One bike rider offers a light in the darkness, a beacon of safety in a struggling part of Minneapolis.

“I ride the Midtown Greenway pretty much every day. The lights have been out for well over a year, if not two,” Alex Tsatsoulis told me when I asked him about his little project in South Minneapolis.

As you probably know, the problem of copper theft has quietly raged in the Twin Cities for years, leaving parks and streets in the dark. While state legislation, good police work and undulating copper prices have calmed the problem in most residential areas, more marginal places — anywhere without Jane Jacobs’ famous “eyes on the street” — often remain mired in vandalized darkness.

That’s where Tsatsoulis, a 42-year-old father who commutes all year by bicycle through South Minneapolis, ste

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