Reward Offered for "Ass Kicking" of "Scum Bag Thief" of Vintage Bike

Here's one way to earn $100...

​Tara N. built that bicycle himself when he was a teenager. It had sat, dormant, in his parents' garage in San Jose for the better part of 22 years. And, not three weeks after he rescued it and planned to fix it up here in San Francisco -- someone broke in and stole it.

So Tara wants his bike back. But he'd like a little more, too.

"$100 reward for the return or information leading to the ass kicking, I mean arrest, of the scum bag thief," reads Tara's eye-catching posters, which he's affixed near his home on Alamo Square.

Tara notes that, no, he doesn't really want to fund the beating of his victimizers. But it did feel fun to write it that way. "That's in thought only," he says. "But, in theory, I would like to see them in the public stocks out in Union Square. Maybe we could throw tomatoes at them."

Jim Herd

​Tara's beloved ride was a 1972 vintage Peugeot with a number of handmade aluminum components that were affordable when he put the bike together in the 1980s -- but are now precious if obtainable at all.

Whoever purloined the bicycle appears to know what he or she was doing. Sometime between 1 and 7 a.m. on Thursday, Jan. 12, a bolt-cutter or some such device was used to cut through the hasp on which Tara had affixed a padlock. The thief made off with the vintage bike while leaving several more pedestrian cycles in the basement room. The Peugeot has flat tires and hadn't undergone any maintenance following its 22-year San Jose sojourn, so Tara is pretty sure the burglar wheeled or carried it away.

The bike thief or thieves made short work of the hasp securing the padlock to a basement room

​"I'm under the impression this happens to a lot of nice bikes in San Francisco," Tara laments. "When I called some of the bike shops to let them know about it, they told me they get a call like this every day."

His bicycle is "so identifiable, so unique" that selling it whole would be a feat for the thieves. He's holding out hope that the burglars may be "some kids" whose parents might be wondering about the nifty old bike that suddenly appeared in the yard.

If anyone has a bead on the location of the 1972 Peugeot and wants his or her due reward, they can contact Tara here.

The ass-kicking is to be undertaken at one's own discretion.

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