“We live in the East Village in New York City and there is one street I will never go down… that is tenth street between First Avenue and Avenue A. The reason I developed this superstition is because I ride my bike everywhere in the city and I… rarely would go down Tenth and first…between First and A… anyway and one time I parked my bike between tenth and first and A and my wheel was gone… somebody had stolen it. People had always warned me about that street… that a lot of people steal bikes on tenth between First and A… but later I parked my bike on Tenth between First and A again and my front wheel was stolen.”

This superstition seems to derive from some sort of fact that many people in New York have had the same experience within that same city block and the belief seemed sprout up that the block was either cursed or part of some sort of hangout for bicycle thieves. Either the belief lead to it actually being true—in the sense that bicycle thieves got the idea to steal bikes from that block from the belief, or the belief sprouted from some sort of truth.