The Unlucky Bike Thief

Copenhagen, 2016. In a city with five times more bicycles than people, a man levers open a low-grade wheel lock on a black Christiania cargo bike — a recognisable, expensive three-wheeled bike, the kind a Copenhagen parent uses for a school run — and rides it northbound up a narrow side street. He has been riding for ninety seconds when a car hits him from behind at twenty kilometres an hour. He is thrown over the wooden cargo box onto the pavement. The driver of the car gets out and walks over. The driver is not a stranger. The driver is the owner of the bike — who had been at a café across the street, returned to the rack, seen the bike was missing, seen the back of a man riding it up the street, got into his car, and given chase. The thief, lying on the pavement next to the stolen bike, has a brief and confused conversation with the owner. He asks, by police record, whose bike it is. The owner tells him. The thief says, in Danish, oh — three times. The Politi arrive seven minutes later. Kit and Eden on Copenhagen civilian engagement, the wrong vehicle for a getaway, and the four-thousand-kilo collision that ended a ninety-second crime spree.