Being a bicycle thief in old-time Phoenix


I've never known anyone who is a bicycle thief, but I know that they're everywhere. My own personal experience is that I was told to never leave my bike anywhere, even locked, when I was a kid in Minneapolis, and the bike that I bought when I moved back to Phoenix from Los Angeles in 1989 was stolen just about right away, even with a nice sturdy lock in a well-lit area in a nice apartment complex. And no, I didn't even consider owning a bicycle in LA! And all of this has got me to thinking about being a bicycle thief, and specifically in old-time Phoenix.

Time-travel with me to turn-of-the-century Phoenix. There are very few automobiles, the streets aren't paved yet, but there are a lot of bicycles. Oh yeah, and horses, too.

Like horses, bicycles could be stolen. I've never seen a photo of a horse padlocked to a hitching rail, and bicycles were just there for the taking, too. Of course a lot of people "parked" their horses in a livery stable when they came into town, and presumably if you had the money you could do that with a bicycle, too. It was definitely done with cars! But most people who rode bicycles then, as now, didn't really have a lot of money to spend on luxuries.

Being a bicycle thief is pretty much the same as being a horse thief. It's all about opportunity, and moving quickly before you're caught. The job is just about 100% profit and the hours are flexible, but the risks are very high. You have to be willing to allow yourself to be in physical danger in order to do what you need to do, and that would include being shot, or stabbed, or beaten, or having a dog sic'ed on you. But people did it!


With my luck I would have stolen the bicycle belonging to the owner of Judge Ruppert, a huge Great Dane that lived in Phoenix around the turn of the century! Yikes!

Image at the top of this post: Riding a bicycle in Phoenix in 1905. You're looking west on Washington towards 1st Street. Judge Ruppert is also on Washington, but you're looking east towards 1st Avenue.

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