“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.
