You have a mental image(s) of the thieves, but its probably wrong. Remember the youtube viral video of the middle-aged women stealing the cabana tent from the beach a while back.
Another vote for trading in your nice car for a beater. And when you park it, leave the doors unlocked. That way, the criminals can just open the door, determine that there is nothing worth stealing and, one hopes, leave it alone. I never owned a car the entire time I lived in Boston because I didn’t want the stress of worrying about it. But if you have to have a car in any city, it should be a crummy one, or a rental.
Hey, xig, perhaps you might take off that 'hook-‘em-horns’ bumper sticker. 
Oh, the memories you are causing to come back from living in the Bay Area for 30 plus years.
Yep. Breaking into cars is epidemic. Believe it or not, we had our first incident of car window smashing after we left California. So, not just a San Francisco/Bay Area thing at all. Window broken and an old i phone taken. However, while taking a trip to the East Bay not long after that, rental car was broken into (window smashed) at 9:00 am in a parking lot outside a restaurant. Huge pain in the you know what, plus my daughters stuff was stolen, including a lap top. Lesson learned. It is a lucrative business, and those who know how can break a car window quickly and quietly (tap, tap and glass quietly shatters) and in less than a minute. Daughter now knows not to leave anything in the car. I hope.
And like Massmom says, it is a strategy to drive a beater when parking in certain neighborhoods (including in front of our house when we lived in Ca) and leave it unlocked. We did employ that strategy for years living in the East Bay. Of course one morning my hubby was getting ready to drive the thing to the BART and noticed four drunk men sitting in it. He yelled at them and they ran away, distributing the driver’s manual and some junk from the glove compartment through out the neighborhood as they ran. Oh, yeah, and once, when the old junker was parked at BART, someone cut the catalytic converter out of it. That cost around $1200 to fix that if I’m remembering right. Not quite what the car was worth, trade in, but almost. So we had it repaired. That was a thing for awhile, happened to a lot of cars parked in the BART lot.
Almost everyone I know in California has had their car or cars stolen. Yes, some have had multiple cars stolen. We were lucky I guess. Several bikes stolen, but no cars.
Ah, such memories. Now that I am living in the midwest, with the obnoxious weather (i.e., winter) – I wonder why everyone can’t just behave themselves and be happy in the sunshine state. It would seem it should be so to me.
Yep - I had my catalytic converter stolen from our off-site parking lot while I was at work. The tow guy knew exactly what it was when I described the noise it made when I turned the starter.
$1600 part
Darn, Bluebayou, I think you cracked the puzzle. Tomorrow I will remove my “sticker”
https://toandfromage.files.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/2014/03/image_1.jpg?w=900&h=1175
Again, I understand that this is part of living in the city, but it is still annoying when it happens, and especially when I have to jump on a plane. It is not the end of the world but wasting hours is never amusing when … I could not delegate the task to my younger sister who was smart enough to book her tickets to SxSW for an earlier departure. Makes me realize how blessed I am to have her to deal with all the “little” issues and keep me straight.
PS Thanks Katliamon!
I just love the good old Midwest so much. I can hardly tell you how great it is here.
touche, xiggi!
@atomom? I can’t tell if you are being serious or sarcastic? I love where I live, in many ways – just find that winter annoys me. This one hasn’t been bad, though, really. Boston got all the snow this time around. And Xiggi, I can relate to the plane thing. The day we had the rental car broken into, I had to get it all settled before leaving on a plane the next day. Thank goodness we weren’t trying to leave that day! It actually is sort of a humorous memory of me getting really upset on the phone with the police who didn’t seem to have time to stop by. I wasn’t my best self that day. They did come by, though, and took the report, and were very nice, and we got a new rental car, and went to SF and bought an outfit for the daughter (because in addition to her laptop, her luggage with all her clothes had been stolen) and then went to see Showboat performed by the SF Opera, and it was an amazing show. 
Memorable day.
Oh man, 4 times xig? Thats awful. When DS and fiancee lived in the Berkeley area, they were in the process of moving to SF. They went inside for 5 minutes for fiancee to watch something on the emmys or something and her gar (which wasn’t packed up with stuff at that point) got broken into. They broke the window and stole her new ski boots (which I think were in a box, not sure). Don’t know if they’ve had their cars broken into ont he street where theyv’e lived for the past 20 mos or so, but am now very glad the house they are buying has a 2 car garage!.
I live in North Dallas. There is a section of Dallas to the south of where I live called Highland Park. The median home price is well over a million dollars and they have their own police department, which has a pretty big presence from what I’ve seen. However, on any given day, if you read the newspaper about reported crimes in the area, you will see numerous car break ins where expensive sunglasses, handbags, jewelry, cameras, laptops, etc. are stolen from cars in front of these homes. In the majority of cases, the report will say the car was left unlocked. I can’t imagine leaving my car unlocked in front of my house, but a false sense of security can certainly leave you vulnerable, and it appears that sense is present to a fair degree in Highland Park.
My son lives North of Dallas (Not in Highland Park!). Had his old beat-up Toyota stolen off the driveway of his gated townhome complex. Why was it in the driveway? Something about needing the garage to brew beer…
Sorry about the trouble this put you through.
^^ a matter of priorities! 
Xiggi- what a pain. Whenever we visited our D in the city we would see broken windows in cars. Didn’t seem to matter what neighborhood or type of car. My D hates to spend her money, she complained mighty about her high rent but she was always grateful that she had a spot in her apartment garage and felt the 200 a month was worth it.she had good luck when she found her apartment that she got a parking spot. More tenants want spots then spots available…
Convenient garages are valued commodities. Might sound like a luxury, but it is great when one has access to a protected space. I hope to move up on the WL after five years.
Ah Xiggi…have you yet been given a parking ticket for not curbing your wheels - on a 3% grade?! They were doing that in the Richmond for a while, not sure if the practice continues.
We had our vehicle broken into on 19th and Lincoln during broad daylight. The rear passenger side window was smashed and a bag was grabbed. There was nothing of value in the bag - an old pair of shoes and some t-shirts. I found the bag which was thrown into a bush a few yards from the car. This is a high traffic/ high pedestrian area and we were in the restaurant just across the street.
These are just unfortunate individuals who would not have to resort to such tactics if SF just had better social programs and support for the unwilling and unable…oh wait…never mind. :-S