First time motorcycle ownership [As a new yorker] (as a BushBurg-er) {Gone wrong?}
Title is a joke, I live in East Williamsburg and realtors call it Bushburg for some reason, but people don't actually call it that.
Owning a Motorcycle in NYC
I bought my 1996 Suzuki DR350SE in CT beginning of the summer and have been riding, maintaining, loving, it all year in lovely Brooklyn, NYC, NY.
I also named her "Suki", Suki is a 350cc Dual Sport motorcycle, electric start and kick start (i added), carbureted, no fancy technology on her.
And I just wanted to briefly share my experiences as a first time motorcycle owner in NYC (Brooklyn) of all places. Good and bad.
TLDR:
Is owning one in NYC fun? Absolutely Yes.
Can it be a lot of work? Absolutely Yes.
Would I do it long term? Probably not.
THE GOOD
1. Good for making trips that are not well covered by public transit.
For example riding 5 minutes to the grocery store, or 10 minutes to the film lab or Home Depot.
These trips would otherwise be a longer walk, a bike ride, or a walk to the bus, wait for the bus, walk to the place, situation.
The cause is most Subway lines extend out from Manhattan like spokes on a wheel.
It was much easier to go to the cheaper/farther grocery store more often, because I had a motorcycle (with my home-built big topbox pictured), than it would be to make that same walk,
Which my roommates and I honestly never make that trip alone walking bc the place feels far enough to go sparingly and buy as much as we can carry home
2. Gas is cheap
A $3 gallon of gas gets me 60 miles, 60 miles is a lot of miles in a dense city.
Pretty good (compared with a car)!
Until you realize that the motorcycle is only 300lb compared with a 2000lb car that would get the same mileage.
No wonder countries are starting to ban carbureted motorcycles.
3. Safety
Given the relatively slow pace of most of these short journeys, rarely exceeding 30mph, I consider riding a motorcycle in Brooklyn relatively safe*****[Citation needed].
For most of my trips, I would wear a helmet, gloves, and maybe a riding jacket.
However, if I was going anywhere further than say 20-30 minutes, then I'd put on riding pants and boots as well (if going further, the trip probably involves some sort of highway).
***** Compared with riding a motorcycle in a more typical American city.
********* As a relatively experienced driver, cyclist, pedestrian, jaywalker, etc.
4. Parking is free (most of the time)
Definitely way easier to park a motorcycle than a car.
Also, the probability of getting a parking ticket (low) makes it pretty easy to just park illegally. I am in and out of places fast and at non-peak times so I never was really concerned about it
Also, for some reason the parking cops never ticket me for not moving for Alternate Side Parking where I parked at home either (I am supposed to get out of the way of the street sweepers twice a week), I think its because I park literally at the end of the ASP zone.
THE BAD
1. Maintenance
As a result of Motorcycles having more routine maintenance than cars, my motorcycle being 25 years old, garages/workshops being inconvenient and expensive, I have ended up doing the majority of the maintenance myself.
I don't mind this, it saves money, I like wrenching, getting my hands dirty and so on, but it is time and space consuming.
And I already have too many hobbies, so now I have even more tools and parts (this time for suki) in the limited space in my apartment.
Finally, there are some things that are just not worth doing myself.
For example I had a tire that I just could not get the bead seated on the rim, I tried lube, a compressor, a hammer, and so on, had to finally give up and bring it to the shop, which had a higher volume compressor than I could realistically have in an apartment and got it seated.
2. Being that guy
I am working on my irrational fear of being cliche, I don't really care that much, but realizing that I was becoming "An Motorcyclist" really re-ignited the fear.
Walking into places dressed a specific way or being forced to carry a helmet, always talking about what I was doing to Suki recently/next.
Riding a motorcycle is definitely fun and interesting and engaging for the rider, but I think I always forgot that it really isn't for my friends who are not motorcyclists, I think this is probably common among other motorcyclists, or just men with "technical" hobbies in general.
If you are a friend reading this and I bored you with details about what I was doing to Suki, sorry!
If you are a friend reading this and I bored you with details about what I was doing to Suki, sorry!
I was also not really interested in engaging with The Larger Community for some reason, see following.
3. Attracting middle aged men
Being on / working on a motorcycle attracts a lot of interaction from Middle Aged Men.
"I used to have one of those"
"Is that the Yamazuki XR400?"
"Back in my day... rambles"
These interactions are honestly fine, but the reality is really so different from some of the first impressions you might have about it as a hobby.
Theory: "I'm going to get a motorcycle to impress women" (not that I think anyone really thinks this after thinking about it for more than 30 seconds).
Reality: "I'm going to get a motorcycle so that some random guy will tell me he used to have one of these back in the day!"
That.being.said, there were some places that it was interesting to engage with Dudes, internet forums about this specific motorcycle. They were a treasure trove of useful and interesting information, and good guys (some trolls too of course). Just good to see people still discussing, riding, and enjoying their out of production DR350s.
4. Safety (storage)
In terms of keeping it safe, NYC is probably one of the worst places in the USA to own a motorcycle.
I parked on the street, I chained suki to a signpole, I had an alarm disc-brake lock, and I had a GPS tracker, Suki was visible from my window, and I was still paranoid.
Some guy (related to 3. Attracting middle aged men) once recounted to me a story about how he parks a few blocks up and also chains to a signpole, and thieves tried wiggling the pole out of the ground.
I was kinda surprised he was targeted and not I, bc my dual sport is lighter and supposedly more desirable than his cruiser.
I didn't get much more info bc my Spanish is nonexistent and his english was just OK.
Fortunately, nothing bad happened to her this summer, the only two times I caught someone messing with Suki was.
(1) A guy trying to move suki to park his car, was very funny to just watch out the window of him trying to figure out what to do (he parked after backing out and in many times)
(2) A drunk girl sitting on suki at 3am
(2) A drunk girl sitting on suki at 3am
But it definitely could have, a few minutes with an angle grinder and Suki would be in the back of a van, and that caused my a non-trivial amount of anxiety.
5. Parking (related to safety)
You may ask, why not simply park in the secure environment of a garage?
Well they cost $200+ a month for one, but more importantly: If I had to take the train to my motorcycle, I would lose all interest in owning one at all.
This is also the reason I didn't use a cover, they take a lot longer to don and doff than my locks, and it'd be too big of a hassle.
6. I'd rather have a moped
I had a 2009 Honda Ruckus (50cc scooter) in Austin and honestly I'd rather have something closer to a scooter than a motorcycle in any sort of city.
An automatic/semi-automatic transmission makes the start-stop riding of a city much easier than a motorcycle with a clutch and manual shifting.
Having a center stand makes routine maintenance easier without a lift.
I don't really need the value-add of a motorcycle vs a moped for my usecase. (I would be fine not being able to take it out of the city).
My motorcycle is too small to really have a passenger comfortably anyways.
SUMMARY / other things I can talk about
As I write this, Suki is in Austin (so am I). I will probably bring Suki back to NYC next year after the snow/salt melts away.
I will probably ride her another season or two, then sell her. I may consider buying a moped again in the future.
Some more specific topics I found interesting I may cover in the future are:
- best way to carry luggage on a smaller motorcycle
- thoughts on Safety - a loaded topic
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