I don't know exactly where Mr. Kilgannon lives, but I have a feeling from other Tweets that it is somewhere in upper Manhattan. Doesn't matter. He walks around the city. And of course if you have a smartphone, you have a camera. He might use a "real" camera, but there is a decreasing need to carry one around.
Mr. Kilgannon shares the above photo of someone who has secured their outdoor Halloween skeleton decoration to their stoop railing with a bicycle lock and a padlock. Good thinking.
With a little imagination, you might think the skeleton belongs to the escape artist Harry Houdini, as if he failed decades ago to get out of the restraints he put himself in, thus decaying away to what you see today. A somewhat gruesome fate.
The point is, you have to secure things you put outside in New York. I've seen significantly large stone planters in front of apartment houses with a chain around them, securing the planter to a railing. You would need a forklift to make off with the pot, but since anything's possible, better safe than sorry.
Bikes of course are secured to parking sign posts, sometimes elaborately securing the front and back wheels. Sometimes if space is an issue, the owner removes the front wheel and secures it with the back wheel. The owner sometime takes one of the wheels with them. Who wants a bike you can't ride away on?
I once read of people in Manhasset who have expensive bonsai plants in their yards who have taken to cabling them to fences. Apparently, there has been a rash of bonsai thefts.
Stores near Penn Station that cater to tourists put luggage outside their store fronts secured with a cable through the handles to prevent a piece being walked off with. If shoes are displayed, only one of the pair is on outdoor display. If you want to score with a left and right, you have to settle for a pair that won't match, much less probably not fit.
Years ago when we had the family shop on 18th Street and 3rd Avenue, the Bowery guys who might wander above 14th Street would scoop up some geraniums and head for the nearest gin mill to try and convince the bartender into a trade for a shot of something. Anything.
It wasn't hard to catch up to these guys and convince them that the plants didn't belong to them. That task always fell to me. I don't know how many geraniums I saved from being bar-room barter.
New York's not necessarily an outright tough place, but you do have to secure what's yours, even if it's a skeleton.
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