Bikes Stolen from Bike Walk Tompkins and Southside Community Center

By Niki Firske, Associate Director of Bike Walk Tompkins & Chavon Bunch, Director of Southside Community Center

In January 2023, Southside Community Center’s RIBs and Bike Walk Tompkins (BWT) suffered two, calculated bike thefts. The first happened in the first week of January when BWT staff found its bike education trailer with locks cut off and 10 refurbished bikes gone. The following week, refurbished bikes disappeared from RIBs while the shop was closed. The combined financial impact was the loss of $2000+ of potential income to our programs and over $1,000 in additional expenses to fix damage and install security measures. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the ongoing struggle with bike theft in Ithaca that has affected countless individuals, local businesses, and our community bike shops. How can we tackle the issue of bike theft with compassion and empathy, treating it as a symptom of an inequitable transportation system?

Many of you know Southside Community Center from their programs that educate youth, feed community members, and empower Black Americans through