What to Do When Your Bike Gets Stolen in San Francisco

It may surprise you, but here’s how to keep your bike safe from people like Shia Labeouf. (Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC, Robert Bye, Cedric Letsch)

BY TOUTA BAHER

Touta Baher was a child actor who was taken out of the game by Shia LaBeouf on the set of a Skippy peanut butter commercial. That traumatic incident forced him into the archaic world of poetry, where he now sits in rooms full of white people and reads poetry about how evil white people are, only to be told how amazing his work is at the end of these readings by the very white people he was just talking about. 

A satirical character by Antony Fangary.

Every 40 seconds, a bike gets stolen in SF, according to a statistic I made up. But in all seriousness, it can leave you feeling vulnerable, scared, violated, and full of questions. And you wanna know what you should do when your bike gets stolen? You get over it.

Theft is baked into capitalism, so you sorta did it to yourself, what living here and all. I know what you might be thinking, but, Touta, I don’t want to live here! I was born here, against my will, I hate America, blah, blah, fuckin-blah. You might sound like the men and white folks who say, What privilege? This, Dear Reader, is the sin you are born into. Accept it. As long as you participate in this economy, you have blood on your hands. This is something that even those from the most marginalized communities cannot escape. So, only makes sense that your bike and everything else you own would eventually get stolen while living on stolen land. 

But let’s expand that concept of theft and apply it to the bike itself: an amalgamation of exploitation from the labor used to extract the minerals and materials to manufacture the bike to the hands that assemble it. Every aspect of these beautiful machines comes from theft of some sort. Most bikes are manufactured outside of the United States, mostly in countries where the economy and the residue of imperialism and colonialism haven’t allowed humane working conditions to bloom (as if such a thing could exist anywhere). Not to mention the unfair exchange we pay these countries for resources. Remember, no matter what dudes named Noah will tell you, there is no such thing as Fair Trade coffee. 

But I am a hypocrite, of course, benefitting from theft myself. I am writing this piece on a laptop that was made from exploited labor and materials, wearing clothing made from that same sort of theft, and drinking coffee steeped in even more theft and exploitation. So, your bike getting stolen isn’t god saying, “I hate you.” It’s karmic justice for your capitalistic sins. We deserve to have our bikes stolen and walk everywhere in shoes made from equally exploitative means, pushing ourselves further and further into the karmic red zone with each and every step. This, Dear Reader, is the beautiful cycle of exploitation and theft that the founding fathers wanted for us. We need to feel lucky that people can steal our stolen stuff. This is freedom. 

(Andres Jasso)

But don’t get it twisted. If someone stole my bike (again), I imagine I would have a Taken moment, combing through the streets of SF with blood-tinted eyes, scanning every object that looks like it has two wheels. I’d be up for hours, maybe days, swiping through the pages of Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and anywhere else people obviously sell stolen stuff. I’m human, too, and I hurt just like you. I love my objects, and I’d want to lose them the natural way, where I deem them obsolete and throw them away to live in a landfill until the end of time.

Let’s talk about when I got my bike stolen by Shia LaBeouf. He was my best friend growing up, and I call him my best friend because that’s what he is, even though we don’t talk anymore. If you were to bring up my name to him, he would probably act like he doesn’t know who I am, but he would just be acting, you know, since he is a “famous actor” and all. We are close as blood and steak, kale and mustard seed, peanut butter and Ted Cruz’s corpse-filled attic. We grew up on the same street, our mothers were friends, and we even spent most holidays together. We had sleepovers, soccer games, acting class — he was the older brother I never had. He taught me everything I know, from how to skateboard to how to shave, even the proper way to roll a blunt. 

Our friendship began because I saw him wearing a SpongeBob SquarePants t-shirt.

“You like SpongeBob too?” I asked.

He snapped, “SpongeBob is for p***ies!”

I was confused and asked why he was wearing the shirt. 

Then he said, “So I can tell who all the p***ies are. Is that all you do? Ask questions like a fuckin’ p***y?”

I didn’t know what a p***y was or why I became his friend after this, but I think I just needed someone to talk to, and it was the first time someone asked me something about myself. He never bothered to learn my name and only referred to me as “Little Akbar,” but still, I felt special and weirdly indebted to him for his attention, like a desperate lobster in a tank at a fancy restaurant. Sure, the lobster will get boiled alive, but there is something special about getting hand-picked by the kid from Holes, even if he is going to crush you limb by limb.

That day, we rode our bikes around the neighborhood until the sun came down. Then, as I was planning to go home, he asked if I wanted to see “how a real man makes his money.” How could I resist? Of course, I wanted to see anything that a “real” man did. Masculinity gets us young. 

He led me into a huge six-car garage, and there it was: hundreds of bikes gutted and laid out on the ground. I didn’t realize how amazing it was back then, but this 13-year-old child actor, the kid from Even Stevens, was running an underground stolen bike chop shop out of his house. He used a big chunk of his Disney money to pay people to steal, gut, reassemble, and resell stolen bikes. He looked proud when he showed me this, like a father watching his child graduate college with a non-humanities degree. I’ll never forget when he said, “You see this, Little Akbar? This is how a man gets his money to work for him.” I felt like I learned something new about the world. 

Then he stole my bike. He said he needed to keep it there for some reason, and I should stop being a p***y and run home. I never saw my bike again, but at least I had a friend.