http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7zb8YXrmIA

its mind boggling to me that people either don't notice or just don't care.

six minutes with a hacksaw.. and especially plugging in the power tool, crazy!

If you have ever been to NY you would understand. So much going on and no one cares. You see the weirdest stuff at any given moment. This isn't surprising at all. I bet even if this was real and the person actually caught him in the act and started a fight no one would even care.

As well usually when someone is so calm and confident you may think that its his own bike and he lost the key.

i hear you about new york being crazy like that.
used to live in d.c. and have been there a number of times

still, the fact that cops are just driving by, people just walking by, etc.. seems wild to me.

keep in mind... this is coming from someone (me) who lives in southern illinois

i saw a video like this at a bicycle film festival once where a police officer actually came up and helped a guy trying to break a bike lock.

makes me nervous about ever leaving my bike outdoors.

I'd like to see some sort of licensing for bikes. Here in Portland the bicyclists are practically catered to, with the city dumping millions of dollars into street changes to make more bike lanes. If bicycles could somehow be licensed then there'd actually be money for these changes rather than using tax-payer dollars on something that's basically unnecessary. And then if a police saw someone cutting a lock they could verify ownership before helping them steal the bike!
I'm not at all against commuting by bike - I think it's great, and I use to be a bike messenger. But I don't like that the city is spending money on traffic changes for bikes when they could be putting the money to better use.

What needs to be changed to allow people to bike???

Therein lies the problem. I just don't like how the bicycle community is able to demand major projects that cater to them and put all tax payers on the hook. Bike lanes and bike boxes really aren't necessary - especially if the bicyclists would ride in a responsible manner! Instead of putting the city money to use on teachers, or updating city buildings with photovoltaic panels, or purchasing electric cars to replace the city-owned gas vehicles, etc, etc, etc, we're putting the money into something that benefits very few people and is absolutely unnecessary. The "vehicular food chain" is really screwed up here - in Europe the right-of-way goes car>bike>pedestrian, and that's how it should be. But here it's completely opposite. Basically pedestrians and bikes are told that they can do whatever they want, and that just sets them up to get killed by a car. Little things that can stop quick should be on the lookout for bigger things that can't stop as quick - common sense.

Is the bike community able to really bring about this kind of change? It seems like a small lobby. I thought it had more to do with cities trying to encourage biking to promote health, pollution control, and alleviate traffic congestion. I think cities are funding these in hopes of encouraging more biking, not because bikers demanded it. But I may be wrong.

Well yes, you are probably right - it's more that the city wants to project an image. But the biking community has lobbied for increased bike lanes, including changing a 4-lane street to a 2-lane street in order to accommodate bike lanes on a very heavily trafficked street when a more bike-friendly parallel street is just 4 blocks away. (I don't know if that ever happened - I try to stay away from Hawthorne.)
As someone who use to bike a lot I'm really fed up with all this bike-lane nonsense and all the a-hole bikers in this city.

I thought this thread was gonna be about some hardcore band named bike thief that I haven't heard of yet....oh well

I avoid the busy streets with bike lanes when I get around town in Portland. My bike is old and slow and the serious bikers here always scream at me to get the fuck out of the way. Plus, I think the side streets are a lot more interesting to explore.

these rich cyclists near me piss me off to no end, they ride down the middle of a lane on a 2 lane highway like they own the road. and i dont mean a group of 50, itll be even one or two! plus you should see some of these fat guys in this spandex, like it makes their fat more aerodynamic