On Monday, the scales of justice worked, for once, like a well-oiled machine, though the usual mechanisms of law and order were circumvented. To paraphrase a classic noir: There are a thousand bike thefts in the city. This is one of them.
For Ashley Von Edge, owner of Tight Knit Vintage on Balboa Street near 20th Avenue, her ride is the bicycle equivalent of a Frankenstein’s monster — an ungainly Dutch-style bucket bike, with a throttle-motor that turns the pedals as though it were a demonic fixie. It is, she said, a heavy, awkward ride for the uninitiated.
That said, the guy who stole it didn’t appear to have a problem riding it away.
Cargo bikes don’t come cheap. A brand new version of Von Edge’s bike would run her upwards of $3500. Even used, they rarely drop below $1,000. More importantly, this one carried its fair share of sentimental value. Once, said Von Edge, her husband transported five (helmeted) kids on it at once.
Around 4 p.m., Von Edge realized the monster was gone. She had left the key in the bike lock.
Von Edge reached out to the police, who told her that she was welcome to file a report. “That wasn’t a priority,” said Von Edge, “because I knew that’s not how I was going to get my bike back.” She figured she’d be better off calling any and all bicycle-loving neighborhood vigilantes to hunt the cargo bike down.
So it stands to reason that Molly Hayden, a bike safety instructor who rides her own gigantic cargo bike and was recently named San Francisco’s 2026 Bicycle Champion by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, would see the distress call Von Edge posted on Tight Knit’s Instagram account. Hayden reposted the call to the 4,000 follower-strong Instagram account for Scenic Routes Community Bicycle Center, where Hayden volunteers.
Von Edge began to get messages from neighbors reporting possible sightings, including one describing a “short kind of guy” riding a similar-looking bike in the Outer Sunset.
Not long after, around 6 p.m., Hayden, standing in her open Lower Haight garage, saw what looked like Von Edge’s cargo bucket bike whizz by.
Hayden took matters into her own pedals, racing after the suspect. A cargo-bike-on-cargo-bike chase scene began.
After a few blocks matching his pace, now sure that the bike was Von Edge’s, Hayden made her pitch. “I got up close to him and I was like, ‘Hey, I know this bike is stolen. You should just ditch it because I’m not going to stop following you.’”
The man didn’t say a word, and kept pedaling. Hayden continued pedaling too. After a few blocks, Hayden said, the man relented. “He just laid the bike down and walked away,” she said. As Hayden watched him go, she said, the man yanked some decorative Fourth of July bunting from a nearby building in a fit of pique.
When Von Edge learned that her bike had been found, she was scouring the outer Sunset by car hoping that the bike was still in the neighborhood. She got a call, and a voice on the line said, “I have your bike!” Von Edge drove down to retrieve it.
Hayden’s impulsive decision to chase, she said, was “probably not the best practice.” But, she added, “ I felt confident. We were in a highly populated area, and he wasn’t going to do anything.”
And, Hayden said, “I didn’t want to get the cops involved because I knew they wouldn’t do anything. They would have just told me to stop pursuing or whatever. And it would just be a statistic at that point. They wouldn’t actually actively help to try and recover it.”
In a written statement, Paulina Henderson, a spokesperson for San Francisco Police Department stated “Police officers and investigators are committed to holding suspects accountable and returning stolen property to the rightful owners.” Henderson did advise against the urge to chase down suspected bike thieves. “For safety, please refrain from engaging with any potential suspects,” she wrote.
Von Edge was delighted to learn of the monster’s rescue.
“For it to come back before dark, and all in one piece,” Von Edge said, “that was above and beyond.”
