Not Too Famous For That

How many of you remember Paris Hilton?

I confess:  When she was in the spotlight, I didn't pay attention to her.  That is, until she was arrested for DUI.  It wasn't her arrest that made me take notice.  Rather, it was something she said not long afterward:  "I'm too pretty for prison."

Well, she did get prison time for violating her probation agreement.  That, as I recall, was about a decade ago--around the time Kim Kardashian-this generation's Paris Hilton-- was becoming, well, Kim Kardashian.

So, if Paris Hilton was indeed not "too pretty for prison", then is anyone too rich/famous/talented/beloved or fill-in-the-blank to have his or her bicycle stolen?

Well, it seems that at least one professional athlete's stature didn't keep him from losing his bike.  As a 20-year-old rookie who is currently sidelined with an injury, he's not one of the better-known players in his sport.  However, he is something of a celebrity in the city that is home to his team, for that team, and the sport they play, play large roles in that city's life and identity.

That city is Pittsburgh, and the team is the Steelers of American football.  

JuJu Smith-Schuster, a receiver, rode his Ghost bicycle to the team's practices.  After reporting it missing on Tuesday, he posted a message about it on social media.  "Why people got to be like that?" he wondered.  

He didn't have to wait long to get it back.  That night--Tuesday--a man called from a bar in nearby Mount Oliver after realizing, from a TV news item, that the bike he'd purchased earlier in the day was indeed Smith-Schuster's bike.  The man turned the bike over to police, who turned it over to Smith-Schuster.

Interestingly, Smith-Schuster doesn't have a driver's license, although he says he plans to get one "before the weather gets cold."  He still needs to work on parallel parking, according to one of his teammates.

That wouldn't be a problem, would it, if he rode his bike to work?  All he needs to remember is that he's not too big or talented, and he will not be too famous, to lose his bike.

Just Bring Her Bike Back

Stealing a bike from anybody is bad enough.  But stealing it from an 11-year-old girl takes a particular kind of depravity.

Whenever I hear about someone stealing, I want to believe--or at least hope--that the thief was desperate.  There is,  however, no room for such hope when the thief steals a bike that is way too small for him, or any other person over the age of 14, to ride:  Small-wheeled bikes for young children have very little, if any, resale value.  

Still, those bikes mean everything to the kids who ride them.  "I learned how to ride a bike on it,"  Brianna Jiminez recalled, as tears streamed down her face.  She has "lots of memories" on it, she said.



At least there is some chance the the thief will be caught:  His image was captured on a surveillance video from her family's front porch, where he took her bike.  The bike burglar also took wallets, purses, jewelry and other items from the Jiminez's neighbors in Houston.

Her father, Pablo isn't "looking for trouble".  All he wants is for the thief to "get the items back."  He won't press charges and has this message for the crook:  "If you need somebody in your life, let me help out."

No Fries With That Sandwich. But I'll Take A Bike, Please!

When I was careening thorugh the concrete canyons of Manhattan, making sometimes-questionable deliveries, it was common knowledge (or, at least, a widely-believed urban myth) that if your bike was stolen, you should head to St. Mark's Place.

In those days, before "Alphabet City" and the Lower East Side gentrified, it was common knowledge that you could "buy anything" on St. Mark's.  By "anything", we didn't mean T-shirts, keychains and other overpriced chotchkes made by Chinese prisoners and emblazoned with the "I Heart NY" logo, although you could get those.  Ditto for anything a hippie who might not have even been born when the real hippies were sauntering in their cannabis-addled haze through the neighborhood might want.  For that matter, we weren't even talking about the great pierogis you could get around the corner or the heavenly hammentashen and sumptuous strudels from Moishe's Bakery on Second Avenue.

What we meant was that, in addition to any substance or service someone might want on a Saturday night (or if one is new to town), you could buy all sorts of things that "fell off the truck" or that people "found".  Those items included, of course, bicycles.  

It was said that all of the bicycles used by restaurant delivery workers "came from" St. Mark's.  So, I suspect, did at least a few messengers' bikes.  I know for that bikes were indeed sold there, even though--to my knowledge--no bike shop (or any other kind of retail store that might sell bikes) has ever operated there.  In fact, as I rode there one night, someone crossed into my path with a bike he wanted to sell me. 

Alas, I never found any of my stolen bikes there.  But I knew other messengers, delivery people, commuters and recreational cyclists who did.  In every instance, someone tried to sell their bike back to them--not knowing, of course, that the would-be customer was the person from whom the bike was stolen.   One fellow of my acquaintance claimed that he punched the would-be small-time entrepreneur in the nose and took his bike back.  I'm sure others did the same.

Then, as now, retrieving stolen bikes or going after bike thieves wasn't very high on the NYPD's list of priorities.  Sometimes I wonder whether they know that most people will simply give up if they're not re-united with their bikes within a couple of days...

...let alone a couple of years.  Or more.  Apparently, that is the story of a few people whose bikes ended up at Los Amigos 2, a bodega in Camden NJ.

Camden (NJ) Police Captain Gabriel Camacho, Sergeant Jannel Simpson and Captain Rich Verticelli with bikes recovered from Los Amigos 2.

Police discovered a stockpile of bikes in the shop's basement when responding to, ironically enough, a burglar alarm.  Cops were searching the store for a suspect when they came upon the stash:  91 in all.  Nobody knows how many other bikes passed through.

Now, if you were in St. Mark's in the heyday of punk and New Wave, try to imagine the neighborhood without the band--or without the movie houses it had (It still has one.), coffee shops or even its dive bars.  (Back in the day, you went to a dive bar--or shopped in a thrift shop--because you couldn't afford to go anywhere else:  There was no cachet in doing so.)  Or try to imagine Newark NJ or Richmond CA, without the charm (really!). Then you'll have an idea of what Camden is like.

Like St. Mark's of yore, Camden is a magnet for the drug-addicted , in part because of the treatment facilities and shelters located in their vicinities. Some bring bikes or other items they stole, sometimes far from the neighborhood, to get money for a "fix."  

Some of the bikes recovered from Los Amigos 2

One thing I found interesting is that the bodega was paying less money for bikes--"up to $20", according to a police spokesperson-- than the unscrupulous were paying on St. Mark's more than three decades ago.  I wonder whether that is a signal that the number of desperate or otherwise impaired people who would steal a bike and sell it for a "fix" is so much greater than it was in the St. Mark's of my youth.

Bodegas, like other small grocery stores, are about convenience.  But a bicycle with your sandwich and cerveza?

Reunited With A Favorite Bike

For those of us who are dedicated cyclists, nothing hurts worse than having our beloved rides stolen.  It's happened to me a few times.  I lost bikes that, frankly, were meant for the purpose: "beaters" that were meant to be locked in urban combat zones.  However, I also lost a relatively nice bike and my first custom build to thieves.

For a time, I thought that having had more than one bike stolen was a sign that one was a true New York cyclist.  Just about everyone with whom I've ridden in the Big Apple has had at least one bike to theft.  In fact, one fellow with whom I sometimes rode in Prospect Park actually sat shiva after losing his classic Ron Cooper.

(I am now recalling how, when drafting him, I would see the tzitzit dangling from the tallit katan he wore under his jersey!  Only in pre-hipster Brooklyn, right?)

For about 99 percent of us, having a bike stolen means never seeing it again.  That's because bikes are pretty easy to transport, take apart and repaint.  Also, law enforcement agencies--at least here in the US--don't seem to make bike theft a high priority.  That's at least somewhat understandable in areas with lots of violent crime but less so, I feel, in relatively tranquil places like suburban or rural college campuses.

Still, when we lose our bikes, we try not to lose hope of being part of the 1 percent whose machines are recovered.  As with just about any other kind of theft, the more time that elapses from the moment the bike is filched, the less likely that bike is to be reunited with its owner.  And, of course, if you lose your wheels far away from home, there's even less chance that you'll ever see them again.

Such a realization left a fellow named Thomas "bummed/heartbroken" the day he left Japan in 1992.  For the previous two years, he'd been stationed in the  northern part the country as a US Navy Pilot.  The riding was "beautiful" there, he says, and the Mercian Strada he'd purchased as a college student a decade earlier got him around. 

He'd raced on that bike against folks like Davis Phinney, Alexi Grewal and Andy Hampsten before even most cyclists had heard of them.  It also made an appearance in the movie American Flyers.  As he explains it, he rode as an extra with the Cinelli team.  The bike the team issued him broke three weeks into the filming, so his Mercian took over.

Well, one cold day a year into his tenure in the Land of the Rising Sun, he stopped at a ramen house to warm his bones with a bowl of noodles.  He parked his Mercian outside the eatery and--you guessed it--his bike wasn't there when he came back out.

He filed a report with the local Japanese police as well as with base security.  No luck--at least not for a while.

In 2009, he was stationed with a squadron in San Diego. As he tells the story, one "glorious" day (Aren't they all in San Diego?), a box appeared on his front porch.

You guessed it:  his Mercian was inside the box.  At least, the frame was, anyway:  the Campagnolo and Cinelli parts, and even the fork, were stripped off. 

Somehow or another, the frame was recovered in Japan.  Because he was in the military, Thomas was much easier to track down than his bike. 

He spent the next few years tracking down replacement components. Once he found them, he sent the frame back to Mercian for restoration. "I'm sure that my next ride on the bike will give me just as much and more joy than that first ride in 1981."

Even though I read and watch all sorts of dark and moody books and films, I like a happy ending now and again.  This one is even better than the one in Breaking Away, don't you think?