Here's one bike owner who never really liked that bike seat anyway. Photo from New York Times.

I’m loving this new recurring feature about urban cycling at the NYT’s City Room, known as Spokes. In this post, SPOKESwriter David Goodman discusses a subject near and dear to my heart - bike theft.

A while back we wrote about Philadelphia’s ignominious distinction at the top of the Kryptonite Lock company’s list of worst cities for bike theft. Along with knocking New York’s National League baseball team from the top of the division, Philadephia was also able to knock Gotham from the top spot for bike theft that it once held. In fact, New York had that spot for so long that Kryptonite named their top-of-the-line locks the “New York” locks.

So after taking over the top spot, do we get some props from Superman’s nemesis?  Nope:

Exact numbers are hard to pin down from other sources as well. The Kryptonite company, which makes a “New York” line of heavy duty locks and chains, releases a yearly ranking of the top 10 worst cities for bike theft. But their exact formula and underlying data are “proprietary,” according to a spokeswoman, Karen Rizzo.

She would say only that “a key factor is the number of bicycle theft claims we receive from people who believe their bike was stolen while using” one of the company’s locks.
…
Nevertheless, New York fell from its top spot on the Kryptonite list last year to No. 3, behind Philadelphia and Chicago.

A locked beach cruiser on North Seventh Street in Williamsburg was missing its unsecured parts — seat and rear wheel. Almost certainly, these were stolen.

Even so, the company said it had no plans to change the name of the “New York” product line, or to begin marketing “Philly” locks. “Cyclists all over the U.S. still consider New York to be the toughest place to own and ride a bike, despite a one-year blip in our chart,” Ms. Rizzo wrote in an e-mail message.

Actually, now that I think about it, New York can keep that distinction.  I’ve discovered that if you ride a crappy enough bike, you can pretty much secure it with a rope and a good square knot.