Bike Stolen Early Saturday Morning
I Fail To Heed The Signs
I used to just leave my bike leaning against the wall right outside my apartment when I got home in the early mornings.
Inside the apartment, it always seemed to be in the way, and since this one didn't have a kickstand, that acerbating the problem of where to put it.
Plus, Harold the cat would sniff the tires, as if being able to tell where I had been by doing so.
It was right under a camera, and there were others at the exits to the left and right of where it sat.
Nobody comes in the building except through the lone door where the security desk is, and after showing ID.
Plus, things have changed in the past couple years after the musical chairs of residents coming in and not working out for one reason or another and then being replaced by other wildcard residents.
The worst of the tenants have been weeded out. Most of the heroin addicts have disappeared.
Harry, who looked at me suspiciously after he once heard me calling Harold the cat, as if I might have named it after him, to mock him in some way, perhaps; he got ten years in prison, I heard, after he was found with pounds of heroin in a car that he was driving. Knowing Harry, he was probably tailgating and flipping the bird and driving erratically, and is probably taking the fall for someone who could have him killed in prison if he starts talking. They aren't going to hold Harry's apartment for him.
But, the monitors at the front security desk went blank a couple weeks ago. Now, instead of the guard sitting in front of a bank of a dozen screens, ostensibly watching the place, he now has to entertain himself with his smart phone alone.
The monitors were kind of entertaining to watch, I thought: "There goes Bobby to the laundry room; out comes the blind woman to cane her way to the candy machine, there she is trying to skeeze change from the guy from A113 who just came out; what's that he's got, a fishing pole?" type of stuff.
Sign 1:
Friday night, as I was coming back from having made 23 bucks (that was the night that I blogged that I would have been happy to get the hell out of there in one piece and with 13 dollars) I rode in using the side street, and not Canal Street, so I didn't notice that the gate that opens and closes to let cars in was stuck open. The "out" gate the opposite end of the lot had been closed.
I like it when the gate is open, as if saves me from having to ride around to the other side of the building and then having to swipe my key card to let myself and my awkward bike and backpack and guitar through a couple lobby doors, into the same parking lot.
The downside is that, someone could enter the lot off the street and then, if they were to catch a resident coming in or out of one of the doors, they might be able to get that resident to let them in, through social engineering.
I always tell any stranger who is hanging around and yells: "Yo, hold that door!" to go around the front and use their key card to get in. That's what the key cards are for. That's what the front door is for. It is often someone who used to live at Sacred Heart, relying upon: "I think this guy lives here, I've seen him before" to get in.
I should have a glance towards that gate to my arriving home routine, because, my bike almost certainly went out through it.
I'm hoping it was someone as crack addled as Brian, who will knock on my door at all hours of the night trying sell me things like size 14 sneakers, and then will beg me for money anyways "to feed my children," after I tell him that I am a size ten and a half, or that I really don't need a vial of antibiotics, or a radio/cassette deck that's only missing one speakers but still has the other one, just turn it up louder, just then.
He is conceivably thick enough to conclude that, since the monitors at the security desk are out, the security system is "down."
It would be more worry-some to think that it was a more "professional" job, involving someone signing in a guest under an alias, who would have pulled a hoodie over his head before snatching the bike.
It is more worry-some, still, to think that the new security guard who doesn't seem to pay attention to anything except his cell phone, might have popped the gate open and told his new friends to help themselves to white boy's bike.
Sign 2:
When I was pushing my bike into the lobby, the guard who was on duty was in the middle of telling some guy who was standing there, as the clock was striking 2 AM: "He didn't open the door because the guy doesn't live here."
This might have tipped me off to the fact that someone who didn't live there had been trying to get in, somehow. Why someone would have been complaining about that is beyond me, but, that should have given me enough of a twinge of apprehension to have made me pull the bike inside behind me, so Harold could sniff the tires.
Sign 3: At about 3:30 AM, I heard a noise, outside my door and so did Harold, whose ears pricked up and who turned his head towards the door. If I had been thinking, I would have surmised that, of all the noises that occur, with some of them not eliciting this response from him, this particular noise was of special interest to Harold. Like oh, I don't know, maybe the sound of his owner returning on his bike with cat food in his backpack at 3 in the morning.
Well, I guess this post wound up being all about the stolen bike, yikes.
Extra Odds And Ends
I swam with Lilly Saturday afternoon.
It was nice, but kind of depressing in that she used pretty much the same playlist of songs as she had the last time we swam, and told me the same stories when prompted by them.
"We saw them (The Beach Boys) at the Saenger, and you know who else we saw...oh, I'm trying to think now who it was..."
"It was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, you told me last time we swam, remember?"
It just seems to me that if you tell a friend something, it would be because you are interested in their reaction to it, or you value their opinion, and would remember having told them. More and more it seems like people are on auto pilot these days. But, she keeps repeating that she loves me, so its a double-edged sword, I guess.
When I arrived just before 5 PM, there was a guy playing at my spot (shown).
Wow, now I don't have to describe him, thanks to Bluetooth, which I just figured out how to use to connect my phone to my laptop.
The guy looked over at me. I wondered if he recognized me as being "the guy who plays that spot at night," but, I didn't have my guitar on me. He just glanced over and acted like he was busy playing when I drifted over closer to him. He could have thought that I lived there. The couple of ladies who had been standing around him began to praise him loudly at the sight of me standing by the gate "You made our day," type of stuff. It could be that he had told them that he was going to play there unless someone came out and ran him off. They may have been trying to make it seem, to someone they though might live there, like he was enhancing the environment, rather than bothering anyone.
It looked like he had made perhaps 30 bucks, assuming he was keeping it all in his jar, which he probably was, because it was broad daylight, and he had a transparent tip jar, ostensibly for that purpose. As a general rule, people tip buskers who already have a tip jar full, because that makes it look like throwing him some money must be "the thing to do." But, I've covered that topic in this blog before.
The picture above, I got by sticking my phone out through the gate to be able to see if the guy was still there, using it like a periscope. I decided to hit the shutter button. It looks like he is packing up, and like he hadn't had a really great outing, money-wise.
Buskers coming to New Orleans have to expect a pay cut as far as cash, and tally in the free food and drinks and cigarettes and weed and stuff that people will give in lieu of currency...maybe this guy's deportment conveys that he hasn't figured that out yet.
I made just 9 bucks in a couple hours after having returned to the apartment to grab my stuff, after swimming, and then gotten back there at around 11, all done using streetcars...
And, today, Sunday, I went and sold the fifth unit of plasma in order to receive the last of the fifty dollar "bonuses" as a "first time donor."
Now, I imagine they might hold one more carrot in front of my nose, reminding me that the next donation would be the sixth one of the month and would qualify me for that bonus, which would probably make it a 35 dollar outing, but would then qualify me for a slightly larger bonus for the next one, being the second donation within a week and the 7th one of the month. And on and on, until I am bled dry.
Without making this blog post all about the bike being stolen, although it is a big pain in the ass and one of those things that you don't truly miss until they are gone.
My business now will be to try to get someone to run the video from that camera in that particular time period and see if it is some idiot who assumed that the cameras were broken and he had carte blanche to take it.
It would be worse is one of the residents had brought in some stranger who signed in with a fake ID to do the dirty work, because there would be more to fear in the future from someone so "clever."
There is also a new security guard.
He is a young black guy with dreadlocks in his hair who sits behind the desk staring at his phone.
When I left to come here, I don't think he noticed me at all.
All of the other guards at least turn their heads to take note of me when I push the door open to enter the lobby. This one never stopped staring at his phone. Nor did he lift his head at any time as I passed by him.
Before I closed the door behind me, I said: "I don't live here, I just stole some stuff." No reaction at all. His job is to keep the seat warm and occasionally sign someone in, he isn't required to talk to white folk, I guess is his deal. He must be from Gretna.
So, I left a message on the machine of Tim, my caseworker, so that if I'm not up bright and early to pursue the matter, there might be a window of opportunity when Tim might be able to get them to hold off on erasing the video of the weekend, if that is something they do.
Some places keep their videos for 72 hours, some for a week or two. I guess it depends upon the type of business and the likelihood of someone having an issue with something that might have happened a couple weeks prior.
Since the office where the hard drive is gets locked up from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, it wouldn't make sense for them to have a machine that records over itself every 24 hours. That would turn Friday and Saturday nights into open season for criminals.
My biggest concern is, not so much getting the bike back, I have already been offered a nice Trek bike for 40 bucks, and a lesser bike for half that. It is with putting a face to all the petty thefts that have been a nuisance to us residents. There are only one of two residents who are of the class that would stoop to stealing a can of beer that someone put down
I Fail To Heed The Signs
I used to just leave my bike leaning against the wall right outside my apartment when I got home in the early mornings.
Inside the apartment, it always seemed to be in the way, and since this one didn't have a kickstand, that acerbating the problem of where to put it.
Plus, Harold the cat would sniff the tires, as if being able to tell where I had been by doing so.
It was right under a camera, and there were others at the exits to the left and right of where it sat.
Nobody comes in the building except through the lone door where the security desk is, and after showing ID.
Plus, things have changed in the past couple years after the musical chairs of residents coming in and not working out for one reason or another and then being replaced by other wildcard residents.
The worst of the tenants have been weeded out. Most of the heroin addicts have disappeared.
Harry, who looked at me suspiciously after he once heard me calling Harold the cat, as if I might have named it after him, to mock him in some way, perhaps; he got ten years in prison, I heard, after he was found with pounds of heroin in a car that he was driving. Knowing Harry, he was probably tailgating and flipping the bird and driving erratically, and is probably taking the fall for someone who could have him killed in prison if he starts talking. They aren't going to hold Harry's apartment for him.
But, the monitors at the front security desk went blank a couple weeks ago. Now, instead of the guard sitting in front of a bank of a dozen screens, ostensibly watching the place, he now has to entertain himself with his smart phone alone.
The monitors were kind of entertaining to watch, I thought: "There goes Bobby to the laundry room; out comes the blind woman to cane her way to the candy machine, there she is trying to skeeze change from the guy from A113 who just came out; what's that he's got, a fishing pole?" type of stuff.
Sign 1:
Friday night, as I was coming back from having made 23 bucks (that was the night that I blogged that I would have been happy to get the hell out of there in one piece and with 13 dollars) I rode in using the side street, and not Canal Street, so I didn't notice that the gate that opens and closes to let cars in was stuck open. The "out" gate the opposite end of the lot had been closed.
I like it when the gate is open, as if saves me from having to ride around to the other side of the building and then having to swipe my key card to let myself and my awkward bike and backpack and guitar through a couple lobby doors, into the same parking lot.
The downside is that, someone could enter the lot off the street and then, if they were to catch a resident coming in or out of one of the doors, they might be able to get that resident to let them in, through social engineering.
I always tell any stranger who is hanging around and yells: "Yo, hold that door!" to go around the front and use their key card to get in. That's what the key cards are for. That's what the front door is for. It is often someone who used to live at Sacred Heart, relying upon: "I think this guy lives here, I've seen him before" to get in.
I should have a glance towards that gate to my arriving home routine, because, my bike almost certainly went out through it.
I'm hoping it was someone as crack addled as Brian, who will knock on my door at all hours of the night trying sell me things like size 14 sneakers, and then will beg me for money anyways "to feed my children," after I tell him that I am a size ten and a half, or that I really don't need a vial of antibiotics, or a radio/cassette deck that's only missing one speakers but still has the other one, just turn it up louder, just then.
He is conceivably thick enough to conclude that, since the monitors at the security desk are out, the security system is "down."
It would be more worry-some to think that it was a more "professional" job, involving someone signing in a guest under an alias, who would have pulled a hoodie over his head before snatching the bike.
It is more worry-some, still, to think that the new security guard who doesn't seem to pay attention to anything except his cell phone, might have popped the gate open and told his new friends to help themselves to white boy's bike.
Sign 2:
When I was pushing my bike into the lobby, the guard who was on duty was in the middle of telling some guy who was standing there, as the clock was striking 2 AM: "He didn't open the door because the guy doesn't live here."
This might have tipped me off to the fact that someone who didn't live there had been trying to get in, somehow. Why someone would have been complaining about that is beyond me, but, that should have given me enough of a twinge of apprehension to have made me pull the bike inside behind me, so Harold could sniff the tires.
Sign 3: At about 3:30 AM, I heard a noise, outside my door and so did Harold, whose ears pricked up and who turned his head towards the door. If I had been thinking, I would have surmised that, of all the noises that occur, with some of them not eliciting this response from him, this particular noise was of special interest to Harold. Like oh, I don't know, maybe the sound of his owner returning on his bike with cat food in his backpack at 3 in the morning.
Well, I guess this post wound up being all about the stolen bike, yikes.
Extra Odds And Ends
I swam with Lilly Saturday afternoon.
It was nice, but kind of depressing in that she used pretty much the same playlist of songs as she had the last time we swam, and told me the same stories when prompted by them.
 |
| While The Cat Is Away, The Mice Will Play |
"We saw them (The Beach Boys) at the Saenger, and you know who else we saw...oh, I'm trying to think now who it was..."
"It was Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, you told me last time we swam, remember?"
It just seems to me that if you tell a friend something, it would be because you are interested in their reaction to it, or you value their opinion, and would remember having told them. More and more it seems like people are on auto pilot these days. But, she keeps repeating that she loves me, so its a double-edged sword, I guess.
When I arrived just before 5 PM, there was a guy playing at my spot (shown).
Wow, now I don't have to describe him, thanks to Bluetooth, which I just figured out how to use to connect my phone to my laptop.
The guy looked over at me. I wondered if he recognized me as being "the guy who plays that spot at night," but, I didn't have my guitar on me. He just glanced over and acted like he was busy playing when I drifted over closer to him. He could have thought that I lived there. The couple of ladies who had been standing around him began to praise him loudly at the sight of me standing by the gate "You made our day," type of stuff. It could be that he had told them that he was going to play there unless someone came out and ran him off. They may have been trying to make it seem, to someone they though might live there, like he was enhancing the environment, rather than bothering anyone.
It looked like he had made perhaps 30 bucks, assuming he was keeping it all in his jar, which he probably was, because it was broad daylight, and he had a transparent tip jar, ostensibly for that purpose. As a general rule, people tip buskers who already have a tip jar full, because that makes it look like throwing him some money must be "the thing to do." But, I've covered that topic in this blog before.
The picture above, I got by sticking my phone out through the gate to be able to see if the guy was still there, using it like a periscope. I decided to hit the shutter button. It looks like he is packing up, and like he hadn't had a really great outing, money-wise.
Buskers coming to New Orleans have to expect a pay cut as far as cash, and tally in the free food and drinks and cigarettes and weed and stuff that people will give in lieu of currency...maybe this guy's deportment conveys that he hasn't figured that out yet.
I made just 9 bucks in a couple hours after having returned to the apartment to grab my stuff, after swimming, and then gotten back there at around 11, all done using streetcars...
And, today, Sunday, I went and sold the fifth unit of plasma in order to receive the last of the fifty dollar "bonuses" as a "first time donor."
Now, I imagine they might hold one more carrot in front of my nose, reminding me that the next donation would be the sixth one of the month and would qualify me for that bonus, which would probably make it a 35 dollar outing, but would then qualify me for a slightly larger bonus for the next one, being the second donation within a week and the 7th one of the month. And on and on, until I am bled dry.
Without making this blog post all about the bike being stolen, although it is a big pain in the ass and one of those things that you don't truly miss until they are gone.
My business now will be to try to get someone to run the video from that camera in that particular time period and see if it is some idiot who assumed that the cameras were broken and he had carte blanche to take it.
It would be worse is one of the residents had brought in some stranger who signed in with a fake ID to do the dirty work, because there would be more to fear in the future from someone so "clever."
There is also a new security guard.
He is a young black guy with dreadlocks in his hair who sits behind the desk staring at his phone.
When I left to come here, I don't think he noticed me at all.
All of the other guards at least turn their heads to take note of me when I push the door open to enter the lobby. This one never stopped staring at his phone. Nor did he lift his head at any time as I passed by him.
Before I closed the door behind me, I said: "I don't live here, I just stole some stuff." No reaction at all. His job is to keep the seat warm and occasionally sign someone in, he isn't required to talk to white folk, I guess is his deal. He must be from Gretna.
So, I left a message on the machine of Tim, my caseworker, so that if I'm not up bright and early to pursue the matter, there might be a window of opportunity when Tim might be able to get them to hold off on erasing the video of the weekend, if that is something they do.
 |
| A rare photo of the camera shy Lilly |
Some places keep their videos for 72 hours, some for a week or two. I guess it depends upon the type of business and the likelihood of someone having an issue with something that might have happened a couple weeks prior.
Since the office where the hard drive is gets locked up from Friday afternoon until Monday morning, it wouldn't make sense for them to have a machine that records over itself every 24 hours. That would turn Friday and Saturday nights into open season for criminals.
My biggest concern is, not so much getting the bike back, I have already been offered a nice Trek bike for 40 bucks, and a lesser bike for half that. It is with putting a face to all the petty thefts that have been a nuisance to us residents. There are only one of two residents who are of the class that would stoop to stealing a can of beer that someone put down
"I don't live here; I just stole some stuff" LOL.
ReplyDeleteSad to say, but you have to keep a bike inside. Yeah, bikes are a pain in the ass, but you have to simply make room. Put down a piece of carpet runner or a rug or something for the bike to be on so you don't mess up the carpet, and just re-arrange things to make room for the bike.
As I understand it, you have a 1-bedroom place so you can make room... Remember how Kramer on Seinfeld always had a bike in his place...