Someone is pissing off California's rich people.
Every few days, a mysterious figure in a mask and latex gloves carries bottles of urine into wealthy neighborhoods, carefully arranging them in utility boxes before disappearing into the night.
Known as the “Piss Thief,” he has been leaving his mark on Pasadena for the past six years with soda bottles, juice cartons and even gallon jugs filled with yellow liquid.
No one knows his identity, but he teases the locals by scrawling notes and drawings on bottles with things like “human urine”, a vulgar smile, and sometimes “HIV positive”.
Piss bandits may attack multiple times a week, with bottles appearing in the morning and disappearing by evening.
This strange behavior had been going on for so long that a round ring had been etched into the paint on the utility box.
The city installed a sharp metal cover on the box in an attempt to stem the flow, but the bandits easily ripped it off, leaving a bunch of new bottles for their trouble.
“It's a tug-of-war between the neighbors and this man,” said Grant Yasra, who along with his partner, director Derek Milton, launched a month-long investigation into the perpetrator.
Their first video about the study received more than 600,000 views on TikTok. To Milton and Yasra, this thief is not a loathsome vandal, but a vigilante artist, a Robin Hood-like figure who has made the town of Pasadena his Little John.
“His dedication to his craft is what intrigues us,” Yasra told the Post.
But bandits are the biggest threat to this oasis of luxury homes, pools and carefully manicured lawns.
“I thought it was disgusting. I had never thought of it as art in any way, shape or form,” said Oscar, who until February owned a home near the site of the gunman's fall. – Ragna said.
Another neighbor posted a handwritten note to the thieves that read: …You've been warned! ”
Milton and Yasra stake out the drop site in search of answers, but the subject never appears. They set up an infrared game camera near the boxes, and footage from the pee roll shows the bandits' hands in latex gloves climbing over the barrier and placing the bottles one by one like candles on a cake. was reflected.
They then left a note for the bandits that read: “I'm a big fan of your installation art…I think your work is on the same level as Banksy and Shepherd's Fairy.” The note came with markers and interview questions for him to answer. .
Not everyone agreed. As they stake out the scene, a man angrily stops his car and asks why the two are stirring things up instead of trying to bring him to justice. “He said, 'Stop being funny!' Do something about it!” Uakasula told the Post. “But what do they want me to do about casting a net on him?”
The bandits themselves don't seem to care about their fans. Not only did he ignore their notes, he also stole their cameras. The camera then sent something to Milton's cloud storage account. It was a stunning seaside view that metadata identified as Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, 196 miles from the urinal.
The next bottle the thief dropped contained a one-gallon jug with the devil's face painted on it. “He was aggressive and had us at our mercy,” Milton said in the video.
Finally, TikTok sleuths installed another camera on the side, this time with audio intercom functionality. However, the thieves ignored their communication efforts and simply stole that camera as well.
Afterwards, the two decided to let the incident go.
“His dedication to his craft intrigued us.” And we wanted to know why. But we realized that he didn't want to tell us why,” Yasra said. “Sometimes you have to make the artist pee.”
