The big bike photo roundup post
Intermittently on Cohost, mostly in 2022 and 2023, I used to make round-up posts of bicycle photographs I'd found on Reddit. Reddit is unfortunately the best place to go to find large photo and video collections of hobby-related stuff, and bikes in particular have a whole range of funny, scary, beautiful, and weird photos to enjoy there across a couple different subreddits.
Here are the bike photo collections I made, organized chronologically from oldest to newest! Enjoy!! I did not download all the pictures so you are going to have to click through to find and enjoy most of them. I swear, they're all either very nice or very scary!
Warning, this post is very long!
Aug 19 2022
I bought an ebike in the spring and started using it to commute to work. I started wondering how I could customize or upgrade my bike, and suddenly I was staying up late every night looking at photos of bikes on reddit.
Well, I can tell you now that the best bike subreddit, and the best place to get exciting bike photos, is xbiking. The bikeporn subreddit is too focused on extremely boring looking expensive bikes; the people on bicycling claim they're for all skill levels but seems unusually heavy with intense road bikers who give bad advice and will say the most unhinged shit to posters who are looking for cheap or shitty bikes to just get around with. Bikecommuting has been useful to me but doesn't have, like, funny pictures.
Xbiking is for real "adventure biking" freaks who build shit that cannot be classified into any particular category. The bikes people here make are dirty and busted and sometimes frightening. There are bike snobs here, but they're snobs for, like, buying a vintage 1990s mountain bike and putting drop bars on it and trying to make it run with the cheapest possible replacement parts. They are the kind of people custom-building frankenbikes for bikepacking trips and then photographing them out of focus leaning against a garage door. Some of them do classy photos, but I forgive them. They seem like normal people with weird tastes, and I love that.
They also make the most colorful, absurd, dangerous-looking shit out there. Please, let me entertain you:
This may be the most dangerous bike I have ever seen. Looking at the bungie cord makes me think I am going to actually die through like, visual bike danger contagion
A terrifying bike made out of what seems to be fucking concert stage infrastructure?
Someone going bikepacking on a folding bike so that they can inflate a raft and paddle the bike across a lake
Endless numbers of neon or otherwise gorgeously bright bikes
Fucking terrifying looking mad max shit
A lot of bikes which look fine but have really nice bags on them
A lot of bikes where the wheels are two different sizes
People bragging that they found their bike in the trash or in the woods. There are a lot of these posts haha
Manufactured tall bikes that are tall for purely hubris reasons
People building bikes out of shit you should not build bikes out of
Shots of bikes with people that are super stylish and extremely hardcore while still looking extremely normal, proving that any human looks fun, cool, and/or badass when they're showing off a whole ass vehicle they maintain themselves
I love biking. I recently hit 500 miles on my ebike. It goes as fast as a (very slow) car and I can fix some shit on it myself--but not enough yet. Having the ebike is really good for my health and my commute and shit but the more I look at these cool chill bike photos on xbiking, the more I want a normal "acoustic" bike that I can use for exercise rather than getting to work and hauling groceries. More people should bike and everyone who builds their own bike is a hero. Enjoy these pics!!
Sept 5, 2022
If you liked my last post about bikes, then here is a new one
a bike with too many bars!! Too many. And they're much too vertical!!
so I hear u like spokes
this poster used a guide on Japanese sword handle wrap styles to wrap their chainstay like it was a fucking katana hilt
this extremely beautiful bike is exactly as old as I am... it's incredible how fucking long a bike lasts!! And how nice you can make them look if you are good at restorations haha
this ebike is made out of wood and cardboard and it is absolutely going to kill its rider instantly the first humid day they take it out
Oct 17, 2022
A homemade cargo bike. This person made it by welding two bike frames together and attaching a skateboard to the back.
A custom Halloween-themed bike with little bats and shit painted on it
A VERY nice color coordinated build for a restored 90s mountain bike
A very Red bicycle that just looks very nice
Someone who welded together their own electric cargo bike
And finally, an utterly cursed handmade ebike made out of a kids' bike frame, scooter parts, and an electric skateboard
Dec 20 2022
I am back once again with more photos of cool and bad bikes from reddit, a great place to look at both extremely smart and extremely self-destructive people's bikes. You deserve the best so I'm bringing you only the extremes today.
Check out this extremely deadly looking bike. A plank of wood holds the ebike guts to a step-through Nishiki frame. The creator plaintively protests in the comments that they have since replaced the wood with a piece of sheet metal.
This bike model uses two differently-sized wheels and an absurd frame geometry to force its rider into an extreme bent-forward riding posture that looks dumb as shit to me. This is legit what it looks like from the factory--no major owner adjustments here. What the fuck!! If you are after a very bent forward posture for bike racing you can easily achieve this with more normal looking bikes so I dunno what's up with this one. (If you are near Pasadena and want to destroy your back with this thing, it looks like it's still for sale!!)
I saw someone repost this picture of a bike themed after (or possibly made out of parts from?) a Trabant, an East German car. I tried to figure out where the pic came from originally, but haven't been able to find anyone posting it with info about who made it or why. Seems cool though!
Here's a goofy ass cart built for two people to power together through a bikechain drive train. The poster says: "It has a freewheel on both sides and one wheel drive." They also mention that "Only one side has steering." Fascinating!!
This sick handcycle wheelchair belongs to someone who is looking to electrify it and create the ebike version of a handcycle. The photo here provides a good close-up view of the drivetrain, which is entirely in the front of the device. You can see that the owner has tied two weights from The Sports Authority to the front wheel, probably to balance their weight better and prevent the front wheel and drivetrain from losing contact with the ground. Super cool!
A person in the ebikes subreddit claims to be the first person to receive the first shipment of a new company's first ebike. The bike comes with a lot of (imo excessive) high tech features, like a system that automatically adjusts the shocks to fit the rider's weight. The guy who founded it seems to have been a long-time Vespa dealer in NYC, which explains the scooter look. The thing I find most interesting about it, though, is that it comes with two hard shell pannier-type containers on either side of the back wheel for cargo storage. The website says, "I knew the integrated panniers would be key to the success of the bike, since we all have stuff. No one had ever built anything like what I wanted, but I was sure it could be done." As someone who bought my own panniers with specific needs in mind, I'm not sure that requiring the bike to run with specific panniers is a good idea, but I'm very clearly not in the target market for a machine like this. There aren't any pictures of the device without those cargo pods attached, and the reddit poster says, "Yes chain maintenance isn’t ideal. There are four chains, and it’s a five minute job to get access to them. But they are 1/8 and pretty well protected so they are recommending a 250 mile interval." I also found this self-mythologizing company "story" page extremely interesting as it contains some old design sketches of the bike, many pictures and videos of the design process, and some photographs of bike mockups and test rigs.
This bike just looks nice! I just like it! Great colors and photography. A lot of folks on the xbiking subreddit go for pastel blue/pink bikes (some of them seem to be deliberately Trans Bikes) and this is one of the better ones I've seen.
This bike has an unusual pair of training wheels and a grab bar up on the front between the handebars. Someone in the comments suggests that this may be so that someone can walk along and help the rider steer. Frankly, I'm not sure how easy that would be given the orientation of the handle bar? Whatever the purpose of this bike is, it seems very custom built for a specific person's situation, which is always cool to see.
Check out this cursed bike which uses a whole Razor scooter as a front wheel. Probably very deadly!!
I... I just love this logo... it's just really good!!!
This person laced a pennant they bought into the triangle of their bike as some kind of decorative panel. Cool! It looks super easy and is something I'm considering doing next time I go to a Critical Mass here in LA.
This chaotic bike is a fucking disaster, but it has it all. Pogies. A fur-lined cupholder. An entire backpack (??) used as a top-bar bag. Some kind of hanging panel pocket on the side. The rear tire is connected to a shocked mountain bike chainstay harvested from a whole nother bike. The fender is attached to ANOTHER fender which is attached to the seat tube and stabilized with bungee cords to the seat rails. So much fucking stuff going on here!! Whoever rides this bike probably really, really needs it.
This has been another month of weird fucking bikes!! Thank you for reading!!!
Mar 9 2023
It's been ages since I've done one of these because I was too tired and depressed to post!!! But now things are looking up! I've got more pictures of bikes for you mined from the bike mines of reddit.
A DIY mudguard made out of a can of Arizona iced tea
A winter commuting setup with a lot of DIY elements. The owner created their own hand guards for cold weather by putting foil pockets around the drop bars. They've also covered the bike in a variety of cosmetic modifications involving a massive number of hand cut reflective tape triangles and a bunch of neon pink paint. I suppose the goal is to be both highly reflective for cars, and extremely difficult to anonymize for bike thieves?
Hideous and dangerous frankenbike with a long front fork made of various dowels and sticks held together by... well, it looks like USA-themed bunting. I dunno. Instead of handlebars this thing has a car wheel, also wrapped in bunting. I think whoever made this must certainly have been killed by it at this point.
Someone attached one of those bizarre Softride seat rigs to the top bar of a regular ass bike frame. Of course, they had to raise the handlebars massively in order to make this work. It looks extremely uncomfortable and whoever is riding it must be a giant!
Ebikes are taking off massively around the world right now so it's the perfect time to find absolutely idiotic ebikes that cost a bunch for no reason and will probably kill you. This ebike has two front wheels. And two forks. They aren't even far enough apart for this to work as an adaptive bike for accessibility reasons--it's just two massively heavy wheels right next to each other, without any mechanism that helps the rider lean separately on each side, so if you want to cut across a sloping hillside I am not sure you would be okay, haha. Apparently this was shown at an "Archery Trade Association Show." If you want more pictures you can find the company site here but please please do not buy one of these, just get a regular fucking ebike or a proper accessible three-wheeler. In the comments on this picture I found a fascinating article about an adaptive ebike with a fairly complex wheel-linking device in the front that allows the user to lean and handle corners properly. Looks a lot safer than this thing!
This bike looks like set decoration from a fucking Klingon starship. Holy shit. I can imagine that doing a wheelie on this one would set you up to get fucking impaled. The guy who makes these is in Poland and I'm having a hard time verifying whether he's still constructing them.
Handlebars!! More handlebars than you can handle!!!
Lmao it's a ski bike. Apparently ski-biking is a thing? Skibiking? Anyway it has whole ass clubs and shit. Apparently it was invented in europe in the 60s and is very niche, which might explain why I never saw one of these before.
I just think this bike is really nice looking! That matte grey plus the orange just looks really good. Probably hard to keep this one looking pristine but it's a great style.
Another bike made out of wood. I feel like I have to find one of these every time I post a roundup now. Anyway this particular wooden bike was apparently made by the owner of a mattress brand. I guess if you get rich then spending all your spare time making bikes out of wood is one of the less harmful things you could do.
A weird fucking wheel. I dunno I don't got anything else here it's just funny lookin
You know what? Let's put a second "steering wheel" bike in here. This one is out on the street so I assume it was actually ridden to the location. It's got brakes and a shifter and everything so maybe it's not so bad to use??
An incredible home creation... multiple frames welded together to create seating for small passengers. It looks pretty sturdy so long as those welds don't fail and nobody gets impaled by anything, haha. This one is apparently in Brooklyn so keep your eyes peeled if you live there I guess.
Aug 21 2023
It's been AGES since I have done this so you're getting the best of the best here. Been building this one up for weeks
This user posted their own solution for a fully snapped in half bike frame to a "redneck engineering" subreddit. The solution: copious zip ties. This user is still alive so I guess it didn't kill them.
A few branded/promo bikes: a Taco Bell klunker made by State Bicycle Co, a handmade NYC taxi-themed bike, an official Hi-C branded bike, and a John Deere branded bike from the 1970s
Hard to see in the first three photos but this person's bike is an orange Surly Karate Monkey that they hand painted all over with metallic silver paint. The whole bike is covered in subtle cartooning and other details--they seem to have painted part of their disc break mount as well. They do other bike frame painting in their personal style and you can see more of it on their instagram.
This person 3D printed a bunch of white plastic boxes to fit all over the bike and contain add-ons like front and rear lights, food for school, etc. It's definitely a wildly impractical way of doing this--there are much better ways to affix lights in particular, because this person's plastic housing actually seems to limit light visibility to cars. However, it looks dope, haha, so good for them
When someone posts a handbuilt ebike with the comment "Ignore how it looks now I'm still in the very early stages." you know you're in for a good time. This photo is oriented incorrectly, features the most seat foam I've ever seen on an ebike at once before, and seems to feature what might be a 2x4 or perhaps a stack of wooden shims acting as a top tube.
A cool anodized titanium bike! Check out the creator's youtube videos showing how they used vinyl stencils to hand-swab a logo and a series of fall motifs onto the bike. Looks great!
A "feral bike" found in South Carolina. I think the red thing under the seat is compressed air for an air horn. Love a bike seat which seems to be largely made out of duct tape at this point
Here are some bikes I liked organized by color!! A yellow bike! An orange bike! A green and purple minivelo! A copper plated bike!! A beach-colored bike! Love em!
A Pedersen bike! These are apparently common in Copenhagen. They're based on a design from the 1890s and they feature a "hammock" seat that hangs on straps and springs. Here's a video of a modern Pedersen bike which shows how it all fits together.
This person made a handebar bag out of a milk carton and it looks dope
Last time I posted an ebike from the 1970s--here is a whole catalog of them!
A bike with one and a half wheels, from Toyko. Incredible
This nerd [laudataory] forged a custom bash ring (picture 2) for the chain ring on this bike they don't even want to keep. I love it. The frame is really busted up but all the components are outrageously clean. This is very funny
"Stereobikes" handmade by teens in Queens in approx 2007! Full blog post about this photoshoot here.
June 6 2023
Here are more pictures of bikes I've saved over the last few months. Enjoy these bizarre bikes!!
This guy tried to make a touring bike with 36 inch wheels which is absolutely unhinged. Please check out the creator's post about how he made this bike and how gigantic it is. The wheels are so big that he had to buy them at a unicycle shop. And if you want to see him riding it and looking like a tiny child in the process, check out this picture.
Look at this sick as hell bike meant for wildfire fighting support-- I guess folks are riding this through the wilderness to bring supplies to firefighters! That's cool as shit
Horrifically dangerous homemade ebike using a spinning wheel directly behind the bike seat to accelerate the rear tire using friction. If your ass makes contact with this one it will delete your ass in the most gory way imaginable!! Looking at this bike makes me sick lmao
Incredible bag system on this bike. There is no extra space left anywhere in the triangle. Absolutely wild custom work... a true sewing machine warrior was here!!
I cannot resist posting all cool trikes with interesting steering systems and this one is a good one.
Found this through the "justridingalong" bike repair subreddit but this post is from a complete freak who is going to kill themselves 3D printing brake pads out of a 3D printer plastic that melts at temperatures lower than the temperatures that brake pads generally rise to while breaking. So the person using these brake pads is going to find them turning into soup and then they're gonna lose control and die. The comments are full of people telling this person they are going to lose their teeth and/or die
An ebike from the 1970s!! Cute as hell. I know a lot of ebikes are currently designed to look like sci fi dirtbikes or motorcycles but I think we should go back to chunky little things like this one. Absolutely adorable. (However I am also a person who commuted on an urb-e for 2 years lmao)
Someone painted and decorated their ebike to look like some mad max shit. They did a good job! They could ride this to Wasteland Weekend, I bet. (I should go to Wasteland Weekend some year... hmm...)
This person is bringing a disgustingly large chain with them everywhere to lock up their (extremely normal) ebike, and the chain they're using is so fucking large that they have created an enormous tackle box type container on the back of the bike to hold it, by attaching a plastic box to a plank of wood. The chain is so large that it must significantly slow the bike. This is extreme overkill--this person could easily use a different locking system to secure the bike, but hey, at least this is funny!!
Sick as hell electrified handcycle that attaches to a normal wheelchair. Awesome shit. It drives me absolutely nuts when anti-bike activists complain about bike infrastructure by incorrectly claiming that disabled folks cannot use bike infrastructure... handcycles exist, and many folks can use them, and they rule! The ebikes subreddit has cool pictures of electrified ones a couple times a month! This one has a giant ass writeup from the owner about how they electrified it and all the features they added in order to make themselves the perfect transportation machine. This rocks!
Feb 9, 2024
It's been too long... I owe you another roundup of my favorite bike pictures from Reddit!!
This one is very heavy on the "bad ideas" posts. DO NOT make these bikes! Save your teeth!!
A commercially produced tandem where BOTH riders steer the bike. Two pairs of handlebars, one very long, attach to the front fork. The person in the back reaches forward around the front rider to grasp the second set of handlebars. This is unbelievably dumb. A divorce machine, perhaps. Or at least a machine for breaking bones
This person is using a car key as a quick release lever for their wheel lmao
This bike has ram glued all over it. It's also a homemade ebike and the owner may have drilled holes in it for internal cable routing. I can't figure out where the battery is but I'm worried about the wires going up to the seat...
This person is trying to sell a bike with big chunks taken out of the seat stays?? It's possible that this bike was stolen but I can't figure out why someone stealing a bike would break the frame in this way. One person in the comments suggests that the bike may have been destroyed for warranty reasons and the person who had to do the destroying is trying to sell it anyway. Describing it as a "suspension system... now it has more deflection" is absolutely hilarious
This cyclist rocks and her bike looks amazing. This frame is sold only in france but I hope they come to the US market someday. It looks incredible
I didn't know they made spoked chainrings but that's fucking incredible. I don't trust it, but it looks incredible
This is just an "incredible transformation" post... but this person took a bike that looked absolutely fucked and made it beautiful. Bikes rarely go bad!! If you keep a bike dry you can ride it for 60+ years!!
If you would like to freakin die, you can use a fork as a derailleur (do not use a fork as a derailleur)
A modern bike using "drop bars" inspired by 1800s drop bars. They achieved this by turning their modern swept-back riser handlebars upside-down.
I don't know what the fuck is going on here with this animated car themed bike light but it feels extremely custom
This bike is hideous but I have to respect it. A minivelo made entirely out of mountain bike parts. I recently ordered myself a hella cheap minivelo for my birthday... maybe I should have just thrown something together out of fucked parts??
This bike has a pretty great brand name
An all-plastic bike. Looks like the kind of plastic that takes hella UV damage and will cause you to die!
A creative chain rerouting system. Cannot fucking figure out why they did this lol