the nice thing about skateboarding is the difference between a truly shitty department store setup that literally does not have pop and what the pros ride (for the most part) is like $150. and half the components of that will last you ages even if you get minimum viable product from a real brand and don’t leave it in the rain.
case in point- i recently switched from a yard sale deck that was 100% no doubt fully for real holding me back to a brand new deck from a reliable source and i still can’t ollie half as high as i could when i skated all the time
and my local skatepark suuuuucks and i still haven’t found the good local flat ground/chill ledge spot
As someone who lives in a place with actual cycling* infrastructure, I hate all the new e-whatever non-bike things as much as anyone, but they’re still better than cars. Those fucking rental scooters, for instance, where an absolute menace when they were introduced, but the city quickly implemented regulated parking spots that have worked surprisingly well. When you can’t just park them wherefuckingever, it reduces the users to people who mean it and they’re not in the way anymore (as much).
I still think all the mono , scooter, etc,. look dumb, but I’m sure my cargoMerckx looks dumb to normies, too.
Outside of being hilariously uncool, they seem at best like an expensive half-assed stopgap to me. Though to be clear, I do still think that if said expensive half-assed stopgap gets people out of cars, that particular result is awesome. I feel the same about the electric skateboards, fly-by-night internet ebike companies, etc.
Idk all of them will end up in landfills in 5–10yrs but maybe that’s the best we can do right now. Kinda depressing.
Let us not forget that a huge majority of normies in the US think riding a bike for transportation is the stupidest, most embarrassing shit ever and should be reserved for the most destitute multiple DUI-offending members of our society’s underclass
Oh yea I mean I’m a huge dork for bikes and all these one-wheel people can be huge dorks if they wanna be, idk that I’m “policing” anything, it’s not like I have any authority whatsoever in this respect.
My opinions about how stupid they look are at best only tangentially related to my real concerns that they’re the Hyperloop of single-occupancy alternative transit.
And sometimes not even then! I’ll never forget the laugh I got from my dad after offering to buy him a bike to help him get around after his first DUI.
I don’t like the direction this thread is going. If I can’t mock the bros on monowheels then I’m definitely not allowed to mock all the goofy bike commuters I encounter every day!
That’s terrible. They used 100 truckloads of dirt to smooth out that trail to make it rideable on those silly things… if your fad toy onewheeler can’t go offroad, that’s ok. Just don’t pretend that it can.
Ehh… it is probably a little fair to generalize, but I’d say that most mono-wheel, scooter, eboard whatever fall into the same “non-cyclist/non-pedestrian” mindset as the amazon e-fatbike falls into. They are motorists at heart that are for some reason forced out of their car for the moment.
I think this makes a pretty reasoned argument why they can be problematic.
I for one think it is possible to hold both “electric unicycles and teetertotters suck” and “hopefully these things can get people out of cars” thoughts in my head at the same time.
I was kind of a low-grade e-bike hater until a) I saw how many normies seemed to really enjoy them as fun car alternatives and b) I got one for myself and understand how they work a little better. I don’t necessarily think I’m going to go through a similar evolution of thought regarding e-unicycles but if somehow I start seeing them locked up outside the grocery store I’m sure my heart will soften some.
I’ve been e cargo bike courious for a minute now, miss the old days of fetching W from school on our old Big Dummy. His new school would be a 14 mile round trip using a safe route. Now with going back to work it seems like an even better idea, and supposedly brand S is coming out with an e cargo bike soonish.
I was biking home tonight (on my e-cargo bike as it happens) and stopped at a light. A woman walks by with her dog and everything is calm. When the dog gets halfway across the intersection it jumps and starts barking at something behind me, which was a kid on an E-board wearing a full face helmet lol
Also the kid whizzed up to a probably-limited 20mph and passed me quickly but safely. No complaints there, but hooo boy I would not want to ride one of those things at 20mph on city streets
