Originally published at: This fashionable bike lock does not slow down the Lockpicking Lawyer | Boing Boing
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That fits with the brand perception: over-priced and underwhelming, except for those who care about brands.
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A “Supreme” bike lock is totally ridiculous, but I kind of feel like the Lockpicking Lawyer is kind of cheating with his videos, now - he’s got a level of skill and tools that even dedicated bike thieves aren’t going to have. He’s not revealing weaknesses in lock products with videos like this one, but his own prowess at lockpicking. Which, don’t get me wrong, is very cool and highly entertaining, but it’s a world away from his earlier videos where he’s making it clear the locks are crap.
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At some point it’s like listening to Usain Bolt tell us how easy it is to run 10 second 100 meter dash. However, LPL does say at the end that the lock and chain set is generally good and only pickable with specialized tools, which he now happens to sell via the internet.
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Honestly, I’m mildly surprised that by now he doesn’t simply stares locks open.
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Among all the thefts I have heard of or experienced, I have never heard of a dedicated bike thief actually picking a lock. Even the old, openable with a bic pen, ones always seem to be in pieces on the ground.
It’s far more likely that the attack is going to involve an angle grinder or big ass cutting tool. Here in Vancouver people get spotted with massive bolt cutters or angle grinders at a disturbingly high frequency and don’t seem too concerned about witnesses to the theft. I go with the policy that the larger lock is a better deterrent as it takes longer to get through. Nothing will stop someone with determination and sufficient time.
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C’mon now, the Lockpicking Lawyer isn’t Chuck Norris.
Is he…?
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That is kind of what my wife and I have learned (and observed) in Paris. She recently bought a well reviewed bike lock without too much concern about how easy it is to pick because it had a short, thick U that would take time to cut and would not leave enough room between the lock and the bike frame to insert a car-jack-like tool to pry the lock apart. Those are by far the most common ways bikes are stolen here.
Still, this whole Supreme thing has me thinking and I think I might traipse down to Hermès to see if they have a bike lock with a matching Birkin bag to transport it… (Kidding – if I did that, the bag alone would cost at least 10X what the bike itself did.)
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I think that may be true of bike thievery, but vehicle thefts do sometimes seem to use low skill picking methods that use a special tool, such as in vans in the UK.
And, of course, LPL has videos on how to do this…
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Plus, in the wild, what you want is a lock that resists destructive methods, not the LL’s nondestructive expertise.
It would be interesting if he put out videos that also used destructive techniques— but, then again, such a video would literally be a manual for thieves to improve their techniques. (Perhaps if he only published videos where his attempts were not successful?)
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The part about “not wanting your bike to stand out on the rack” puts me in mind of a bit in one of William Gibson’s “Bridge Trilogy” books, where he described the ride of a professional bicycle courier: she’d gotten a bike made of some incredibly expensive, lightweight, and strong high-tech material… and then wrapped it up in duct tape, sprayed it different colors, and generally made it look like a piece of trash. It still rode like a dream but it looked like a nightmare, and the idea was that it would always be the last bike anyone would want to steal from anywhere it was locked to.
Someday when my Patreon is doing better, perhaps I will blow half a year’s rent on a really, really nice bike and do something similar to it. Hide in plain sight. Right now my bike is just a cheap $300 thing with a dented-up chainguard I haven’t bothered to get fixed.
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IANAL but… isn’t ‘Going Equipped’ still illegal in most places?
I remember a lighting company that made air travel cases for their portable photography lights, and they also sold “ugly covers” for them - canvas covers that you could grunge up so that your luggage didn’t look like nice cases of expensive photographic equipment.
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This was Sheldon Brown’s daily ride (Sheldon was basically the bike mechanic’s bike mechanic).
He’d just dab at it whenever had a mostly empty tin of paint lying around to deter thieves. Never got stolen. I think it looks a lot better than most new bikes.
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He totally does that. You just need to look through his back catalog of videos more. He has lots of videos including bolt cutters, cable cutters, angle grinder, and other destructive tools successfully pressed into service to destroy locks. He is not just a picker.
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after recently purchasing a rather expensive (for me) ebike and agonizing about what sort of lock to get for it, here is what i have learned: given enough time, any bike lock can be sawed through, and people who live in places where bicycles must be stored outdoors overnight or for long periods during the day are kind of shit out of luck and will either need to store bikes indoors or gamble on having a bike that’s less desirable or locked more securely than the one next to it. i ended up buying the highest “rated” bike lock i could find for my needs, which other than the color, looks a lot like the one in the video above. even that had several negative reviews accompanied by images of the lock having been sawed through and poof no bike. but these were generally bikes stored outdoors overnight. and as others have noted, the average bike thief does not have the skill that lockpicking lawyer has.
in a nutshell, deterring bike theft comes down to not making it easy, and to some extent is like that joke about escaping bear attacks by hiking w/ someone slower.
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are there any ASMR lock picking videos out there? every click of his pick in the lock was like having a chiropractor work on my neck one vertebra at a time - except at the end my head doesn’t fall off.
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Yeah, the cordless tool revolution really was a game changer.
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Well, I’d say it was the chain fender and spring-loaded seat that spoke louder to me than the paint job.
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