Bike Batman

The detective said missing kids usually come home.

What happens when they don't?

Based on a true story, police looking for John Gacy.

We discovered bodies by the looks of it, the younger man,

the things he did to those kids.

He's sick.

The system failed these families.

Devil in disguise, John Wayne Gacy.

Streaming now, only on Peacock.

Do you know how many there are?

Up to you to find out.

Lowe's knows you've got a job to do and we help get it done.

With the My Lowe's Pro Rewards Program, eligible members save more with volume discounts on qualifying orders through a quote of $2,000 or more.

Join for free today.

Lowe's, we help you save.

Offer can't be combined with any other discount contract and or special pricing.

Exclusions, more terms, and restrictions apply.

Details at lowe's.com/slash terms.

Subject to change.

Hello and welcome.

Citation Needed.

podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts.

Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now.

I'm Heath, and I'll be steering the bike today.

And I'm joined by the other delighted peddlers on this bicycle built for four, Noah Cecil, and Eli.

Yeah, no, I'm riding side saddle or I come the whole time.

Tom paid us to drive this bicycle directly at him as fast as we could go, and I'm not sure why he did that.

And I took my seat off on purpose.

All right, so we're having a fun time on the bicycle, each of us in our own way.

That's funny.

All right, Eli, let's get into it.

What person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event are we're going to be talking about today?

We'll be talking about bike Batman.

Okay, bike Batman.

But before we get into Bike Batman, you want to do the

Tom thing?

I do want to do the Tom thing.

Thank you for offering, Heath.

The world is broken.

Corruption surrounds us.

Fascism is on the rise, and it feels like we're growing more inhumane and less connected every day.

In times like these, I'm sure I'm not the only one who looks around and thinks, where are all the heroes?

Where are the guys, gals, and non-binary pals who will stand up and say, enough?

This essay is not about Luigi Mangione, my friends.

No, this essay is about Bike Batman.

Okay, Eli, moments before we recorded this, I read a story where Christian Noam was complaining that ICE agents can't find a place to eat or take a shit in Chicago because nobody will serve them.

I know good and damn well where the heroes are.

Oh, yeah, baby.

This is a lot city.

Now, listener, I'd love to tell you the story about Bike Batman, but Tom was out this week, so we had to come up with an essay in a hurry.

And luckily for me, what is quickly becoming more of a source for us than Wikipedia itself, outsideonline.com, already did my homework.

In an article from August of 2016 by Christopher Solomon titled, The Real Life Superhero Who Beats the Cops to Bike Thieves.

A year ago, before the man they call Bike Batman began his work, before he headed out on missions around the Emerald City with a pocket full of cash and the cops on speed dial and a paladin sense of wrongs to be righted, before he'd rescued two dozen stolen bikes from the grubby fingers of the city's thieves, before even anyone referred to him as Bike Batman, he was just an average seeming guy in Seattle who liked to ride his bicycles.

Okay, this story is already starting out disappointingly ignoring the lore unless his wealthy parents are killed by bike thieves.

Obviously, it has to be that.

Thank you.

Also, grubby fingers.

Is that our issue with thieves?

They're fucking inadequate hand sanitation regimens?

Come on.

He rode his bike to work.

After work, he rode his bike home again.

In the evenings, in his basement, he wrenched on bikes that he fixed up and flipped.

Monkeying with bikes helped him burn off stress.

The guy had a wife who also liked to ride.

A wife who, at times, would wonder aloud if all that half-finished transportation would be departing the basement soon, honey.

So they could finally tackle that remodel.

Hey, Christopher, did you put in that part about how nagging my wife is?

It's right there in the second sentence.

In short,

Big Squeeze TV!

I want a BEG Squeeze TV!

In short, the guy showed no no crime-fighting predilection.

Certainly, no inkling to become a vigilante who would face off against criminals while armed with little more than a smartphone, some spare time, and a pair of brass balls.

Okay.

He didn't choose to become bike Batman.

Sometimes in life, though, the cape finds you.

Oh, come on.

Just fixing the streamers on a little kid's bike as his hobby.

They think I'm hiding in the shadows, but I am the shadow

okay the bell works good

uh all the action heroes have their origin story here is bike batman's it was may of 2015 a monday or a tuesday our guy an engineer was at work never mind where and don't worry about his name he doesn't want the glory or need the guff you don't have to explain superhero secret identities man

right

also it's bright it's bike bruce wayne we already know that It's like in the lore.

Come on.

He was surfing online for a steel bike for his wife to ride on an upcoming trip.

And well, here, let him tell you what happened next.

So I was looking for a surly cross creek, he says one recent day at lunch over a pulled pork sandwich.

And I'd been searching for one on Craigslist forever.

And one finally popped up and it was really, really cheap.

And I thought, immediately, this is either stolen, it's super beat up, and all the parts are junk, or the person doesn't know what they have.

It was like 300 bucks, and

it would sell for 700,

like half price.

Yeah, no, that's how 700 works.

So, I started asking the guy

questions about fit, about parts, and whatever.

And the guy couldn't answer anything.

So, I think, okay, this is probably stolen.

And I did a quick Google, surly, cross-check Seattle stolen, and a bike index ad popped up.

And we understand how Google works.

Bike Index ad had Petrus's bike, and it had a contact number for the owner of this thing.

Bike Index, if you haven't heard of it, and you haven't.

Is the nation's largest bike registry and a clearinghouse for info on stolen rides?

It lists more than 75,000 bikes.

When someone loses his bike and turns to the web, there's a hit.

Bike index is often one of the first links that pops up.

So, our guy, he's not Batman at this point, remember, still just some Joe who likes bikes and who's in possession of a certain curiosity of mind.

The kind of guy who likes to pull on a string to see what's at the other end.

Analbee, man, it's always going to be analbeat.

Jesus, what you're pulling it out of an ass.

What do you expect it to be?

Reaches out to the original owner of the cross-check.

I shoot her attack.

I say,

I'm

a Gentile voice.

That's amazing.

I found your bike for sale.

Could you provide some details?

And she responded with pictures of her police report, pictures of her receipts, all this stuff.

Serial number.

I think she thought I was some weirdo.

He was.

Yeah, what else could he possibly be?

She was correct.

It could have ended there.

Except it didn't.

That afternoon, our hero pulls on the string a little harder.

He decides to pose as a buyer so he can meet the guy who's selling the stolen bike.

He has no idea what to say.

No escape route.

No nothing.

The seller suggests meeting in downtown Seattle.

Right by the city jail, as it turns out.

When the seller shows up, it's not one guy.

It's three guys.

They look like drug addicts.

And, you know, whatever.

I talk to people like this all the time.

I take after my mom.

Talk to everybody.

My wife hates it.

Okay, seriously, I looked at that sentence for so long before I realized he wasn't saying his mom was a drug addict, but no, I get it.

I get it now.

And I start talking to them, looking at the bike, and immediately I'm like, this bike is set up exactly like the ladies that I've been texting.

I flip the bike over.

I check his serial number.

Serial number is the same.

Okay, at this point, the bike is stolen.

I don't know what to do.

Battering, batarang, batarang.

So I miss with the batarang completely.

I'm bad at throwing objects.

So I throw a smoke bomb and I grab the bike.

The smoke bomb, it was nothing.

It was just like a really small smoke bomb.

I got tackled by the three guys and they beat me up.

So yeah.

I am the shadows, though.

I am the shadows.

I said, Just give me a second, guys.

I dialed 911 on my phone.

Conveniently, my phone didn't dial.

So

so I pretended to talk to the police as I derived a plan.

And I said, well, guys, I'm sorry to tell you this, but this is my girlfriend's bike and it's stolen.

And I just talked to the police.

And the way I see it, you've got two options.

You can wait here for the police to come and tell them your story and how you came upon the bike, or you can get out of here and just let me throw the bike in my truck.

One guy immediately ran away as soon as I said police.

He was out there.

And now that I knew which one was holding, I sprang my attack and got myself drugs.

Here it should be said that even though you have only met Batman a few times at places and times of his choosing, what strikes you most about him is his utter unremarkableness.

To the near stranger, he is beige, nearly without affect, almost boring.

Okay, so sorry, I know I'm reading another person.

Hey,

I can see you writing that across the table from me right now about me

while we're doing this interview.

Did you call me Beige?

There is no amount of a complimentary an article could be about me that reading that sentence would not instantly cause a happening-esque suicide.

Don't misunderstand.

Once you get to know him, you see that he's smart and funny.

Okay, you saw saw him crying.

But his hands do not wave when he talks.

Inflection is not one of his gifts.

What?

In this way,

he rather reminds you of one of those other Batmans, Christian Bale, Michael Keaton, who managed to be both charismatic and two-dimensional at the same time.

He's not completely boring and one-dimensional, but I'm not three, though.

He's a nice medium-dimensional, like, flat planar beige guy, right?

You can go up, down, crying again.

Damn, beige is so mean.

Bike Batman.

Are you going to finish that sandwich?

Bike Batman, of course, is keenly aware of the face he presents to the world and to thieves.

It's just important to be this energy sink, basically.

He'll tell you later.

The only reason this has worked for me so far is that I just go in there and just keep an even keel the whole time.

As soon as you start getting worked up, that person is going to start getting worked up with you and then feed off the energy vibe that you're putting out.

Probably also doesn't hurt that our hero is in his 30s, big shouldered, thick russet beard, Viking looking.

He isn't the first guy you'd choose to fuck with over a hot light speed.

Okay, so that whole fucking quote sounds like what he said when he looked over and saw the guy who said he was beige in his notes, right?

Like a whole like, I'm being boring and devoid of personality on purpose spiels and spills out of him.

Okay.

But back to the action.

What What action?

You just said, I don't do anything.

I just kind of stand there and, well, I'm going to take this bike now.

Action.

I'm kind of an energy vampire on purpose, if you think about it.

It's part of the way, you know,

you get the bikes back.

Where one thief has fled, but a standoff has arisen with the remaining dirt bags across the empty saddle of the stolen bike.

The other two guys were getting a little amped up.

My heart is just in my throat.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm just standing there.

And I said,

Well, guys,

I'm not waiting around any longer.

All right.

I'm out of here.

And I throw it in my truck and try to race down the highway at 5:30 p.m.

on a Tuesday.

I'm making about 50 feet and then I stop at a traffic light.

Not exactly.

Two guys just walk up,

right up to my truck.

I stopped there and they just walked out.

I threw another smoke bomb.

They took the bike.

So

learning experience.

The window was up.

I I am the shadows.

Still, he makes it.

I call the ladies.

I'm going to be the shadows.

I'm going to be the shadows eventually.

Just trust me.

I call the lady.

Yep, it's your bike.

I drove about six blocks and met her downtown, gave it back to her, and she was just so happy.

It didn't matter, he says, that the bike was all janky and barely worth the trouble.

Right there.

Our guy could have walked away, but his work didn't feel finished.

The seller, probably the coward who ran had dozens of bikes for sale on craigslist so our guy forked over the woman's info to the seattle police department then he waited for the boom to fall and he waited

seattle pd was going really slow and i was getting really frustrated watching these bikes go for sale and and coming down

Yeah, look, we'd love to help, but there's this huge Pacific Northwest Antifa problem we're trying to solve.

It's a whole thing.

He got a little obsessed doing his own hack job investigations.

He found more bike index postings about stolen bikes and then located them for sale on websites.

About a week after his first sting, he saw a red surly karate monkey for sale.

Cheap on a site called Opera.

That's called the Stephen Seagal bike sometimes, too.

The red, surly, karate monkey.

He easily found shitty names for bikes.

That's

a lot of bad names for bikes.

He easily found the owner on Bike Index, a young young country boy from Idaho whose ride vanished in the 20 minutes he ran upstairs to see his girlfriend at the University of Washington.

Hey, officer, any chance you can pretend it took me longer than 20 minutes in your report?

Matter of public record?

No, it's fine.

It's fine.

He and the kids set up the buy, then rendezvoused that night with the thieves and followed them to a bleak area.

south of downtown Seattle, where trailers squatted in a circle and shadows moved in the dark dark bushes.

It was the land of stolen bikes, just tons of them.

And again, our guy had no plan, no way to communicate with his new sidekick.

We were idiots, he recalls.

Were once they confirmed it was the kid's bike.

I was like, hey, why don't you call the girlfriends and tell them we're doing all right?

And I'm wearing a wedding ring.

I'm trying to pull it off and put it in my pocket.

I was like, oh, okay, the girlfriends.

And he runs off to call 911.

Kid must have screamed bloody murder because seven cops descended.

Cuffs slapped on the perps.

Bikes were covered.

The police admired their initiative and told them that their initiative would probably get them shot.

You got spunk, kid.

Also, bullet wounds, but spunk too.

But god damn it, it was a rush.

Okay.

This kid was hosed if he didn't have someone else.

He was like, fuck this city.

Our guy recalls.

It was so much fun and felt so good to stand up and, you know, not let these particularly out-of-town people get this bad ride for Seattle.

Later, some cops called him Robin Hood.

A grateful citizen in the Seattle Times named him the Bike Repo Man.

Okay, I'm not sure why he has to sully the name of the good traveler, though.

Own it, dude.

Your city's thick with fucking bike thieves, obviously.

If the alter ego born that dark night must have a name, however, the guy preferred Bike Batman.

I'm sorry, officer, but does Robin Hood wear a fucking utility belt and have a giant spotlight with a bike on it?

No, no, he doesn't.

Look at the streamers on the Apollo Savaranzi.

Exactly, idiot.

Bike themed.

In the 12 months since he began in May of 2014, Batman returned 24 bicycles to their owners, all in his spare time, for free.

Okay, he's a fucking billionaire Nepo, baby, for free.

What What is he gonna charge for him?

Be illegal.

He charged for him.

At first, he did it solo.

Over time, he met some cops, and he met victims who had friends who were cops, and he sometimes called them to help him on his stinks.

Still, more officers reached out to him after the story in the paper.

But then, there was a tragedy at the circus.

Getting bikes back to people became a bit of an addiction.

It felt so good, just to

get people reconnected with this thing that they've got all this emotional attachment to.

He says.

And most of these guys don't have renter's insurance or they don't have an insurance policy on their bike for whatever reason.

They're out like two, $3,000 when this thing gets stolen.

Okay, I'm definitely team bike thief at this point.

Like if a douchey hipster bike person loses their fancy $3,000 bike and...

A heroin addict gets high on heroin, that's fucking win.

Well, right.

And then

right, but also some fucking dude on the internet gets a sweet deal on a fucking red karate monkey or whatever.

Consider the tale of Maggie Stapleton, one of Batman's favorite recent stories.

On an unseasonably warm April Friday this year, Stapleton, who's 29, was grilling outside with friends in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood.

As the day cooled, everyone went inside.

And Stapleton did, she plumb forgot to lock up her bike.

Bicycles have stories.

And magazines have word counts.

I will now tell the story of this bicycle.

Her name was

Her Salsa Vaya.

There it is.

Steel.

Traffic Cone Orange was the bike she bought when she first met her boyfriend, a longtime cyclist.

Atop her salsa, Stableton became a cyclist and bike commuter.

riding to and from her job in downtown Seattle.

She has put thousands of miles on it.

This summer, she was training to ride the Ramrod, a glorious one-day, 150-odd-mile, 10,000-foot crusher that loops Mount Rainier.

Say Ramrod.

But when Stapleton came outside at midnight to ride home, the baya.

I read on the home.

Well,

you know.

I was ramrodded.

Stapleton went home and posted the loss online wherever she could think of.

She tweeted.

She contacted bike shops.

Nothing.

She was bummed.

This bike does have a lot of sentimental value to me because it's the first bike that made me fall in love with cycling.

She was sick.

I love that you have so many different obnoxious white people voices at your ears.

I've lost my other character.

It's like how there's a lot of words for snow if you live in Alaska.

Yeah, right, right.

She was sick about her lost bike.

But what could she do?

She'd forgotten to lock it up.

Now it was gone.

Lesson learned, she said to herself.

Then, on Monday night, she received a phone message.

I think I may have found your bike, said the voice.

She called it back.

It was Batman.

No, it wasn't.

He was already winging to North Seattle to meet the seller.

He'd been checking the listings one last time before bed when he saw a fishy post, cross-referenced it, and found Stapleton's post on Bike Indexed.

Complete with telltale details.

A scratch here, mismatched tires.

Hey, cops, I don't want to help you out, but just it like everything for sale on Craigslist has some kind of crime going on.

Just like literally click on anything on that website and go arrest somebody.

You get one almost every time.

Stapleton met up with him in a Sam's Club parking lot.

Batman had already called the cops.

A plan was hatched.

The police would hide nearby as Batman met the thief in a parking lot of a Kid Valley burger joint.

He scrawled the Via's serial number on his hand.

If it matched the one on the bike, he'd turn the crank to call in the cavalry.

What should I do?

Stapleton asked asked the officer.

Why don't you go get some french fries?

The cop replied.

Okay, so I feel like what's actually happening here is a bunch of people who are, you know, paid to risk their lives and restrained by legal procedure are just outsourcing all the danger and procedure to an unpaid intern that's willing to work for lack of exposure, right?

Right?

So Stapleton watched through the plate glass windows of the burger joint, about to lose her mind as the dirtbag produced her beloved bike, and Batman turned the crank, and the flashing lights whooped into view.

She went home that night with her salsa baya.

It does kind of restore my faith in humanity, she says.

A lot of people do bad things, but someone out of the goodness of their heart reunites people with their stolen bikes.

Only later did she realize she'd had a brush with Batman, whom she'd read about in the paper just days before.

What?

So she thought this was a different Seattle-based vigilante bike returner.

Yep.

Feels like she's going to lose that bike again somehow.

Not the smartest.

But maybe, I don't know, Bikeman gets it back for her again.

We'll see how it goes after a quick break.

So that'll be a hundred bucks.

A hundred bucks, eh?

Aha!

Dude,

what are you doing?

I'm calling the cops on you.

Maybe you've heard of me.

I'm bike batman.

Oh,

yeah, you're the guy who goes around reporting petty thieves, right?

They're not petty thieves.

They're criminals.

No, it's a legal definition of a petty theft, man.

Anyway,

can I ask why you're picking a crime mostly committed against affluent people by poor people?

And like poor children?

Because, because

someone stole my bike.

Can I?

I got to stop doing the voice.

And now

I do what the cops won't.

Okay, I feel like the cops just don't particularly care.

Have you thought about just not caring?

No.

Okay, well,

that sounds like the cops are here, so I guess I'm going to go get arrested and have my life ruined.

Well, maybe next time you'll think better.

No, it's not going to be a next time, man.

They're going to take away my kids now.

I'm bike bat, man.

Yeah, no, you mentioned.

This Halloween, what's under your costume might just steal the show.

Wait, is that Glow in the Dark underwear?

Ooh, yeah.

MeUndies has dropped their spookiest collection yet.

Glow in the Dark Undies and PJs so comfy, it's scary.

Tricks, treats, and buttery soft briefs.

Exactly.

To get cozy and spooky for less, go to meundies.com slash trick-or-treat and enter code trick-or-treat to get 20% off your first order.

That's 20% off your first order at meundies.com/slash trick-or-treat.

Code Trick-or-Treat.

Meundies, treat yourself.

And we're back.

When we left off, Bikeman was eating a pulled pork sandwich and telling a magazine guy about all the seedy underbelly stuff of the bicycle world.

What's next?

Batman's crime fighting starts during downtime at work.

Take this morning.

He tells me while we're at lunch, there was a 10-minute conference call, but he didn't really have to participate much, he says.

So the first thing I did was pop up Craigslist and Offer up on both screens of my computer and just scroll through them passively till I see something that, you know, raises a red flag for me.

And then I cross-check bike index or I'll open up bike index and scroll through the recent stolen bike.

So like five minutes or 30 seconds here and there.

Anyone can do it.

He pulls out his phone.

Here's one now that he's flagged.

It's a trek, lime green.

With that, my sidekick powers of observation end.

Batman, though, is just getting started.

It's a modern touring bike, he says.

I would say you could end up buying this for around a thousand bucks from REI.

The components look fairly new.

They're asking $250 for it.

If this is a normal sale, I would expect to see trek, model, size, and just some details, he says.

But look at this listing, he continues.

All it says is a green trek bike.

No size, no nothing.

Price and an inarticulate seller are his first clues.

He's just getting warmed up.

He's a detective now, picking up bits of lint, lint, gathering circumstantial evidence, building a case.

Building a case?

No, he's cross-referencing a single other database.

World's greatest detective, my dad.

A photo is taken in front of a flipped over shopping cart and a makeshift barbecue, some burned chairs or something.

Okay.

No big deal.

Whatever.

But then I go to...

Here he clicks on the guy's profile.

This guy's name and this guy's profile is May of 2016.

And if you look at his other sales, they're all equally sketchy.

Alfred, cross-check any super villain lairs with known shopping cart thefts.

We might be onto something.

Also, check burnt chairs.

Is that Arlene?

Is that a thing?

Next, Batman takes the info and surfs over to Bike Index.

He punches in what he knows.

Track

green.

Within 100 miles of Seattle, several contenders pop up.

He starts to weed them out and helps to know bikes by a glance, their geometry and components.

Batman knows bikes.

Nope, nope.

None seem to match.

It's a dead end.

Just another shifty-looking sale.

For now, anyways.

I asked Detective Batch at the local police department what he thought of Batman's vigilanteism.

He was blunt.

I think there's some huge risks for what he's doing, Batch says.

I would never advise a citizen to meet a suspect on his own.

You're buying these bikes from people who are possibly high on narcotics.

You still know.

A few years ago, Seattle's bike blog's Tom Fucolaro was nearly air raided with a screwdriver while helping to retrieve a friend's stolen bike.

Batch also points to an incident north of Seattle in February, in which several people claimed they'd found their stolen construction tools on offer-up.

After being unable to secure a police officer's help in time, People met the seller and tried to make a citizen's arrest of the alleged thief.

Instead, the man pulled a pistol.

He was

Yeah, no, right.

They literally just need him to skirt around laws about illegal search and seizure and to potentially soak up the first wave of bullets.

That's all he's doing there.

Still, Batch recommends gathering as much info as you can about the stolen bike and who has it to make police's job as easy as possible, and then calling the police so they can intervene or make the buy instead.

If you get us involved early, that's great, Batch says.

And then be persistent, he says, until someone with a badge pays attention.

Not too early, though.

I mean, we aren't going to do anything until the case is basically done.

Then we'll show up, okay?

Also, don't be persistent unless you're white, or we might shoot you.

Fucking true.

Holy shit.

Our Batman is quite familiar with some of the occupational hazards that come with being a bike vigilante.

There's the danger for one.

Last summer, when Batman was still new at this, he spied a Carvelo Pitu for sale, confronted the thief, and took it.

I've got a picture of the victim.

He's standing on my porch with just this gigantic smile on my face, like, oh my god.

Two weeks later, another stolen bike pops up on offer-up.

Batman got a little careless, though he had changed his profile in his picture.

His texting pattern was similar.

He recommended meeting at the same parking garage.

He arrived early and saw the same thief, who he later found was wanted for violent crimes.

Now, the guy was with four friends who were waiting in the corners of the parking garage.

Batman,

let that bike go and live to fight another day.

Almost foiled by stolen bike Batman.

Okay, that was going to be his first stealth level.

Boo.

Yeah, I want to see him take down those four people in the corners.

Well, exactly.

If you're going to chicken out just because you're going against five-to-one, stop calling yourself Batman, okay?

You're fucking your you're bike night owl at best.

Yeah.

Bike Bernie gets.

Oh, no.

Here's the good news.

Here's the good news.

Anyone who could be upset at that joke is too old to matter.

Christ.

Perhaps it's no surprise that Mrs.

Batman does not love these stories.

Still, he adds, she's supportive.

She knows it's something that's really important for me and she's chosen to support me in it.

But there's times where, for instance, with Maggie Stapleson's bicycle, I found that at like 8:30 p.m.

or something, I was literally brushing my teeth looking through the bikes on Offer Up, and I went out to bust the guy.

And the whole thing was very rushed.

She doesn't like that.

She wants me to contact the police, get a plan together.

Look, hun, I would love to take you seriously, but you won't even try on the Robin costume.

The cap gets in the fucking gears.

We keep falling on the way to stuff.

Why we have capes?

Then, there are the hazards of trying to be a zealous do-gooder.

Last summer, Batman was flying high on his success, recovering bikes left and right, feeling cocksure.

A Rodriguez-coupled tandem came up for sale.

Dirt cheap.

A note here, Rodriguez cycles are sweet custom steel rides hand-built in Seattle.

A new fully kitted tandem can go for up to $9,000 today.

The seller is sketchy, jittery, knows nothing about the bike.

Batman sets up the buy and calls the police.

They meet.

Batman tells the woman the jig is up.

Fuck off, she says.

The bike's mine.

Yeah, because fucking she seems sketchy to me isn't a fucking crime, right?

The police arrive.

They remount Batman for pro-life, profiling someone as a criminal with absolutely no proof.

The irony wasn't lost on them.

I had a friend, a bleeding heart liberal teacher, was just talking about what a piece of shit I was.

He says now.

I don't even think

I was aware of what I was doing.

The unlikely owner apparently got the Rodriguez through an auction of a forgotten storage unit, a la storage war.

After that, he says, I seriously considered stopping this foolishness altogether, but I got an email

or a text from someone saying, like, oh, thank you so much.

Just put

60 miles on my bike or whatever.

It feels amazing.

And I thought, I can't.

It just feels too good.

So he didn't stop.

But now he plays by the new rules.

If he can't contact the owner and confirm that the bike is stolen, he won't contact the cops and get them involved.

Well, that feels like it should have been an earlier policy.

I also stopped tackling people and frisking them for bikes.

So

lesson learned.

Sometimes it's the shadows.

Sometimes he'll snap up a really suspicious bike himself and try and find the owner later.

It's all about acting fast, he says.

This is like ambulance chasing.

If you're not the first one there, someone else is going to swoop in, and then you're not going to find the owner.

Okay, hey, man, if you're ever tempted to say that the thing that you're doing is, quote, like ambulance chasing, and quote, just stop doing the thing, right?

Uh,

he's so confused.

He's like, Yeah, it's like ambulance chasing, it's pretty fucking great.

You got to chase them ambulances down because they go fast.

Sucking blood,

and when it all goes right, salty, it is sweet, Coppery.

Last fall, Batman sees a Carbon Serviello P5, a crazy expensive tri-bike.

Cheese.

It's a $9,000 retail for about $3,000.

It's obviously hot.

It's just a bicycle, right?

It's just like you pedal it.

Two wheels.

Okay.

It's obviously hot, but bike index shows bookkus.

And local police have no reports.

Batman talks the kids selling it down to $1,700, tells him he'll have it in cash when he gets back from a business trip in a week.

During the delay, Batman gets on the horn.

He calls the Terelliol rep to find out where the bike was sold.

Oregon.

He calls the Oregon shop.

The shop calls the bike owner.

The owner calls Batman.

I left for Hawaii three weeks ago.

The owner says that bike should be in my house.

Well, it's not, says Batman.

Also, you didn't.

Shine the spotlight with the bike shape.

I just

I prefer it if you do the spotlight.

The next day, when he meets the thief, the fuzz swarms.

Turns out two guys with family in the neighborhood knew the cyclist's schedule and had emptied out his house when he headed to the islands.

Nobody even knows there's been a crime until Bike Batman solves it.

Why does Bike Man do this for us?

He has a life after all.

He's got a wife who wants to sit on the couch with him and watch Game of Thrones.

He's got friends, a busy career.

He's got bikes to ride for four

Four at last count, not to mention the hobby bikes cluttering the basement.

Why do this?

Well, if this was the latest Batman movie, his explanation would require a four-minute montage of him riding bikes set to something in the way by Nirvana.

If he did that, then you'd know.

Our comic book heroes have always been different from us in their monomania, in the black and white way they see the world.

Tell me about it.

The rest of us accept early to shrug and live with the unfairness of it.

But the heroes we invent and raise up, they don't shrug.

They don't accept things the way they are.

Come on.

That's what makes them so appealing and yet keeps us distant from them.

We admire their monomania and we distrust it.

We want to know what's really in their hearts and makes them not like us.

I'm sorry, were we supposed to be admiring this?

I'm sorry.

I feel like volunteering those same hours at a homeless shelter would do way more to curb crime.

Right.

Yeah.

And not sentence sentence people into our incredibly cruel prison system.

Yes, right.

Really, it might be like 3%, let's say, adrenaline, some subconscious adrenaline seeking.

Batman says of his motives.

It's not like the adrenaline.

It's not like the adrenaline I get from riding a mountain bike or something or riding really fast.

He wants you to know.

But it's kind of the nervous energy I get when I've got way too much on my plate.

And there might be like 2% of something else, but I would say 95% of it is just getting the bike returned.

Okay.

The 2% vague something else, that was like a sex thing, right?

And it's more than 2%.

Here's a, for instance, he says, after the recovery of Maggie Stapleton's bike, the salsa baya, the french fries, he friended her on Instagram.

I was having a really, really busy week the following week after getting that thing back for her, and I was really not super enthused with work and every once in a while I would just open up Instagram and look at a picture of her riding the bike and just think

fuck yeah

I'd hit that wait well

Jesus Christ I know that sounds creepy it does

it does it does and he laughs at himself and you laugh with him I'm not making up any of the words of the article I'm writing.

Reading.

Because the mask has slipped down.

And you see that the guy across from you isn't batman anymore isn't some abstract concept about the war in man's breasts between good and evil oh fuck you it's just a guy who just spilled some pulled pork on his shirt while he's been telling me this story it's just a big viking looking guy who gets frustrated at work just like you do and who right now is wearing a giant grin on his face because he's found something he really really likes to do.

And that something happens to be helping other people who are in a jam.

Let's go, Batman.

That's not creepy at all.

In fact, that's about the most normal thing in the world.

Jesus Christ, man.

That's the actual end of the argument.

God damn it.

Which wins?

That or I'm the tick on the cosmic vagina?

Which one wins?

It's tough.

It is tough.

All right, Eli.

If you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would that be?

Being poor is a crime.

It is.

It is.

You ready for the quiz?

Yeah.

Okay, Eli.

What's a way better superhero name for Bike Batman?

A.

Sprocket Raccoon.

B.

Death Spoke.

C,

BMX Man.

Or D

Biklops.

Excellent.

I'm going to go with D biklops.

We're all biclops.

Yes, absolutely.

Okay, which bicycle-based super villain is the best nemesis for bikeman?

A

schwinaestro.

Fantastic.

B

Kingspin.

Or C,

Sebastian Rickshaw.

Brave, brave.

Yes.

Gonna go with Kingspin.

That is correct.

Nicely done.

All right, I got one for you.

Who is the only vigilante worse than Bike Batman?

A, second lieutenant in America.

B, the flush.

C, truth devil.

Nobody ever picks him.

Thank you.

D, I love it.

That asshole at McDonald's who narked on Luigi.

Oh, gotta go with D, that asshole.

Yeah, I made it too.

I made it too easy.

Yeah, sorry.

Brutal.

Yeah.

Eli, I think you got them all.

I did.

I did.

All right.

I would like a Heath essay next week.

All right.

Well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil, and Eli, I'm Heath.

Thank you for hanging out with us.

We'll be back next week, and I will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can listen to Cognitive Dissonance, The No Rogan Experience, Dear Old Dads, Godolph Movies, The Scathing Atheist, Skeptic, and DD Mias.

And if you'd like to join the ranks of our beloved patrons, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash citationpod.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect with us on social media, or take show notes, check out citationpod.com.