CitiBiker

May 23, 2014 12:08 PM

"This began my quest to find as many of the first 100 Citibikes as possible."

Bonus links:

lots of citibike visualizations
Mapping citibike riders
or roll your own with the data

posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? (6 comments total)

Wouldn't the first post in the tumblr begin his quest? It seems like the Village Voice article comes well into the quest, or perhaps afterwards.
posted by michaelh at 12:14 PM on May 23, 2014

Looks like his last post was 7 months ago on his tumblr, so either its getting much harder or he stopped updating it.
posted by DynamiteToast at 12:29 PM on May 23, 2014

July 27th, 2013: "Making the most of a great weather weekend, I got out with a plan to ride as much Sunday as I had Saturday. What a find, my lowest #Citibike #00008 yet."

July 23rd, 2013: "A short time after my previous find and only four blocks south, I find my first bike under ten ‪#‎Citibike‬ 00006."

Only four days earlier and yet already discarded from his memory. I personally have always thought of Citibike 00006 as totally forgettable. Glad I'm not the only one.
posted by komara at 12:37 PM on May 23, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ha, this is pretty great! I wonder if Stockholm's City Bikes have some kind of numbers on them? Even though I ride them pretty much every day I'd never embark on a quest like this, but it'd be fun to check some numbers from time to time!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 1:44 PM on May 23, 2014

This is great:

He was slightly annoyed when they took out eight parking spaces in front of his building ("Wow, that's a lot," he thought) to make room for 50 bikes ("Do they really need that many?").

Seeing him turned into a biking believer is really neat, because biking in New York City is pretty awesome! It can be scary, it can be smoggy, but it can also be beautiful and a great way to get around.


This also reminds me of The German Tank Problem, where the allies estimated how many tanks Germany was producing by observing the serial numbers in the field. And then using math.
posted by Phredward at 2:14 PM on May 23, 2014

Citibikes, you say?
posted by pxe2000 at 5:39 AM on May 24, 2014