Stolen bikes

no serial number?

must be a nicked bike that had it ground off

nah, after a respray, the serial number can be covered up by the new colour.

doesn't help that all bareknuckle has is '56 EAI'.

I was windin im up innit!

get the rozzers to stamp it if you are worried.

BKs don't have serial numbers because they aren't expected to last long enough

this is an interesting idea - list your stolen bike on ebay
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ROY-THAME-TRACK-RACING-BIKE-RED-COLOR-STOLEN-HELP_W0QQitemZ250164597299QQihZ015QQcategoryZ33503QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

If ur gonna fill theyre locks with glue, super glue and iron filings works best!

...I'll be meeting the lady who had my bike soon, so will get as much info as I can on where she picked it up.

Heard another scam that the lowlife run, where they post someone at the end of the street to intercept a buyer who's just forked out for a bike, and claim it's theirs and they came to Brick Lane to hunt it out.

I have a day-dream that we could mobilise an army to ride past on a Friday night - like a late night flashmob - all armed with a festered week-old pint of milk and bomb the entrance (assuming it's one of the permenant places) ensuring a horrendous milky stench for the next week or so.

Milk over crowbars folks.

Thanks for the tip straightedgeandy!

dicki i have been looking at maplins website thay have a tracker for 100 ish quid and some tags / emitters
only good for 183m though i guess that would be enough
we would need to let them take the bike away and follow at a discreet distance back to the hoard
anyone free for some ass kicking fun later in the week
would like to have stef ( or some other martial arts expert with me too )

be carefull man, dont want to end up getting cut ya know... altho recovering a stolen bike is the best feeling ever.

Something a bit odd happened in brick lane this Wednesday after (my rather pathetic attempt at) polo. Was sitting in the bar right at the top of brick lane (on the right hand side) with my bike chained to 2 lamp posts in my line of site. This old guy came up to it, started checking it out, then lifted it up (at this point i bolted to the door clenching my fists). By the time I was right next to him he was making some suspicious arm gestures (golf swing?) to what appeared to be a window on the top floor of a building across bethnal green road, to the left of the street that the polo court is on. I dropped my bag on the floor and curtly told him to piss off, got a good look at his face in the process. While i was unlocking my bike I noticed half a magnet on the top tube. Cycled home feeling pretty angry.

I can only assume that

  a) this guy (wearing a check blue shirt, blue jeans, heavy (fat) build, greying/thinning/shortish mousy brown hair, bright blue eyes (and with a squint)) had marked my bike with the magnet for someone else to come along and steal it(I had 2 locks on it, mini kryptonite and an abus cable lock);

and b) The people who would come along with bolt cutters etc were in the building across the street.

Either that or he was just a crazy guy, but I somehow don't think so.

I think/hope that this of some use to everyone here. I am considering parking my bike within easy reach and in clear view somewhere else in brick lane and seeing if I catch the same guy at it again! (Although that's sort of playing with fire i guess.)

stay away from brick lane...!

thats mental! i didnt think these idiots would be so organised!

Yeah, a magnet wouldn't work on an aluminium bike, so they must be relatively clued up on track bikes. I wonder how they mark aluminium bikes...

Living pretty close to brick lane, I tend to strawl down the market on Sunday sometimes. I haven't really seen many fixedgears among the obviously stolen bikes yet but today, I saw
a black (and gray?) Fuji Track bike, small (think about 54?)
couldn't really see it well as the police was already talking to the pimpled seller, and a few minutes later, both bike and police were gone, they might have taken it. If you think it's yours, might be worth calling the police about it before they auction the bike...

oh ja, and also:
as I saw that bike on bricklane today, I tried to look for it on this forum. But the 'stolen bikes' - thread is a bit messy, as mentioned before: stolen bikes, found bikes, tips on locking up and condolences... full of good intentions as we're all friendly people but not too useful.
a separate blog might be a good idea for the future, but for now it might be easier to make a category for stolen bikes with separate threads for every bike [with basic info in the topic and extended info and pictures in the thread]. Easier to find.
[Maybe we also need a thread for found bikes, where we can all post pictures of ugly dodgy people selling beautiful nice bikes, so we can all memorise their faces and hunt for them all the time]

asm Something a bit odd happened in brick lane this Wednesday after (my rather pathetic attempt at) polo. Was sitting in the bar right at the top of brick lane (on the right hand side) with my bike chained to 2 lamp posts in my line of site. This old guy came up to it, started checking it out, then lifted it up (at this point i bolted to the door clenching my fists). By the time I was right next to him he was making some suspicious arm gestures (golf swing?) to what appeared to be a window on the top floor of a building across bethnal green road, to the left of the street that the polo court is on. I dropped my bag on the floor and curtly told him to piss off, got a good look at his face in the process. While i was unlocking my bike I noticed half a magnet on the top tube. Cycled home feeling pretty angry.

I can only assume that

  a) this guy (wearing a check blue shirt, blue jeans, heavy (fat) build, greying/thinning/shortish mousy brown hair, bright blue eyes (and with a squint)) had marked my bike with the magnet for someone else to come along and steal it(I had 2 locks on it, mini kryptonite and an abus cable lock);

and b) The people who would come along with bolt cutters etc were in the building across the street.

Either that or he was just a crazy guy, but I somehow don't think so.

I think/hope that this of some use to everyone here. I am considering parking my bike within easy reach and in clear view somewhere else in brick lane and seeing if I catch the same guy at it again! (Although that's sort of playing with fire i guess.)

that makes me want to punch someone!!

aidan [quote]asm Something a bit odd happened in brick lane this Wednesday after (my rather pathetic attempt at) polo. Was sitting in the bar right at the top of brick lane (on the right hand side) with my bike chained to 2 lamp posts in my line of site. This old guy came up to it, started checking it out, then lifted it up (at this point i bolted to the door clenching my fists). By the time I was right next to him he was making some suspicious arm gestures (golf swing?) to what appeared to be a window on the top floor of a building across bethnal green road, to the left of the street that the polo court is on. I dropped my bag on the floor and curtly told him to piss off, got a good look at his face in the process. While i was unlocking my bike I noticed half a magnet on the top tube. Cycled home feeling pretty angry.

I can only assume that

  a) this guy (wearing a check blue shirt, blue jeans, heavy (fat) build, greying/thinning/shortish mousy brown hair, bright blue eyes (and with a squint)) had marked my bike with the magnet for someone else to come along and steal it(I had 2 locks on it, mini kryptonite and an abus cable lock);

and b) The people who would come along with bolt cutters etc were in the building across the street.

Either that or he was just a crazy guy, but I somehow don't think so.

I think/hope that this of some use to everyone here. I am considering parking my bike within easy reach and in clear view somewhere else in brick lane and seeing if I catch the same guy at it again! (Although that's sort of playing with fire i guess.)

that makes me want to punch someone!![/quote]

I nominate turd furgeson

done!

i wonder if a large group of us dedicate a weekend to catching bike thieves by placing "jail bait bikes" around london
could film and identify a significant percentage of london's organised bike thieves.

vigilantes unite - one weekend!

So are fixed wheel (or single speed) bikes now seen as a higher risk regardless of their immediate value than other types of bike? Just wondering if the whole 'fashion' for fixed wheel bikes has now made the once low-maintenance, unattractive to thieves option a victim of its own renewed popularity?

I think you'll find they nick owt - a bike is a bike, if they can sell it on for some cash, they don't care if it's fixed or geared. If it looks good, they'll try take it, do many messenger bike that are covered in tape and stickers get robbed, or is it Mercians and Langster et al that are targeted? My mate had his scooter nicked at the weekend, owning a classic 1967 Lambretta, I am always paranoid about leaving it, as they are not as easy to secure as modern scooters, my cycle is stored inside my flat and my studio at work, so I have peace of mine with that!

not all thieves are swamp dwelling creatures and do have a small understanding of popular culture.it seems we are underestimating these people....maybe thats why our bikes get stolen(?)

Well, i'm just going from experience of friends, who have had varying qualities of bikes, and i see no preference for either, if they can take it, they have?
I'm certainly not saying there are those out there who take to order, but on the whole I think it's just bike theft, it's always gone on, had my first BMX stolen
as a kid from outside my house - not that it was locked up!!! Oops.

back in the old days 1999 - 2005 i used to have a single speed custom mountain bike but i never cleaned it and made it as basic as possible, it served me well as my courier and also pub bike, i left it out overnight in shoreditch loads of times with no problems. since 2005 when it finally got pinched from outside on the rocks kingsland road i've had 4 fixed gear bikes nicked locked up with two locks whilst friends geared bikes have been left alone.
these little shits know whats what and how much it's worth.
from my years working the worst time for their thievery is during the school holidays and worst locations near any estate.
it seems those really cheap d locks might be worth a go as the metal is quite soft and it jut bends when they try to shatter it through twisting force.

but they are easy to pick with a bic biro aren't they?

dunno i used to see loads of stripped frames with just these cheap d locks left but that was a few years ago

That is true, I see loads of frames with twisted locks, should write down the brand and get some? Obviously they are foiling some of the thieves!