'tis the season

16 years ago
Still life with tree and what's left of my bike:

Tags: , ,
Current Music: The Breeders -- Forced to Drive ♬

56 Responses:

  1. drjon says:
    16 years ago at 3:24 am

    Not good. I feel your pain. I should post photos of mine.
  2. baconmonkey says:
    16 years ago at 4:15 am

    There is a bike at DNA that had been abandoned outside. I kept trying to get rid of it, but it kept coming back and getting in the way. Finally we stuck a sign on it stating that if it wasn't claimed by Sat, it was getting tossed. Yen said she'd take it, but didn't ride it home because she doesn't know how to ride one, but will be taking it home on monday.

    also, were you just licking the wheel, and not going through the frame?
    • grahams says:
      16 years ago at 4:20 am

      also, were you just licking the wheel, and not going through the frame?

      I read this 5 times before I realized what I think I was supposed to read was "locking the wheel" and not "licking". :)
  3. hatter says:
    16 years ago at 4:45 am

    Well you did give them instructions here.
    • jwz says:
      16 years ago at 5:07 am

      Yeah, let us all now point and laugh at <lj user="flipping_hades"> and <lj user="zuvembi">...
      • flipping_hades says:
        16 years ago at 7:17 am

        So much for "conventional wisdom", I guess.
      • seminiferous says:
        16 years ago at 7:48 am

        Do you mind posting or emailing the make and model or approximate value of your bike? I'm curious to know how desperate the SF crackheads that they would make such an effort and take such a risk to get only 60-75% of the resale.
        • netik says:
          16 years ago at 9:59 am

          With a wheel replacement at ~$50-100 and bike replacement at >$500, I can see why someone would cut through the wheel to steal jwz's bike.

          jwz: Sorry about your bike, this is what, the 3rd bike in the time I've known you? Did you lock the frame as well?

          I lost one bike here years ago to construction. They took the bike, the meter, and the sidewalk.
          • seminiferous says:
            16 years ago at 10:50 am

            A typical >$500 bike is not going to have a $50-$100 wheel, cassette, and tire on it. I'm guessing that altogether that's roughly a third (maybe 25%) of the whole bike's value. Plus, now the thief has to replace the rear wheel or get even less money by selling the bike for parts. It seems that using a loud reciprocating saw is a bigger risk for a less reward. But, I suppose I'm being too rational here.

            I had my bike locker emptied out by LA Metro due to bureaucratic incompetence. Cities hate bikes.
        • jwz says:
          16 years ago at 11:55 am

          My usual habit (which I will be doing again in an hour or so) is to walk into the bike store down the street and say "gimme your cheapest hybrid, index shifters". I think the last one was a Giant? So probably $300?

          I doubt it was technically a crackhead, though, since this required tools, and crackheads aren't that prepared or entrepreneurial.
      • jkow says:
        16 years ago at 8:28 am

        but they did sound as if they had something to say :-D
      • zuvembi says:
        16 years ago at 9:49 am

        Err, it doesn't look like they used a hacksaw (which is what I was talking about). Looks more like bolt cutters or something similar. I never said it couldn't be cut, I said a hacksaw wasn't a good way to do it.

        Sorry to hear about your bike though.
      • pygmalion says:
        16 years ago at 7:37 pm

        When helping Jared move once, he had this huge, heavy angel statue. We had set it by the trunk of my car when he asked me to go back up to help him with something for just a second. "Should we leave the statue out here?" I asked oh so innocently. Jared said it should be fine down there for just a moment. "Yeah. That thing is fuckin' heavy. I'd like to see someone try to pick it up and run with it." Blah blah blah, hah hah hah. We were up the stairs and down again in less than 5 minutes and lo' and behold it was gone. Long gone. Not a soul in sight, not a car within hearing.
  4. vxo says:
    16 years ago at 5:46 am

    Gah. That's incredibly rude.

    Looks like they had a pretty large set of bolt cutters to chop through the rim like that. I wonder why they decided to kill the rim and not just the lock alone, though?

    Then again, I have seen a locked abandoned bike dematerialize from the mere background radiation of ambient street slime here. It was left locked to a street light by the frame, and parts disappeared one by one... first the rear wheel, then the front, then the handlebars, and finally the chain and bottom bracket... leaving it just a random frame and front fork. It's still there, as far as I know.
  5. inoah says:
    16 years ago at 6:39 am

    I'm surprised they left the wheel there; there's a perfectly good cassette on it. Also, where's the tire and inner tube?
  6. rawdogue says:
    16 years ago at 7:26 am

    Bastards!
  7. ralesk says:
    16 years ago at 8:17 am

    What the fuck! :O
  8. ladykalessia says:
    16 years ago at 8:44 am

    Seriously, I think they should run background checks to sell bolt cutters these days. One more point in the column marked "Reasons Not To Live In San Francisco".
    • fantasygoat says:
      16 years ago at 8:59 am

      Making bolt cutters illegal or difficult to get is as stupid an idea as making claritin difficult to buy because it's used as an ingredient in meth.

      The real solution is to never lock your bike anywhere - bring it inside with you.
      • ichijo_hikaru says:
        16 years ago at 9:39 am

        The local grocery store by me (SE Michigan) requires ID, and the person be at least 18 to buy certain OTC meds, because they're used in meth labs. Pretty sure it's not just them doing it, either. At least no one there actually thinks it helps any, and they're just doing it because it's required to remain employed there.
        • netik says:
          16 years ago at 10:02 am

          That's okay, they're going to attempt to eliminate the whole meth issue now by outlawing most OTC cold drugs and replacing them with decongestants which cannot be used as a precursor to methamphetamine.

          The process has already begun with Sudafed, and there are certainly more to follow.

          I hear through ancedotal evidence that Sudafed doesn't work that well anymore.
        • pygmalion says:
          16 years ago at 7:30 pm

          Oh yes, because meth cooks are never over 18.
    • belgand says:
      16 years ago at 11:25 am

      I have to say I'm a bit curious what occupies the rest of that column.
      • ladykalessia says:
        16 years ago at 12:49 pm

        Curious because you're curious, or curious because you want to try and change my mind?
        • belgand says:
          16 years ago at 2:20 pm

          Curious because I've been working at moving to SF and I'm interested in the opposing viewpoint.
          • ladykalessia says:
            16 years ago at 7:55 pm

            My transportation is vital to my continued health and happiness... Aside from that email me, as I'm not interested in subjecing myself to the "your opinions are stupid" crowd that tends to crop up. (See above.)
  9. nightrider says:
    16 years ago at 9:23 am

    You can put this in the "too little, too late" category, but you know that there's bike lockers in the 5th & Mission garage, right?
    • flipping_hades says:
      16 years ago at 1:24 pm

      I actually rented one of those bike lockers (in the Sutter st. garage, but it's the same program & lockers) and returned it for a refund (which they took 9 freaking months to process) as soon as I got the key and took a look inside one.

      They use a bic-able cylinder lock, and the dividers between lockers are simple particleboard fastened on by nuts & bolts, with about a 4 inch gap at top and bottom. Having access to one locker, you could get into them all from the inside with a socket wrench. And there's no way to lock your bike to the structure of the locker. You can lock the wheels, but the bike's still free inside the locker.

      I might be being paranoid about it, but I did not feel secure with them. I stick to twin U-locks on the street.
  10. phreddiva says:
    16 years ago at 10:44 am

    Oh, NO.
    When?
    (please don't say last night, please don't say last night!)
  11. gytterberg says:
    16 years ago at 11:34 am

    Wow, that sucks. Did the crackhead even take the rim strip or did you take that off? That's gotta be $.25 of resale value right there.

    I always lock through the front wheel (quick release) and the frame and whatever I'm locking to. It fills up the space inside the shackle nicely, which defeats hydraulic jack attacks, and it's pretty quick and convenient. The back wheel is, well, on it's own, but I've been meaning to buy one of these or one of these. More secure plus with a long chain and a u-lock there's just about no circumstance in which you can't find something suitable to lock up to.
    • jwz says:
      16 years ago at 12:02 pm

      I so can't be bothered to be one of those people who carries around three locks and a chain disassembles their bike to component atoms every time they leave it somewhere. Fuck that. I'd much rather continue buying a new bike every two years. $0.50/day for it to not take me ten minutes to lock/unlock my bike? And to carry less bullshit around with me? I'll take that bargain.
    • vxo says:
      16 years ago at 4:58 pm

      I had to pay $15 for a rim strip a few years ago after one tore around the valve stem hole, finding it only at the last of six bike shops I checked at... and the guy there said he would have trouble ordering another one.

      This boggles my mind. What the heck is so special about the rim liner? Bah.

      I could turn this into another "Everything sucks in Miami" rant, but I refuse.
  12. quercus says:
    16 years ago at 11:43 am

    Did they cut the lock to release the frame?

    ...or did you just lock it through the rim (in which case, Duh!)
    • jwz says:
      16 years ago at 11:58 am

      I (used to) always lock it through the rear wheel with the lock inside the rear frame triangle, because I really didn't think anyone would ever bother to cut through a wheel to get my piece-of-shit bike!
      • quercus says:
        16 years ago at 4:55 pm

        I've seen a $750 dollar Ti frame sawn through and ruined just so they could steal the flash chainset and brakes off it.

        What they didn't realise was how damned hard Ti is to saw, so they gave up halfway and unbolted the fork to steal that instead. Fortunately I was able to weld the frame afterwards.

        In this town (Bristol, UK) wheels are a consumable.
  13. bifrosty2k says:
    16 years ago at 11:43 am

    awman.... At least you have some gears left?
  14. lars_larsen says:
    15 years ago at 8:28 pm

    If an angle grinder, hydraulic jack, and a bolt cutter fucked... their offspring would look like this:

    Cordless electric-hydraulic bolt cutter. Ultimate status symbol of the most wealthy of crackhead-bike-theives at a little over $1300.

    Fire departments use them to cut security bars on windows, high security padlocks, etc.