Wagamama advertising bike draws cyclists' ire

Just another pain-in-the-behind way of getting arond advertising restrictions, like the "parked trucks" at the side of motorways. Except in this case as others have said, takes up valuable cycle parking space that someone has paid to install. I think I'll stop using Wagamama.

It has got them free publicity on this web site and others. Not positive PR, it is true, but there many marketing "people" who believe getting your brand out there is all that matters. Is everyone reading this sure that, say a year from now, when you are looking for somewhere to eat a quick meal before going to a movie, you won't see that same name on a sign above a restaurant door and think, I've heard of them, can't remember why, but seems like a safe bet...

Of course, if people were to start posting comments under such stories telling horror stories of food poisoning and insultingly bad service it might counter that effect, but it would be libellous, so I definitely won't do that. I will say that, as George Orwell once wrote, "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket." That is a quote which is even more apt in the case of soulless corporate chain restaurants.

Just use a black marker/paint to obscure the white lettering of the advertising. If they still don't get the message after that, then add your own message on the placard. 

The guy/gal with the red bike's going to be pretty p!ssed when they get back.

Even in London, for the vast majority of people cycling occupies a very hazy position, they have a good opinion of it but as an association with sport or even the past. I don't think it'll have registered whether or not the bike is actually used. 

You can even see this with the style of bike they picked, the kind you'd see an elderly woman pedaling in Utrecht or Osaka today (or really anybody, but the reasons our bicycles look different here also figure in to why those demographics are excluded from cycling), but to the mind of the average passer-by, it's the kind they'd see an actress riding through the shot on a period drama on BBC2.

The bicycle has a fantastic public image - everyday cyclists do not. That the addition of a person attempting a pedal the object makes it's popularity plummet mirrors government support for cycling - everybody is happy proposing a vague image, but as soon as anybody tries to do the things that will make cycling more practical, the rosy, imaginary bubble bursts and those good intentions evaporate. The cartoonification of cycling is therefore, a bit of a problem.

Ok, you can all get really properly pointlessly angry like the whole rest of the interweb or you can just chain your bike to, or around,  the green one?

there's a shop in Gloucester that does the same except that they don't take up a bicycle rack space, they just chain their bike to a tree...

just lock your bike to the table in wagamamas and walk out. If they complain when you come back, point out you would have used the bike parking provided in the street, but wagamamas felt is was available as advertising space.

Did they just lock the front wheel?

Advertising bikes left on bike racks like this are a real scourge: it's not like many cities have an overabundance of bike parking anyway.

Personally I wish councils would harvest dead bikes from bike racks more often: if just a frame or just one wheel are left locked to a bike rack for weeks on end (usually with a heavy duty d-lock?) then they're clearly not in use. Dead cars get towed, so why not dead bikes?

(On the same issue: who just walks away from a dead bike? If you come back and everything's missing except your front wheel, wouldn't you at least take that and your lock home with you?)