Chill Bike

Gadget Lab’s Charlie Sorrel knows a thing or two about getting stolen property back from thieving mutant junkies. He’d have to. Charlie is a roaming exile from the streets of Nottingham, the Chernobyl of the East Midlands: a town so nightmarishly violent that it has more guns per capita than South Africa, so inbred that all its residents can trace a half-equine “Mitochondrial Eve” back to the mid 17th century, and so impoverished that its main export was pig iron until 2005 (which was then exceeded by Crazy Frog Ringtones). So when Charlie’s ???280 bicycle was stolen in Barcelona by the local “king of the junkies”, Mad Man Chuck knew just what to do: confront the junkie in front of said junkie’s aged mother, then (after some masterful negotiation) happily agree to pay ???40… despite the fact that he’d already paid the junkie ???40 for the bike back!

A tribute to the benefits of alcohol and perseverance, the 18 day saga came to end when I spotted the jerk wheeling the bike past my local bar, where I was drinking a beer. He was walking with his mother, and there was a rather nice looking houseplant hanging from my handlebars… When I grabbed the handlebars, some vague recognition swam into his eyes. I told him he had my bike, and he told me not to say anything in front of his mother, a short sturdy battle-axe of a woman in a floral print tent of a dress. Then he started ranting: “Fifty euros. Pay me or I will slit your throat.” This was an improvement, I think, on the last offer, which was “a stab in the heart.”

Eventually, an amenable deal was reached by both parties, and Charlie got his bike then-and there, with a free wheel thrown in to boot. Never say junkie bike thieves have no sense of customer service. While I love teasing my favorite Wired drinking buddy on his perceived wussiness, his post on getting his bike back is actually a fantastic look at the inside politics of trying to reclaim property in a crime-ridden Spanish barrio. In this case, the junkie was furious that Charlie had called the police during the initial theft, thereby making Charlie a persistent target… by agreeing to pay more money, Charlie hopes that he wiped the slate clean. The effect may well be the opposite, but the First Blood wishful thinking of Wired’s commenters — to the last of them, a bunch of loutish, half-sentient turdlings — would be just as disastrous. After all, who would you bet on in a physical confrontation? A sunken-chested tech writer with the upper body strength of a consumptive pre-teen? Or a vicious crack junkie so desperate for a rock that he’d threaten to cut your throat in front of his own septuagenarian mother? Charlie, you made the right choice. Congrats on the proud reclamation of your steed!