I just bought a crappy looking bike. Not a department store bike.

There are lots of stolen bikes in Portland.  I don't really ride an ebike very much because I'm afraid it will be stolen. I just bought a really old, dirty, rusty bike for $40. It rides well. It will need some minor repairs.   My idea was that criminals won't want to steal it. They don't want to hold onto something that is large and that they can't sell quickly for money. I am going to fix it up.  I often make my bikes a bit unusual looking because criminals don't want a bike that is easily recognizable.  Especially one that's kind of weird, because then they are hard to sell.  I was told by my bike mechanic to buy a "bike shop bike", not a "department store bike",even if it's used.  I bought a Trek.  Other cheaper bikes that they said were good quality were Giant and Specialized brands.  On department store bikes, their parts are crappy, poorly installed, and you often can't get the right parts for them.  Mechanics will sometimes refuse to work on department store bikes.  

John S
PDX OR

As long as it provides that sense of freedom, the almighty 'wind in the face' moment, then your time seems well spent.  

Some sand paper and paint might make that bike look almost new ... well, better.

I kind of want it to look crappy, so no one wants to steal it.

I ride my bike all the time and park it everywhere.  I go grocery shopping, to the library, to the hardware store, Home Depot, etc.  

JohN S
PDX OR

I went to university in a town known for bike thieves.

I had a probably 30 year old department store 6 speed (well, 5 speed, as 1 speed didn't work) bike with pitted chrome fenders.

Loved that bike.

Anyway, rode it 3 years in university, left it parked outside in my rough area of town all season, used a shitty bike lock. I had lights stolen,but never the bike, including the 2 or 3 times I left it on campus for half a day and didn't lock it!

I am a big advocate of shitty bikes for short distance commuting and errands.

I saw other people paint their bikes in multiple ugly colours to make them distinguishable and hard to resell (and disguise things like the brand name that made the bikes more valuable)

I had a friend with a bike like that.  He scratched up the frame and left it in the rain.  The seat he painted to look muddy (he called it a poop seat).  The chain, gears, and breaks were the only things in top condition.

He never locked it as part of the deception. But also as a laugh to see how long he could ride the bike before it got stolen.  4.5 years and it wasn't stolen, it was "disposed of" by the local railway station in their attempt to clear space by removing abandoned bikes.

He had a trouser clip to stop his legs rubbing against the rusted frame.

We intentionally bought used, boring looking bikes for our kids when they were young. Their bike locks weren't great, but they did use them when they parked at the school in particularly. They were expected to ride to school except in the worst weather, and the alternative was walking which took much longer, so that helped their motivation.

Neat trick for kids: Bike helmets are mandatory here and since I'd seen what head injuries do to kids, it would have been a house rule regardless. I sewed their bike key to the strap of their helmet in elementary school and it worked a charm. By high school, they preferred to lock their helmet to the bike, but stitches are easy to remove.

Best of luck Juan, and even taking your front wheel into the store plus using a small lock can help. Four stolen bikes in my six decades of riding: on the mean streets of Long Beach CA, a second  in GA, and two in Europe.
In each situation I could have  protected the bike with more aggressive defense, admittedly

I've still got the old-school mountain bike I got 40 years ago and ride it almost every day. No shocks, broken gearshift, lots of visual wear and tear, and still as trusty a steed as you could ever desire. It's definitely not a theft magnet...no bling whatsoever.

If and when (probably when) I do splash out on some sort of e-bike, it will need to be utilitarian and rely on a minimum of software. Ideally anything it has would be open source, because I'm already seeing a handful of stories about people whose bikes are bricked when the company that made it goes belly up or gets bought by vulture capital.

"Oh, you wanted power assist to get back home before dark in a headwind? That's a premium subscription feature! Enter your credit card details here."

"We're sorry, your battery capacity has been limited to 50% because our stock price went down this past week."

Anne Miller wrote:Some sand paper and paint might make that bike look almost new ... well, better.

We bought a bike at a junk yard, painted it and it still looked like a junk yard bike ..