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Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

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Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We're here to adjust the phase variance on the cardinal grammeter of the retro encabulator"

did you bring you sinusoidal dingle arm? :)

No, but the fluvial wave bearings have been recalibrated to match the impedance of the gravimetric flam.

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#92

I carefully and quietly walked into an academic building with a pair of bolt cutters and walked out with a pair of bolt cutters and an iMac hefted under one arm (having relieved it of its lock-cable) and nobody seemed to even notice. That said it was my actual job to do this- but I could have been anyone with a pair of bolt cutters!

My dad used to work as a technician for a company selling expensive hospital equipment. He says there are countless times when he or with another colleage would go in any hospital and roll out such a device. Nobody asks any questions.

At my university there were some actual thefts like this. Someone stole a beamer from a high ceiling in the middle of the day. And another time someone stole a heavy (=unliftable) new server.

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#93
post #73

I used to knock about on a Friday night (also in Melbourne, funnily enough) with my Canon 1D with a 24-70mm lens and the EOS flash (430?). I’d walk right to the front of the line of any club, with my mate, mumble something about shooting for the local music mag, and they’d wave us straight in. Never got one question. Then there was the time that I skipped a line by pretending to be deaf, but that’s another story. (I…

What did you do with the reasonably expensive camera once you were in the club?

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#94

There was a gag in Machete where Danny Trejo could sneak in anywhere just by being Mexican and carrying a weed-eater. It seemed plausible.

You could probably get a whole safe-cracking burglary team of four guys into anywhere if they looked vaguely mexican, carried lawn equipment and wore work clothing.

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#95

way to ruin it, guys. a high-vis vest only gets you access to anything because not everybody knows that trick, if Vice starts publishing articles about it it's not going to work for much longer.

Considering this is from 2016 and vice wasn’t even close to the first people “exposing” this, as is common for them, I doubt it’ll ruin it for ya. If anything you should worry about the youtubers like alleylaw that end up getting young people thinking it’s okay.

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#96
Coincidentally on Hacker News front page right now ... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318647 ... a story about being black while legitimately shopping with no intention of stealing. I'm not sure the author of that article could use the hi-viz trick and get away with it ... or have the luxury of even contemplating it as a lark all in "harmless fun".

edit: grammar and emphasis

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#97

The pitch-black side of this phenomenon: In 2011 in Norway, Anders Breivik commandeered a ferry to the Utøya island, was let onboard, heavily armed and with several heavy boxes of ammunition, going on, as we know, to kill 69 people there, mainly youngsters. All this solely on the basis of a sufficient display of authority and an obviously fake police uniform, and despite the ferry having been put on hold after the bo…

The much happier version: Robert Smalls, a slave in the civil war, manages to steal a confederate ship from his master and sail it to union lines by putting on a hat. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cro...

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#98

Amateurs. I made a "press pass" consisting of a sticker printed from a laser printer reading "PRESS", highlighted yellow, and applied to the back of my highschool ID. I literally drive on the tarmac of Stapleton International Airport in Denver, in a failed attempt to meet then presidential candidate Bob Dole as he stepped off of his plane. One hour and one flash of the pass later and I landed a killer photo of he and…

A classmate of mine who was a teenager in Las Vegas in the 80's used to tell me that he would get together with his friends, dress up in suits, dumpster dive for conference badges that had defects or typos, and just walk into conferences like CES. He also claimed his mates would go out into the desert to find orgies and break them up with bottle rockets. People were too scared about being busted and were too busy run…

Wtf? People do that in the desert?

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#99
This article reminded me of BBC Three's The Real Hustle programme [1].

The presenters often used to wear hi-vis jackets to pull off various scams. It was surprisingly effective. [2][3][4]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_Hustle

[2] https://youtu.be/1vOV4-6Sozw

[3] https://youtu.be/CxappKA4YBY

[4] https://youtu.be/CRBJrSBtnKM

Re: Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You into Everything for Free

#100
I am part of a volunteer organization and am reasonably confident I could go out on the road and direct case wherever I wanted to without authorization. People trust the vest.

And while I wear gear issued by my organization, it's all stuff you could order online. A lot of people buy their own gear if it has more pockets or looks cooler. I've even seen a few "badges" this year, despite that not being something our organization issues.

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