Flipping Bikes

Montréal’s full of Quick Criminals and you don’t need to be hanging out skating on the streets all day to notice it either. In just about every park in the city is some cracked out dude ready to sell you a stolen bike for a great deal. In fact, I heard Montréal has the highest number of bike thefts in North America, it’s become its own industry. Organized crime started exporting stolen bikes in crates to other countries by the tens of thousands.

Bike thieves will straight hustle bikes out in the open as if they were panhandling. So, if you ever need a bicycle, just walk around downtown and look for any weather worn sketch bag that doesn’t seem to match with his wheels. If he doesn’t approach you first, just ask him how much for the ride. The most I have ever paid for a bike was forty bucks for a brand new Federal cruiser, which I still peddle with today. I could have gotten it for thirty, but while I was in the middle of bargaining someone tried out bidding me. The most common cycles for sale on the streets are Canadian Tire Super Cycles, which I wouldn’t even buy brand new for ten dollars. The average going price for any bike off the streets is 20 bucks, the equivalent to a crack rock.

Anyway, the other day at Peace Park I saw some dude rolling by on a Fieling 2008 bike. Leading by example, I asked him how much for the collapsible bike. During price negotiations, I managed to question him on how he goes about stealing bikes. His response was that he doesn’t just rob bikes he steals everything. While showing me his backpack full of tools for cutting chains, freezing and shattering locks, sawing shit, and prying things open, he added, he’d go as far as to following a person who has a bike with disk breaks, just waiting for the chance to nab their ride so he can sell it on the south shore for two maybe three hundred dollars.

Some people argue that you shouldn’t buy stolen bikes because it promotes bike theft. Well let me tell you, in my opinion after getting several bikes stolen, it doesn’t make sense to purchase a new one just to have it stolen again. Besides, buying new bikes from stores in my opinion only saturates the black market. When people buy new bikes instead of stolen ones to replace their stolen bike, less stolen bikes are sold on the streets. This creates a surplus of stolen bikes, which are accumulated by organized crime and shipped to other countries.

A lot of bike shops refuse to repair or buy stolen bikes, but then there are some that profit from it. Meaning, even if you where to purchase a used non-stolen bike from a store, there’s no way to know for sure whether or not it’s a stolen ride. Hence, you might as well just buy it off the streets and save your self some money.

I ended up buying the brand new red-hot Fieling 2008 collapsible for only twenty bucks, still with its plastic wrapping. After I used it as a skate obstacle and not being able to return the bike to its proper owner, I gave it away to a friend who had their bike stolen. If you do have a bike stolen or not, my advice is to invest in a bike lock that’s guaranteed against bike theft.

Dave Bouthillier Bs Flip

Photo: Dan Stevenson