Originally Posted by Gresp15C

The moral protestations about kickstands are just one of the amusing quirks of cycling culture -- an antidote lest we ever take ourselves too seriously.

I remember when I was in middle school, one day the message came from somewhere, that we had to strip our bikes of every single attachment. Off came our fenders, baskets, kickstands, and so forth. Attachments were suddenly anathema. Some kid would try to remove the built-in Schwinn kickstand, and end up either injuring themselves or being left with a stand that was still attached but had to be held up by a piece of string. Ah, the days of my youth.

Oddly enough, the garage is the place where kick stands seem to be the most useful. There are enough bikes with kickstands that the ones without can be kept out of the way, held up by stands that I made out of plywood. Outside of the house, one can always find a wall, tree, mud pit, grassy knoll, or stonework cistern out in the middle of nowhere. Or, you can also declare that your bike would never be left by itself for more than 50 seconds, thus obviating the need for parking it.