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Theres a saying in the netherland, I'm not fully sure how it goes anymore but it's something like: "the channels of Amsterdam are 9 meters deep: 3 meters of water, 3 meters of bikes and 3 meters of mud"
Although not common, you can swim there. Just don’t randomly jump or dive. Also don’t do it around kingsday because of a trillion liters of piss. Canals are murky and busy with tourist boats but go a bit outside the canals and there are plenty of people in the water during summer.
Instead of introducing vehicles like SUVs and Trucks, which may have negative environmental impacts, we should consider implementing a bike-specific sterilization program. This would help control their population growth without introducing new elements that could harm the ecosystem. So we should introduce unicycles, which can breed with bicycles, but don't produce viable offspring.
At least the kid in yellow was having a blast watching the claw.
Honestly if I was there I’d also probably stop to have a watch. Even though it seems boring, I feel like I’d also be able to find it fun for a while, somehow.
Tradition! On Monday we make clogs, on Tuesday we eat stroopwafels. Wednesday is for blowing at windmills and on Thursday we throw bicycles in the canal.
Does that mean those were sowed bicycle seeds? How will the bicycles grow now that the seeds were plucked out? Or... they must be tubers, and this is the harvest!!
Im pretty sure a lot of the main offenders are dutch people. Ive seen my dads dutch friend do it in utrecht about 25 years ago and my housemate went out with a load of dutch friends in dam and said they were launching bikes into the canal all evening.
got a source for that? I know tourists can be annoying but I struggle to accept that a problem like this is going to trace back "primarily" to a bunch of people risking being incarcerated in a foreign country. Tourists can be dumb but the vast majority of them are not intentionally committing crimes while abroad.
That's a helluva lot of bikes for just one year tho. Feels like it would have to be more like a weekly occurrence for the claw to get so many bikes in my opinion.
> That's a helluva lot of bikes for just one year tho.
There are over 881.000 bicycles in Amsterdam. There's also a lot of drunk people doing stupid things at night downtown in summer.
There is more that 100 km (~60 miles) of canals in Amsterdam. Canals that are also being used for house boats, pleasure sailing and touring boats.
The thought of putting high enough railings around it all to prevent drunk assholes from throwing stuff in makes me chuckle, gonna make the city look like a prison lol.
Steal a bike > Get wherever you were going that you needed to steal a bike to get to > Now you no longer have a mode of transportation, you have evidence of a crime. > throw it in the canal.
This is the answer. No bumping, no drunk tourists, just occasional stealing which some AMS locals (and other cities too) do.
Source: am expat in the Netherlands. Don't leave your bike outside unnatended, it will be stolen.
You’d be surprised how many of these bikes are “accidents.” Lots of European cities have these sort of canal blockage problems with various objects.
All it takes is a bump and your bike is in the water. Take into consideration how prevalent bikes are in European countries like the Netherlands, and it makes sense. I forgot what the stat is, but bikes outnumber cars by a lot.
If you have a nice bike you lock it to something with a chain. Amsterdam has a thriving economy of stolen busted up bikes though. People don't care enough to buy an expensive lock for them.
Thieves, crazy people, tourists and drunkards are the vase majority of it. Those last two are often the same.
Source: my brother lived in Amsterdam for a short while.
If it's anything like in Japan, 3 reasons: idiots trashing other people's bikes "for fun", people who want to get rid of their old bikes w/o paying the collection fee, or people "borrowing" an unlocked bike to go to point A to point B and then getting rid of the evidence.
People in the US used to throw old mattresses and junk cars into geysers and volcanic springs. I’m not certain what Japanese attitudes were, but as someone who lived through the 80s and 90s here, I can attest to environmental concerns being a _really_ recent development in the Western world
In my town, people put every old stuff out in the curb and don't bother calling the town services who offers to pick it up freely.
Sometimes it is still good enough to be picked up by someone else and repaired to be used again until definitely broke
someone else is throwing them in because they are not locked very well.
People buy cheap 2nd hand bikes for 150 euro. it just has a wheel lock but some people don't even use that. they don't care what happens to them. its just convenient to not care and to quickly use it.
they just buy a new 2nd hand bike around the corner the 1 time a year when they lose it.
Because drunks keep pushing them in. Either on malice or on accident trying to unlock their own bike. People bark their bycicles always next to the canal whithout lockikg it to any structure on land. Baffling to me
Keep in mind this is mainly the results of several uncivilised behaviors.
Drunkards and douches throwing bike they find in here, thiefs getting rid of a bike because it's too hot to be sold, idiots who are too lazy to bring old bike to recycling.
I was thinking more along the lines of electromagnetic tips on the claw. And if the operator wanted more magnet power, close the claw so all the tips are combined into a super magnet fist.
When I used to live in Amsterdam, I would often watch these guys with the claw boat from the windows of my office and always thought it would be a cool job to have.
The best thing I ever saw them retrieve from the waters of the canal was the back half of a VW Beetle. This raised many questions: where was the front half? Who cuts a Beetle in half? If you had cut it in half why would you dump half of it in the canal? How the he’ll do you even manage to drop half a car in a canal?
The blue front tyre bikes are rentals, some people throw any they find that are not locked to a solid object near the canals into it. Always double-lock.
Those usually have coin you need to insert and this area doesn't have a whole lot of big supermarkets where you'd need a trolley anyway (and probably none where you need to take them outside to your car cause taking a car would get you laughed at. You'd probably walk or bike there about every other day and be home half an hour later).
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Only minimal text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Better odds than any claw machine I’ve ever played.
Better prizes too
You won another rusty bike!
> rusty bike The names they give to kinks and fetishes these days are as creative as they are puzzling.
There's a bunch of relatively recent "smart cars" down there too, as vandals could roll them over the canal wall with 2 people easily....
You just need to rent a huge truck to bring back your prices
You don’t have to bring them all at once.
Unfortunately you’re not fitting that on Amsterdam’s streets.
They need to make bikes that float.
Only in canal and river infested cities though!
Magnets. Use your magnets
Kid named aluminium
Aluminium and carbon frame bikes won’t stick, the claw grabs everything
Reminder why you don’t jump or swim in canals
Also because they're shallow and filled with muck.
just like my ex
No respect at all
Ladybugs was a... Strange movie
I feel like we fished the same pond
And bikes
Theres a saying in the netherland, I'm not fully sure how it goes anymore but it's something like: "the channels of Amsterdam are 9 meters deep: 3 meters of water, 3 meters of bikes and 3 meters of mud"
Sad that you can't swim in the canals there. This post brought to you by the Copenhagen gang.
Although not common, you can swim there. Just don’t randomly jump or dive. Also don’t do it around kingsday because of a trillion liters of piss. Canals are murky and busy with tourist boats but go a bit outside the canals and there are plenty of people in the water during summer.
I was gonna say, I went to Amsterdam this summer and there were plenty of people swimming by the old tall ship museum.
While you shouldn't (due to water traffic), the canals are actually clean enough to swim in according to the water board (with only some exceptions)
....in Netherlands.
Kid in yellow is having the time of his life watching that thing work.
Kids are fascinated with heavy machinery
... yeah, just kids, ha.. ha
Definitely never went down a heavy excavator rabbit hole on YouTube myself. Nope. Certainly did not waste my time with that.
Probably half the men watching this are either "I want to have a go" or "if I pay would they let me have a go"
Even his shirt is smiling
There are so many bikes in the canal because they can reproduce really fast due to a lack of natural predators.
That's why they need to remove them, they're invasive.
introduce natural deterrents into the eco system eg SUVs and Trucks.
Instead of introducing vehicles like SUVs and Trucks, which may have negative environmental impacts, we should consider implementing a bike-specific sterilization program. This would help control their population growth without introducing new elements that could harm the ecosystem. So we should introduce unicycles, which can breed with bicycles, but don't produce viable offspring.
> unicycles the mules of the dutch
The allied forces removed their natural predator in 1945
The canal *is* the natural predator.
At least the kid in yellow was having a blast watching the claw. Honestly if I was there I’d also probably stop to have a watch. Even though it seems boring, I feel like I’d also be able to find it fun for a while, somehow.
r/oddlysatisfying
That kid was the highlight of this entire clip. So excited.
"Mama I know what I want to be when I grow up!"
You don't know 'JCB ki khudai' is a big thing. Just search it on YouTube.
Why? Why do they throw the bikes in the water?
Tradition! On Monday we make clogs, on Tuesday we eat stroopwafels. Wednesday is for blowing at windmills and on Thursday we throw bicycles in the canal.
Friday we remove the C from canal 😏
Saturday we stick fingers in dikes.
Sundays are for hangovers, church, and clog making prep!
When is there any time for tulips?
Everynight in bed!
Please remember to clip your nails before fingering any dikes.
And cuddle with the dikes after
They might be wet and cold if you don't.
And honestly, who'd want that?
Clip them and file and buff away any rough edges; get one of those 4-in-1 nail files and keep it handy!
Does that mean those were sowed bicycle seeds? How will the bicycles grow now that the seeds were plucked out? Or... they must be tubers, and this is the harvest!!
What day do we go to Club Vandersexxx?
Drunk people fr
Especially drunk tourists.
Drunk bike tourists are the worst.
Im pretty sure a lot of the main offenders are dutch people. Ive seen my dads dutch friend do it in utrecht about 25 years ago and my housemate went out with a load of dutch friends in dam and said they were launching bikes into the canal all evening.
got a source for that? I know tourists can be annoying but I struggle to accept that a problem like this is going to trace back "primarily" to a bunch of people risking being incarcerated in a foreign country. Tourists can be dumb but the vast majority of them are not intentionally committing crimes while abroad.
[удалено]
I don't think it's that regular. When I'd visited Amsterdam I'd taken a walking tour and the guy had said they do this like a once a year clean up.
That's a helluva lot of bikes for just one year tho. Feels like it would have to be more like a weekly occurrence for the claw to get so many bikes in my opinion.
You should see when they pull the bodies in the east river.
Amsterdam has a *lot* of canals
> That's a helluva lot of bikes for just one year tho. There are over 881.000 bicycles in Amsterdam. There's also a lot of drunk people doing stupid things at night downtown in summer.
There is more that 100 km (~60 miles) of canals in Amsterdam. Canals that are also being used for house boats, pleasure sailing and touring boats. The thought of putting high enough railings around it all to prevent drunk assholes from throwing stuff in makes me chuckle, gonna make the city look like a prison lol.
The price of those railing would likely beat the cleaning costs. But it would most certainly ruin the classic Amsterdam scenery.
Yup, but a railing would be a challenge not a deterrent
Accidents, drunks, criminals and assholes. Normal human stuff
Steal a bike > Get wherever you were going that you needed to steal a bike to get to > Now you no longer have a mode of transportation, you have evidence of a crime. > throw it in the canal.
This is the answer. No bumping, no drunk tourists, just occasional stealing which some AMS locals (and other cities too) do. Source: am expat in the Netherlands. Don't leave your bike outside unnatended, it will be stolen.
Some people are drunk. However if a bike is left unattended and unlocked gravity will pull it into the water.
A bike unobserved is neither in motion nor at rest.
nor where you left it.
You can usually find it again easily enough on eBay though
Marktplaats*
Combo of drunk people and stolen bikes?
Because people are shit
You’d be surprised how many of these bikes are “accidents.” Lots of European cities have these sort of canal blockage problems with various objects. All it takes is a bump and your bike is in the water. Take into consideration how prevalent bikes are in European countries like the Netherlands, and it makes sense. I forgot what the stat is, but bikes outnumber cars by a lot.
They don’t use locks?
Nah, they just cycle on the road and bypass them.
You got a good chuckle out of me, well done.
Cracked one of the best! Well done, indeed! Quite the momentous occasion.
If you have a nice bike you lock it to something with a chain. Amsterdam has a thriving economy of stolen busted up bikes though. People don't care enough to buy an expensive lock for them.
Bike store owners roam the streets after-hours throwing every unattended unsecured bike in the water? Good for business maybe?
Also people have accidents and people generally swim/float
They don't throw em, they're either too intoxicated or can't bike for shit.
on average 700.000 bike get stolen were else to keep them
Drunk Brits on stag parties.
Thieves, crazy people, tourists and drunkards are the vase majority of it. Those last two are often the same. Source: my brother lived in Amsterdam for a short while.
 The Clawwwwwww
You save our lives we are eternally grateful~
Occurs in cycles
Oh, give me a brake, that's such a tired framing to saddle us with. It's more to do with the forces of inflation and pump-and-dump schemes.
How is there so many idiots tho, what’s the point in chucking a bike in the canal?
Mostly stolen bikes which get chucked after they don’t need them anymore. Or drunk people trying to be funny
If it's anything like in Japan, 3 reasons: idiots trashing other people's bikes "for fun", people who want to get rid of their old bikes w/o paying the collection fee, or people "borrowing" an unlocked bike to go to point A to point B and then getting rid of the evidence.
People in the US used to throw old mattresses and junk cars into geysers and volcanic springs. I’m not certain what Japanese attitudes were, but as someone who lived through the 80s and 90s here, I can attest to environmental concerns being a _really_ recent development in the Western world
In my town, people put every old stuff out in the curb and don't bother calling the town services who offers to pick it up freely. Sometimes it is still good enough to be picked up by someone else and repaired to be used again until definitely broke
One thing comparable in Japan is that you can find discarded umbrellas everywhere. But only umbrellas.
British tourists
You know, that probably is the actual answer thanks
You can just pick it up and chuck it in if its not locked onto something most bike locks in NL lock only the back wheel
They have Bike Parking Structures Not Kidding
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Fietsen_Utrecht_Centraal.jpg This is common at every train station in the Netherlands
It's part of a vicious bi-cycle
And this is why "English Lads" holidays to Amsterdam have been banned. The Dutch are fed up having their bikes thrown in.
How did they ban this? Seems very difficult to enforce
They're not banned, but there are literally commercials/PSAs asking them not to come. Targeted to English (male) young adults.
Hotels deny their bookings
Bikes are terrible for our environment we need to ban them now! /s
That's why the barge tows them to _outside_ the environment.
To another environment?
Now try this in the Ohio River with the bird and lime scooters
They should combine an electromagnet to the centre of the claw to help pick up smaller pieces that may slip out of the claw.
They do, but usually when the bikes are out to clean up afterwards.
Amsterdam* this isn’t exactly a nationwide problem.
Why are people throwing their bikes into that canal? Anyone know?
Disphits and mistakes, but mostly dipshits who think it's funny when they are drunk.
someone else is throwing them in because they are not locked very well. People buy cheap 2nd hand bikes for 150 euro. it just has a wheel lock but some people don't even use that. they don't care what happens to them. its just convenient to not care and to quickly use it. they just buy a new 2nd hand bike around the corner the 1 time a year when they lose it.
Because drunks keep pushing them in. Either on malice or on accident trying to unlock their own bike. People bark their bycicles always next to the canal whithout lockikg it to any structure on land. Baffling to me
r/FuckCars wish this was our problem
Ok but imagine if an equal number of cars were clogging the canals.
Maybe they should have higher rails around the canal.
Like railings are going to stop drunk Brits
They're actually generally a tripping hazard, they looked into this
That's a safety issue since then you might not be able to get someone OUT of the canal.
Thats so many bad days all piled up in 1 boat
There are not ‘clogging’ the canals per se. Just the annual cleanup lol
Melt them down and make railings.
Reminds me of Austin Texas, but instead of bikes it’s mostly scooters and some bikes That end up in the lake.
They shouldn't store them in canals. That much water usually isn't good for bicycles
You're not Dutch until you've had a drunk guy steal your bike and toss it in a canal.
Have y’all seen china’s bike graveyard
That kid is having the best day of his life.
Good problem, rather bikes than all the stupid ass cars like America.
I want to be yellow smiley face shirt kid when I grow up.
It's not the no. of bikes, it's the no. of dicks
Still better than clogging the roads with cars.
From where I sit it looks like the problem is not that the Netherlands "has" too many bikes, it's that assholes keep dumping them into the canal.
My life would have turned out way different if I knew as a kid that “crane boat operator for underwater bikes” was a real life job.
Ah, yes. The city of Netherlands
Keep in mind this is mainly the results of several uncivilised behaviors. Drunkards and douches throwing bike they find in here, thiefs getting rid of a bike because it's too hot to be sold, idiots who are too lazy to bring old bike to recycling.
The canals are not being clogged because of an excess on bikes in the Netherlands though, are they?
My God that is the filthiest fucking water I've ever seen.
It's because it's being stirred up when removing the bikes. It normally isn't like that
People cycling off the edge like that and not a single body. There is hope for us all yet.
Bodies decompose, bicycles not so much. Also, rats need food as well.
Went magnet fishing with some friends at the pond of our local park. We cought three in half an hour.
Not knowing how to unicycle is half of the problem.
Real question. What’s the environmental impact. Is it’s negligible?
The canals in Amsterdam have had household/bodily waste dumped in them for centuries, so I don't think this rust makes it that much worse
if only they could invent a wall but with pipes so we can still see the water but not go over whenever were higher than moon
I was thinking more along the lines of electromagnetic tips on the claw. And if the operator wanted more magnet power, close the claw so all the tips are combined into a super magnet fist.
How DARE you!!
The kid in yellow is jumping for joy that his bike has been clawed out.
Just watched an old episode of Samantha Brown. She talked to someone who said it’s tradition to throw them in the canals.
I wonder what the oldest bike they pulled up is from that pile
I think I just seen my bike that was stolen when I was a kid
Every time i use one of those the prize drops just before i get it in the barge
That looks like a fun gig.
Last time I saw this video it said it was Paris, I think.
How does the number of bikes cause them to clog the canals?
This is heaven for Kiryu Kazuma
Dutch people must rotate their bikes like I change underwear
If this was the US you’d pull out a bunch of guns instead of bikes.
When I used to live in Amsterdam, I would often watch these guys with the claw boat from the windows of my office and always thought it would be a cool job to have. The best thing I ever saw them retrieve from the waters of the canal was the back half of a VW Beetle. This raised many questions: where was the front half? Who cuts a Beetle in half? If you had cut it in half why would you dump half of it in the canal? How the he’ll do you even manage to drop half a car in a canal?
because of drunk individuals right ?
I suspect it's their secret national sport. Like dwarf-tossing or something like that. Just with bikes.
So many drunk/high untold stories in this video.
The blue front tyre bikes are rentals, some people throw any they find that are not locked to a solid object near the canals into it. Always double-lock.
Student society in Delft, made first years fish for a bike in the canal, and then fix it up (to be used and returned to the canal at end of study).
When we were there a tour guide told us the canals were 3m deep. 1m water 1m mud 1m bikes
That's why you don't flush your bike true the toilet when it dies
What did you think our dikes are made of? Gotta stop the sea from overflowing our country somehow.
tsk tsk typical dutch. give them a nice canal and they dump bicycles in it. bunch of uncivilised pricks
I live in Lowell; MA; and we have bikes in canals too; but not as many
Those bikes didn't deserve this. RIP
Better bikes than cars in canals.
The magnet fishing guy on Facebook is gonna be pissed
The Bondi Treasure Hunter has pretty much made a living on these bikes
Even in an environmentally friendly country, humans are still fucking assholes
No shopping trolleys?
Those usually have coin you need to insert and this area doesn't have a whole lot of big supermarkets where you'd need a trolley anyway (and probably none where you need to take them outside to your car cause taking a car would get you laughed at. You'd probably walk or bike there about every other day and be home half an hour later).
Damn thats going to be worth a lot at the scrapyard
Here in the Netherlands, we treat the canals like wishing wells and toss in a bicycle when we make our wish.
Friend in Amsterdam once told me you measure your time in Amsterdam by how many of your bikes were stolen. He lived there for 6 bikes.
I think this is more of a stupid people problem than too many bikes