Stolen Brooks Saddles: The Latest Boom Industry?

Reader Neb hips us to this Craigslist post on the subject

I was at the Laney College flea market yesterday, and there were many, many Brooks saddles to be had, black & brown, sprung & unsprung, most in great shape, and most with the post still attached. Of course, the bikes were no longer attached, and the sellers did not appear to be avid cyclists. I asked a couple sellers and the price seems to be around $50-60.

This seems to an industry in bloom - Invest in a saddle lock, but if and when your saddle is stolen, you'll know where to find it!  

Coincidentally, my buddy Ben, he of getting-his-bike-stripped-outside-of-Doc's-Clock-then-losing-it-off-his-bike-rack fame, had two, that's right, TWO Brooks saddles stolen last month.  He built the bike up on Christmas Eve, taking all the usual precautions (chaining the saddle to the frame and wrapping the chain in a tube).  Yet, he still had his new saddle stolen 36 hours later while his bike was parked on Market outside the Westfield.  His conclusion was to buy a third, crappier saddle and take it with him every time he parked his bike.  My conclusion was that fate intended for him to be a rollerblader.

The picture above was part of the chain-breaker that the thief left at the scene of the crime, suggesting our city's crackheads have caught up to our anti-theft tricks.  I guess all that's left to do is either outfit your bike with shitty, worthless parts or, if you really want to irritate yourself, stuffing all your bolts with tinfoil and hot wax.

Comments (7)

trying to understand how that dinky little thing will break a chain?

glue a ball bearing in the seat post. takes 45 min to heat up to get that sucker off. no thief is gonna wanna do that unless they are able to take your whole bike home.

It sucks to get your saddle stolen. One solution to this is to use something other than a bike chain to lock it.

Last July I had a locking nut on my B135 - some spiteful dirtbag thief decided to slash the leather when they couldn’t steal it. They must have tried to use a monkey wrench or something to steal it and scratched the hell out of the post and stripped the nut!

nobody has tried to steal my huffy…