I live in an apartment building. My apartment is too small to store my bike and I don’t have a patio. For the past 4 years I have been locking my bike to the railing on the landing of a lightly used interior stairwell. It is not visible from the street and is secured since the gate requires a key. The stairwell faces another building. So it isn’t visible from the street or anything.

Several other people parked their bikes on the ground floor below this landing.

Well apparently someone left the gate open. And most of the bikes were stolen. Or had parts stolen. Mine was cut from the railing and stolen.

I thought my spot was pretty safe, but clearly this person had plenty of time. And my building has few people home during the day - no one would have seen anything.

I’m crushed. My bike was a carefully curated (by me) custom build.

Now I am not sure how I want to replace. And how much work to put into trolling all of the various sources of stolen bikes.