THis is very cool. I can dig it.

Nice...but better for a backyard.

this a great idea! i really like it. i think the multi coloured frames would better suit a more modern home. I think that for a more traditional home it would look less DIY if they were painted the same colour. as an avid bike rider, i love it.

Amazing and creative way to repurpose... but wouldn't call it "cute". Maybe if they were painted.

i love it!

I think it's awesome.

Love the originality, shapes and repurposing. Wish it was a little less literal. A unifying paint color would have me thinking less "Cool, a fence made of bicycles.", and more "Wow, what a hot fence! oh, and it's made of bicycles! Love it"

On revisiting the photo, what's the point? What is this fence keeping out, or in?

I love it!

I'm surprised this looks good, I'm sure if I tried it my building would look like a junkyard. You have my ok to like it.

It's clever- And reuse is relevant.

I dig it. It's not hideous, and the good karma of upcycling makes everything prettier!

ditto to jeremyers' comment

I think it would suit something like a city park better than a house.

I like it in a New Orleans-y sort of way. I admire the creative reuse. It it for me? Meh, probably not. But more power to them for such a clever solution.

Jeremyers, to suggest an answer to your question, we're putting up a low iron fence to keep people from trampling through our front yard garden. Sometimes it's just about traffic control. :) No matter how I try, our postman keeps walking through our flower beds.

agree with mperfection. it would look a LOT nicer if it was paired with a more modern home.

seems like this home would need a very low stone/stucco fence rather than this modern eclectic one.

it's a great idea if you've got a bunch of bikes laying around...but i'm not sure i would go out searching for hundreds of bikes to make a fence out of.

I like it. I would prefer it painted, and I agree it might work better in a public park, or maybe a more urban space.

I like it.

Is it really "upcycling?" Isn't the best way to use a bike frame really to use it as a bike frame? I sill think it's cool. And I'd rather they be an awesome fence than in a landfill. But just made me think about what that word really means.

I think it would look great if painted all one color that complimented the yard/house. Love the idea!

I think it's an interesting way to repurpose the frames, but I don't love it. Agree with other commenters that a consistent color and differenct location would have enhanced the effect. It's much too obvious and too much of a distraction from (what is likely) a beautiful early 20th-century house.

I like it too. I think a fence like that would look good at an outdoor cafe for cyclists to stop and grab some coffee and a snack during a ride.
Very clever.

I like it a whole lot.

LOL...this is in my neighborhood! I pass it all the time and love it (although up close it sometimes looks a little "rickety"...something about the way the frames hang together.)

Next time I think you should turn the corner onto Estes and photograph the leopard print house! I'd love to see what AT readers think of *that*. (I love it--but then again I have a high tolerance for kitsch.)

PS...the bike frame fence doesn't really detract from the house in my opinion. In person the exterior of the house isn't particularly impressive--the frames definitely add to it.

Oh gosh...my mistake. I just noticed this is from SF, not Chicago. There is a *very similar* house/fence combo here in Rogers Park. (The yard is smaller...but I believe the house is stucco and the bike frames are hung to form a fence in an identical manner.)

My comments apply to the house/fence here in Chicago. Sorry for getting them mixed up.

Fantastic.

I really like that the frames are connected to each other with bike chain. Nice touch. It does seem like there are some pretty decent frames in there, but I assume they were discarded for a reason.

i really hope that these frames WERE discarded for a reason! i live in portland, OR and what a WASTE that would be. i like the way it looks but i don't think it is special enough for me to override the the cringe-inducing factor of all those frames just put to rest because someone wanted to show off how INTO bikes they were. no thanks.

i think it looks great, but i also wonder if the bike frames couldn't have been better recycled into rebuilt bikes...

awesome design. bad reclamation. yes, the fence is better than the landfill but don't get all high and mighty how this is green or conscious or whatever they call it these days. How about putting those 50 classic bikes back on the street where they belong. maybe you could've donated them to a youth center. these frames are much more valuable to the world as bikes. selfish s.o.b.s FREE THE BICYCLES!

I think its wonderful, but then again maybe that's my Texan penchant for yard art talking. I agree that some re-painting would have done wonders (even different colors--just a fresher coat), but I think it's fine in the front yard. I love the lines and angles!

And phooey on you guys whining about improper use! I'm sure if someone had THAT many spare frames lying around, they were probably useless for actual biking!

smackwaterjack...

i didn't say it better myself! :)

i love it!!

Very clever, but the hipster ghetto aesthetic doesn't appeal to me.

I am on the fence about it.

It's gorgeous. I love the architectural quality, and even the mismatched colors. But I do wonder how green it really is. Those frames look like they're in perfectly good condition. A bunch of dinged up, rusty frames that required repainting would be a more responsible reuse. As it is, it seems a little wasteful.

I like it, but agree, the bikes are better used as bikes. This is downcycling.

This house looks like it belongs to Igor Kenk!

For all my fellow Torontonians :)

I like it. We don't really complain about the neighbor who has a drab generic fence, so I don't think there's anything wrong with something fun like this, and it doesn't hurt to recycle.

In a round about way it makes me think of "the witches house" in Fox Point, WI. It's over the top, kind of creepy, fun and crazy. decorated with tons of statues and plants. Should everyone decorate or landscape like that? Maybe not, but it's interesting and fun to see.

jeremyers - As someone who owns a small (at the moment, unfenced) yard in the city, I can tell you what it's keeping out.... Dogs! I'm a dog owner who adores my pups, but I'm still respectful enough not to let them pee or poop in someone else's front yard (yes, even pee ruins yards!). Unfortunately, we are all not alike in this respect. So, yes, aI will be fencing it in soon!

paint them a cosistent color? you might as well put up a boring fence from a big-box hardware store

and i can't imagine that the builder isn't a cycling enthusiast, therefore I don't think he'd mangle perfectly good bikes

come on people... admit it... you're just jealous

Are there better uses for used bikes? Maybe taking them apart and creating new bikes for people who need them? Or scrapping the metal to used for something else?

Still, I'd take this over the bright white vinyl fence my neighbour is about to install. :(

Where is it located? I want to go see it in person.

I was initially fine with it, since the first frame was a Schwinn and you can build those into a fence anytime. But then I saw the Trek frame and died a little. I love me my Treks... :-)

I'm fine with the fence as-is. Recycling used bike frames into usable bikes is not as easy as it might sound- finding someone knowledgeable to take the bikes, re-build them, find owners, and/or have the funds to do all of the above is really quite an undertaking. Bike frames, sadly, can be like feral cats sometimes. (And I have rescued both cats and bikes.)

I think it's downcycling like someone above pointed out, but put a gun to my temple and I'll squeal that it looks good since I like the regularity very much (which is true; I only have a problem with how the colours have been mixed in this particular project).

It looks great- it'd look better if it wasn't soooo coloured though.

This just IS NOTTTTT recycling though. Recycling is not taking perfectly usable things and making a fence out of them. Those bikes can be rebuilt and actually USED.

The more I look at it, gahhh. That's like, a TON of bikes that could have been donated to people who need them. Like fat kids or something.
I'm sure they had to take parts off of those too, I'm sure they didn't all come without handlebars and everything. Were those thrown away, tossed aside?
I like things made out of unusable items that need recycling, not bikes needing owners to take care of them.

Hi - just a note to say that this is, indeed, misidentified as San Francisco. This fence belongs to a house in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. It's on Ashland, just north of Estes, next to St. Paul's by the Lake. (I walked by it today and double checked...I recognize the details of the porch of the house next door, as well as the trim color on the house,etc.)

It's around the corner from where I live and I've always enjoyed it--although the placement of the frames in person is less tidy looking...there are slight differences in height/frame style that make the way the fences hangs together look slightly less polished up close.

Also, the yard is in fact quite tiny in the front of the house. It's planted not with grass but with small ground-cover plants. It has a bit of an overgrown/wild look to it that the fence compliments.

I agree - better used as bikes than anything else.

elankat--you rock.

Love it - the colors and the design. Great idea!!

I'd be interested to find out if these were from "perfectly usable" (as people keep writing) bikes or not. To have this fence, I assume the owner is a bike enthusiast of some kind, maybe a bike store owner. Maybe these are wrecked bikes, bikes that had been in bad accidents. I've known a few people who were in bad accidents whose bikes needed to be trashed.

Anyway, I think it's interesting, and would work on the right house. Or maybe a cafe. Probably would be more attractive all painted one color.

Pencils - I agree. no one in their right mind would turn a Trek into a fence if it could be rebuilt. I'm guessing these bikes were wrecked, frames cracked - in which case, no one should re-use it to ride on! I think it was a great way to recycle the frames. It'd never fly in my HOA-infested area. I like the colors, too!

Whoa - is this the same forum that fawned over all the expensive designer bike post and ignored on my suggestion to get a used bike instead?

There are a lot more abandoned and screwed up bikes than there are people with the skills and motivation to fix them. Ask any bike mechanic. Faced with the option of meltdown or reuse, reuse gets my vote! Bonus - people start thinking about bikes.

>nicoleson, thanks for the clarification. i thought it was somewhere in san francisco that i could go take a look in person.

build bicycles not barriers.

wait... a ... minute... could it be? IT IS!!! that's my old raleigh frame! I had that bike stolen 3 years ago! what kind of bs is this??!! I coming to take back what is rightfully mine!