Music

Portugal. The Man's stolen van recovered with most of their gear still intact

by Tyler Munro

People who steal from bands are assholes, there’s no two ways about it. But sometimes things work out, like what just happened with Portugal. The Man and the case of their stolen van (which, at the time, was full of their gear). After a week and a half of what we can only assume to be frustrating, anxious anticipation and worrying, the band happily reported yesterday that the Chicago PD has found and recovered their stolen van with most (if not all) of their gear still intact.

They’ve posted a lengthy thank you to fans, supporters and police alike on their Facebook page, a big chunk of which you can read here:

A win for the band in a situation that seemingly happens monthly in the van and trailer touring world and so rarely followed by good news and equipment being returned. Well, it is good news and it is more than just a win for PTM, it is also a win for twitter, the world of social media, the Chicago police, and old school journalism. We had taken notice of this as soon as the first tweets started rolling, as the blogs were posted and the news story aired. It’s the sort of thing that brings you close to tears (in the manliest way, of course). Tears not because we had a chance of getting our things back because, after all, they are just things but because this was people banding together over a cause. People banding together because “I was robbed before and fuck that”. I’m sure we all know how it feels, and even surer still because of this response. It is violating, it is unfair, it is wrong. As much as I found humor in the fact that it took a robbery to make us a trending topic on twitter I knew it was more than the band, it wasn’t about “us” at the end of the day, it was about all of us. This is a serious win for everyone that has been violated in some way. I have said this before and it will not sound any less cliche’ saying it now: We can do anything when we work together. Yeah, we may not get all of our things back, most certainly guitars were sent off maybe the personal things have already been distributed, little things are harder to track and easily lost in the mix but really, who cares? They are just things. The most important thing to remember is that we did this together.

Portugal. The Van (the red Ford pictured above) was stolen in Chicago after their Lollapalooza gig last week.