Three weeks ago, I left my apartment to an unusual sight: My bright blue BMW, usually sitting so proudly at the curb in front of my apartment, had been replaced with a street-parked SUV. The bike wasn’t ahead of the car, nor behind it. It wasn’t on its side somewhere, it wasn’t at the corner, and a quick glance at the AirTag hidden under its seat showed me it was, in fact on its way to Queens.
Shit. Someone stole my motorcycle. I was planning to get rid of it, sure, but not like this. Not like this. It was supposed to go to someone who’d care for it, who’d adore its rigidly German do-everything practicality, who’d give it the wide open highways and verdant rolling hills that it deserv — wait, insurance is offering how much compared to my asking price? That recontextualizes this. This isn’t so bad, actually.
The GS — named Sophie, after Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury’s Sophie Pulone — disappeared on street cleaning day, which kicked off a whole adventure of attempting to determine whether the New York City Department of Sanitation had towed it. This meant checking the sanitation website, calling the local NYPD precinct, checking the site again, calling 911, being told to call 311, being told to wait a couple hours and call 911 again, checking the sanitation site again, and eventually dealing with four esteemed officers of our fine and extremely reasonably funded police department.
Four cops showed up, asked general questions, and called the Department of Sanitation. They were told that Sanitation hadn’t towed anything, and in fact doesn’t tow plated vehicles, and wouldn’t even be open to check until Monday. The cops then told me to call Sanitation the following day — Saturday, famous for not being Monday — to check whether it had been towed. The thing Sanitation said they didn’t and wouldn’t do. The cops then proceeded to do absolutely zero paperwork, so I had to do the whole dance again the next day. New York’s finest.
After that whole debacle, though, things improved. In fact, they felt like they were going too well — isn’t insurance supposed to be difficult? Isn’t insurance supposed to low ball you? Isn’t it supposed to be a drag to get anything out of them, a process so infuriating that you eventually give up and they get to keep your money?
My GS had been listed on Facebook for months before this theft, sitting idly while cold weather cooled the motorcycle market. I’d been asking $7,000 there, and I hadn’t even gotten lowballers or tire kickers — just a two trade offers and a single “how low can you go” that never even made an offer. Facebook Marketplace is usually a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where any sale is preceded by months of bad-faith negotiations, but I wasn’t even getting that. For me, it was desolate.
Insurance, by contrast, was simple. Sure, I had to haul myself out to The Middle Of Goddamn Nowhere, Long Island to actually get a check, but that was the last step in what was ultimately a very simple process — a process profitable enough to justify buying my new-to-me Suzuki GSX-8R as a replacement for the GS. Also a cover for the Suzuki, in hopes of preventing history from repeating itself.
I’m not going to go recommending that people get their bikes stolen instead of selling them, but I’m shocked at how well it worked out for me. Facebook Marketplace is hell on Earth, and somehow even dealing with the insurance industry is an improvement over the average Marketplace tire kicker. I’m as surprised as you are — a little bit, but not entirely.
