Auction profits supply campus bike racks

The lights of the Jordan Avenue parking garage cast an orange glow on the bikes that were lined in the corner of the lot.

Students and Bloomington residents stopped to inspect the bikes with cards in hand.
The IU Office of Parking Operations’ Spring Bike Auction on Saturday offered 140 bikes at the biannual event.

The auction was held like a traditional auction; the price was yelled out by the auctioneer and attendees of the event raised their numbered cards to make a bid.

“We usually have two (auctions), one in the beginning of the summer and one very early in the fall semester,” said parking manager Doug Porter.

The auctioned bikes were abandoned by students on the Bloomington campus, Porter said.

“Sometimes the bikes are just laying around not attached to anything,” he said.

When the residence halls close, Porter said they assume the bikes have been left for good.

“If they have a bike permit on them, we don’t take them,” he said. “We hold the bike for 30 days before sale.”

The auction, open to the public, attracted many students and Bloomington residents alike.

“I heard about it from some people in my major,” graduate student Erin Robinson said. “We were talking about bikes abandoned on campus, and someone mentioned the bike auction.”

A lot of the bikes were in good condition, but some need fixing. The back wheel was falling off one of the bikes as Porter handed it to the auctioneer.
 
“New bikes are too expensive for the quality you might get from used bikes,” Bloomington resident Ian Grant said. “It’s hard to find the kind of quality of the old bikes on the new ones, unless you spend $600 or $700.”

Junior Allie Kellner was looking for a bike to ride in the Little 500 race next year as part of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority team. She purchased a Schwinn for $230 at the auction that seemed to be in good condition.

“I’m going to be training for the Little 500 team,” she said, adding that new bikes “run up around $800, so this is a really good deal. I know a lot of people have gone to the event. I also heard from my house to come here if I wanted a Little 500 bike.”

Kellner’s bike used to belong to the Briscoe Quad Little 5 Team.

“They were framed up in Briscoe,” McNutt Quad Residence Manager John Summerlot said. “A couple of guys scrounged up the parts and fixed them up. We’re splitting the money between two nonprofits — Stepping Stones and Monroe County United Ministries.”

Not everyone at the auction was looking for a bike for themselves.

Paul Graf, an IU economics professor, bought his stepdaughter, sophomore Stephanie Graf, a Diamondback bike for $120.

“I got a flier on campus,” he said. “She wanted it, so I bought it.”

The money from the auction went into the Parking Operations budget to supply the bike racks around campus.

“When someone buys a bike freshman year from Walmart for $100 and they ride it for four years ... when they leave, they see what a cheap bike it’s become and don’t want to drag it along in their U-haul, and they leave it behind,” Porter said. “If we don’t do anything with them, they accumulate. We let the crowd decide their cost — if they want to buy them for $5, we let them.”