I've been told, by people who have worked in it, that the art business can be as shady as any other. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised: It's a world of secrecy with very little regulation. And, as with real estate, stocks or anything else that's bought and sold, paintings, sculptures and other created objects sell for, essentially, whatever people are willing to pay for them, which leads to all sorts of unethical behavior.
Still, I have trouble imaging that anyone has ever said, with a straight face, "Psst! Wanna buy a Monet?" I don't know whether I'd laugh or call the police if I were to hear that.
That is the reason why I don't understand art theft--or theft of anything but basic necessities, and then only by desperate, destitute people. (Mind you, I don't condone any sort of pilferage: I simply can better understand the motives of a person who's simply trying to survive or feed his or her family.) After all, what do you do with Rembrandt's Storm on the Sea of Galilee? Or Van Gogh's Poppy Flowers? Or Cezanne's Boy In A Red Vest? Hang them on your wall and invite your friends over for dinner? I mean, if you were to try to sell those paintings to anyone who recognized them, they'd know that it was fake or stolen. You can't make it "go stealth" the way you can with, say, a contraband high-end watch.
So it is with unusual bicycles. Most bike thieves want to sell the bikes or their parts, so they steal stuff that's valuable but common. (That makes even more sense when you realize that for several years running, the most-stolen car was the Toyota Camry.) I would think that it's more difficult to unload a tandem, especially a high-end one. And I would expect that a bicycle built for three (which was misidentified as a tandem in the article in which I learned about its theft) would be even trickier to sell, "chop shop" or simply disappear. How many triplet fames have you seen?
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| The Rumseys. Courtesy: Salt Lake City Police Department |
Fortunately for the Rumsey family of Houston, it didn't take long for their three-seater to be recovered after it was stolen in Salt Lake City. They commissioned the bike 18 years old, not only so Dave and Merle could pedal with Ford, their 36-year-old son with Down's Syndrome, but also so it could travel with them. The bike can be disassembled to fit into a suitcase and has therefore accompanied the family on every trip they've taken.
So, as you can imagine, the bike entwines all sorts of memories with its usefulness to the family. That is the reason why they were so glad it was returned to them. And perhaps it was a good thing that the bike is unlike almost any other. The Salt Lake Police didn't say whether they'd caught the thief. If they hadn't, perhaps he realized it would be too difficult to sell or otherwise unload and abandoned it. What would he have done with a Picasso or a Caravaggio?
