VIDEO: Brooklyn Bicycle Thieves Cut Down Ginkgo Tree to Steal Bike
A tree did not grow in Brooklyn early yesterday morning (har har) when a troupe of bicycle thieves -- dead set on jacking a bike tied to a sidewalk ginkgo -- chopped down the innocent tree in cold blood. [Spotted at Flying Pigeon LA.]
sea turtle via Flickr Next time, try more Xtreme measures
It was no Palto Alto shrub, either, as robbers soon found out: It took them until 1:40 in the sped-up surveillance footage to even begin to fell the resilient tree. And after all their hard work, one of the dudes takes a five-second joyride before getting bored and wandering away, glued to his smart phone. (Damn NYC kids/dumb criminals and their necessity to Tweet every lamebrained shit they take at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night.) See for yourself:
While one Reddit commenter scolds the bike's owner for putting nature in danger -- "trees grow really slow here and are more important than a bike" -- another, who seems to have some honest-cherry-tree moments under his belt, scoffs at the thieves' technique:
"Pro tip for chopping down trees: Do not swing the axe so that you are hitting the trunk at a 90 degree angle. Swing the axe in a slight downward motion to create chips in the wood at a 45 degree angle that can be cleared away with one good hack at 90 degrees. In other words, he could have had this tree down in half the time. Damn city slicker."
Lucky for us Angelenos, you can't tie SUVs to trees. And even the few yet avid cyclists among us would never so much as nick a ginkgo branch in pursuit of locking up their green machines. That's what all those damn parking meters are for!
[@simone_electra/swilson@laweekly.com]
Email to Friend
Write to Editor
Print Article
