Just call me the handyman.

My friend Rif called me yesterday afternoon ’cause his bike lock was jammed. He had been hanging out in Copley Square (a big, open plaza in downtown Boston) at a swing dance, so there was power (for the DJ) available; after trying some other avenues – the police said to call the locksmith, the locksmith wanted 150 bucks just to show up – I strapped my circular saw with cutoff wheel to the back of my bike and headed on down.

Understand that cutting through a half inch of steel in a Kryptonite lock is not a subtle or quiet effort. The saw spits sparks a good five feet into the air, and it’s quite loud. Nonetheless, there we were, in broad daylight, in the plaza cutting the lock off a bike and not a single soul said a word to us (granted we got one or two strange looks). Astounding. No prizes for guessing how quickly the police would’ve arrived had we been black…