"Four guys walk into the Audemars Piguet Boutique..."
No, gentle reader, this is not the start of a joke.
Yesterday afternoon four people entered the Boston Audemars Piguet Boutique on Boylston Street, one allegedly (per some news reports) with a gun, the others additionally armed with sledgehammers and proceeded to smash the display cases before making off with at least one (according to a security staff member) if not more APs. Thankfully, nobody was physically hurt.
And here's where it gets interesting. For those of you unfamiliar, that portion of Boylston street is one-way, at times divided into two separate sections, littered with traffic lights, a bike lane and a lot of absent minded tourists and locals with a propensity for crossing the street without really paying attention. Long story short, traffic there is a bitch. While there are boutiques, shops, and hotels on one side of the street, the other side is the Public Garden and Boston Common, rife with tourists this time of year.
Three suspects were arrested when their car was stopped a little less than 2 blocks from the crime scene. The fourth was the driver of one of the cars who fled on foot, heading away from Boylston towards Stuart Street. He is still, to use the parlance, at large. One AP watch apparently in the box (if anyone can explain that one to me, I am all ears) was recovered from one of the cars.
While AP is name-checked in several songs from Beyonce's Upgrade U to Lil Wayne's “Marvin’s Room (Freestyle)”, it is perhaps ironic that the haul probably would not have netted as much as the robbers would have hoped for, both monetarily and status wise. As Royal Oaks are pretty thin on the ground, it is likely that the watches taken were from the less sexy, less desirable collections. The robbers can thank outgoing CEO François-Henry Bennahmias for that last bit of ironic insult to injury. Maybe it was a good thing that he essentially made AP solely about the Royal Oak, and conveniently those are pretty much never available. Looking to offload a Code 11:59? Bonne chance...
Now to be clear, I do not intend to make light of the trauma that the staff at the AP boutique experienced, thankfully nobody was hurt. And moreover, full marks to the Boston PD, that was quite a collar in record time. But in a city where over three decades later, they still haven't solved the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the AP Boutique Caper of 2023 seems more of a misadventure than anything else, and underscores that while there are several movies with successful heists and car getaways set in downtown Boston, they are just that - movies.
