Joe Keohane has an interesting piece, “The Lost Art of Pickpocketing,” on Slate. An excerpt:

“Pickpocketing in America was once a proud criminal tradition, rich with drama, celebrated in the culture, singular enough that its practitioners developed a whole lexicon to describe its intricacies. Those days appear to be over. ‘Pickpocketing is more or less dead in this country,’ says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, whose new book Triumph of the City, deals at length with urban crime trends. ‘I think these skills have been tragically lost. You’ve got to respect the skill of some pickpocket relative to some thug coming up to you with a knife. A knife takes no skill whatsoever. But to lift someone’s wallet without them knowing …'”