflating the price of an f1 car to the price of a civic.
now I feel like a dick comparing it to the price of my car
I don’t think its an unfair comparison. There’s simply nothing that you can do to a bicycle that will make it more complex or difficult to manufacture than the most bare bones automobile. So it is a bit crazy that folks can charge $15k for a fancy frame and tire set, when an extra ton of precision engineered material costs the same.
At some level, it just feels like gouging. A good bicycle should be the sort of thing anyone can afford, not a luxury good reserved for wealthy hobbyists.
I saw that video of the group of degenerates stealing hundreds of pairs of socks from a discount store, something tells me they weren’t planning on eating those socks
Maybe they were too poor to buy both clothes and food. Shit’s tight for a lot of people now. Me and my SO both have pretty nice middle class jobs and still have to be really careful with our money. If I was still a pizza cook I wouldn’t be able to afford clothes for both me and my kids, for sure.
Unless you know what circumstances are driving someone to crime, you aren’t in a position to judge them.
Im baffled youre confused, this clearly isnt a direct quote of anyone. This style of reframing a statement to emphasize a specific aspect you want to draw attention to while making clear who made the original statement isnt new.
I got one for $20 at a garage sale and worked ok until the tires gave out and I haven’t gotten around to changing them yet. But I don’t need high performance tires or anything since I just bike around the neighborhood, so that will be what, another $50? Bikes are cheap if you don’t care if they’re brand new.
I’m into mountain biking and it’s fucking criminal what they charge for bike prices these days. A good bike with decent quality components is like $5000-$7000. High end name brand components will bring that up to $9000 easily. Higher end frames and boutique components can bring it into the $11000-$15000 range. It’s fucked lol.
Oh and for an electric bike add $2000-3000 to the price.
Your notion of “decent” is certainly not the same as 99.99% of the population. Or you live in a very expensive place and have a very specific use of mountain bikes.
I think most people have no idea how fast ebikes are in a city environment. Yeah my bike is capped at 30km/h but I make a lot of that time up by never being stuck in traffic. Short trips are always faster than driving and medium trips are usually comparable.
People also don’t seem to understand how bikes (and good transit) are completely unaffected by rush hour, accidents, or construction. My buddy (who is pretty sympathetic to urbanism) seemed confused when I said my trips always take the same amount of time, the concept seemed outlandish to him.
@Moneo@Eheran I live in a city that constantly shows up in the top 5 for worst traffic in the world. BUT, we also have a sizeable bike path network. I almost exclusively move on my bike (I don't have a car, but sometimes I take a taxi or a bus). The other day I told someone I haven't been stuck in traffic in years, and they couldn't understand how (the answer is easy, you don't get stuck in traffic in a bike path. Even when there's a lot of people, you keep moving along).
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