Stabbed For an iPod Full of Jazz and Classic Rock in Kirkland, WA
There was a time when every urban iPod listener had a choice to make regarding personal speakers. Do you use some pair of headphones from the 80s with the orange foam on them that you found in the spare electronics box in the garage to disguise your identity as an iPod owner? Or do you fly the snowy whites your iPod came with and announce your Apple Cool to everyone on the bus, and damn the mugging risks, this being Seattle after all. Or do you sport the giant cans because you absolutely need to squeeze as much sound performance as you can from a 128 kb-encoded MP3? The question has fallen moot as time, incessant television advertising and the near-ubiquity of iPods themselves have wrung the last vestiges of cachet out of the white cables. Just go with what ya got--Seattlest has a pair of these Sony earbuds that sound ok, but have this terrible cord configuration that was dreamed up by either a moron or a marketing guy hoping to horn in on Apple's headphone branding successes.
Furthermore, iPod mugging is just a myth anyway, right? Not so. A guy in Kirkland who "who often takes late walks up to nine miles" was coming home late at night and was sucker stabbed in the back by thieves after his iPod. He ran off and is recovering at Harborview.
Personal electronic devices have become an increasingly tempting target for thieves, especially among youths, because they're small, expensive and represent a status symbol, police and prosecutors say. The sleek earphones enable thieves to easily see who has one.
The thing is, really any headphones at all now indicate that you're in possession of an expensive personal electronic device. No visible wires anywhere on your person? We know you have a phone, target, and it just might be an iPhone. Watch your back in Kirkland, everyone.
Image taken from these victims of a misguided Sony cease-and-desist.
