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Monday, February 1, 2010

Bikes Bike Shop Broken into Before its Opening Day

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:02 AM

Tom Daly made this helpful mock-up of the break-in at his new shop.
  • Tom Daly made this helpful mock-up of the break-in at his new shop.
Chalk up another point toward Portland's reputation as a bike thief capital: our fair city's newest bike repair shop has been ripped off even before its opening day. Tom Daly worked for the past year as a manager at Joe Bike, saving up money and building a tool collection to finally open his own space, WTFBikes (get your mind out of the gutter! It stands for "Well Tuned and Fast") in the food cart lot on SE 11th and Clay. The store is pretty humble: just a collection of tools, parts, work bench, and customer bikes in a corner of the lot surrounded by a tall chain-link fence. "It was a skeleton bike shop, but all the parts were there," says Daly. The grand opening is this Wednesday February 3rd.

But Daly awoke to a 6 AM phone call from his landlord on Saturday morning: someone had hopped the fence, cut the padlock on his chain-link door and made off with $1,300 worth of bikes and tools. The stolen cutsomers' bikes are an Iron Horse and a Novara. Though Daly has insurance, he says he's not going to try and get them to cover the damage. "I was in a spot that was locked up with a padlock. If I have an insurance person come out, they're just going to laugh in my face and raise my premium," he says.

Daly might not need to get insurance involved. Since friends heard about the break in Saturday morning, Daly has received almost $1,000 in donations to get back in business, including an anonymous donation of tools. "My primary negative emotion that I feel right now is guilt, because everyone's been so great. I'm lucky, I'm so lucky," says Daly. Once he gets back on his feet, Daly will make one major change to his business: moving inside a building.

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