In any other part of the country, one drives one's shiny new Tesla to show off one's wealth, prestige and hip environmental consciousness.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, it's a little different:

So I’m driving on interstate 880 heading to the Oakland Coliseum from Hayward and I notice so many vehicles driving with their rear wing window smashed out. Many were @tesla’s. I’m hearing those are the most expensive to replace and there is a backlog for replacement parts. pic.twitter.com/0NTA9LXfWm

— Stanley Roberts рџЋ¬ (@StanleyRoberts) August 27, 2023

Yes, these people have money to repair even expensive broken car windows.

The problem is, so many have been broken, and so many have been the victimized by smash-and-grab car burglars that the supply chain for their replacement windows apparently has buckled.

So, they have to drive around with that sort of ugly black eye on what has to be, for some of them, their prized baby, as they wait in line for parts and repair. Cost to repair it, according one person on this Tesla owners' bulletin board was $400 in 2018. and the owner who had it would have to wait 10 days for an appointment. Naturally, the driver was from the Bay Area and the victim of a car break-in. Indicators now show that the cost is higher and the wait times are now longer -- this Tesla bulletin board indicates the cost of a back side window replacement is now $500 to $673. Not all of them have insurance deductibles for glass, so out of the pocket it comes, if they can find someone with the parts at all.

And that's the effect of just one of the crimes the Bay Area is swamped with. According to this NBC report summary from 2021:

In the heart of San Francisco, alongside popular tourist attractions, car break-ins have spiked nearly 200% since last year, turning visitors into victims and creating what some business owners say is an economic crisis. On average, the city suffers about 74 car break-ins per day, according to police records for the month of October. The District Attorney’s Office lays blame with police, pointing to the fact that officers only make arrests in less than two percent of car break-in cases. The Police Department, however, says whenever arrests are made, the District Attorney releases offenders without substantive penalties, making car break-ins an easy crime for organized gangs.  

...and this more updated one:

The San Francisco Chronicle publishes an auto break-in map as a community feature here, updated as recently as yesterday. Don't take your car to North Beach, the Cole Valley, UCSF, Union Street, the Marina, Fisherman's Wharf, the outer Richmond, downtown, or the Western Addition. Actually, don't take it anywhere in that city given all those double-digit dots.

According to KTVU:

San Francisco police said there have been 13,000 car break-ins to date. The highest number of break-ins was in 2017 when there were over 31,000 car burglaries.

2017 was back when people reported crimes to the cops. Today, many don't. That the cops have only now begun to set up bait cars for the city's prodigious auto burglars tells us the problem is worse than ever.

On Thursday, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins held a news conference on how the city is going to address car burglaries.

Scott said his department is going to use bait cars, in hopes of catching repeat offenders. He also said since the city's new budget allows for more police overtime, which will increase officer patrols in tourist areas like the Palace of Fine Arts, Lombard Street, and Fisherman's Wharf.

As they were making that announcement for the television cameras -- another car got broken into. The thieves don't even care anymore if anyone sees it, so they do it in broad daylight.

And it's important to note that Oakland is even worse.

And now a common sight is oodles of Teslas, driving around with broken windows like broken-down ghetto cars.

You know they talk about it. You know they can see it. Beautiful new cars now driving around with broken windows is bound to become some kind of tourist bingo card attraction. What a sad development. Until they can learn to change their voting patterns over there, this is bound to become some kind of institution. That's some status symbol they've got emerging over there.

Image: Twitter screen shot