I’m in the market for a new bike. I love the one I have dearly: she really is the sweetest bike I’ve ever seen, and I’m so lucky I get to come home to this every night:

Part cruiser, part road bike, she’s perfect in my eyes. Lemon yellow and bookish as all get out. But she’s SO HEAVY. I didn’t even realize how heavy my bike is until I picked up Tony’s bike that weighs all of three pounds. While I owe my glutes of steel (jk) to lugging my bike up and down flights of El stairs, I want something faster, lighter, sleeker.
The thing is, I don’t have a clue about bikes. I don’t know how they work (in fact, Science only recently found out how they work) or how the parts fit together or how to build one. But I do know what looks good; my eye is drawn to bicycles that look like they belong to literature professors. Fall bikes. Bikes to take on a picnic or an apple orchard. Cozy bikes you can wear cute skirts in.
I know this is all aesthetic. I genuinely admire and am pretty intimidated by full-fledged Bike Folk. YouknowwhatI’msayin. Especially the lady Bike Folk. They zoom past me on their pretty bikes that they know how to fix and I just try to stay out of the way. They wear shorts and don’t need step-through frames. They look cool in their helmets.
Anyway. Here are a few bikes I’ve been eyeing. I really like fenders, leather saddles and baskets, clearly. I’m fairly sure my next bike will be green.