I own what might be the perfect city bike: a sage green, Amsterdam-style cruiser I researched for months before buying. In two years, I’ve ridden it three times. The reason? I’m scared of having it stolen.
I’m not alone. The fear of losing a bike — to say nothing of actually losing one — quietly undercuts the very thing that drew my partner and me to Minneapolis: its bikeability.
Choosing Minneapolis Due to its Bikeability
Before moving to Minneapolis, my partner and I would very frequently hitch up our bicycles and drive the 20-some minutes from a southwest suburb into the city to ride the trails around the Chain of Lakes or along Minnehaha Creek.
After we realized that it made more sense for us to “live where we play” rather than making these weekly trips for restaurants and leisure biking, we finally made the move to our East Isles home.
We didn’t consider our lifestyle as that of bikers, but the bikeability of Minneapolis was certainly alluring.
After venturing beyond the bike trails of parks in South Minneapolis, we discovered that urban bike lanes, both protected and shared on-road, gave us access to explore the less park-y parts of the city.
An hour-long bike ride would allow us to explore 10 to 12 miles through unique Minneapolis neighborhoods. Our hybrid bikes were soon upgraded to electric bikes, giving us even more freedom to wander without going beyond our not-so-avid biking limits.
I then bought a clip-on basket sold as an accessory for my specific electric bike, as I considered expanding its use to short errands rather than just fun.
And, truthfully, that’s about as far as this idealized version of using my bike for transportation has gone.
The City of Bikes
We live in a very dense section of the city, and I do observe people who are clearly using their bikes as a primary means to transport goods in saddlebags or milk crates bolted to their frames.
There are even kids riding to and fro in bucket bikes. But where are these riders keeping their bikes safe so that they’re still there when they get back?
“Why don’t you just buy a cheap ‘bar bike’? That way, if something happens to it, it’s not like you’ve lost something that’s going to be really expensive to replace.
The more I came to terms with my hesitation, the more I asked around: Am I the only one a little paranoid about this potential loss?
The answer, not surprisingly, was no.
Before we chalk this up to a guy who’s just not comfortable with city life, let’s rewind. I was raised in the inner city, my adolescence spent in multiple duplexes in neighborhoods where, unfortunately, theft was common.
In fact, after I realized my early ’90s BMX kid bike had gone missing, my single mother went with a neighbor to retrieve it from the strangers three blocks away who had taken it.
If those strangers got even half the look my mom could give, I understand why she got it back without a confrontation.
While not particularly scarring, I still vividly remember the feeling of walking outside and realizing my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me — my bike was gone.
The Kmart Chop Shop
Maybe it traces back to our first few rides through the Midtown Greenway after moving to Minneapolis in 2021.
For those who remember, the backside of the former Kmart was a legit bicycle chop shop.
In 2022, the Star Tribune ran a commentary in which a resident recounted retrieving her bike — intact — from the person who had it, alongside piles of bikes and bike parts.
I saw those piles from the trail below and thought, “I sure hope my bike doesn’t end up gone, but if it does, this is the place to find it.”
Thankfully, the Kmart and the chop shop are a thing of the past.
My partner, who brags about his 10-minute commute to work downtown on his electric bike, said, “Why don’t you just buy a cheap ‘bar bike’? That way, if something happens to it, it’s not like you’ve lost something that’s going to be really expensive to replace.” He had a point. So I hunted for said bar bike.
That hunt soon morphed into researching the perfect, Amsterdam-style upright bicycle for my new urban lifestyle. I finally landed one with a hunter green frame, complete with a hand-stitched, camel leatherette seat and grips.
I even bought a retro detachable chrome basket because, of course, I was going to have so much to carry around. I may have strayed a little from the cheap bar bike, but I have no regrets.
As I said, I’ve ridden it three times in two years.
I just can’t bear the thought of losing it.
Am I paranoid?
Determined to prove I’m not just unreasonably worried about bike theft, I searched the Minneapolis Crime Dashboard. Not to my surprise, bicycle thefts aren’t categorized on their own.
They’re labeled as general property crimes, so isolating the data requires requesting it internally.
The most recent figure published in local media came in May 2025, when KSTP reported that the Minneapolis Police Department logged 1,462 stolen-bicycle cases in 2024 — a six-year high.
[Editor’s note: updated MPD figures pending.] It wasn’t comforting, but I needed to hear solutions.
As part of Minneapolis’s Transportation Action Plan, a proposal to pilot safe bicycle storage locations around the city was presented in 2024, with the sites supposedly active that fall. As of last June, the city was still holding webinars about the coming storage locations. To date, there are no signs of city-sponsored safe bicycle storage. Is Hennepin County holding bike thieves accountable? I don’t know.
Until there are solutions that give riders a little more confidence, I’ve registered all of our household bicycles with the city.
In 2025, we were asked to re-register our bikes with Bike Index, a national bicycle registry that the police department’s Property and Evidence Unit uses to connect missing bikes to their riders. We also invested in U-locks as a deterrent.
Some neighbors say they just bring their bikes inside stores; my partner and other clients bring theirs into the gym.
Still, the worries — mine and my neighbors’ — persist. At a meeting in May at the VFW in LynLake about the coming Lyndale Avenue redesign and reconstruction, someone who works at the CC Club said “The people that come by bikes... they are all stolen. They come out and there’s tires laying around, bikes chopped up.”
In my search for fear-of-cycling validation, one Reddit user, Beneficial_Giraffe21, summed it up: “I’m also not OK with bike theft, which has such a chilling effect on public safety and people’s willingness to embrace cycling as transportation.”
For me, it’s baby steps — er, training wheels — toward the point where I can bike to run errands and support local businesses.
Just don’t expect me to do it in January. It’s going to take quite a few more years as a newer Minnesotan for me to build up that level of commitment.
Quinton Courts writes for the Hill & Lake Press. He lives in East Isles.
