Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Saturday, May 23, 2009
$188.76, Added To My Mint.com "Idiot Penalities" Category

So after last night's deprarious lock/key snafu, I'm :-/ faced to report that I have acted quickly and today purchased a replacement lock for my treasured Kyptonite "Fahgettaboudit Chain" (seriously, that is what it's called).

Thankfully--with the chain on its own worth $75--I only needed a lock and not the full lock-chain set. Which was nice to not have to spend another $100 for a new set... but unfortunately, even replacing the lock alone is quite expensive, as Kryptonite cuts you a deal by buying the chain and lock together. I hemmed and hawed for a bit about going with a less nice lock to save money, but ultimately I decided that a little savings now wasn't worth the longterm bummer theft posed, and so I purchased the black lock above known as the Kryptonite Series 4 for $45 plus tax. This is a serious lock--the same as what I owned previously and had cut last night--though it is, amusingly, not Kryptonite's strongest--only registering a "9" on a scale of "11", with their strongest lock having the simple and pretty-deprarious-when-you-think-about-it name "New York Lock"***. Still, after watching a locksmith spend 25 minutes last night trying to cut through it with a mini-disc drill--he ran through two discs!!--I feel satisfied that only the most dedicated thief will crack my shit. Far more likely, if my bike is ever stolen, it will be due to my own negligence or idiocy.

Anyway, the sad end result is that I am now out $188.76, which is about half the amount I had been hoping to spend on the shitty track bike for commuting (so that I might be able to cease spending days at my office in constant fear that my bike was being carried off by thieves while I tarried on spreadsheets and CMS backends. This is the life of Ben Scheim. He apologizes to Jeffrey Beaumont on a daily basis for making him deal with this constant bullshit. C'est la vie.

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If you're curious about what kind of lock to buy, check out the following: a 2008 NY Mag article, 2006 Slate article here and another here. And a simple Google query will result in many more hits as well.

NOTES:

*** - Interestingly (or deprariously) enough, while most bike locks carry some kind of anti-theft warranty, many of them have warranties that are specifically voided if the bike is stolen within the state of New York. Basically, New York is fucking sinkhole for theft and its denizens of the underworld have both the desire and know-how to steal just about anything they want. Rad!

Labels: BEAUMONT, biking, deprarious, fucktactics, lolgore

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 5/23/2009 01:47:00 PM 0 comments

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