Most upvoted comment
I’m not proud of it, but I’ve been forced to live out of my car for now. Today I woke and found this on my rear window. I’ve never felt so vulnerable.(r/creepy)
Also some helpful tips from someone who’s lived in a very ghetto neighborhood in a very ghetto city before:
-
Keep your doors unlocked, and keep nothing valuable in the car, if the doors are locked they’ll break the window and rifle through the compartments, to prevent theft of the car itself, I got a club for the steering wheel
-
take the bulbs out of the glove compartment, doors, and ceilings, car hoppers usually leave those open because they don’t care, are trying to be as fast as possible, and don’t want anyone to hear the sound of the car door shutting
-
There are stickers like this that are really useful, I’m not armed and probably never will be, but I witnessed a guy come creeping up on my car looking in the back window, about to go for the drivers side door but pause and slowly walk away
Another fun thing I did one time was create an urban scarecrow and place it in the back window of our house, which faced an alleyway where people have been stabbed and is a constant haven for drug use. I took a cardboard cutout of some wine aficionado guy that my roommate found, cut his arm (in the cutout he was holding a bottle of wine at his chest), repositioned it so that it was extended up to his face, and fixtured a pair of binoculars on his eyes. It was great because the light shined down right behind him so if you saw from outside all you really see is the silhouette, with the binoculars still able to be seen! I thought it would never work but my roommates bedroom was on the floor directly below and his computer was near his window directly below and he informed me rather surprised one time, “Dude that thing is actually working, I’ve seen people show up to shoot up and look at our house with deer in the headlights look on their faces and leave all sketchy-like.”
edit: for those questioning the neighborhood and the circumstances, this was (Jesse) Ventura Village in Minneapolis, which is pretty tame now but used to be much, much worse
edit2: boring article from the jesse ventura village screenshot