Above is the stylish bicycle used in a 2008 bombing of an Army Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square that injured no one, but the FBI would desperately like to solve it anyway. Today the agency released never-before-seen (relatively unexciting) surveillance footage from the blast and announced a $65,000 reward, while NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly warned, “The distance between polemics by bombing and the murdering of innocents is short, indeed.” There’s also a hashtag.
To stress the seriousness of the search, the FBI announced that the seemingly homemade device “was built using an ammunition can commonly found on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan” and “was stronger than the device detonated during the Boston Marathon,” although it did not include any shrapnel.
Unintentionally undermining the seriousness of the search, the FBI also started the hashtag #bikebomber, which hasn’t really caught on but has already been hijacked:
