Over here the only one I could find that would allow me to lug around my purse and a little bit of extra cargo if needed was this one. It doesn’t even mount on my bike so the people at the bike shop had to improvise with zip ties and the like.
It took a while to find, because I couldn’t trust steel not to start getting rust stains on all my stuff, and my previous one pretty much instantly broke the very first time my bike fell, so I couldn’t trust just any kind of plastic.
I had the employees of no less than 5 bike shops try to recommend me something with little success before finally finding something. Most shops seem to carry 0~1 models of bike basket period, and not to have much more that they can order from their distributors.
I think North American shops are just confused at the idea of a bike for anything but leisure overall. Which is understandable considering how goddamn dangerous our awful car-centric cities can be.
I love my big basket, but man was it not easy to find
My first thought on that second link was: Id never buy such a thing made of plastic?!
In Switzerland you can get normal Baskets for CHF 15.- to 100.- (around 1:1 to USD).
https://www.veloplus.ch/shop/ausruestung/koerbe/gepaecktraegerkoerbe
You see them all the time, they are so common that the images often don’t even feature a size comparison or use demonstration like in your first link, because everyone knows them 😅.
10-20 years ago it was considered a woman or gay thing to have them but apparently they are convenient enough to have overcome that stigma.
The one you got is a bit heftier and looks pretty heavy tbh
Over here the only one I could find that would allow me to lug around my purse and a little bit of extra cargo if needed was this one. It doesn’t even mount on my bike so the people at the bike shop had to improvise with zip ties and the like.
It took a while to find, because I couldn’t trust steel not to start getting rust stains on all my stuff, and my previous one pretty much instantly broke the very first time my bike fell, so I couldn’t trust just any kind of plastic.
I had the employees of no less than 5 bike shops try to recommend me something with little success before finally finding something. Most shops seem to carry 0~1 models of bike basket period, and not to have much more that they can order from their distributors.
I think North American shops are just confused at the idea of a bike for anything but leisure overall. Which is understandable considering how goddamn dangerous our awful car-centric cities can be.
I love my big basket, but man was it not easy to find
My first thought on that second link was: Id never buy such a thing made of plastic?!
In Switzerland you can get normal Baskets for CHF 15.- to 100.- (around 1:1 to USD). https://www.veloplus.ch/shop/ausruestung/koerbe/gepaecktraegerkoerbe You see them all the time, they are so common that the images often don’t even feature a size comparison or use demonstration like in your first link, because everyone knows them 😅.
10-20 years ago it was considered a woman or gay thing to have them but apparently they are convenient enough to have overcome that stigma.
The one you got is a bit heftier and looks pretty heavy tbh