I bought a used bike yesterday from a pawn shop. Probably not the best place to get one but I was loathe to take two trains into town and walk seven blocks to get to the Play It Again Sports.

Part of my justification for going out to this pawn shop (which occasioned my first bus ride in Chicago) was that I suspect my old bike has already been sold to such an establishment, and a half dozen phone calls that morning had narrowed my list of nearby pawn shops selling bikes to two: A-Ashland Pawners & Jewelers and EZ Pawn Inc.

Pawn shops names always sound so sleazy...

Indeed, I'm mildly suspicious that my bike was on sale in the first place I visited. They had a Rockhopper with a white seat from a different bike, and purple handlebars from yet another bike. Covered with stickers, too. Of course, I can't prove anything without a serial number, and I wasn't about to pay $90 for such a monstrosity.

Yeah, I don't trust pawn shops. Probably having my bike stolen has made me paranoid — I know my dad went characteristically overboard after it was pinched — and I've become too suspicious of the cityfolk around me. Or maybe my new stance is justified, even healthy in a neighborhood where an unattended bike can get stolen in ten minutes.

Have I given too much credit to strangers? It's not like this is the first time I've been robbed: my CD case was definitely stolen, as were a few pairs of sunglasses — and as inexplicable as it is I have no other explanation for the disappearance of my first AP stylebook. Maybe my trust for the general public is too high.

Certainly B-town — where I rarely locked my car doors and once went so far as to unwittingly leave a giant Mickey Mouse keychain on the dashboard (the keychain was stolen) — gave me unrealistic expectations for the world at large. Or my luck in B-town, anyways.

(I wouldn't trust anyone from Southeast Brainerd, mind you, but I'd always considered those jerks the exception.)

I don't want to be that guy, of course. No sense being paranoid if you can't be full-out crazy paranoid, and my landlord won't let me install four deadbolts. But I resent having to put my guard up; hopefully after a week or two without incident I'll put all of this behind me and become oblivious again.