metaljim

once again, if it's not yours, don't take it.

let the campus/park/transit/city police liberate it in the summer like they always do, and go pick it up when they auction it if you really want it. the auctions are advertised. they aren't clandestine.

if you do feel the need to be the guy who steals a bike, no matter what justification you may have, take it to a charity or your local co-op. they will give the bike to someone who really needs it, or sell it/part it out to for funds they need.

don't just take it because you think it's abandoned and you want the stem. that's a waste, and a dick move.

cavit8

Similarly, City of Toronto tags bikes that appear abandoned, then you have two weeks (nominally) before they remove it. I'm not sure where you are, but it appears the Honolulu police have a operation Street Sweep:
"Operation Bicycle "Street Sweep" consists of two officers who track abandoned, derelict, and illegally parked bicycles and cite and remove them from the streets."

Give them a shout and see what the rules are. I've never liberated a bike 'cause most of the abandoned ones around here are, as blick blocks said, so totally POS as to not be worth it.

ssspenser

about 2 weeks ago there was an oldish bike locked to the fence outside my apartment in the bike area. there was a note on it that said "this bike appears to be abandoned. if it isnt recovered within 3 days the lock will be cut and it will be donated to City Bikes." and the note was official and such. i thought about scanvenging some parts off it but i ended up not. oh and the front tire was gone. anyways is this immoral as well?

crushkilldstroy

That depends. Was it your bike?

maddyfish

How do you do it? You just do it. Nobody will question you. Cops will walk right by you. Pedestrians will want right by. Just walk right over and do it. Don't hide. Look like you belong. If it is in a city, if possible wear a hat with the city name on it, and if possible a "workman" style shirt. If on a school campus wear a school hat, or a outfit that approximates the look of the school's maintenance personel. Nobody cares if you take a bike. Just say if asked, "I'm clearing out this old abandoned bike for the" and insert the name of the school or city.

Should you do it? No it is theft.
Maybe if you went to the property owner, city, or whoever administers the bike rack and offer to clean up the old bikes. Call it recycling, or city beautification. Be polite.

Negative Force

You are a bike thief. And that's disgusting.




And by the way, other trend-hopping ******bags-who-happen-to-be-on-a-bike, you aren't "liberating" anything. It is stealing. It will always be stealing, and your self-serving, adjustable moral compass is full of ****.

Zombie Carl

****ing word.

metaljim

to your mother****ing momz.

what's the word? word up.

doofo

i pay your momma in liberated bikes

crushkilldstroy

Checkmate.

SingleSpeeDemon

There was a bike chained up near my office for at least a couple months. Frequently on my way past it, I would set it upright when it was knocked over, almost becoming a caretake of this bike. Within the last few days of its existence locked it's street sign both wheels were taken. Shortly after that I walked by after work to see a city employee cutting the cable lock. I asked him where abandoned bikes went. He said "the dump". So I asked if I could have it. "Take it" he said.

I sleep better knowing that I saved it from the dump, but I would never have touched it otherwise.

wildturkey

whatever. don't take it. are you that lame? or poor?

Half-Impressive

what's up, Kantian ethics.

What are you stealing from if it doesn't belong to anyone. If I don't want a sandwich, and leave it on a park bench, should i be upset if some takes it? What if they take my sandwich and give it to someone who needs it more? Are they stealing it from me? Even if they are, I don't want it, so what's the big deal?

I said I don't do it because the risk is too high, not because it is inherently wrong. Try working out some kind of argument rather than just declaring it wrong because it "is" wrong.

dumbass.

BizzaroSteve

What do you mean by Kantian ethics? Are you applying Kantian ethics or was Negative force?

crushkilldstroy

You suck at comparisons. It'd be more like breaking into a store that's been closed for a couple of months because you want a belt. What the hell kind of idiot would lock a sandwich to a park bench and come back for it half a year later?

It's hilarious watching people in this thread try to justify bike theft. Get a job.

jussik

Well, as for the bike I 'liberated', even if most you seem to consider this as theft,
in first place I did it in order to keep our yard clean. After all, I'm member of our house's administrative board (or whatever that is it called), we own our flat and if some ass leaves their garbage, litter or other s*it on the yard, I will personally clean it up when I see it.

So just don't come leaving your crappy old bikes lying around and rotting in the bushes on our yard, which is private property after all. 'Cos it gets cleaned away, simple as that. And this was obviously not a bike belonging to any of the tenants.

Serendipper 

Thieves, I'll have at you if I catch you.

Half-Impressive

Point taken.

But my only point was to show that if you forcibly remove a bike lock from a bike that isn't yours, it doesn't necessarily mean its theft. There could be other reasons you're doing it. And even if we were to call all such instances theft, they wouldn't all necessarily be wrong.

We don't call it theft when the polce do it. Maybe we should start.

SingleSpeeDemon

I'm not poor, I'm broke. You gotta problem with that?

vuduchyld

Kant would absolutely pwn any of you poseurs who would try to justify taking something that is not yours. Unless there is a transparent process in place to identify the definition of abandonment, YOU ARE STEALING. Kant would tell you that is not ethical.

So when the campus FO folks or when the cops are cutting locks off abandoned bikes, they are following a process. It's a transparent, defined process. IT IS DEFINED and TRANSPARENT to EVERYBODY, not just one person saying "oh, it has been two weeks" or "oh, it has been three months". YOU do not get to decide how long I lock up my bike or where I lock it up...or whether it is even locked. Your definition of abandoned may not be the same as mine.

I had a bike locked up outside for quite a while my freshman year in college...about 20 years ago. Whether it was "liberated" or "stolen" the net effect was the same for me. If I find out it which of you poseurs did it, you will rue the day.

schnee

The police do because they're vested with the authority to do so by society as a whole. We give up our rights to vigilante behavior to an impartial third party under public scrutiny.

You might as well say 'we don't call it kidnapping when the courts imprison a murderer for 20 years. Maybe we should start.' It's stupid closing in on terminally idiotic.

wroomwroomoops

Dude, you're losing it.

Look, I sympathize with people who say that a certain bike has been taking up the space in the rack or is just in the way in the yard etc. but the way to solve this shouldn't be to appropriate the bike. You notify the authority/owner of the place, and let them take care of it. What the police will do is, they'll take reasonable steps to try and contact the woner. In most cases this isn't possible, so the bicycle is auctioned off. That's what they do here in Finland, and I'm pretty sure a similar process exists in other places.

IDeliverPitas

Just because a bike has been locked up forever and is in ****ty condition doesn't mean that nobody is coming back for it. I had one beat up 10 speed that i used to leave locked up for a long time at the train station. I used that bike only for riding to and from the train station. I wasn't comfortable leaving my nicer bike there for long periods of time so I used the beater. Also I had a bike that I kept locked up outside the train station in Lancaster, PA. That bike was for whenever I went to visit my friends there. Amtrak wouldn't let me take my bike on the philly to lancaster train so I bought a cheap bike and left it in lancaster so I wouldn't be stuck without a bike on visits. That bike sat there for periods of over 3 months untouched.

knucks

The general rule of thumb on campus is if any of the wheels are tacoed, it's fair game. If handlebars are missing, it's fair game. If derailler is gone w/ the chain, it's fair game.

Basically, if it's not rideable, it's considered abandoned.

blackblood

my first bike was a mountain bike my mom bought for me as a kid. i loved it and rode it to death (even as it started to become too small for me) i kept getting taller and one day in high school decided this bike was not for me anymore. i saved some money and bought my first road frame. i didn't really want to hassle with selling the mountain bike, so i just took it downtown and left it there unlocked. i figured someone who needed it for some reason or another would take it. sure enough, two weeks later it was gone.

that being said, i could never bring myself to take a bike, even if it has been sitting there for a long time. my bike is my lifeline, and even though the owner could be neglecting it, it is possible that they really need that bike.