Someone stole my truck. I got a crash course on the wild black market for stolen cars

A couple weeks ago, my truck was stolen. This wasn't just any truck. It was a 1999 Toyota Tacoma that I owned for 20 years. I bought it used back when I was a teenager, and it was my primary mode of transportation for basically my entire adulthood. Sure, it was dented. It was rusting. It was starting to fall apart. But I loved that truck.

Then, in the dead of night, in front of our apartment in San Francisco, poof, it was gone. I moved to this city almost exactly a year ago — and this is the third time the truck was either stolen or broken into since I arrived. Which is weird: It was never broken into or stolen in the 19 years before. That includes the years I lived and parked my truck in rough parts of Brooklyn.

My personal experience matches the data. The San Francisco Bay Area has one of the highest rates of car theft of any major metro area in the nation. New York City has one of the lowest. (H/t to Greg Morton for crunching the numbers and making this pretty map.)

Maybe my experience of living in New