We tried something special at Hobees last weekend. It wasn’t on the menu, it was in the parking lot: a new bike rack. It was installed in an awkward location, so we couldn’t use it properly without blocking the sidewalk. And we had to move a bench to make room for our two bikes. But I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth.
The rickety rack it replaced was so bad that it was featured in my first ever Bike Rack FAIL last year. On that trip, I politely asked the restaurant manager if there were plans to replace the rack since it was falling apart. Her smile fell into a look somewhere between irritation and resignation. She said she had asked the shopping center owner for a new rack before, but she’d ask again. She offered little hope and I had none.
But here was a new rack, most likely installed due to requests like mine. I don’t enjoy asking, but having a sturdy rack to lock up our prized bikes was worth the awkward conversation with the manager.
Have you ever requested a rack before? What was the manager’s reaction? Did it work?
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- The full bike rack at Zibbibo, a high-end restaurant in Palo Alto, shows that it has customers that arrive by bike.
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- On Cowper Street, there was so much demand the city replaced a car parking spot with a bike corral.
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- This super-sized bike corral is on Valencia Street in San Francisco. Abundant bike parking is good for retail.
Location: Hobee’s Mountain View, Central Expressway at Rengstoff Avenue, Mountain View, California, USA.
