Bob and I are thrilled to announce the world premiere of the documentary we shot late last year with National Geographic. Pickpocket King features us, Bob Arno and Bambi Vincent, as “thiefhunters in paradise.” The paradise we chose for the story is the warm and wild city of Naples, Italy, home to the world’s best pickpockets.
National Geographic has just posted a clip. [As of October 9, the clip is no longer available.]
In the film, stage pickpocket Bob Arno faces off against a gang of the world’s best criminal pickpockets. The thieves demonstrate their trickiest (and most lucrative) steals. Bob and Bambi are invited to a splendid dinner with thieves, where lively thefts intersperse the endless courses.
The #1 pickpocket’s conclusion: “Bob. You and I do the same thing, but you make people laugh. I make them cry.”
The documentary’s international premiere begins this month, region by region and week by week. Watch for it in your local listing. I will post schedules as I receive them.
Michael-G created his own black bar to be sure his identity would be hidden.
Hamburg, Germany—Undercover pickpocket cop Michael-G is the first person we’ve met who exceeds our own nutcase-level of fascination with pickpocketry.
The day we spent together a year ago was all nuts-and-bolts info-sharing, technique-talking, statistic-rattling, drollness-swapping, photo-showing, video-viewing…. You know, the usual for pickpocket enthusiasts.
Over the years we’ve come to know a few others with extreme interest or knowledge in street thievery. The first may have been Terry Jones in Barcelona, whom we met exactly ten years ago. His observations of the pickpockets and bag snatchers in his own neighborhood led him to compile a loooong page of local street-theft incidents. On the surfeit of simple, opportunistic pickpockets, he’d already come to the conclusion that “there is little in the way of evolutionary pressure to make them improve their methods. The tourists are too many and too unaware, the police are too few, and the laws are too slack.”
A friend of Michael-G's.
The mysterious Monsieur F in Paris is a passionate pickpocket cop who works as “an invisible man;” his identity cannot even be hinted at. As one might expect of a Frenchman, the guarded Monsieur F shares his emotions freely. He tells us that, although his priority is arresting thieves and keeping the public safe, he “sometimes finds victims unfriendly and pickpockets compelling.” For example, when he “arrests a thief with AIDS who has just stolen a purse with ten euros, it is difficult judge the morality…”
We had the great pleasure of introducing Michael-G to Monsieur F, and then heard from both of their delight in their new friendship and information-exchange.
Last week we spent a relaxing day at Michael-G’s tidy, upscale home in a sleepy Hamburg suburb where, over cappuccinos (he’s a first-rate barrista, too), Michael-G’s obsession with all things pickpocket could not be concealed.
His library is extensive, possibly comprising every book and film on pickpockets in existence (including my own book). A life-sized mannequin stands nearby, fully-suited, seven bells sewn to its pockets. Michael-G uses the mannequin in his lectures, but I suspect there’s a little more to the relationship.
A postcard from Michael-G's collection.
He’s taught himself to do a little stealing—for show, of course—so he can entertain and demonstrate at his police presentations. And he runs a website, http://www.taschendiebstahl.com.
Michael-G admits that he lives, breathes, and dreams pickpockets. Bob and I were most impressed by his pickpocket postcard collection. I didn’t even realize such things existed. They’re beautiful, mostly old, and from the world over.
Are there any pickpocket-obsessed painters or cartoonists out there?
“You remember that famous movie, the one shot in Naples?” shouted Officer DC. “In this restaurant they filmed that movie. The whole world knows this section of Napoli.” He gunned his motorcycle and he, with Bob on the back, left me in the dust on the back of Officer M’s bike.
DC and M are Falchi—Falcons—two of Naples’ anti-theft plainclothes motorcycle warriors. The squad was launched in 1995 to fight, among other criminals, scippatori, the pickpockets and purse-snatchers who operate on motor scooters. Patrolling the city on souped-up motorcycles, the Falcons fight speed with speed, power with power, and strength with strength.
Our motorcycle excursion through Quartieri Spagnoli was not exactly a wind-in-the-hair power-ride, but it was bracing, a cop’s-eye view and guided tour of one huge crime scene. Hugging the backs of these brawny, spiky-haired, Levi-clad, cool dudes, we felt immune to danger—there, at ground level, but in a protective bubble.
Bob and DC had stopped to talk with a guy on a Vespa as M and I caught up with them.
Officer DC, Bob Arno, and a Rolex thief
“This is AS, one of the best scippatori,” DC said. “He’s an expert with Rolexes.” The cop turned to AS: “These are two journalists from America. They want to interview you.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We’re making a touristic tour,” DC said with a sweeping gesture.
“How many Rolexes do you take?” Bob asked. He had a video camera in his hand but it was pointed at the ground.
“In a week? It depends. Where are they going to show this movie?”
“In America. In Las Vegas. Hey—this man is better than you at stealing!”
AS didn’t react. “Are you filming this? Are you filming me and everything?”
“How many watches do you take in a week?” Bob persisted.
“I take maybe ten Rolexes in one week. Hey, I don’t like this movie you’re making. You’re going to show a bad image of Napoli.”
“This guy makes films about crime in all different cities. Quartieri Spagnoli will be famous in America.”
“AS, how much do you get for one Rolex?”
“$16,000 [in US$]. For, you know, the one with diamonds all around.”
“Now we are friends with Bob. We can visit him in America!” Officer DC started his bike.
“Can I call you on the phone?” Bob asked. “Later, when I find someone to speak Italian for me?”
“No, I don’t want to give you my phone number.”
“Bob is okay, we’ve known him for many years.” Translation: give him your number.
“Okay, you can call me. Here’s my number.”
“Why is it different? Is it new?”
“Ah, I changed the SIM card.” Translation: I’m using a different stolen phone.
Bob and I had wanted a good look at Quartieri Spagnoli ever since our unexpected introduction to a trio of scippatori—from behind. We’d heard from other officers that the police don’t even go into this district except in squads of four or more. It was a war zone, they told us. Neapolitans disown Quartieri Spagnoli as other Italians disown Naples.
As we rode through the narrow lanes, DC told us about his symbiotic relationship with AS.
“AS has a lot of respect for me, that is why he gave you his number. He gives me information about the criminals here. We cooperate.”
A Rolex thief and a cop
AS is an informer—he rats on major drug activity. In exchange, the Falchi close their eyes to AS’s vocation. Unless, that is, a tourist comes complaining to the police about a Rolex theft. In those cases, Officer DC can have a chat with AS, and AS can do some digging, find out who did the swipe, and try to recover the item. Not that it always works….
DC stopped his bike to point out some of the quarter’s highlights.
“Look at all the laundry hanging from the balconies. Typical for this area. And here, this is one of the squares where the mob is very big, the Camorra. They all have their own areas and their own crimes—drugs, prostitution, stealing…”
“Do the grandmothers really sit in the upper windows watching for Rolexes?” I asked. It sounded like a myth, but I’d heard many times that theft here was a family affair.
Someone whistled—the piercing, two-finger type.
“That means police,” DC said. “They’re warning their friends that we’re here. Yes, the women sit on their balconies and when they see something to steal they call their sons or grandsons to come by on their scooters. It’s true.” He twisted around to look at Bob. “You must be careful with your video camera. These are gangs of thieves we’re passing and they’re looking at it. They can steal it.”
We paused in front of the funicular, the very one that inspired the classic Neapolitan song “Funiculi, Funicula.”
“Here in Piazza Montesanto there are many pickpockets, near the underground station. They steal many wallets in this area. And the funiculare is here. We have four video cameras watching this Piazza. There’s a lot of drug dealing here, too.”
Most tourists never venture into these areas of Naples’ old town and, but for the threat of theft, it’s a shame. Although we have no excuse to describe them in this book about criminals, most Napolitanos are warm and welcoming toward visitors; Bob and I adore their casual, urbane tradition. With its lively outdoor culture and its heart on its sleeve, Quartieri Spagnoli is the heart and soul of the place I call the city of hugs and thugs.
A Rolex thief demonstrates how a watch is grabbed, twisted, and broken during a steal.
Wristwatches are a classic subject of seizure. The problem is not widespread, but concentrated largely in specific locales. Naples, Italy, is only one of them.
José, a day visitor there, stopped on Via Toledo to photograph a colorful produce stand. As he walked away with his wife, his Rolex was snatched from his wrist. He turned in time to see a teenage boy running up into the narrow alleys of Quartieri Spagnoli, bystanders watching with no apparent concern.
A cruise ship captain had his Rolex ripped off from the perceived safety of a taxi stopped in traffic, as he rested his arm on the open window. And a grocer we met, a Napolitano, said the motorcycle bandits, scippatori, had tried to grab his Rolex four times, and finally succeeded. He had a new one now, but showed us the cheap watch he switched to before leaving his store every day with the Rolex in his pocket.
In Caracas, 17 members of an organized tour paused in a square to view a statue of Bolivar. While the tour guide lectured, a pair of men in business suits jumped a Japanese couple who stood at the back of the group. They were wrestled to the ground, their Rolexes pried off their wrists, and the well-dressed thieves on their escape before anyone could spring into action.
Bob Arno’s multi-step steal is just as fast as a thief’s, but doesn’t break the watch.Bob Arno’s multi-step steal is just as fast as a thief’s, but doesn’t break the watch.
After watching my husband, Bob Arno, demonstrate watch steals in his show, people come up to us with wrists outstretched. “But they couldn’t get this one, could they? It’s even hard for me to unclasp.”
Watch-stealing
Bob’s theatrical techniques are totally unlike the street thieves’ methods. Bob’s stage steals are designed to climax with the surprise return of an intact watch. The thief, on the other hand, cares not if the victim notices or if the watch breaks. In the street, a watch thief gets his quick fingers under the face of the watch and pulls with a twist, snapping the tiny pins that connect the watch to its strap.
The readily recognizable Rolex is a universal symbol of wealth. Its instant ID factor makes it not only a conspicuous target, but highly desirable on the second-hand market. Even a fraction of its “hot” price brings big bucks to the thief and the fence.
Outside of Naples, in South Africa, Brazil, and England for example, seizure of Rolex watches is big business often perpetrated by Nigerian gangs, who send shipments of these status symbols to eager dealers in the Middle East. Who would guess that watch-snatching was so organized, so global?
Just For Laughs Comedy Tour 2010: Gina Yashere, Ryan Hamilton, Bob Arno, Robert Kelly, Frank Spadone, and Jeremy Hotz (not pictured)
Bob and I are presently touring. It’s just three weeks across Canada—nothing long or exotic. We’re not roughing it, either. Well…15 cities in 21 days is a little rough.
We’re part of the Just For Laughs Comedy Tour—bringing raucous humor to large and small cities from east to west. The tour has been organized to the smallest detail with the dual goal of putting on fabulous shows almost every night and making it as easy and pleasant as possible for the artists. That means our hotel rooms are ready no matter how early we arrive. Keys are handed out without our needing to check in. Our frequent flyer numbers and hotel loyalty program numbers have been entered for us. We’re pre-checked in for flights, and cars, vans, and buses are always ready when we are.
National Arts Centre Theatre in Ottawa
When we get to each theater, our names are on the dressing room doors and our favorite snacks and drinks are backstage in the green room. Our own secure wifi network has been set up. The backstage ambiance is relaxed at first, but energy quickly builds as the comedians gear themselves up for their sets. Each has his or her own way of mentally preparing. One sings and does little dance steps. One reviews notes. One snipes at anyone he sets eyes on, warming himself up. And one doubles over with stomach cramps from anxiety. Each is a seasoned professional and hits the stage in attack mode, ready to tear the audience apart.
New to Canada, we never know what to expect as to theater or audience demographic. It’s fun to experience the differences. The theaters range from beautiful, old, traditional ones like the Capitol Theatre in Moncton, New Brunswick, to the big beer-barn of Centennial Hall in London, Ontario, to the enormous Massey Hall in Toronto. Our audiences, from 800 to 3,000 people each night, have paid to see us and are therefore vastly different from the corporate attendees who basically challenge us with “go ahead—prove yourself.”
The Just For Laughs Comedy Tour stage set at rehearsal.
We’re no strangers to life on the road. 200 to 250 nights a year in beds not-our-own, for the past 17 years is the experience I speak from. This tour is high-intensity-travel.
We’re in a different hotel every night or two. After the third or fourth hotel, I lost track of our room number and now make notes for my pocket every day. Yesterday we actually entered the wrong room. Housekeeping was there and let us walk on in. We saw other people’s stuff and realized we were on the wrong floor. Such a weakness in hotel security. We keep the do-not-disturb sign on our door.
Inside the Just For Laughs tour bus
Road food is tiresome. We want a breakfast better than Starbucks, but not as big and bland as hotel buffets. We found a good restaurant chain for breakfast, then got sick of it. It’s a struggle to find an independent restaurant or diner we can walk to with so little time to spare. Dinners are mostly impossible. We leave for the theater at 5:00 or so, and are busy until 10 or later—exactly restaurant dinner hours in all but the biggest Canadian cities. We usually manage a decent lunch; sometimes very good ones. Since we stay in city centers, we must usually be sure to go for lunch before the joints close up at 2 pm.
Artists, staff, and some crew board our little jet
Mostly, we fly from city to city. We’ve also traveled by tour bus, the big comfortable kind with sofas, bunks, kitchen, bathroom, and internet. Between Prince Edward Island and Halifax, we took a private chartered jet.
While we were flying among the Maritimes, all the tour gear and sets also flew, or was driven overnight. We used smaller, packable sets and limited sound and light equipment. Now we have an 18-wheeler that carries the huge Just For Laughs set pieces, sound, lighting, catering, and office. I can’t imagine what’s in the many, many trunks that are unloaded every day and packed up at the end of each city’s gig.
The truck doesn't fit into one photo.
For us, it’s important to have packed every thing we want or need, but nothing else. Packing every single morning makes you think about what you really want to unpack. What you really want to unpack varies vastly from person to person. Especially from Bob to me. I am the minimalist in our family. He brought his espresso machine. Touring in cold weather is an extra complication, having to look after such easily losable items as gloves and scarves.
Just a few of the sea of trunks and set pieces carried by the truck.
We thoroughly enjoy the company of the other comedians in the show, as well as the staff and crew. We don’t sense any of the competitiveness or jealousy common among magicians. From our perspective, the mix of personalities on this tour is harmonious, and the beginning of lasting friendships.
Today is the third day of a three-week tour across Canada with Just For Laughs. This is a blast, and very different from my usual corporate gigs. The Just For Laugh Comedy Festival is the world’s oldest and most prestigious comedy event, held every July in Montreal. It attracts major comedy talent from around the world and has grown into be a two-week global showcase of the best and rising-star comedians, very much like the Cannes film festival.
Just for Laughs now takes a show across Canada. This year the featured comics are Jeremy Hotz, Gina Yashere, Robert Kelly, Ryan Hamilton, host Frank Spadone, and me, Bob Arno. The beautiful theaters we play hold 1000 seats to several thousand. For me this is a first, and hanging with bright, talented comedians is as much fun as interacting with pickpockets in Europe, or hanging with undercover security agents in the USA. The pendulum swings from one extreme to another.
We have just concluded filming in Europe for our documentary, done a corporate event in Toronto, attended the annual convention for professional mentalists (MINDvention) in Las Vegas, and now this comedy tour. How more varied can our work be?
The first night the show got an instant standing ovation. Huge applause for each comic. Very different from performing for a corporate event, where the management and event planners are often sticklers for squeaky clean content. The extent of the censoring can be extreme, including a preview of the performer’s spoken lines to make certain that nothing may offend any sub-group among the attendees.
But a comedy tour is a very different animal altogether. Here the audience buys tickets and expects raw and cutting-edge comedy, which by nature will nearly always offend someone. The bigger the appeal or the stronger the ticket demand is, the more controversial the material may be. This tour has a sponsor — Capital One Bank — and therefore even our cast got a briefing of sorts to not embarrass our client. Otherwise we have practically free reign.
During the next couple of days we will chat with our fellow comedy team members and share what they have to say about touring, the comedy scene today in North America, where their careers are, and how to expand and climb the ladder. We will go inside the minds of some of the very best new and successful comedians out there today.
I guess I spoke too soon and too much about our documentary project. I held back information, but not enough. Our producer has asked me to block access, temporarily. That makes 20 posts that require a password. Sorry for the inconvenience.
It”s ten to one in mothville. Raise your antennas.
Coming down. Feels strange trying to write ordinary blog stuff after all the excitement covered in my previous 22 posts. As Bob and I now tackle the editing of photos and video of our encounters with thieves, we feel as if we’re still living the experience, still in that odd and wonderful unmentionable metropolis, and still among the pickpockets. All we’re missing is the food, though I’m not doing too bad a job myself.
Sound guy/translator Michele stayed another week in the den of thieves to be with his family (who, of course, have nothing to do with the business of thievery!). In an email, Michele mentioned an amusing coincidence (and allowed me to share it):
I took my final bus in Xxxxxx, the one that took me out of the city until next return. At the bus stop of Xxxxxxxxx, I met all our friends …“ Clay, Ed, Marc, Andy, and Frank. They were on duty and we only exchanged looks and small signs. Alone, Frank stopped by to share some last words. He once again complained about society, government, and all the universe for their infamous fate, but then, with a big smile on his face, he joined the others for the next steal. He had a final hello for you before diving deep into his daily routine of damage and bravado.
Life goes on. Nothing this primal will change. Only, we hope, the behavior of travelers, those who venture both near and far. Bob and I know our pickpocket comedy affects many and our lectures touch even more, helping to raise the antennas of wanderers. If our documentary is successful, it will put a little dent in the pockets of Frank and friends, and others like them elsewhere.
Denouement. None of us wanted to leave the park. After the demos, the dinner, and the as-yet-untold experience on the buses, after the conversation, the exchange of trade secrets, the trust, and yes, the new friendships, we sort of bonded. And I mean all of us: the band of thieves, the filmmaking crew, and the Arnos in the middle.
We stand there in the park in two concentric circles. The inner circle is Bob, Michele, Frank, Andy, and Marc. The outer circle is Van with the Red on his shoulder and his assistant holding his shoulders to guide him, director Kun, producer Kath, fixer Rosie, and me. None of us want to say goodbye.
Work finally pulls Marc and Andy away, but Frank remains. And finally, after two complete rounds of hugs and kisses, Frank straddles his bike, snaps on his helmet, and rides away. Van follows him with the camera until he’s out of sight.
We’re all physically and mentally exhausted; spent. I don’t know how the crew kept going; they were up hours before us every day and working for hours after we said goodnight. Yesterday they went nonstop from the market to the thieves’ restaurant to the second restaurant without a break, setting up and taking down equipment repeatedly. They are champions, all of them.
Making this documentary allowed Bob and me to fulfill certain long-held dreams. It allowed us the time in which to develop relationships with our subjects. It allowed us to have top-notch translators, especially my hero Michele. It enabled us to host our gang of thieves at a meal that Bob and I alone would need investors to fund, but which was integral to the building or our relationship, which gave us the ability to dig deeper into the life and times of pickpockets. And lastly, the documentary gives a soapbox to the subjects, a platform for the pickpockets themselves to explain their methods and motivations, their regrets and their desires.
Writing these stories has been difficult for me. The “easy difficulty,” if there is such a thing, has been simply finding the time to write in the midst of our action-packed days, and then finding an internet connection to get them online. But that’s just a technicality. The true difficulties have been several.
First, whitewashing our incredible host city, and by necessity, the characters and true identities of the men in our story. How I had to restrain myself! As a writer, I tend to be of the descriptive sort. I would never say we drank “liqueur!” I want to say what kind, what color, and how lovely the fruit it was made from. I want to tell about the marvelous restaurants we visited and the wonders of the local cuisine. I want to praise our cliffside hotel and describe the view from its terraces, that you can see all the way to …
Sigh.
And—wait a minute! What will this film do to tourism in this mystery town? Will we repel visitors, or intrigue them? Our goal is to balance the stardust with the dirt, to spotlight the unique riches this place has to offer. We hope it comes through in the film. I certainly left it out of these stories.
And there is something of a moral dilemma. In an exchange of thievery techniques, are we teaching known criminals how to steal more and better? We don’t think so, but how do you see it? What about the techniques the general public will learn from watching the film—should we be concerned about how that knowledge may be used? We don’t think so, but we agree that it looks bad—as if we’re teaching how to steal.
I’m afraid of what the public will think of Bob and me in our pursuit of thieves. Will you chastise us for not stopping thefts when we see them? Or will you understand that our method, getting “in” with these criminals, has a greater end? Will you think us awful for liking the pickpockets, despite knowing what havoc they wreak, what distress they cause? In the film, it will be up to Kun to portray us honestly alongside our motives. But here in these writings, it was my responsibility. Do you think it’s all fun and games for us, that we dine with thieves for a lark? Do you understand that as outsiders, allowed into an underground brotherhood of thieves, we are able to gather knowledge for the greater good? Please comment. We need to know if we should hide under a rock when the film comes out.
We are incredibly grateful to film director Kun Chang, who has pushed this project forward for more than four years already. Bob and I have complete faith in him and have no doubt that he’ll put together a documentary that is as beautiful and dramatic as it is fascinating and educational.
While the shooting isn’t over, the exciting part is. What’s left is hard work, mostly by Kun and his editing team. It’s impossible for me to imagine how they’ll make sense of the vast amount of gripping footage we have accumulated. I also recognize that my perception of the experience is not the same as Kun’s. The sterile, stripped-down story I told here, missing highlights (believe it or not), missing local color (of which there’s tons), genericizing everything for the sake of the eventual film, may have little resemblance to Kun’s vision. We will all be surprised at the film: you, readers; and Bob and I.
Bob gets cold feet. Overnight, reality began to percolate and bubble over the exhilaration of yesterday’s thieves’ challenge. By morning it was clear to Bob that stealing from the innocent public requires a set of attributes he lacked. Pickpockets in the U.S. call it heart, but they are referring to a lower part of the anatomy. They mean balls. I call it a criminal core.
Bob will not disappoint our gang of thieves in the park, assuming they show up. We will go to the park to thank them for the good time last evening and for participating in our film, and concede defeat in the great steal-off that never was.
Our director is fine with this decision. Crew and cameras are packed into the van; Bob and I are put in a taxi. We meet in the park. Bob paces, still somewhat conflicted. He wrongly accepted this dare in a feverish party atmosphere; but he is not a man to go back on his word, either. Not even to a band of crooks.
Maybe they won’t show up. Then Bob will be off the hook. Of course they’ll show up. Just like they did for the demo in this same park weeks ago, and yesterday’s dinner party. Bob paces in the shadow of the kiddie rides.
Frank zooms up on his motorcycle, grinning. He doesn’t know if the others will come; Andy’s not too reliable, he says. After a few minutes of chat, Bob swings his leg over the bike, wanting to putt around the park. Frank first pushes his helmet on Bob, and ensures that it’s safely fastened.
By the time Bob returns, Ed, Marc, and Andy have arrived. The regrouping of the party gang revs up the mood a few notches and distorts reality once again. The thieves are eager to pit themselves against the stage professional, and their enthusiasm is contagious. The laughter and excitement rise. Then talk turns to location.
“On the buses, of course,” they say in unison, “that’s where we work!”
“How about the market,” Bob suggests. He’s hoping for an environment in which he’d feel a little more control. A place with a large number of potential victims so he can pick just the right one, in just the right situation.
“No, another group is working there today. We don’t want to ruin their day. The bus!”
Somehow it was agreed. It was also agreed that all items would be returned to their owners. Certainly we could not be involved in stealing things for real; not even in accompanying known thieves while they commit criminal acts. All pickpockets, Bob included, would take, display, and return or replace ill-begotten gains.
Again we are a large group. Four thieves, Bob and I, and a crew of five. The eleven of us cross the park and board the next bus.
What happens next is—is—well, I’m very sorry but I can’t say. I will tell you that it is the climax of the film. It is beyond the dinner with thieves in excitement, fascination, and entertainment value. The added element of danger looms large. The speed in which events occur, the drama, and the revelations to us all combine to create lifetime impressions for all of us. Perhaps for you, too, when you see the film.
I know it’s mean to leave a cliffhanger. I admitted in part one of this narrative that I’d be compelled to leave out much good stuff. I’m sorry. But let’s go on.
Two hours later we regroup in the park. There’s been a little one-upmanship between Frank and Andy, a kind of battle using warmth-charisma-speed-guts-and-raw-skill. No hard feelings—it was all in fun. But which of them will be the pickpocket face of this city?
We’re debriefing now. Interviews in the park with the big Red camera back on its tripod and Michele translating while responsible for impeccable sound.
These men are thieves—criminal scavengers—but they are also poets. On camera Andy says:
“Bob, what we do is the same, but we are different. You make people laugh. I make people cry.”
