Fuck you, bicycle theivin' bastard!

The BBQ Pit
1

I went to take out the trash this morning to discover my absolutely wonderfully perfect bike was GONE!

It was a royal blue, 1952 single-speed Schwinn with chrome fenders. The most wonderful bike EVER. It was the perfect expression of my soul in bicycle form. I had it locked up behind my apartment, on an alley that only runs behind 2 houses that connects one dead-end alley with another dead-end alley on the other side. In short, the only people who would have seen this bike live within 100 feet of me, unless they just happened to wander down my alley by mistake.

Either way, the fucking asshole that stole my bike is the biggest shit-headed, cock-sucking asshat scumfuck ever to disgrace the earth with their presence. I hope you contract so many social diseases that your cock bursts into ignominious flame. And I hope your descendents, if anyone is so misfortunate as to mate with you, are all wall-eyed, hare-lipped, mouth-breathing shitlings just like you. I want you to die a horribe death in a freak construction accident, anally impaled on a piece of rebar. Or, better yet, I want to meet you one night down a dark alley so I can beat you repeatedly in the head with the very bicycle you had the gall to steal from me, only pausing to piss on your face before running over your balls and continuing merrily on my way.

Beware, fuckhead, I will do anything in my power to get my bike back. So watch your back, bitch.

:mad:

2

Hey, I’m with you… sorry about your loss. Bike thieves are the fucking scum of the Earth. I hope St. Peter is kneecapping those fuckers at the pearly gates when they’re gone.

3

That sucks, I hope you find out who it is…Did they cut the lock or something?

4

Yeah, they musta cut the lock. It was chained up to a very solid pole behind my apartment. Of course, they took the lock with them (?) perhaps to conceal any evidence or something.

Late last night I heard a noise that I assumed was my cats knocking something over in my kitchen, but didn’t both to investigate because they do that all the time. It was probably the asshole stealing my bike, though.

5

I hate bike thieves. My last bike was chained to my front porch and couldn’t be moved, so some fucker stole the front wheel and the seat off of it. My previous bike, which I replaced after nearly getting killed when the brakes failed while going downhill, was stolen right off my front porch two days after I bought the replacement (I had intended to donate it to a local homeless shelter where one of the guys repaired and sold used bikes). I found myself sincerely :smiley: hoping that the thief didn’t find out the hard way that it had no brakes … heh heh heh

Now I’m getting a new bike, a good one this time, and I’m going to be keeping the damn thing indoors!

6

I used to use a bike. What I’ve been using for the last 2 years is a TriSki. For the year before that, I was using both a bike and a Trissingssing. The Trissingssing and the Triski are variants of the Trikke. A friend here tells me, “It looks dorky.” But I don’t care. The thing is good exercise, they’re fun, and when I get to my destination, I collapse them and just carry it in with me.

7

Please ignore the grammar errors in the posting above. The editing window timed out on me. :frowning:

8

Phase42, that’s a pretty fancy-lookin’ bike!

I’ve just got a thing for vintage stuff. I live in an Art Deco building with vintage furniture and vintage cookbooks and vintage Guinness posters. That’s why my bike was the perfect expression of my soul in bicycle form. :frowning:

So tomorrow I’m hitting up all the pawn shops and bike shops around, and leaving my name and # and a description of the bike should someone pawn it. Best case scenario, they already did pawn it. I filed a police report and everything, but I know they don’t give a shit- I’ve got to do the leg work.

If I don’t find it, I’ll be spending some of my student loans on a new one. I’m trying to look at it positively- my bike was a gift from an ex-boyfriend, so I could get myself a nice new fancy one without all the memories of him attached. I still want a vintage one, although this time maybe with different speeds, because I’m not in as great a shape as I’d like to be, and peddling a heavy bike with chrome fenders and crap uphill with no gears- rather difficult.

But I will definitely not leave it chained up out back anymore. I guess I could keep it in the living room, but what a pain. I wouldn’t mind leaving it in the hallway, because I (theoretically) live in a secure building, but some of my neighbors aren’t always great about locking the front door, and there’s nothing in the hallway to lock it up to. Hmmm. Living room it is.

9

I know it sucks, but if you value a decent bike you need to keep it under your lock and key. I’ve had bikes stolen from:
[ul]
[li]my front yard, when I was a kid[/li][li]in front of my third-story apartment, while they were chained to the railing in front of my fucking door[/li][li]in front of my office, with a chain (not a Krypton lock)[/li][li]the mailroom in my second-floor apartment in Harvard Square with the key-access front door[/li][/ul]
I fucking hate thieves generally, but bike thieves are the worst, because most bike riders are trying to better themselves or help the environment. Most cyclists aren’t made of money, so we go out and work and save for the bike that some scumfuck steals for crack/meth. Plus you constantly have to balance efficiency and convenience with theft protection. Having my bike out front on my covered porch was the coolest, because I could just jump on it when I felt like it. Now it’s in my hallway, and takes a good five minutes to get out and ready to ride… at which point I’ve probably decided to jump in the motor instead.

I’m tempted to get a Gary Fisher bike, booby trap it, and watch some shithead take a header when they discover the brake cables are cut. Then post the video on the web. Heck, if such a video exists, I’ll watch it every day!

10

Accursed bike thieves. I feel your pain, OP!

My city has been called “the bike theft capital of North America” - I don’t know if it’s true but bikes are certainly stolen regularly and heartlessly. But I am pleased to report there are changes afoot!

There is a legendary figure called Igor (and any Toronto dopers with bikes probably know exactly who I’m talking about) who had a shop on Queen Street that was quite literally filled to the rafters with bicycles. They were stacked 10 feet high in the backyard. He’d fix your flat for $20 (!!!) or sell you a “used” bike for $80, or buy your “used” bike with no questions asked.

He was widely known as the fence who bought hot bikes off meth-heads at 3 am. Whenever his name was mentioned, someone would always say “Tell that asshole to give me my bike back!” If you did find your stolen bike in his shop, he would gladly sell it back to you.

Well, the news is: Igor is gone! He packed up shop and took off! Left without a trace! I tell myself that he was summoned by Satan himself straight down into the bowels of hell, into that special level reserved for bike thieves and their enablers. I hope that he is, right now and for all eternity, getting brake cables jammed under his fingernails and being whipped with Kryptonite chains.

I hope and expect that this will make a notable dent in the Toronto bike theft industry. No longer will crackheads be able to dispose of their hot property just beside Trinity Bellwoods Park. I don’t know what proportion of bike thefts Igor was responsible for but he did a very brisk business so it must have been a lot.

My heart goes out to you, RedRosesForMe and all other victims of Igor’s evil trade. I will have a look for your bike the next time I pass by the dregs of Igor’s shop, and say a prayer that the bike-thievery circle of hell grows again by one, this time in the person of the asshole who stole your beloved.

lousy stinking bike thieves.

I will also request that if you do buy a used bike, please take pains to ensure that it was not someone else’s beloved, stolen from their backyards. The stolen bike trade creates a vicious cycle, where people are tempted to buy cheap beaters (because they know that good bikes are likely to get nicked), and therefore create a market for “used” (i.e. stolen) bikes. Please be careful.

11

I’m just about to set off to search the pawn shops and bike stores to see if someone has sold it.

Although my neighbor across the alley was not home yesterday when I knocked, the bike he usually had locked up across from mine (with 2 chains!) is gone too, so barring some long-distance bike trip or sleepover at a friend’s house it looks like they got his bike too.

That makes me think it was definitely someone out to make money off of it, not just someone who thought my bike would look better with them riding it. My upstairs neighbor thinks I’m going to see some bum in the neighborhood riding it, but I’m thinking, since when do bums carry boltcutters?

So it’s off to see whether my bike is under the avuncular protection (dunno where that phrase came from but I like it). I was wondering if I would have to buy it back should I find it. My mom said that my dad had to do that with some stolen tools, because the police said the pawn shop shouldn’t get fucked in the deal. But it’s ok for the victim to get fucked? I mean, unless it’s some junk shop or shady business where they don’t take names (like the villainous Igor referred to above) they should have the person’s name, address, driver’s license number. How bout you go arrest the bastard, and as part of his punishment, make him pay the pawn shop back so he doesn’t get fucked in the deal. Hm?

12

Fucker(s)!!! :mad: There is surely a special place in hell for bicycle thieves. I’m using no less than two independent and equally robust locking systems for my bike. The determined thief could still get it, I’m sure, but it would take the fucker twice as long.

Rat bastards stole my finacee’s road bike not long ago.

13

I think it was here on the Dope that I read someone’s story of having their bike stolen as kid, and many years later the culprit was all grown up and a successful businessman or like that in their town, but she could only ever see him as that fucking bike thief.

14

It varies from town to town and also from officer to officer, I’m finding.
We have people regularly walk off with music equipment for rental that end up pawning it. The company files it as stolen and there’s a detective who’s job is to go from shop to shop with a list of stolen goods looking for them.
Sometimes we have to write the pawnshop a check to pick up our stuff and then we wait on restitution from the thief, if they’re ever caught.
Most times the equipment is pulled from the shop and held in Property and Evidence until we pick it up, but sometimes the stuff is kept as evidence for the trial and we don’t get it until after trial is over. In those instances it is the pawnshop that is waiting on restitution to recover their cost.
Sometimes the police will just pull up to the store and unload equipment with hardly a word about it.
It just really seems to vary what they’ll do.

15

“The deal” was receiving stolen goods, which is a crime. I would have to ask to speak to that cop’s supervisor.

16

Don’t forget to check craigslist if it’s available in your local city. And for that matter, check ebay, as well.

Good luck!

17

We did ask and were told ‘how could the pawnshop know it was stolen?’
I’ve never pawned anything in my life, but I’m guessing they’re not asking for proof of ownership when people bring stuff in? :confused:

18

IANAL, but my understanding is that ignorance is no excuse. It s incumbent upon the buyer to verify proof of ownership. Otherwise, how could “receiving stolen goods” ever be enforced?

19

No luck yet, but I did find out that my jerk of an ex sold the bike that I bought him back to the bike shop!

He bought me my bike for our anniversary, so I bought him a bike for Valentine’s day. I thought it was cute, we went for bike rides together.

Apparently he didn’t like his bike as much as I liked mine. Bastard.

However, in the event that I don’t find mine, one of the bike shops has a pretty cool green 1964 Schwinn. Not as cool as mine :frowning: but it does have green sparkly grips on the handle bars!

20

Bikes are like finding cash. Junkies can sell them for a fix and the cops do not really care. keep it inside.