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As a seasoned bicycle courier in Vancouver BC I know that most people really don’t care about what happens to bikes in general, perhaps this is just an american extension of that. I am sure that you could do the same with a mugging or kidnapping and get the same disregard for person or property unless it directly impacts that person. Sad to see really.
I’d be curious to see a black guy do the exact same routine and see if anything panned out differently.
Also, I don’t think this guy looked shifty enough while doing this. He should have been looking around, looking nervous. He was cool as a cucumber. Just some stupid white kid that lost his key or forgot his combination.
It would appear that the fine people of New York don’t care about anybody other than themselves or at least not about a stranger.
Of course with that kind of mind set in a crowded city nobody is safe any of the time.
One time I had parked my Honda motorcycle in a busy downtown public parking garage, then somehow lost my key. So the next day I drove down with my toolchest and literally stripped the bike down to the frame in order to remove the lock. It took me about 3 hours. Yet no one asked me what I was doing, no employees, security, curious public.
As a city person, I sort of get this. It’s not a lack of concern, exactly — it’s just that there are so many things going on in a city that you could spend your whole day trying to determine which are legitimate and which are not.
If someone is confident and unafraid, you figure they have legitimate reasons for what they are doing.
There are power outlets in New York traffic lights. I never would have thought that, I wonder why this isn’t used more.
If you act like you own it, no one will say a word. Unless of course they own it.
I was just waiting for someone to stop him and comment on the fact that his one sock was pulled up over his pants leg. Stealing a bike in New York is nothing new but looking like a dork can be hazardous.
We have evolved to the point where even /looking/ at other people can be deemed offensive, couple that with the short tempers that the media keeps feeding people and you end up with everyone keeping to themselves.
I do agree, the guy seemed way too confident in my eyes to look suspicious, which is possibly a huge reason why he was helped in the end.
This is why I hate cities.
What is someone supposed to do, go up and ask the guy for proof that he owns the bike? Run and find a cop? Call 911?
Welcome to New York!
I wonder how stupid that cop would feel if he got recognized.
#8 “I was just waiting for someone to stop him and comment on the fact that his one sock was pulled up over his pants leg”
Cyclists do that so they don’t catch their pants in the bike chain. It’s a common thing to see.
I grew up in a small town and if we saw a shoe in middle of the road, we usually knew who it belonged to.
Since then, I’ve lived in REALLY BIG cities and I can’t judge these New Yorkers.
When I was relatively new to big cities, I was living in the middle of serious gang territory. At about 3am the clank of a tire iron woke me up and I looked out my bedroom window into the dark but could make out a gang taking the wheels off of a car.
I called 911 and a cop car showed up who confronted them.
It just LOOKED like a gang (they all dress the same) and ended up being my neighbors who were swapping wheels in order to get to work.
I totally messed up good people.
S, can you understand why I don’t call 911 for every odd looking thing?
#14 OMG Greg. You’re such a racist 🙂 That story made my day…
who would use such a cheap ass chain to lock their bike in NYC?
I don’t quite get what people are suppose to do… call the police? Maybe they did and the police did the same that any copper in the UK does when you call them about anything: make you feel like an idiot for phoning them then tell you to mind your own business, or if you lucky say something alongs of “Okay, we’ll right there” then show up three days later.
What’s the surprise? Wasn’t it in New York that a woman was killed outside an apartment building and many residents saw it from their windows without calling for any help? It’s human nature to keep to your own close knit group. Face it, we’ve been successfully separated into small family groups and our strongest allegiance is to these groups.
A black dude would not have been able to get away with that, the video would have been a lot different.
It’d make an interesting experiment to do just that: make the exactly same video (sames places, sames times, same bike, same locks etc) and see what happens….
Are these the same guys that did the first ‘non-interchangable-iPod-battery-is-an-Apple-conspiracy’ video?
#11 – The best way to see if he belongs there is to approach him as if it’s your bike. If you walk/run up quickly shouting to leave it alone, it’s your bike, a thief will take off. The legit owner will contest your position, then you just explain yourself and wish him a good day.
I witnessed a bicycle theft in New York when I lived there. The guy was prying a U-lock open with a 2×4.
Later, I asked a policeman what I should have done, and he said not to get involved with the perp and maybe call the police.
I remember back in ’92. I was living in an LA suburb and couldn’t sleep. I went for a walk at about 5 am. A guy was driving a van down the streets leaning out the window smashing car windshields with a bat.
I took down the lic plate # and went home to call the police. When I got hold of an officer at the station he told me that unless my car had been vandalized he wasn’t interested and he didn’t want the info…
Volkswagen car jack is supposed to work well against u-locks
Goes to show you EXACTLY what is #1 fucked up in this world, no one is looking out for each other. Only #1