Cash, Sex, Drugs, and Bicycles

If you haven't already read Patrick Symmes's "Who Pinched My Ride?," which appeared in the February 2012 issue of Outside, you should. 

I'm tempted to declare the almost 6,000-word piece a classic of bike theft literature. It tells the story of how the author's bike got stolen and how his thirst to avenge that violation "grew to encompass three cities, seven bikes, and repeated encounters with the dangerous underworld of vanished bicycles."

It will be months before I've researched and written posts about all the oh-so-germane topics Symmes touches on—Chris Brennan, who has a method of lock-picking named after him; the value a piece of stolen property has to have for its theft to qualify as a felony (apparently the value varies state-to-state); the possibility of tracking wayward spouses with Garmin GPS locators—so for now I'll leave it at a single quote (from which I took the title of this post) and, of course, the recommendation that you go read the piece in its entirety.

In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs, and bicycles. Of those, only one is routinely left outside unattended.

—from "Who Pinched My Ride?" 

Mark Your Man (or Woman)

For the capstone project required for his degree, UK design student Michael Lambourn devised a bike lock he hoped would make "the experience of bike theft as unpleasant as possible to put off the opportunist thief."

How'd he do it? The SmartLock is a cable lock with cores of compressed air and liquid running its entire length. If the lock is cut, the liquid explodes onto the would-be thief and the scene of the crime.

Lambourn says that while the lock's four chambers (each with its own propellant!) could be adapted to contain "almost any liquid imaginable," he recommends using dye and something called SmartWater. (For you consumers of enhanced H₂O beverages, this SmartWater is not a Coca-Cola product.)

Lambourn explains his rationale:

The dye would stain clothes, skin, tools, the bike and the area but would fade within two or three months. Smartwater is a clear, odourless forensic liquid that can be detected by police. It has a unique coding that can link the thief to the stolen property and the scene of the crime.

Commenters on the Yanko Design post about the SmartLock had their own ideas:

Fill the lock with pressurized bleach and cat urine, and Ill take 20.

A better deterrent than dye would be mercaptan – aka skunk smell. You could have enough in that spray to make the guy smell like he was attacked by 1000 skunks.

Watch the video and see for yourself:

Want to buy one? While that's not an option—the SmartLock has never been commercially produced—I have made contact with Lambourn, so you at least have a follow-up post to look forward to...

This Bike Is a Pipebomb

At a recent birthday get-together, talk turned to protecting bicycles from theft. (Such topics arise naturally when four people who have had three bikes stolen find themselves inspecting a friend's stable of eight.)

I mentioned the pricey but somewhat anxiety-reducing lock I had purchased to secure the Surly I'd bought to replace my stolen Cannondale, but said that what I really wanted was to rig my bike such that if anyone other than me touched it, he or she would be in for a nasty—by which I mean literal—shock.

We riffed on this idea, suggesting a string of similarly unconventional and vaguely violent means of foiling would-be bike thieves: What if the lock, if tampered with, squirted acid? Or had a leghold trap attached to it? (Apparently Boston-based blogger Bikeyface—www.bikeyface.com—also has a pent-up desire to see bike thieves gnawing their trapped appendages off: see below.)

Though one friend expressed concern about collateral damage—what if an unwitting child got the Taser-strength electroshock I'd intended for a criminal?—or our property-protection measures landing us in jail, the prevalence of bike theft has led many to at least fantasize about taking bike security to extremes. A BMXforum.com thread titled "how to booby-trap your bike" included these suggestions.

put some c4 on the handle bars with a remote control detanater.

hire a sniper/sharpshooter to watch your bike at all times. thats what i do and it seems to work. and you don't get caught with murder when the person dies

There was also this dubious strategy which I'm actually sort of implementing already:

get clear plastic pedals so the thief thinks the bike is useless without the pedals

(Somehow I doubt this deterrent would be effective even without that red circle...)

Something I learned while trolling the BMXforum thread: There's a Pensacola-based folk-punk band called This Bike Is a Pipebomb, and, as cataloged on the relevant Wikipedia page, a bike bearing a sticker with the band's name is enough to evacuate an airport or get the bike's owner charged with the misdemeanor of "inducing panic." Apparently you don't even have to actually booby-trap your bike to risk a run-in with law enforcement! 

(I looked to see if "This Bike Is a Pipebomb" stickers are still available for sale, but all I found was this.) 

Help Fund a Comprehensive Bike Registry

With nine days to go before the end of its Kickstarter fundraising campaign, the Bike Index has received pledges for only 51% of its $50,000 goal. If you want to help "create a comprehensive registry of bicycles to fight theft and save the world," back the project. Need more info before forking over the dough? Watch the Bike Index pitch:

To Confront a Thief

So you're not a bike ninja. You're not the type to get up in the grill of a guy who has the better of you weight-wise and a potential bludgeon in his back pocket to boot. But is it okay to see a bike theft in progress and just walk right by?

People do it all the time, even when the theft is occurring in broad daylight on a Vancouver thoroughfare and the crooks are wielding axes and two-by-fours. Does observing a crime and failing to take action—whether it be confronting the criminal or alerting authorities—make you a bad person? Complicit somehow?

These are questions a friend wanted me to force the public to consider by transforming my cut cable lock—pictured in the inaugural BTB post—into a provocative art installation.

Situate the cut lock in a high-traffic area, he said, like Dupont Circle on the weekend or during a weekday lunch hour. He had several suggestions for the text that could adorn a poster board next to the lock, but a clear favorite emerged: "Fuck You."

Now passersby might initially assume the profanity to be directed at a presumed thief, but then, as they perhaps averted their eyes from the unsettling sight, it might occur to them that the artist was cursing them, too, as members of a society that not only drives its citizens to lives of crime but too often fails to acknowledge this reality or do anything about it.

A fitting audio-visual addition to the installation might be ABC's What Would You Do? bike theft episode running on a loop (or motion-activated somehow?). It's enough to make anyone reflect a little. (You can get away with bike theft as long as you're white? If you're an attractive woman, men will help you steal a bike? WTF?)

TiGr: Elegant Bike Security

Readers of the post "Death to Bike Thieves" may have noted and had their interest piqued by a passing mention of a titanium lock. That would be the TiGr® I bought to help ensure that my new bike doesn't meet the same sad fate as the old one.

The TiGr appealed to me over other bike security options for several reasons:

• While not impregnable—see the "attack video" embedded below—it is relatively hard to breach.
• It is light-weight and can be affixed to the top tube for easy transport.
• It is enough of a newcomer on the bike lock market that just its unfamiliar—and no-nonsense—look might suffice to make a thief move on.

(Which brings to mind something a fellow cyclist said to me last week at the bike rack behind the Tenleytown Whole Foods. He asked me about my lock, and I gave him the lowdown. "So thieves will take someone else's bike," he summarized. Damn it, I thought. I don't want them to take anyone's...)

The Cardboard Cop Deterrent

Though I first got wind of the cardboard-cop-as-bike-theft-deterrent in this Grist story, the ability of a life-size, two-dimensional likeness of a police officer to decrease the number of bikes stolen from Boston's Alewife subway station caught the attention of outlets from Fox to Esquire.

Check out the NewsBreaker clip below or buy your own corrugated policeman. The challenge will be figuring out how to fold him into a portable pannier-size package for pop-up protection wherever your next ride takes you.

Death to Bike Thieves

One of the first things I did the day my bike got stolen—along with posting a picture on Facebook and emailing the serial number to the police officer handling my case and compulsively scanning Craigslist for Cannondale 29ers—was register my onetime ride with stolenbikeregistry.com. While there, I ordered one of the stickers on offer.

SBR's sales pitch had my mental state pegged perfectly: "Not only will you be helping supporting the cause, but you'll [be] making your intentions clear to any future would-be bike thieves out there."

The sticker sat on my desk for months, though, before I polled my Facebook friends:

If you were a bike thief and you saw a bike with a "Death to bike thieves" sticker on it, do you think that observation would make you more likely or less likely to try to remove the titanium lock securing the bike?

A few of my bike-concerned acquaintances offered opinions, but the most extensive and relevant back-and-forth developed between me and my friend Matt (not a cyclist, to my knowledge).

Matt's initial reaction: "If I were a bike thief, I would not want people advocating my early and abrupt demise. That might make me more likely to steal your bike as both (a) retribution for your displeasing opinion, as well as (b) a response to the actual incentive you created to get that sticker off the streets. On the other hand, if I had a sense of humor or reason to fear you, it would probably go the other way."

The conversation continued:

I went ahead and stuck the sticker on my down tube, but the jury's still out: Does the sticker deter theft or just egg the bastards on? How can I make my bike better project a don't-mess-with-me attitude? These mylar NRA decals can supposedly "be affixed to practically everything"...

(For more on the cop cutout, see "The Cardboard Cop Deterrent.")

What and Why

I am a victim of bike theft, but my story is not an extraordinary one. There was the cut cable lock; the same I-never-thought-it-would-happen-to-me feeling I imagine attends many an unplanned pregnancy; the boyfriend (and bike godfather) who almost hurled his phone away from him in anger when he received the bad news via text. ("My pissed off ness is out of control over this. I will calm down so I don't fucking scream right now.")

I was pissed, too, of course, and this blog is an outgrowth of that post-theft fury. Three imperatives loomed large after my bike was stolen, three imperatives I bet will resonate with anyone who has experienced bike theft. I wanted to 

• recover the stolen bike,
• better secure my bike in the future, and
• avenge myself.

To serve not only my needs but those of its intended audience—anyone who has had a bike stolen, anyone who wants to keep a beloved bike from getting stolen, and anyone who dreams of striking fear into the hearts of bike thieves everywhere—Bike Thieves Beware will

• aggregate stories of bike theft (fortuitous reunions, sweet revenge, tragic losses);
• spread the word about innovations in bike security;
• collect resources for victims of bike theft;
• publicize efforts to curb bike theft; and
• give readers the chance to share stories and strategies as well as weigh in on questions relevant to keeping our two-wheelers safe.

Let's do this!