Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

  • http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

    And it was a “gipsy” [sic].

    • fidel_funk

      What you Gyrofrog…another hungarian rascist?

      • http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

        Nope… Merely noting how they felt the need to mention this (a disfavored exonym) in the video title. What I didn’t know is that “gipsy” is an alternate spelling, not a misspelling. (Which is why I couldn’t tell if you were perhaps joking, and intentionally misspelled racist)

        • fidel_funk

          oh i see sorry…

          (i dont know the word exwym,what does it mean?)

          • http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exonym_and_endonym

  • ChicagoD

    Yeah. That’s how they do it. Welcome to the big city. I had the sound off here at work. Why were they filming him?

    • Navin_Johnson

      Was going to say the same.  Saw a guy do this to somebody on the green line (Central stop) back in the day, but with a poor girl’s necklace instead. Sad to see her break out in tears and her mom and dad try to console her.

      Also, at one point the thief looked like he was about to fall asleep… *edit* I see that’s part of his routine.

    • ocker3

       Because they’d seen it before. Lack of consistent acting on his part.

  • http://twitter.com/jeremybrooks Jeremy Brooks

    This happened to my wife on BART just a couple of weeks ago. She forced the doors open, screaming at the guy. Somebody managed to tackle him and got her phone back; the guy left his shoe behind and bolted.

  • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

    Its all in the timing. Presumably the tone before the doors close is triggered by the signal which closes the door so he just has to learn the exact interval to wait after the tone to grab the item.

    Thats a bummer of a failure mode right there. I would love to see traceability for that in the system level design.

    • ChicagoD

      Although a simple barrier between that seat and the doors would be (a) more comfortable for riders (both standing and sitting), and (b) make this harder to do.

      • http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley

         It’s a Soviet-built subway car from the late 60s-early 70s. It wasn’t designed with comfort in mind. It’s a miracle it still operates!

        • http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith

          It’s a miracle it still operates!

          I saw a lot of soviet hardware like that in Prague and IMHO it was kept running by rock solid engineering. No miracles required.

          • http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

            It’s been a few years since I was in Prague… but they definitely weren’t using Soviet-era trams; the ones we were one were quite new.

  • http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley

    haha I actually saw this story in the news the other day and was thinking of submitterating it here.

    According to the news report, he’s been doing this phone theft thing regularly on Metro line 3. Part of his schtick is to act drunk or drugged, so as to disarm people around him into thinking he wouldn’t be able to react fast. But it backfired on him as another passenger was suspicious of this behavior and started filming him.

    They caught him by showing the video to the police, who could identify and locate him since he just got out of jail. Back to the clink!

  • http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley

    Oh and the lady watching at the end yells, “What a dick!”

  • http://twitter.com/johndavidstutts johndavidstutts

    He didn’t steal anything. She didn’t build that phone, and he looked like he needed it more.  Just spreading the wealth around

    • joeposts

      STEAL CELL PHONES IS JUST LIKE OBMAMAS TAXES1!!!

    • petertrepan

      Oh, I get it! By making reference to the phrase Obama used when arguing that most large scale projects are collaborative and not the work of individual heroes of industry, you are comparing the theft of the phone to the claim that more progressive taxation would be a fairer way to fund the collaborative efforts of government than the practice of levying flat taxes that, while seemingly fairer to people who believe they may be such captains of industry in the future, allow elites to use funds from past successes to erect barriers to entry that prevent future innovators from competing in an open market, and…
      Wait, I guess you lost me after all.

    • DevinC

      Is it just one guy who is always trying to threadjack a conversation for purposes of Obamabashing?  ’Cos I see it all over, not just in BoingBoing.  The connection’s always tenuous at best, and the humour pretty weak, so there is a certain stylistic unity.

      Or is it a whole lot of people?  I can’t believe a whole class of people honestly think their observations of dubious perspicuity are needed wherever they go.

      So I’m going with the “single prolific troll” theory.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Based on his history, I thought that it was a joke.

  • Kelly M

    So, was the knowing person who filmed this an accomplice?  A suspicious rider?

    • oasisob1

      A superbeing.

  • bluest_one

    Interesting to note how he first relaxes his right arm, in preperation and then once the doors open, he hooks his left leg around to prevent them closing on him.

  • fidel_funk

    i blew 12 years of my life in Budapest… we couldnt leave leave baby toys in the entry for 30 secs, WHAM! gone… garden tools or an un-opened beer on the terrace… Man our tulips dug out and gone… turn your back and bye-bye…

    • http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley

       fwiw I’ve been here for 12 years myself now and I’ve never had anything stolen. oh except for my car.

      • fidel_funk

        Buddy, do we know each other? I left 4 years ago – and have a comlete collection on Hate comics…
        Danish i am!

        • http://www.peterbagge.com/ Buddy Bradley

          Maybe we do! But more importantly, let me commend you on your fine taste in comic books.

    • Eric Hunt

       That’s not unique to Budapest. Same thing happens in parts of San Francisco and New York City.

      • fidel_funk

        yup i know, sorry!

  • fidel_funk

    Hah… i one had friends visiting… they parked their can on the road in front of our house… and after a nite of heavy partying in the morning they found their car, standing on bricks – no wheels…
    weird…

  • http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

    Well I’d still prefer this the brand of phone stealing I see fairly often on Melbourne’s public transport. That usually involves groups of feral looking kids in tracksuits surrounding one or two people (usually Indians or Asians, talking to them initially like they’re being friendly but quickly devolving into “hand over your phones or we’ll follow you off at your station and beat the living crap out of you. Oh and don’t think about pressing the emergency button or we will just do it on the train in front of people”… Unfortunately the physical beating side of thing happens often enough and gets reported often enough in the news that people do simply hand over the phones. In the scheme of things I’d prefer the grab and run.

    This is also why I hate seeing people that are obviously tourists walking around Melbourne with their backpacks on their fronts. Pickpocketing isn’t much of a problem here, muggings are. Putting the backpack on your front pretty much yells out “the stuff I have in here is valuable!”.

    • Navin_Johnson

       Not so much anymore, but the white earbuds used to pretty much advertise to hoods:  I have an iPod or iPhone please take it!!!

  • smeno smeno

    Budapest is beautiful. But somebody stole my old shoes there. From under my head while I was taking a nap on a meadow. Really crazy.