Boing Boing has a great story about how a Toronto artist, who turned an abandoned bike into sculpture, ended up being threatened by the city for “storing bike on public property”.

The article is well worth a read.

My own two cents is that the artist did a great job, and is to be commended. However, I also appreciate the municipality’s view. What would be great would be some in-the-middle decision, but right now, I don’t see that.

Some potential thoughts on this: any bike left in a spot longer than a reasonable period of time should be taken by the City. It could then either be picked up at a depot by the owner with appropriate credentials, and if it wasn’t, a program could be set up to clean up the bikes and provide them to kids who don’t have a bike but could use one.

I also think that the city should provide spaces for visual artists, just like it provides spaces for food vendors and musicians. Artists could apply to put installations and sculptures in parts of the city for a period of time. If we had such a program, the pink bike could apply for it. Likewise, we could have graffiti parks, public boxframes for visual artists, etc. I would love to see that sort of program become available. The city could use more art, and artists can always use more venues to display their great work.