The scallies of Liverpool are extremely happy with their free bikes.
These charcoal gray anonymous clothing wearing teenagers are really enjoying the local scheme which allows a collection of well maintained bicycles to be left at various collection points around the city of Liverpool.
Naturally, of course, the more stupid and older folk actually pay to use these bikes, and worry about getting them back to a bike rack, any citybike bike rack, as quick as they can so as to avoid additional charges.
Scallies, in contrast, have the luxury of being able to just dump the bikes anywhere. In fact, they can destroy them, which is great fun. Scallies love destroying things.
The bikes are dead easy to remove from the stands or ‘stations’. Everybody else pays using a credit or debit card and presses a button on the ‘citybike’ control panel, then enters a pin and presses another button to release the lock and so release the bicycle.
Scallies, in contrast, just pull and twist until the lock is broken. This is dead easy. So dead easy in fact that when a bike station was installed in North Liverpool’s Anfield area, every bike had been stolen within an hour. And so were the replacement bikes. In the end the decision was made to remove the Anfield bike station.
This doesn’t stop the scallies heading into town to pick up a free bike and return to the suburbs, usually in a pack, enjoying their mischievous adventure on the way.
Bikes can be very useful for scallies, since they are the favourite method of transport when delivering drugs, or separately collecting the payment for the drugs. However, the bright cream and green of the citybike stock are in complete contrast to the favoured black and unlit livery that make them able to slip around in the dark shadows of night. Stupidly of course, this also means that cars can’t see the scallies on bikes at night, causing lots of last minute swerving and near misses.
Personally, I quite like the idea of scallies on bikes, especially scallies on stolen bikes, being fair game for car drivers to mow down. Unfortunately, for reasons that make no sense, it’s illegal.
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