Total Motorcycle Community Forums

I have been reading this forum for a few days now and it has been really helpful. I have always wanted to start riding motorcycles and now that I have finished school and been working for a few months I can finally afford to do it.
Im living in Shanghai right now but i'll be returning to Los Angeles in a few months. I've been doing a lot of research on several bikes and i'm hoping I can get some advice (naturally the first one will be a smaller, used bike).
Living in LA, I want a bike that is sporty enough to be manueverable in traffic and can also handle the freeway to some degree and wont get too uncomfortable being on it for a while either.. The three models im looking at now are the Ninja 250, Honda Rebel, and Honda Nighthawk. They are all about the same price, which one do you think would be best for riding relatively often in the LA area?

good luck ben...those all sound like good picks to me...have you tried any out yet...pick the one that feels best to you....ergonomics i think its called...thats all the advise i have seeing im not in LA...and is that Shanghai like across the pacific ocean shanghai?

I'd go with Ninja 250. this is small in size but not too small in power around 30hp. It could be easily to learn on. It can handle the high volume traffic in LA very well. It also can keep up on FWY traffic.

The thing is, you have to ask yourself if you like Sport / Standard or Cruiser style. I'd try to sit on all of them first then buy a used one.

Those all sound like pretty good bikes.

I'd probably pick the rebel, just because I like how it looks, but I've heard a number of people say enough good things about the Nighthawk to check though out too. And the Ninja 250 is a typical recommendation around here for any first-time biker.

I agree with the others, I think they would all make great bikes, it just depends on your riding preference. I have a Rebel I use mainly in town. I love it because it's easy to manuver, doesn't get heavy in stop and go traffic, and gets great gas mileage. I'm sure the same can be said for the other two bikes. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them.

Personally, for riding in LA, I would pick a bike borrowed from the U.S. Marines, with the .50 Cal machine gun still mounted in the sidecar, with plenty of ammo.

Toyuzu wrote:Personally, for riding in LA, I would pick a bike borrowed from the U.S. Marines, with the .50 Cal machine gun still mounted in the sidecar, with plenty of ammo.

How about something with a little Russian flavouring... like this:


Or perhaps even this...

Gummiente wrote:

Toyuzu wrote:Personally, for riding in LA, I would pick a bike borrowed from the U.S. Marines, with the .50 Cal machine gun still mounted in the sidecar, with plenty of ammo.

How about something with a little Russian flavouring... like this:


Or perhaps even this...

Not only does the 'zooka give it nice lines, but that orange-camo scheme is just the right thing for L.A.

That second one is perfect gummie.!

I myself am looking at a kawa 250, looks quite sporty to me (love sporty)

Yeah, those will work, too. ----> L.A. traffic!