Here's your San Francisco experience in a nutshell: you pop into Whole Foods on 4th Street for five minutes — five minutes — and come back to a cut lock and an empty bike rack. Another resident learned this week what thousands of SF cyclists already know: this city has essentially decriminalized bike theft.

The victim's bike is built for someone 6'3", making it pretty distinctive. Not that it matters much. As one local put it, "There should be a club for idiots like us who lock our bikes up at that Whole Foods thinking they'll be okay." He's not wrong — that particular location has become something of a legendary hunting ground for thieves.

So what do you do when your bike gets stolen in San Francisco? Well, you certainly don't count on law enforcement. The unofficial playbook, crowd-sourced by residents who've been through this before, reads like a DIY vigilante handbook: check flea markets, stake out BART stations at 16th and 24th, cruise the Mission looking for someone riding your property, set up automated Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace alerts, and — the real pro tip — hide an Apple AirTag on your bike before it gets stolen. One SF resident shared that an AirTag helped them recover their bike not once, but twice, adding, "Maybe not legally, but I got it back."

Let that sink in. Citizens are running their own sting operations because the system has completely abdicated responsibility.

This isn't just a bike problem. It's a property rights problem. When theft below $950 is effectively a citation — if anyone even bothers showing up — you've created a rational incentive to steal. Thieves know the risk-reward calculus better than most economists. A bike worth $1,500 on the street, with virtually zero chance of prosecution? That's just good business if you're a criminal.

The city could fund dedicated property crime units. It could crack down on the open-air stolen goods markets that everyone knows about but nobody touches. It could prosecute repeat offenders. Instead, San Franciscans are left hiding tracking devices on their own property and browsing flea markets on weekends, hoping to buy back what's already theirs.

Register your bike's serial number at BikeIndex.org. File a police report, even if it feels pointless — it builds the data. Get a U-lock. And maybe, just maybe, start asking your elected officials why "five minutes at the grocery store" is all the window a thief needs to operate with impunity in broad daylight.