bikes roof kensington toronto

Dozens of bikes found stashed on the roof of a Toronto store

A downtown Toronto store was revealed to have dozens of bikes piled up on the roof in a photo posted to neighbourhood Facebook group called (you guessed it) Weird Toronto.

"Oh Kensington," reads the caption to the photos posted by Matthew Cohen. "Not saying [they] are stolen."

Of course, suspicion abounds in the comment section that the bikes are in fact stolen, many commenting "that's my bike!" some in jest, some not so much. Many commenters said they were "zooming in" to try and identify their stolen bike in the photos.

Others have some alternative ideas.

"Next year's Nuit Blanche art installation?" wrote one person. "People are filming right there so it could be part of that," commented another. "It's storage for the Bovine," wrote another person.

The roof appears to belong to or at least be near Kensington Melody, a music/junk/antique shop not far from Dirty Bird.

One poster says they have noticed the shop getting progressively more and more filled with items, to the point that it was difficult to enter, and speculated that this rooftop pile could be overflow.

A few cult fans of notorious Toronto bicycle thief Igor Kenk chimed in to make references to his "career," which actually even once inspired a graphic novel.

One revelation seems to have been somewhat drowned out in the flood of comments, however: this roof stash of bikes wasn't as new to one commenter as it appeared to be to everyone else.

"I can see this place from my window, and I think those bikes have been in that exact same spot since I moved here 5 years ago," someone wrote.

Whether you view it as some sort of accidental public art installation, a den of broken bicycle dreams, or the forgotten stash of some bicycle Blackbeard, sights like this are certainly one of the things that keeps Toronto, well... weird.

Lead photo by

Matthew Cohen


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