A NYC man had his e-bike rental snatched up by an opportunistic peddler who cruised nearly 40 miles around Manhattan for six long hours on his dime.
Fernando Peña, a model from the Bronx, admitted in an Instagram video that he improperly docked his rented Citi Bike in lower Manhattan, which made snatching the bicycle a breeze.
The person traveled in a strange loop from SoHo, around Central Park and back, zigzagging through Midtown at one point and heading back and forth near 42nd Street. The person logged 38.64 miles over the course of 367 minutes to Peña’s account — for a total bill of $79.91
Renting the e-bikes costs 12 cents a minute for members to 36 cents a minute for non-members.
“I’ve never met you, man, but I really do hate you,” Peña, 28, said in an Instagram reel addressing the culprit. The video went viral after being shared by the account New Yorkers, collecting 21,000 “likes” and over 800 comments.
“It’s a beautiful day [but] you spent no time in Central Park and yet you spent, like, half of your time zig zagging through 42nd Street,” he added.
“What were you doing?”
Some social media users speculated that the bike bandit was delivering food given the repetitive route.
“Bro did all his deliveries for the day on your tab,” one person commented with a laughing face emoji.
Peña said the blow to his pocket left him scrounging for dinner, which that night was sourdough toast with “Everything but the Bagel” spread from Trader Joe’s.
“I’m trying to save up on money, and then you do this,” he said in the video.
“I hope you had the adventure of a lifetime,” Peña quipped.
Some scolded him for his carelessness.
“Don’t leave your rented bike attended,” one said. “Blame yourself for not locking the bike,” said another.
Another called Peña naïve and said native New Yorkers would know not to make his mistake.
“Born and raised in the Bronx I’ve ridden Citi Bikes 1,000 times,” he responded. “This was meant to be funny … don’t turn it into something that it’s not.
Peña concluded his monologue saying, “My only hope during these 367 minutes that you had the Citi Bike is that you did something during this time to better your life, to better yourself, to be at a point in your life where you don’t have to basically steal an unparked Citi Bike.”
