Another Reason Your Favorite Shop Doesn't Have What You Want Or Need

During the 1980s and early 1990s, some bike shop owners and employees, it seemed, regarded robberies as a rite of passage.  I knew, and was known in, most Manhattan and Brooklyn shops and I don't think a single one escaped having expensive bikes, parts or money stolen.  Some even prepared themselves for what seemed an inevitability:  One employee was able to free herself, two fellow employees and the shop's owner after a perp tied them up and fled with cash and merchandise.

Later in the 1990s, as overall crime dropped, such events became less common.  Theft in bike shops, by that time, was more likely to be a matter of  some sticky-fingered opportunist absconding with a bike computer or expensive accessory or part--or low-paid employees taking "samples" of stuff they couldn't afford on their salaries.  

If you live long enough (as someone with a blog called "Midlife Cycling" has), you realize that almost no condition, good or bad, lasts forever--and that the good usually has at least one bad consequence,and vice versa.

Case in point:  the COVID 19-induced Bike Boom.  Anyone selling or repairing bikes, or anything related to them, was doing more business than they've done in years, or ever.  Then, lockdowns and workforce attrition throughout supply chains--from factories in the Far East to docks on the East and West coasts--led to scarcity that caused the prosperity that burned so brightly to consume the very shops that enjoyed it, however briefly.  

Those shortages--and the overall increase in crime--led to something that now seems all but inevitable:  an increase in theft, of bikes parked on streets, stored in warehouses or displayed on showroom floors, and of parts and accessories.  So, the number of bike shops incurring theft--whether of small items or bikes with five-figure price tags--has risen for the first time in decades.  

Worse, bike shop robberies and other crimes have been "taken to another level," in the words Gillian Forsyth.  She owns BFF Bikes in Chicago, which was hit when "people were going to work and cars about" on a weekday morning.  The robbers "crashed through one of my windows" and "targeted five very high-end bikes," she said.  "They just kind of rushed in, grabbed the bikes and left very quickly."

Although she has security footage of the incident, Forsyth says that identifying the perps will be difficult because they were masked--an ironic consequence of a measure taken to deal with the COVID pandemic.

In an ideal world, everyone will have a good bike and will ride it without worrying about their safety while riding or the bike's safety when parked.  In the meantime, we'll have to settle for part of the utopia, I guess:  More people are riding bikes.