Driven By Boredom is all me. I take all the photos, I write all the posts and other than the occasional bit of help from a drug addict an intern, it’s all the work of one person.  But today a story came a long so great that I decided I had to have a guest.

Mike Nouveau is a DJ.  He was a Ruff Kid, he threw M at Darkroom and now he spins at Avenue when he is not gallivanting around Europe.  Mike is also not a nice guy.  A lot of people hate him and probably for good reason.  His absolute hatred directed at 95% of the human population is exactly why I like him so much.  The guy is clearly fantastic.

Anyway, a few days ago Mike was in Amsterdam when a burglar tried to steal his laptop. I followed the whole thing live as he Tweeted his tale from the hospital where he was trying to glue his missing toenail back on, but I will let him tell the story…

Mike’s story is after the jump.  It’s a long post with some very gross pictures.  You have been warned….

So my friend Peter and I were renting an apartment in Amsterdam for 5 days.

The other night at 5am Amsterdam time (11pm NYC time) I was sleeping in the one bed in the apartment, an Ikea-looking platform bed about 1.5 feet above the ground. Next to my pillow are my two Blackberries, and flat on the ground next to me was my MacBook. Both Blackberries are attached to the Macbook through USB wires, that way I can charge 3 things (the laptop and both blackberries) with just one European electrical converter.

So anyway, around 5am I hear one of my Blackberries fall and hit the ground. That is what woke me up. I open my eyes and see a figure reaching for my laptop. I don’t even think twice about it, because in my mind I know it’s my roommate Peter, because who else could it be? It was bizarre because I said something like “stop dude”, and I kind
of lightly force my laptop back onto the ground with one hand, and the guy kind of allows me to force it back onto the ground. Kind of hard to explain but basically every time he lifts my computer, he allows me to take it back. So after the second time, I finally look at this guy up and down, but since I was sleeping in my contact lenses and they were fogged up from sleep, all I am thinking is “Why the fuck is Peter wearing a hood?”. It still didn’t fully click in my head that this was a burglar in my apartment. So after the third time he tries taking the computer, I was like “chill the fuck out dude, use your own computer” and the guy goes “Shhhhhh!” I say something like “what do you mean ‘shhhhhhh!'”? AND THEN THE GUY SAYS SOMETHING IN DUTCH! Peter does not speak Dutch.

At this point I went from groggy/barely can see/eyes not adjusted to the dark to STRAIGHT ON AWAKE AND FILLED WITH ADRENALINE. Within one second everything in my brain is clear as day, and while still in bed
with the covers on me, I wrap my arms around the dude’s neck to the point where he basically falls into bed on top of me. I’m wearing only boxers! I didn’t even think, I just started wrestling the dude. At the same time I am YELLING at the top of my lungs “PETER!!!! WAKE UP!!!!! PETER!!!!” Peter was sleeping on the couch on the other side of the apartment and honestly I don’t think the burglar even knew he was there. The burglar and I wrestle out of the bed and now we’re both on our feet, still in the bedroom. He makes one last ditch effort, bends down, and grabs one of my blackberries. He and I grapple for about 30 seconds in the living room, knocking basically everything over. He gets away from me and goes for the front door. I kind of tackle him out of the way, and now we’re entering Pete’s line of vision, since he’s on the other side of the apartment, just now waking up and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

He goes for the door again, opens it about a foot, and then I slam it back shut. He pushes me away, and finally gets it open. So now if you took a freeze-frame of this moment, I think you’d see both him and I staring down this terrifying set of stairs, the steepest fucking stairs I’ve ever seen in an apartment. When we moved in earlier in the week, Peter and I were making jokes about how insane these stairs were and how impossible it would be to carry anything heavy up or down them. Kind of hard to tell, but walking up these stairs was like climbing up a ladder.

So the burglar and I think both hesitated for a split second, and after that we were both literally ROLLING down these steps. Somehow I land on my feet, and we’re grappling at the bottom of the stairs, where the apartment building door is. After about 10 more seconds of grappling, somehow this dude gets the door open, even though he had to pull the door TOWARDS us. So the door flies open, and the dude runs outside, and immediately slips on the ice and snow. I go to follow him and I slip too. I look at my foot, and my BIG TOENAIL IS GONE, and where it once was, is now just bloody pulp.

So anyway, I’m about one foot out of my apartment, regaining my balance because we’re both slipping on ice, and the burglar is maybe 5 feet ahead of me, in the middle of the street. As I’m regaining my balance, Peter comes flying out of the door (also only wearing boxers) and fucking tackles this dude like in a movie. Peter is rolling around the ice with this guy for a few seconds, and I’m screaming “He took my fucking phone! Get my fucking phone!!!” Peter gets on top of him (BTW Peter is only like 5’10 and 140 pounds, so he’s not a big guy at all.) Peter’s on top of him and delivers a series of diving punches to the top of this guys head. The two of them separate and the guy runs off down the street.

We go inside and search the apartment. Nothing is missing! He didn’t get a thing. He went through my bad and emptied it’s contents. He didn’t bother taking my Ricoh GR-Digital III. Both my phones are in the apartment thankfully. The apartment is a fucking mess and there are drops of blood everywhere. Peter has about 7 cuts all over his body, so at this point he looks a lot worse than he actually is. There’s a lot of blood on him, but only from about 7 small cuts.

We call the police, and they come very quickly. They didn’t really explain or estimate how often this happens. We don’t know how he got into the apartment, but none of the locks or doors were broken. We asked if they thought he would come back, and they said that he wouldn’t after all the trouble we gave him. So I had to go to the police station and file an official report, with the notes that the officers wrote down, and then go to the hospital to see what to do with my fucking toe nail.

At press time the aforementioned toe nail was in Mike’s pocket in a little plastic baggie.

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