Karim Cycle

This store, when it is open, sells stolen bicycles and parts. Do not support this store or the thieves it buys from. Stay away. My neighbor had his stolen bike parts end up here.

Very shady place. I wouldn’t shop there or support this place in any way. Stay away. The owner also loses his temper pretty quickly.

I live up the street from this shop and so every time I have a problem with my bike I bring it to this man. He’s patched up holes in my tires in the past and today, he took off some old folding baskets that I didn’t have the tools to take off. He installed the new folding baskets I brought and he even readjusted the position of them on my bike so that they don’t get in my way when I’m riding. He also adjusted my bike bell because he saw that it was hanging on pathetically with some string. So now my bike bell is actually effective. Each time he’s only charged $ 10 for his labor, which I think is more than fair enough. He’s been decent and polite enough each time I’ve interacted with him. He is efficient and knows what he is doing.

This place is incredibly sketchy. I wouldn’t give them my business if my life depended on it. Make no mistake, you are supporting bike thieves by making a purchase here.

Ok so my beloved boyfriend was hit by an SUV in a crosswalk and was thankfully ok, but his bike, a super vega was totally destroyed. My friend and I took up bike riding on trails to get fit and loose our love handles. My boyfriend was feeling left out so as a surprise gift I wanted to get him a bike in a pinch while ballin on a budget lol.
Despite all the sketchy reviews about where this guy gets his bikes and other things, I went to look at a some bikes that I had found advertised by Karim on Craigslist. Now let me say, my friend and I went there feeling very skeptical, and agreed if we thought it was a sketch situation that we would leave but to my surprise I had a pretty positive experience with the guy. I wasn’t very familiar with types of bikes but I knew what kind of bike my bf had before so I used to that and his height as a reference. Karim verified for me that the bike i was interested in would be the appropriate size and is actually a very comparable to a super vega. The bike was older and showed use but was obviously someones well loved bike at one point as it had been cared for well and Karim made sure that everything worked on it and had replaced the necessities to make it safe to ride without making it more expensive than necessary. I paid him in cash and took the bike home. My Boyfriend absolutely loves it and is so pleased. It was the right bike and at the right price. It only needed a tune up and the wheels straitened out a bit which we had done at a local bike shop. Not bad in my opinion.
This guy is older and a little odd, I think that, combined with his wall to wall over filled shop that you can’t even walk in (so he mostly does business outside in front of his shop) makes people get the wrong idea of him. I think he just buys older bikes, fixes the necessities and resells them for a small profit just because he enjoys the bike business, he doesn’t strike me as a crook.

Clearly a fence for stolen bikes. If you shop here, you are choosing to shore up a secondary market for thieves and guys like this who don’t care about the integrity of the product. Fact.

BEWARE IF YOU BUY A BIKE HERE, YOU MAY BE BUYING SOMEONE ELESES STOLEN BIKE!!! BOYCOTT KARIM“S!!!
This is a full fledged racket that is being allowed by our local Police Force. Today I awoke to my bike missing from my own private front yard, which is set behind another 2brm house. I felt totally violated by the fact that someone went sneaking around our Home, and stole my sweet vintage 1970’s bike, that was a gift from a friend.
I was really upset, so I called a close friend of mine and told him what happened, and he being the wise and street smart fellow, he immediately told me to check Karim Cycle. He said that this guy is known for selling stolen bicycles, and that he has been doing this for years!
So this afternoon I took chance, and rode by, and… sure enough my bike was sitting literally right out front… I couldn’t believe it!!! Only one day later and there it was!!! I wanted my bike back, but I wanted to handle it by the book, so he would get attention, and in trouble by the Law. So directly after I found my bike, I drove downtown to the Police Station, and filed a report. Shortly there after, I drove back to Karim’s where a friend had been waiting and distracting «Mr. Karim»? Then called a dispatch cop to tell him I found my stolen bike on the corner in front of Karim’s shop. The Police officer said this was a usual complaint and have known many a people who have found there stolen bikes being sold at Karim’s. BEWARE IF YOU BUY A BIKE HERE, YOU MAY BE BUYING SOMEONE ELESES STOLEN BIKE!!! BOYCOTT KARIM“S!!!

I walked by a ramshackle store with hundreds of hubs spilling out of a doorway and saw some obviously stolen bicycles being rehabbed on the sidewalk in front of the store. It was the infamous Karim Cycle! Some old hippie, probably Karim, was trying to convince some lady to buy one of his black market bicycles.
If you look inside through the windows, this «used bike store» cannot be mistaken for anything other than a haven for stolen bicycles. As other reviewers have noted, Karim advertises heavily on Craigslist. I wonder if he ever thinks twice about buying a bike from «sellers» who walk in off the street?
If your bike was stolen, and it isn’t found at the Laney Flea Market, it just might be here…

stolen! stolen!stolen!stolen!stolen!stolen!stolen!stolen!stolen!
karim is a fool. rude doesn’t even cover how much of an ass this guy is! all those bikes are stolen and he knows it!

I don’t know anything about all of the accusations, but I thought it would only be fair to share my experience. My GF and I rolled up on our shit bikes to look for a new used bike for her. I asked him about one and he said the bike she had was better and didn’t recommend it. He asked what was wrong with her current bike and we told him about the creaks and other noises it was making. You know what he did? He said «let me see» and he tightened up a few loose bolts and had the thing running as good as new (well, as good as 10 years old anyway). He basically talked us out of buying a new bike and fixed her bike for free.
Didn’t seem like a jerk at all to me. Seemed pretty damn cool. That said, his shop is mayhem :)

This guy should be a skit on SNL. He’s so rude it’s funny.
Nuts and bolts: clearly this guy knows what he’s talking about. He knows bikes. Serious selection in here. If you’re determined– he will help you. But above all he is a salesman. Don’t go in expecting someone fair and honest. You need to know what you’re looking for and be firm in your
budget.
Good luck. Oh! And maybe make sure you’ve had all your shots before you go.

Who would even give them a chance? It’s filled floor to ceiling: one more bike and you could not close the door.

I guess there are outliers, so I have to say that I always get treated well by Karim. He is friendly, down to earth, makes sure the bike fits me, and spends extra time fixing little things for free. He even does free repairs if I got the bike from him.

KARIM SELLS STOLEN BIKES!!!
I know this, without a shadow of a doubt, because I just recovered a bike that was stolen 5 years ago from him with the help of the Berkeley Police Department.
MAKE SURE AND REGISTER YOUR BIKES ON THE NATIONAL BIKE REGISTRY!!!
They even have a place to register stolen bikes. Also, make sure and take a picture of the serial number on the bottom bracket and keep any documentation you have together with that printed out picture in a file. This all helped me reclaim and prove ownership of a bike stolen five years ago, when I saw Karim posting it on Craigslist.
DO NOT confront Karim on your own! He’s a dangerous asshole. Make sure it’s your bike, keep cool, try not to arouse his suspicion and then walk away and call the police, from a distance. Also, know that Karim sits on stolen bikes that he’s fencing for years before trying to resale them. He doesn’t keep them at that rat den he calls a bike shop. He has an off-​site storage area where he keeps them until the heat has died down a bit. The police have raided his store and have tried to shut him down and make a case against him for years. But, he’s too smart and tricky for them. The only way that he’s going to be shut down is if the word gets out and people (especially naïve Cal students) stop buying his corrupt goods from him. Get the word out:
DON’T BUY FROM KARIM!!!

If you browse the east bay Craigslist for bikes and come across a vaguely-​described used bike in the «Near UC Berkeley» area that seems like a good deal, check to see if the listed address is for this place. It probably is.
And you probably don’t want to buy that bike because – as so many other reviewers have already pointed out – there’s a chance that bike’s stolen.
But, hey. It’s a good deal, you’re on a tight budget, and it’s a pretty cool bike. It might not even be stolen. Worth the risk? That’s up to you. But either way, the guy who runs it is a complete tool. There are a ton of other bike shops in the east bay – ones that aren’t run by complete tools – who actually give a crap about little things like customer service and being pleasurable human beings.

Adlai Karim actually performs an unappreciated public service. Somebody has to repair and move those piles of bikes left on racks for months and left in police property rooms without a claim.
It’s a nasty job, and Adlai Karim has a nasty streak to match. But when the Berkeley Police raided they identified 3 out of 1000 bikes as stolen. That’s pretty low, indicating that Karim is not a major fence. Are some of them hot? No doubt. But short of shipping the bikes to Gahna (see Villiage Bicycle Project) what are you going to do? Track down the owners? How?
That said the shop is a mess, consisting of a giant pile of rusty bikes in a giant steaming heap. A real bike shop would line each bike up, check the serial number against a theft database, fix the bike, put a fixed price on it, and move it out. Karim is not nearly so organized.
At Karim nothing is really fixed, especially the price. Expect to pay whatever Karim thinks he can get out of you.

man, it is redundant to give this place a one star rating.
I recently had my bike stolen while having drinks at 355 in downtown oakland. My bike was locked up with my friends bikes –though connected to the pile with only a cable lock — I thought — ‘who would be so bold?’ as the bikes were right in front of the busy bar. But, as we came out an hour later, we found a cut lock, a discarded hand file like the kind you put in a cake and deliver to your uncle in jail, and everybody’s bikes but mine. I was super pissed. I also hate it when people imply that I deserve it since I only used a cable lock — like bike thieves have rights too…
Almost everyone I know told me to go to see if it is at Karims. So I went. This place is a trip, it is a decent piece of real-​estate on the corner of Telegraph near that yoga place, but the interior of the bike shop looks like a giant tangle of used bikes, as if they had been dropped from an airplane into a giant heap. So you cannot go into the shop since it is such a mess. I met Karim out front and he asked me what I wanted. I told him I was looking for a single speed fixed gear bike. He immediately started heckling me about how dumb fixies are, which I find so tired… He then tried to sell me on some abused looking trek that was too small for me. I asked if I could go in a look around and he got seriously edgy. So then I split…
The moral is — if you buy a used bike that is stolen, no matter what, you are legally culpable. Also I am so indignant about bike theft since every bike I have ever owned has been stolen… I find Karims loose morals around reselling stolen bikes to be odious.

KARIM SELLS STOLEN BIKES.
anyone who’s lived in the east bay for any amount of time knows this. those people coming to the defense of this shop should understand that you are defending someone who sells bikes stolen from other people. If you want to buy a good used bike, that wasn’t stolen, go to The Spoke on telegraph or another reputable shop. Please don’t support bike theft.

Headed here today to see if our bikes made it to the graveyard of stolen bikes. The scumbags who rip off other people’s property know to come here to fence the goods. This has nothing to do with being a ‘trust fund baby’ or any other overused derogatory term.
There is no way an honest-​to-​goodness business would sell this many ‘used’ bikes without the bulk of them being stolen.
If you’ve made a police report with the OPD or BPD you can call them when you find your bike here. Hopefully they can support you in retrieving your stolen bike. Lucky for us, we have two marks on our bikes which indicate they are ours.
This place is garbage and sells stolen merchandise, plain and simple.

Seriously sketchy. If you are a serious cyclist and have lived in the Bay Area for a few years, you know of Karim’s as the place to go for stolen bikes. Supposedly he’ll even store a stolen bike for a while before selling it so you’ll stop looking for it.
Look at his reviews. How could a place *so* hated stay in business for so long unless he has something up his sleeve no reputable bike shop has.