bitingduck

edit: Found and being recovered- see below

My girlfriend's bike was stolen tonight while parked at UQAM. It's a 44 cm Bianchi Axis cyclocross bike-- pretty rare around Montreal (I don't think Bianchi even imports to Canada, or at least not Quebec). It's got V-brakes, is black and celeste, and has square-ish tubing, and is pretty small but with 700c wheels. PM me in the unlikely event you see it around.

Boudicca

Ouch.

Bianchi does import to Canada though -- couple of Toronto shops carry 'em.

Steve_Guelph

I would look on Kijiji, Ebay, and local ads for the next little while. This happened to one of our members and he got to meet face to face with the same person that tried to sell him his own bike back.

Hope you find the bike...Steve

bitingduck

Amazingly, it looks like it's been found and we're in the process of getting it back!

A shop owner near where it was stolen had someone walk in with it last night, and knew it was stolen (they got it for practically free). They got it, and posted on craigslist that they had it (very minimal description) and wanted to make sure it got back to the owner. I saw the post--mac os x mail client makes it easy to watch and filter a lot of RSS feeds, so I was watching every craigslist bikes for sale feed within 200 miles, plus ebay and comptant.com. I emailed with more details of the bike and they're pretty sure it's hers. They wanted proof of ownership but not money (they'll be covered for what they paid for it, though).

I learned a lot about the bike theft markets in Montreal and Toronto in the process though. It seems like a really frustrating situation, since the police don't do much about what seems to be really rampant and organized bike theft. A little bit of work with bait bikes and some serious prosecution might go a long way.

Kurogashi

I'm curious, how did it get stolen in the first place? Was it not locked with a U-lock? Grats on the recovery, your gf is lucky to have a guy who went through all that trouble.

bitingduck

It was locked with a pretty hefty (and recent model) U-lock to some kind of clamp-type rack at UQAM (haven't seen one myself--I'm in LA). They broke the rack to get the bike-- the lock wasn't left behind. I suspect it took from tuesday to friday to get the lock off the bike. There are also more and more stories here in LA of people having U-locks broken-- there are some recent pics posted at midnightridazz.

Edit: she finally picked up the bike from the shop and the U-lock was still on it. The lights (cheap ones) were gone, and the thief had added a saddle pad (odd...a strange attempt to disguise it?). She also said that the rack it was locked to is still all bent up and people don't try to lock to it.

When I was reading about bike theft in Montreal and Toronto I saw a lot of stories of people finding their bikes again on CL and/or pawn shops, particularly higher end and more recognizable bikes. Monitoring CL is really easy-- there are RSS feeds on all the for sale pages, so I was just using my mail client to monitor all the bikes for sale ads within about 200 miles of Montreal. The thief unloaded it less than a mile from where it was stolen for next to nothing, and the shop owner posted something to the effect that they knew the bike was stolen and wanted to get it back to the owner.

idugboe

Congrats on getting the bike back.
What is the name of the shop, they deserve a plug.

bitingduck

bikurious (formerly revolution) near uqam