Boris Bike Is So Stylish Your Having A Laugh

It is the talk of London Town…the Barclays Bike Hire scheme that has taken the city by storm, it hasn’t really, well not quite yet. I don’t know about the rest of you lot, but any time I have walked past a bike docking station, very few of the bikes are in use. And from what I can gather a few of them have already went missing in action! It is however early days and it may well turn out to revolutionise how we travel in London, but I doubt it…

I couldn’t but help but notice an article in one of London’s free rags yesterday that a couple of citizens of Paris have given the Boris Bike the thumbs up…that it is stylish…stylish, they are having a fucking laugh. One thing the Boris bike isn’t stylish, it looks like a bit of joke, but that’s just my opinion. I suppose its okay if you want to go for a slow bike ride – it weighs a lot and you aint getting any speed out of the three gears, which are slow, slower and even slower!

The local rag took a Boris Bike on a day trip to Paris to get the reaction from the locals to see what they thought of it in comparison to the Velib, which is the name of the bike used in their hire scheme. I don’t know where the paper found so many locals to speak such good English, are they sure they were in Paris? The Parisians were seemingly highly impressed with and love the Boris bike, they claim it is stylish, beautiful, nice, attractive…and they like it better than their own Velib.

The Velib must be one ugly looking monster is all I have to say about that. Their positive reaction may have had something to with the fact the Pairs bike hire scheme has been on the go since 2007 and the bikes are a bit past their sell by date. The London Bike they showed the eager folks in Paris was  gleaming, spanking brand new…what do you think they are going to say.  How come the Paris version, which in reality doesn’t look too much different from the London version has a useful basket?

I couldn’t help but notice that the people the local rag had pictured in Paris were some of the least stylish people I have ever seen. If you wanna talk about style go and find some stylish looking people and ask their opinion! Maybe the people they talked to in Paris have been munching on too many snails and frogs legs and their minds have lost the plot…I never want to hear the word stylish used in association with the Boris bike again, it is complete bull…

The Velib has seemingly been a huge success in Paris, having been to Paris a few times, there is a big difference between the wide boulevards and avenues they have other there, and from what I can gather they have loads of cycle lanes. Cycling in London is a hell of lot more hazardous than in Paris and that is a fact. I wonder if those Parisians would be using all those kind words if they had to cycle around the streets of London on the Boris Bike, I doubt it!

When they launched the bike hire scheme in Paris in 2007 they had 1451 docking stations, there are now have around 1750. London we have…wait for it…there we will eventually be 400 docking stations, which I’m sure will be in perfect locations for the tourists.

Here is a fun comment I read from an ex Velib user in Paris -

‘I used the Velib’ loads last year until they cashed my 150 euro deposit for allegedly not putting one back properly, with no way of proving my innocence or getting the money back due to Velib’s woeful customer service. Just get a scooter instead – quicker, park ‘em anywhere and much more fun.’

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