Stolen bikes

080901

Long time no posts! I've been remodeling my kitchen and it hasn't left a whole lot of time for anything besides (kind of) keeping up with work.

I've begun helping out with moderation duties at the Chicago Stolen Bike Registry over the last couple of weeks. It's a community maintained site for reporting stolen bikes which offers a pretty coherent set of questions and information one must fill out and then posts it in a standardized fashion.

One thing it makes you realize is that there are A LOT of bikes stolen in Chicago! I mean A LOT! I would assume that perhaps no more than maybe 10-ish percent of stolen bikes end up on this list, and there are so far maybe 30 or so posts per week, so do the math.

Another quick thing you'll notice if you look through it is that using a cable lock is the very easiest way to have your bike stolen. These things can be cut through in about 5 to 10 seconds with a big, honking pair of cable cutters. Use at least a U-lock. Bikes are still stolen with U-locks, but it is almost always a situation where the bike was left unattended for at least some hours.

Be careful out there, there ain't a lot of civilized behavior going on out on the streets of Chicago!