Bike Share Was a Cool Idea, Then...

Any day now they'll announce the 600 locations of NYC version of "Bike Share." The pricing is now known (see list). While Gothamist wants you to think the prices are outlandish ($77 For Four Hour Ride!!!), the fact is these bikes are designed for the FREE up to 30 or 45 minute rides from docking station to docking station; free that is, when you PAY for a daily, weekly or annual membership. All of which makes the location of these stations INCREDIBLY important. At a Community Board meeting a couple months ago, the NYC Bike Share folks were pretty clear that we'd be lucky to get one at Parkside; one at Prospect Park station is more likely. The first round of docks will cover Manhattan and parts of tonier, or rather hipstery, Brooklyn. No surprise there; the whole approximately $100 annual membership was never going to go over well in areas of entrenched poverty, nor in car-happy Mill Basin etc. BUT...the real story here is that Citibank nabbed the name and the logo on the whole system. This is the Citibank that the U.S. lent $45 Billion to in 2009. Now they've repayed the favor by letting you take a bike for 45 minutes, emblazoned with its logo of course. The bikes and docks will look something, or exactly, like this:

But here's the prob. The very people most likely to dig the Bike Share, at least initially, are just the sorts of people who wouldn't be caught dead riding a Citibank Citibike. Oh, these things will come in really handy, and some folks will go for 'em. But there are few corporations more "corporate" than Citibank, and I suspect many hipsters will be worried for their image. Not to identify myself too much in that category, but the Q is not particularly excited to ride about on a two-wheeled billboard for a loathsome poorly-managed company that we're all pretty much forced by its size to tolerate on a daily basis already.

Sigh. And yes, do be sure to return it promptly, or you will be paying some outrageous overdraft fees.