Courtesy of the neighborhood blog Bowery Boogie, we learn about this note, left on a car parked at the corner of Rivington and Ridge streets.
Is it OK if you apologize and leave cash? Was it ENOUGH cash? Is there any mitigating impact to the fact that it warms the cockles of one’s heart to know that the ancient urban art of gas siphoning lives on in the gentrifying neighborhood Snarly calls home? Speaking of mitigating, does the fact that the person spelled “syphon” and “inconvenience” correctly mitigate the use of “I had to”? (You didn’t HAVE to take his gas, Spelling Bee. You could have called a cab, or waited three hours until the gas stations opened. If you were cold and didn’t want to go back to wherever expelled you at 3am, you could have gone to Bar 151 if you’re one of those gentrifiers or Bereket if you’re not — both are open then. There’s no “had to.”)
If $10 really covered the amount syphoned, I will give this apology a pass. In exchange for the gas, the car owner got a fun life-in-the-big-city story.
That printing looks hauntingly familiar. Surely I don’t know anyone who would do this. Do I?
Well yeah, but in that neighborhood?
I got a similar note sans the cash. I was not amused. (I’m not even sure that ignorance might not have been closer to bliss.) It has a certain Hah, hah, hah, quality.
BTW it was not in the big city, it was at a parking lot for a hiking spot on the Yuba River in Northern California.
I think it had the same “had to” message, and I don’t think it included an “I’m sorry.”
Grumpily,
SMcC