Originally Posted by alanbikehouston
If you are using a cable lock, and your bike has not been stolen, it does NOT mean "a cable lock is good enough if my neighborhood". It simply means none of the crooks in your area want your bike. Even a heavy weight $40 cable lock can be opened by an experienced crook in under one minute.
Cable locks are NOT locks. They are an ad that says "Get Your Free Bike Right Here". A bike shop ought to be ashamed to sell someone a new bike that costs $500 or $800 and let them out the door with anything less than a good OnGuard or Kryptonite u-lock.
I think it all depends on the attitude of where you live. In my city, the person driving the $300 Ford Taurus with the transmission going out and the right fender crushed in still thinks he's better off then the guy riding the $2,000 bike because he has a car. If a bike is going to get stolen here, it's going to be a bike left sitting out unlocked; even the most rudimentary of locks is enough to stop most every would be bike thief in my area.
However, I only have a cable lock and as such, I don't feel comfortable leaving my bike locked with it and unattended for more than a few minutes. Mostly out of paranoia. I've been looking at u-locks and trying to decide which to invest in. But that leads me to another question - how hard is it to find a "thick steel pole set in concrete" around where you live? The closest I usually see is street signs and it seems like since they'd unbolt easily, they're not a good option. Also, it seems like it'd be hard to get a mini u-lock around a steel pole. Maybe I just don't know what to look for? What method do you go for if/when you can't locate a steel pole that you can get your u-lock around?