Rust Never Sleeps But Your Bike Might
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12. 7.07
An old trick to protect your shiny new bike is to slap loud and ugly paint all over it. Much more subtle is Dominic Wilcox's temporary rust stickers, that are "designed to make your beautiful bike/car look rusted and scratched so that passing thieves assume it's not worth stealing due to its apparent shabbyness."
The inventor notes that he put them on his new bike 13 days ago and it has not been stolen yet, which he considers "probably equates to 7 years of non-stealing in the friendly countryside." Only £3.99, a lot cheaper than my lock....
before and after pix below the fold..
I predict that the effectiveness of these stickers will be inversely proportional to their popularity.
Nice Neil Young reference :)
I don't understand - wouldn't it be easier to just scratch a bike up a little? A steel one I mean?
Hang on - didn't William Gibson write about this in Virtual Light? The bike couriers in future San Francisco all used them.
Hmmm.... I've seen the post on another blog. II thought the idea was "pointless".
Reminds me of my dad's old trick:
We bought a nice new motor for our boat, and the first thing he did was buy a bunch of army green paint and give it a coat, then he hand painted "Sears" in bright blue paint on the sides. Gotta admit, it never got stolen.
The functional premise for this product is that bike thieves won't steal any old thing that isn't fastened down. Sadly, this is false.
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