Random Acts of Vandalism

[pryan]

Last night I attended a Luciana Souza concert that was held at the Pantages Theatre, which is in downtown Winnipeg. I parked on a side street in order to avoid any parking fees. Upon returning to my vehicle (an older Toyota 4-Runner), I noticed that the back window had been smashed. Much to my surprise, the vandals didn't take anything. So, what are you doing on a Saturday evening? Busting car windows, of course. I don't get it. Tell your vandalism stories in this thread.

[connoisseur series500]

The only thing I vandalize is my pocketbook. Been spending a lot lately...

[Guest Chaney]

Around two years ago, I went in to my office on a Sunday in the usual attempt to get caught up. I parked in the Main Place Mall 'ramp'. (Three floors of parking beneath the nearly dead mall. I work in the Main Place Tower, a 27 storey office building.)

After spending 5 or 6 utterly delightful hours at my desk working on some endlessly entertaining estate matters -- but feeling pretty good about things as there's no way I can get so much work done during the week -- I left my office, rode down in the elevator, signed out at the security desk and made my way to my car, parked on the first level just below the building.

Understand one thing: Downtown Buffalo, on a Sunday, is dead. There were maybe ten cars parked in the ramp when I got there and fewer when I left.

Arriving at my car -- a 1986 Toyota Corolla, since junked -- I opened the trunk to stow some items. I closed the trunk and then looked through the back window and notice that, for some reason, my seats seemed to be glistening. After staring through the back window for a few seconds, wondering how the inside of my car had become wet, I went to the driver's side of the car, where I then notice that someone had thrown a cinder block through the front passenger side window. (The cinder block was now in the passenger seat. The shimmer had come from the glass that now covered the inside of the car.)

What had so enticed Mr. Bastard to do what he did? Well, as two of my tires were losing air and I didn't have the money to buy new ones, on my back seat was a air pump thingy, purchased just one week before. Mr. Shit took that and also cleaned out my glove compartment. (There was nothing of value there but there were items that had my name and address on them. I then feared that Mr. Cretin was at that very moment ransacking my apartment. Thankfully, not realized; Mr. Dipshit probably didn't have transportation!)

Why was my car chosen? Well, the car was a piece of crap so the bad guy could (correctly) assume that the car did not have an alarm. I also made the mistake of not parking the car near the security camera. (Not that the security guy was likely to notice anything as, when I left my office, he was watching the Bills game.)

Repair cost: $114.

Lesson learned? Don't work on Sundays and don't ever again foolishly drop glass coverage from my auto insurance in a attempt to save money.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I went nearly two years without a car as I saved for a new one.

My landlord went out of town and let me use his car. I drove to work on a Wednesday, parked IN THE SAME RAMP!, and when I left for the day, I found that someone had smeared the car with peanut butter cups (!) and broken the outside driver’s side rear view mirror!

Repair cost: $25 and a half-day of work missed as I wanted to have the mirror replaced before my landlord arrived home the next day! (I told him of the mishap.)

Edited February 6, 2005 by Chaney

[patricia]

Trying to figure out what the reason was for vandalism is futile. There are so many angry fools out there who think it's amusing to wreck anything they can that I can't imagine what they would say, if apprehended and they were asked.

What makes it worse is that if you report this criminal offence to the local constabulary, it's not long before you feel that it's your own fault that it happened. How could you have left your car in a parking lot without an armed guard protecting it?? If you had, it seems, you would not have had this happen. No mention of what we were all taught as little kids, that if it's not yours, leave it alone. To add insult to injury, if you claim on your insurance, quite often your premiums go up. The implied solutions seem to be to either lock up your belongings in a windowless strongroom, or not have anything of value.

I'm not saying that we should amputate thieves' and vandals' right hands, or put them in the stocks in the public square and sic the townspeaple, armed with over-ripe fruit on them............................but, maybe I am. Whatever we are doing isn't working.

It makes no sense to, in effect blame us for having things that we paid for and oddly enough want to use.

[Soul Stream]

I once played a gig at a dump called the Starlite Lounge in Dallas. When I went to the car on my break, I saw someone had spraypainted every single car in the parking lot.

[Uncle Skid]

Way back when I was in college, my roommates and I would get drunk and practice random acts of anti-vandalism. We'd be walking back from parties on campus and do crazy things like fix knocked over signs, pick up litter, help people fix flat tires, and other wild and crazy stuff like that.

We felt that, in a very small way, it might counter some of the insanity that went on elsewhere.

I ran with a pretty crazy crowd, huh???

[Free For All]

Way back when I was in college, my roommates and I would get drunk and practice random acts of anti-vandalism.  We'd be walking back from parties on campus and do crazy things like fix knocked over signs, pick up litter, help people fix flat tires, and other wild and crazy stuff like that.

We felt that, in a very small way, it might counter some of the insanity that went on elsewhere.

I ran with a pretty crazy crowd, huh??? 

Sounds like the *Van Buren boys*.

[vibes]

My father had had his first Porsche for about a month (this was in the mid-80's) when someone walked around the parking lot at his office and sprayed some type of acid on every car there, ruining the paint on dozens of cars. Getting his car repainted with a comparable paint job cost over $5000. He was not a happy camper.

Oh, and the vandals left a note on someone else's brand new car, saying "Sorry, I just couldn't resist."

[Jim Alfredson]

Karma (or is it car-ma?) will get 'em sooner or later.

I never had anyone vandalize my car for no reason. I did have someone jimmy the lock on my '78 Buick Skylark and take my CDs and portable CD player that I stupidly left out in the open. I couldn't even tell they got in... no scratches on the door, no sign of any unlawful entry except my stuff was gone. Oh well... they got a bunch of "worthless" jazz CDs.