I’ve been to all those except Buenos Aires and Hanoi and have never had any problems. But I had a friend foil a pickpocketing attempt on himself in Rome (on a bus) and my father fondly recounts his being ‘rolled in Pigalle’ (in 1966).
I too wonder why Barcelona has this problem especially. I’ve been twice and never got the sense that it was a ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’.
I’ve been to 7 and never had a problem…
I’m disappointed to see that the only city in which I’ve been pick-pocketed, Lisbon, did not make the list. (Of course I knew to keep serious money and my papers in a money belt, but it pissed me off anyway.)
Seriously, why is that? Most countries are pretty gung-ho to promote tourism and they have to know this stuff really pisses off tourists.
I know, right? I dunno - maybe she was a newbie at it and figuring it couldn’t be that hard in such a crowded place. Maybe she was more commonly the type to hit on tourist guys in a dark bar and make off with their wallet while she excuses herself to go to the “restroom”, running out the back instead. I suspect she saw the ‘wallet bulge’ stretched into whatever pants he was wearing, though no wallet was present, and thought this was a great opportunity to rip off a tourist and that she shouldn’t miss it.
I’ve heard that keeping your wallet in your back pocket is a particularly dangerous place to keep it, as it’s the easiest pocket to pick. Any truth to that?
Let’s see.
[ol]
[li]Barcelona: Was there for a 10-day conference. Saw a few pickpockets at work in the Metro. Note to visitors–if the person in front of you on the escalator drops something at the top and bends down to pick it up, kick him into the wall and be ready to elbow the guy behind you.[/li][li]Rome: Having to fend off tag-teaming 10-year-old street girls–one pushing newspapers at you while the other tries to get at your stuff under the cover of all the paper.[/li][li]Prague: I eventually ended up carrying my humongous Bogen monopod and ostentatiously slapping it against my leg while waiting for the metro, to deter the crowd of 5 to 7 pickpockets who woud try to swamp you while entering the car. This was after my wife had to use her elbows to get out from such a crowd.[/li][/ol]
Regardless, had great fun in all three cities. Haven’t had any problems in Paris or Florence. Knock wood.
Added for appleciders: I believe that’s true. Certainly, the method mentioned above for the Barcelona metro hopes for that placement: When the victim falls over the kneeling person, it presents his butt in the air for the following pickpocket to pluck the wallet easily.
I’ve been to three of those cities without any problems, but while in Madrid I met a couple of Brits who were there due to one of them getting a passport pick-pocketed in Barcelona. Someone approached her with napkins offering to clean off what seemed to be bird crap off of her shoulder, and while distracted someone else want for her passport and may have gotten more.
My dad had his wallet stolen in Naples a couple of years ago. They bunched up very close to him on a bus and didn’t have much trouble snatching it. I usually feel the most vulnerable on subways when I have one hand up holding a bar. I’ll often try my best to balance without support when I can’t get a seat or lean against a wall so I can keep both hands on my pockets.
Bangkok’s got some pickpockets, but it’s not as bad as a lot of places. The absolute worst here are transvestites. I kid you not. Especially if there’s a whole group of them. They’ll sort of swarm all over you, squealing like little schoolgirls, like a Monty Python skit, then before you know it, your stuff is gone! I’ve not lost anything to them, but if I’m walking someplace like, say, lower Sukhumvit Road in the wee hours, which I often do, and see some transvestites heading my way, I clamp my hand over my wallet and do not remove it until they’re gone.
Just came back from Rome and experienced no problems at all. I tried the neck wallet, but found it a little too hot to wear. Instead, using my knife as a money clip, I put my paper Euros in the pocket clip and slid that to the bottom of my front pocket, keeping the loose change in the same pocket as an ad hoc alarm system. I carried a paper copy of my passport for ID and was never even attempted (as far as I know).
The warnings were everywhere though.
Judging from the literature on the subject, chiefly Maurer, Icardi and Campion (a less scholarly source, perhaps, but a career whiz cop), I would say that there is no safe pocket. Wherever you put it, there’s a pickpocket who can get to it. But most of them are relatively low-skilled and looking for easy scores. The problem is that it takes surprisingly little skill most of the time. Your best bet is not to be an easy enough mark.
In a strange city where I was obviously going to stand out as not able to stay long enough to make trouble with local law enforcement, I would not keep valuables in pants pockets at all. You might think your pratt pocket is too tight and you’d notice someone touching you in the ass, but you’d be wrong. It may be that the breech pockets on tight jeans are too difficult to get into, but certainly the breech pockets on trousers with linings that can be pulled inside-out are completely insecure however tight your pants are. Don’t use a wallet on a chain unless you’d like to find it dangling empty at your side.
Side pockets on your jacket are great places to store money you don’t want. Inside pockets are harder to get to, and may force more drastic measures to get to, such as a “throw” with a newspaper or a “keister plant” from an attractive female. Better still, pockets under a sweater or other articles of clothing. The lanyards that hold the wallet under your shirt but around your neck sound pretty good – not impossible to get, but risky and tricky even for serious cannons, if any are left out there.
If the pattern persists as it had in the previous centuries, it’s an unstoppable problem because of the fix. You can put the fix in to “grift right” (i.e., the police staying out of your way). You can put in the fix after the fact, paying the officer who arrests you, or anybody else up the whole bureaucratic and legal chain that leads to conviction. Or, quite often you can pay a “fixer” to put the fix in for you. As long as your take exceeds the fall money you’re doling out, you’re operating in the black. By picking on tourists, you make it easier for everyone to simply stall the process until the foreigner has to go away, and can’t conveniently show up to testify in a trial or pressure local politicians.
Once in a while, they will make a show of cracking down, which generally means that some other city will get a huge upsurge in pickpocket activity for a while.
It is believed that pickpockets hang around “beware of pickpocket” signs because when people see it they instinctively check their belongings. This gives pickpockets instant data as to where your valuables are, saving them the risk-enhancing step of “fanning” the mark to locate valuables.
I’m going to Rome and Athens in a month. I’m thinking neon yellow decoy wallet(s) with a few fake bills (or possibly a small amount of real money), and an email address to respond to if they get punchy or bored. Those, I’d keep in the outer pocket of my leather jacket.
The real wallet/passport/whatever, I’m thinking I’ll keep either in one of those under-the-pants pouches, or in my jeans pocket under my skirt in a chained wallet (I wear skirts over jeans. It’s a thing. It’s cute.).
I have no idea of how I’ll carry my phone. Fortunately, I’m upgrading it when I get back anyway, so it wouldn’t be a giant deal, but still, I’d rather keep it…
Lived in Paris ten years, had three tries at my wallet during that time, one of them successful.
Was in Rome for a couple days, had two tries at my wallet, one successful.
Of the others, have been to Barcelona, Florence and Amsterdam, and had no problems.
I’ve been to six of those cities, and never had any kind of a problem. I don’t tend to carry a wallet, though; I keep cash in my hip pockets and cards in the leg pocket of my shorts in summer or the breast pocket of my jacket in winter. And I don’t carry my passport unless I absolutely have to! But I’ve never even had anyone try to get anything off me. We did have someone try to break into the van in Spain, twice in fact, but no-one ever tried to pick our pockets. And we fucking loved Barcelona, spent nearly three weeks there when we should have been moving on.
I’ve been to most of those places. Barcelona, Rome, Madrid and Florence were lousy with pickpockets (so were Seville, Granada and Cordoba, but I don’t see them on the list). Just crawling with them. Some solo, some teams (usually Gypsy women, often with an infant, which they’d use as cover while the woman or her brats or accomplices went for the pockets). The train stations were especially problematical. In one Spanish station (I forget which one) I watched a Gypsy man running several teams. I was fascinated. He was there for hours, in plain sight, and it was completely obvious what was going on. Perhaps he had an arrangement with the police responsible for that train station.
Paris? Not so bad. Scam artists, drunks, assholes, but I don’t remember any pickpockets (and I was there for nearly two years). Amsterdam, no problem. Buenos Aires, again, no problem.
New York, where I live, no, not really. The closest I ever came to seeing a pickpocket was fairly recently (last winter). I was in a bar with some people, including my wife and my brother. My brother and I saw a guy with his hand inside my wife’s coat, which was on the back of her barstool. It was a Saturday night, the bar was crowded and noisy, and the guy had probably been doing this at various bars all night. My brother and I “escorted” him from the bar. My wife expressed her opinion that we were too aggressive. Hey, we didn’t hurt him, and she still had her wallet. I didn’t see the problem.
I’ve never had any problem in any of these cities, but I also tend to be aware of pickpockets, having lived in an Eastern European capital for a number of years. Never been pick-pocketed, but I once stupidly changed money on the street (for reasons I can’t quite explain–there was little to no advantage in exchanging money on the street there) and exchanged $50 for a pile of worthless Romanian lei. The sleight of hand was actually quite impressive, and I feel I got $50 worth of entertainment out of it. The thing is, midway through, I knew I was being scammed, but wanted to see if I could spot the trick. Obviously, I didn’t. When I walked away, opened my fist, and found a wad of lei worth about $5 instead of $50 worth of Hungarian forint, I just started laughing. “The sonnuvabitch got me! Well played.”
My uncle had his digital camera taken in Barcelona, as he was about to fly home. He lost all his pictures from his vacation.
I’ve only been to one of those cities: Paris. Yes, an attempt was made on me.
We were at the Arche de Triomphe early in the morning to avoid the crowds. There were few people around, and we went through the tunnel underneath the street to get to the Arche. As we were climbing back up the underground stairs, I felt crowded, which was weird, as there was hardly anyone else around. I turned around and there were two teenage girls right behind us, and one had unzipped my purse and had my wallet halfway extracted. I grabbed her wrist and my husband yelled at them. They unhurriedly walked away and he followed them, yelling “voleurs!”. However, few people were around and he couldn’t follow them forever. I was lucky I caught them or I’d have been out cash and cards.
Why is pickpocketing such a Eurocentric offense? Or is the prevalence of European cities on this list just somehow an artifact of the data-gathering?
I’ve been to 4 of those cities (Rome, Florence, Prague, Paris)… never had a bit of trouble.
Of course, I tend to put on my game face (hostile) when I’m somewhere that it seems like I might get pickpocketed, and try not to get on crowded buses/trains or go near really crowded attractions also.
It might help that I’m 6’1", 280 lbs and am built more like an NFL lineman than a really tubby round guy.
I see Hanoi has dropped off the list. We did spend some time there last year, and I carried a decoy wallet in my back pocket. Empty except for a note that said: “Fuck You!!!” Try as I might, no one picked it. :mad: