I live in a college town that does have its fair share of stolen bikes, but the first place it usually goes is to the pawn shop and the police and the pawn shop have set up a data base that links them to stolen merchandise. I found this out the hard way when my car was broken into and the stero stolen I did get it back through this system. Also the pawn shop requires I.D. to sell merchandise, and the college will engrave a serial number in a descrete location on the bike for free so to identify it later, so I'm confident that I won't be buying stolen merchandise. Thanks for the hints and can someome direct me to a good site for reviews of bikes or maybe a good mag?