Thieves Targeting Ghost Bikes For Parts

Thieves are now stripping parts from “ghost bikes,” the white bicycles placed as memorials to slain cyclists, according to the Brooklyn Paper.

“It’s very disrespectful and it makes me furious,” said bike activist and filmmaker Dan Gingold. “People wouldn’t be disrespectful in a cemetery or a national monument.”

The paper says that the thieves have mainly gone after “easy-to-snatch parts,” with the frame usually remaining chained in place.

“People who take parts off bikes are probably not connected to biking or even know what ghost bikes are,” Ellen Belcher, a volunteer with the New York Street Memorial Project told the paper.

The bikes are covered in thick white paint, usually

According to the Brooklyn Paper, the bike at the corner of Atlantic and Washington avenues is missing its seat and rear wheel.

Ralston Bryan’s ghost bike, at the corner of Fulton Street and Utica Avenue in Bed-Stuy is missing it’s front wheel as well, while a bike memorializing Dan Valle, on S. Fifth Street near the Williamsburg Bridge, is down to a frame, handlebars, and seat.

Previously, the Department of Sanitation would come after ghost bikes, but cycling advocates convinced the city to only remove the bikes if they were in bad shape and could be considered a hazard.