It’s one thing to take a cutting from a very beautiful plant to grow in the comfort of your own home. But, it’s a completely different thing to take a whole plant from the street –and get caught on camera.
Stork’s Skin Therapy on 20th Street had four fully-grown spider plants ransacked on a beautiful sunny day, and it’s not the first time it’s happened.
Two weeks ago, the business, which has been in the Mission since 2008 and at its current location since 2013, had decorated the outside of their storefront with a purple polka-dot plant and another spider plant. They were both stolen.
The owners called the police’s non-emergency line and they will be filing a police report, but in the meantime Palacios and her husband have the video from their recently installed security camera so they have some information.
“He did it earlier in the a.m. around 7:09 am,” wrote the owner Caroline Palacios. “A few early birds strolled pass, but the thief carried out his actions in such brazen, nonchalant way that no passer-by would think to stop him.”
Palacios said that she’s spent more than $400 in soil & plants , but that’s without counting her time and her attachment to the plants. “We are a naturopathic based skin care business and I am a botanist by degree so plants are truly special for for us,” she wrote.
And then, there is the community and how a flower bed can help a business make connections. “Often when we are gardening, neighbors say “thanks for doing that,” Palicios wrote and added that it was “hard to put a monetary value on that.”
It took the plant thief a good 20 minutes to tear out the plants, and from the picture it seems he was well prepared, as he is carrying a paper and plastic bag and a tool. The business has caught the thief on camera for the first time and published the photo on their Instagram feed to publicly shame the guy. But, does the perpetrator even use Instagram?
too bad you didn’t have a camera some 17 to 30 years ago, you may have found that it was an aging white guy with running shoes and a plumber’s butt.
Please. I lived on 25th x York from 1984 to 1997 and during that time we had a couple of bowls of succulents and a six foot tall rubber tree stolen from our stoop. All the thefts happened around Mother’s Day. I hope those mom’s enjoyed the stolen plants taken by their gangbanger sons.