This post was flagged as a Best of CL and we agree. It’s a classic and it’s from East Williamsburg. (Props to Super Correspondent E.C. Stephens for hunting this down and bringing it to us.) All we can do is say, read this thing. You’ll be glad you did:

To the girl who stole my bike as a gesture of flirtation – m4w
I love how well you get me–you know that the way to my heart is through my bike, and I can only assume that you cut the chain binding my ’86 Benotto to that stop sign in East Williamsburg late Thursday night in the hopes of starting a conversation with me. It was a really gutsy plan.
“Oh hey,” you’d say as I walked up. “I was just stealing your bike.”
“What the fuck?” I’d say.
“I feel terrible,” you’d say. And then you’d say something cute to move things along, like “Can I make it up to you with coffee?“

I totally understand where you were coming from–we all have a hard time starting a conversation with the person we have a crush on. Your plan was actually really good and clever and I am just so so bummed that we missed each other. I can imagine how awful you felt–it’s midnight in East Williamsburg and you’re standing there holding 3-foot-long garden clippers and feeling very, very conspicuous. There’s a busted chain pooled at your feet and a beautiful old white Italian racing bike with blue highlights and red handlebar tape leaning up against a stop sign, and I’m nowhere in sight. You’re starting to wonder whether I’m ever going to show up. Maybe I’ve gone to Arizona for the weekend or something.

Then you realize, with a sense of dread that grows and grows the longer you wait, that you can’t just leave the bike there and abandon the whole plan–the chain is well and truly cut, so the bike isn’t secure anymore and it would be all too easy for some complete and total fucking asshole to walk away with it and make maybe $150 selling my most beloved possession and possibly greatest and most trusted friend so far in New York. If this were to happen, if this hypothetical asshole were to walk away with my bike, which I just spent my first month here searching for and then carefully patching up and tuning, then where would all my love for this bike go? It would simply vanish. The bike would be reduced to an object of monetary value and I would be reduced to a guy who has to find a new bike. There would be measurably less love in the world, and the hypothetical asshole who had stolen my bike would therefore be a destroyer of love. A Love Destroyer.

You, of course, could not allow this to happen. The destruction of love is antithetical to your core mission in life, which is to create love, more love, for me. So you decided to take the bike for safe-keeping. THANK YOU. I cannot express how grateful I am and how eager to finally to have our long-awaited conversation, which might honestly be a little awkward now but will be well worth it. I’ve been pretty lonely in my first month in New York and kind of missing my ex-girlfriend and frankly I’m just really flattered that you’ve taken an interest in me.

I can’t wait to meet you. And to get my bike back.

If she’s cute and nice, it’ll be love at first sight. We know this instinctively.