Let H stand for the set of homeomorphisms φ:[0, 1] → [0, 1]. We prove the following dichotomy for Borel subsets A ⊂ [0, 1]: • either there exists a homeomorphism φ ∈ Hsuch that the image φ(A) contains no 3-term arithmetic progressions; • or, for every φ ∈ H, the image φ(A) contains arithmetic progressions of arbitrary finite length. In fact, we show that the first alternative holds if and only if the set A is meager (a countable union of nowhere dense sets).