I have lived in New York City for most of my life. I love it, including the cycling it offers, but I’ll admit that there are times when I was tempted, however briefly, to leave.
One of those occasions came during a long fall weekend, which included a lot of cycling, in Vermont. I’d take an overnight Amtrak train from Penn Station to Burlington. I cycled there, and in the surrounding countryside, and slep in the state ski dorm—which served as a hostel during the off-season—near Stowe.
Much of the temptation to move came from seeing the most vibrant colors of the Green Mountain State’s Fall Foliage season. But I knew that if I were to continue the car-free life I’d been living, my relocation would take me to Burlington which, decades before cities were talking the “bike friendly” talk, seemed be spinning their pedals in that direction. In other words, it was a kind of proto-Portland, if smaller.
Now Vermont’s largest city—which has about a third as many people as Astoria, where I live—is acknowledged as one of the nation’s most “bike friendly “ cities. But, as in other velo havens, there is a dark side: bike theft.
As an article in today’s New York Times points out, although bikes are commonly stolen by professional thieves who know what they’re looking for, many others—and, it seems, many of the bikes swiped in Burlington—are taken, sometimes for fun, other times for profit, by drug addicts.
Some blame the very open-minded, welcoming atmosphere that attracted them to the city. (Ironically, they are in agreement with outsiders, many with right-wing politics.) This is the city that launched Bernie Sanders’ political career when it elected him as its Socialist mayor. It’s also where latter-day hippies went to continue their lives away from the clatter and clamor of cities and corporations. Among such refugees were a couple of guys who started one of the world’s best-loved ice cream brands. Such folks have long felt grateful to the place that welcomed them and pride themselves on welcoming newcomers like themselves.
But as in larger “bike friendly” cities like Portland and “liberal” enclaves like San Francisco, some arrive with no connections or prospects. Also, those who come and manage to start businesses and careers, or attend the university, make it more difficult for those who were born and raised there but who can’t or didn’t go to college and who can’t get the kinds of jobs their parents had but don’t exist anymore.
The latter group of people are more or less like the kinds of people would-be gentrifiers encounter in cities like mine and are called “remnants,” “leftovers” or other less flattering names. They, and the young people who get off the Greyhound buses from the Rust Belt or Deep South are vulnerable to addiction and their circumstances—often as residents of encampments or park benches—make them easy to be recruited as bike thieves or simply to steal bikes on their own.
Now, to be fair, some steal bikes for transportation. That, of course, doesn’t change the fact that they are stealing. But, as one outreach worker pointed out, the “high” crystal meth users lead some to steal things—including bikes—for the thrill of it.
So, while being a “bike friendly” city didn’t cause Burlington’s problems, it caused those problems to manifest in a way that isn’t friendly to bike owners.
