PORTLAND, Ore. -- Here, you can get a free ride -- possibly the next best thing to a free lunch.
One hundred slightly battered yellow bicycles have been put on the streets by the nonprofit United Community Action Network. Now anybody and everybody can ride free anywhere and everywhere. Anytime. Nobody locks these bikes up at night.
"No reason to," said Tom O'Keefe, the freewheeling social activist peddling the program. "People can't steal what's free."
The program is a curiosity in an era that all too frequently finds it more acceptable to receive than to give. Television's "Good Morning America" can't get over it, "Inside Edition" is astounded, and the drab New York Times reports the news with a color photograph.
"People are blown away, even hardnose news types," said the 43-year-old Mr. O'Keefe, tucking his graying ponytail under a brand-new cap with the NBC peacock logo. "It's like, sharing is some radical new idea."
With '60s-generation sagacity, Mr. O'Keefe and others are wrestling '90s raw realities.
"Just using common sense to achieve a common good," said Brian Lacy, 37, who runs Community Cycling Center, a nonprofit repair shop where kids learn manners and mechanics by recycling used bicycles.
"There are people hurting out there, who need work but don't have transportation," he said. "And then there are other people out there with bikes in their basements gathering dust and rust."
Need a penny, take a penny. Have a penny, leave a penny. The same goes for Portland's yellow bikes.
Said Mr. Lacy, "It's a way of helping people who have fallen on hard times."
Or who have gone there for a diversion. Outside Hard Times Adult Theater in downtown Portland, a yellow bike is chained to a street lamp. It's raining, and a young woman in black shorts and a dripping purple rain slicker stops to check out the bike.
She reads aloud the message on the "license plate":
"Free community bike. Please return to a major street for others to use. Use at your own risk."
Tugging on the lock, she complains to no one in particular: "Supposed to be free, and somebody has gone and locked it up."
Sharing can be difficult, especially when it's raining.
"Some people are going to want a bike for the round trip. Others may want them for a few round trips -- and that's OK so long as the bikes are being used," Mr. O'Keefe said.
As far as anybody knows, not one yellow bike has been stripped for parts, vandalized or damaged beyond repair. (Of course, nobody is really keeping track.)
Since the bikes were rolled out two months ago, the biggest reported problems have been flat tires and dented fenders. There's a telephone number that riders can call, but many have fixed the bikes themselves.
The share-a-bike idea came to Mr. O'Keefe in the middle of the night.
Awakened by the noise of two thieves wheeling away his bicycle (a $10 garage sale special), Mr. O'Keefe decided something had to be done. And fast. "First thing the next morning, I got up and called my partner, Joe Keating. I told him, 'We need to give away bikes.' "
But how? Mr. O'Keefe and Mr. Keating found the answer while watching "Sex, Drugs and Democracy," a documentary about life in Holland, where free community bicycles are used by everyone, from the down-and-out to daily commuters.
Mr. O'Keefe and friends began to knock on doors, asking for used bicycles. An auto shop agreed to paint the bikes for free, and a local sign shop printed the message plates.
Calls have been coming in from Seattle, Chicago, Dallas and Sacramento, Calif., among other places. "They all want to know how [to] start their own program, how to set the wheels in motion," Mr. O'Keefe said. "I tell 'em it's easy."
As easy as riding with no hands.
For information about the program, write the United Community Action Network, 1951 W. Burnside, Box 1500, Portland, Ore. 97209; or call UCAN at (503)-331-0526.