Bike Thief, A New York City Social Experiment by Casey Neistat

“Bike Thief” is a social experiment in which filmmaker Casey Neistat repeatedly stole his own bike in locations around New York City, including in front of a police station. He gets away with it in (almost) every instance. Neistat performed the experiment as a New York Times opinion-documentary. We recently wrote about another Neistat op-doc “Texting While Walking.” And back in 2008 we wrote about Casey and Van Neistat’s earlier attempt at the bike thief experiment.

I recently spent a couple of days conducting a bike theft experiment, which I first tried with my brother Van in 2005. I locked my own bike up and then proceeded to steal it, using brazen means — like a giant crowbar — in audacious locations, including directly in front of a police station. I wanted to find out whether onlookers or the cops would intervene. What you see here in my film are the results.

E.D.W. Lynch
E.D.W. Lynch

Writer and humor generalist on the Internet and on Facebook.