Park Your Bike at the Gas "Station"

There's a joke among some folks in St. Paul that this is what bike parking looks like in our fair city:




Each of these is part of the natural gas system and is located at the front of a commercial building. At some point, the metal bar was installed around the vulnerable piping to protected it from damage, but that bar also created a usable space for locking a bike.

It's absolutely not intended to be used that way, but it happens anyway. I notice these everywhere I go, and wonder if there's an inventory of them.