Might be a bit painful for some. But i would like to know how you got your bike stolen so we can share experiences and learn from each other. Also please mention the city the bike was stolen in and of course how you locked it and what you think happened.
I also want to if anyone has ever gotten their bikes stolen even when locked with one of those kryptonite NYC Forgetaboutit locks.
they stopped their car and beat me up. took me a couple years to feel completely safe being outside at night.
Someone stole a POS Schwinn Varsity conversion I used to have out of my garage. I had left a door unlocked because I had some laundry in the drier.
It was such a garbage bike that the thief left in the alley behind my house. They tried to ride off with it and decided 'fuck this shit, ill walk instead" I guess.
Edit: fuckkkk, mailer that is heinous. I’m always kind of scared something like that will happen to me, I’ve had some close calls with that kind of shit.
i cant tell if your being serious
but if you are, thats pretty crazy man
ever since i got robbed i’ve been super uptight at night, not only at my house
two weeks after i turned 16 i got a pinch flat riding street on my bmx three or four blocks from home so i thought it would be ok to just walk. since then i’d occasionally get panic attacks in places i didn’t feel safe but thankfully haven’t really had one in three years.
Was living in Boston, lost my keys but decided to walk my dog around the block to the liquor store. It was a two apartment house, so the outer door was definitely locked but the door to my apt was not.When I got back (after 5 minutes) everything seemed normal except for my Cannondale mtb was gone. I always thought it was a neighbor since I was only gone for 5 minutes and since I just happened to take my dog out of the house for that amount of time (she’s a Doberman Pinscher and an excellent deterrent). Guess you can never really complain when you don’t lock your shit.
Also two Huffy White Heats and a Specialized Hard Rock (three separate occasions) out of my garage while growing up in Kansas City, MO.
Had a bmx stolen from my back yard as a kid.
A mountain bike stolen from apartment. Left it on the front porch unlocked. In a not so great neighborhood in Dallas.
I was asking for the last one.
A couple weeks ago. A friend had his shitty schwinn stolen from in front of a club in denton. He was used to just leaving it leaning on the rails unlocked.
It was returned two days later. Never found out who stole it.
[quote=RonPopeil]Was living in Boston, lost my keys but decided to walk my dog around the block to the liquor store. It was a two apartment house, so the outer door was definitely locked but the door to my apt was not.When I got back (after 5 minutes) everything seemed normal except for my Cannondale mtb was gone. I always thought it was a neighbor since I was only gone for 5 minutes and since I just happened to take my dog out of the house for that amount of time (she’s a Doberman Pinscher and an excellent deterrent). Guess you can never really complain when you don’t lock your shit.
Also two Huffy White Heats and a Specialized Hard Rock (three separate occasions) out of my garage while growing up in Kansas City, MO.[/quote]
Another KC boy. Neat.
I had a bike stolen off of my back porch when I left it unlocked once. I found a crackhead riding it a few days later, waited for him to park it, and stole it back.
I almost had my monocog stolen when it was new and expensive looking.
I locked it with a bulldog mini outside of the bookstore/coffeeshop my friend works at and went in for a minute. When I came back out to show her my new bike, there was a padlock on one of the front spokes and some tweezers sitting on the ground under the lock. Some crackhead tried to pick the lock and failed, so he put a padlock on so that I would have to leave it and he would have more time. Fortunately for me, the idiot only put it around a single spoke, after the cross. I used the spoke wrench on my multi-tool and just took the spoke out and took the lock off. Fixed in about five minutes.
Just as I put it back together, the jackass that put it on came around the corner and gave me an eye-contact glare that couldn’t have meant anything but guilt.
Moral: carry a spoke wrench.
^ Excellent story.
I once had a shitty wal-mart MTB stolen. I had just gotten my Miyata that would become my first conversion. Needed to buy another lock (was still keeping my bikes locked up outside at this point) so I just left the MTB unlocked while I went to the store to get a second one. It was gone when I got back.
Couple days later I saw some bro-looking dude riding it on campus. All I had the time to do was yell “THAT’S MY BIKE FUCKER!” as he rode away. Next day it was locked up outside a lecture hall with a U and was never touched again. Eventually got impounded.
Nate and I had both our tandems stolen, I think most people know the story.
They were locked up in the backyard with a chain. We were in the process of moving and had started staying at our new house and someone stole both of them. One wasn’t ridable and the other had been sitting outside all winter. A few weeks later someone saw someone riding one of them and posted on CL, that was the last we heard of them.
my buddies and i were swimming at a pool in a GHETTO ass area. two of us rode our skateboards to the pool, the other guy rode his sickass haro flatland bike. he locked up and it was all good. well some ghetto ass mofos showed up and swam too. no big deal. when we were leaving, the black dudes came up to my buddy and surrounded him. one dude punched him in the jaw, breaking it. they took his bike and walked away. they were about to take our skateboards, but the boards were garbage. later that day a cop came to our house. we followed the cops to the dude’s house, we identified dude who punched my buddy. they found drugs and a bunch of other stolen shit.
Black dudes, huh, Sol?
Freelocked it in the yard of a shooting range. A police shooting range. At noon. There were about 50-100 people there.
Who’d have thought someone would take that risk…
wasnt my bike, but my roommates. good story anyhow.
so i just got back from traveling and was unloading some junk from my vehicle. walking down my street towards my house i notice a crackhead guy stop and look up at my house. he then suspiciously creeps up the steps up to our porch. crouching down at the side of my roommates shitty huffy mtb slowly pulls out some bolt cutters. immediately i yell at this guy, who then fumbles with his stuff and his words. i call him out about the bolt cutters, which he denies possessing all together. i tell him to get lost, or else i’d call the cops.
after going inside and dropping off my stuff, i come back outside and the bike is gone. the dude CAME BACK and stole this pos bike that totally wasn’t worth $20. so my roommate calls the cops, long story short i take a trip down the hill to otr and have to point out the dude that stole it, which gets him and a bunch of other dudes arrested. i was really surprised, and really kind of impressed with the cincy PD about their willingness to both recover stolen bikes and the fact that they took the guy in. usually the cincy PD does nothing about anything besides bust up college parties.
yeah. they were black american dudes
Left my conversion unlocked on a bike rack in my office behind two RFID locked doors. Someone tailgated in, grabbed the bike and rolled away on it.
I feel like every stolen bike in the bay area has passed through Karim’s hands at one point or another.
My bike in high school got stolen cause one night I left it laying along the side of our front yard. I’d done it before plenty of times and assumed our little suburban haven didn’t have pesky theives… it did.
Got a bike the day before moving into my freshman dorm. Sweet Walmart mountain bike with a sweet Walmart cable lock. Locked it up that afternoon, went out with some friends that night, didn’t see it when I returned around 10pm but assumed it was because it was so dark. Nope it’d been snatched and the crappy lock left, cut in half. Not a bad thing though because while doing research on decent locks and locking strategies I found out about actually decent bikes. Haven’t had an issue since.