There's no glass ceiling in the high-profile world of East Bay crime. At MacArthur BART on June 11, a woman tried to pickpocket a hot-dog vendor. Seizing her hand, he summoned a police officer, who arrested her for attempted grand theft. On Walnut Creek's Ygnacio Valley Road on June 6, a fiftyish woman shoplifted an angel figurine, then fled in a station wagon. Using a foil-lined bag and a screwdriver, an unidentified female defeated the antitheft system at Emeryville's Barnes & Noble last month to steal four TV series on DVD. Also in Emeryville, two women were cited for pulling each other's hair at Scends Restaurant, whose Web site proclaims: "Scends is proud to present under bar hooks and power outlets for your convenience. So hang your hat or purse or plug in your phone charger or laptop while you enjoy food, drink, and friends." It was a "mutual combat" situation, Emeryville Police Officer Ferdinand Suba says. In other hair-pulling news, a woman pulled the hair of Albany High School vice principal Kirsten Wollenweber after the latter denied the former's son permission to attend a school event last month. Twice last month, female burglars stole lingerie from the Emeryville Gap.

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Throwing muses: On June 8, two men pelted Cafe Strada, across from the UCB campus at College Avenue and Bancroft Way, with water balloons from a nearby rooftop. They eluded capture. Uphill fraternities armed with water-balloon slingshots have been known to pull similar stunts, typically targeting one another's sun decks.

Night of the long knife: While playing hide and seek on the campus of Walnut Creek's Berean Christian High School on June 9, a twelve-year-old boy found a foot-long machete under a bush.

Gymnastic caper: As a tot in the '80s, Amy Cools "learned to crochet and hand-sew from my grandma," and made clothes for her doll. She taught herself to make patterns, "moving from simple shirts, apron tops, and hippie dresses to sleeved tops, fitted and knit clothing, jeans, and fully lined handbags." For a while she worked "altering muumuus," then opened the Afterglow shop at 4233 Telegraph Avenue, where she remained "committed to keeping my designs sweatshop-free." What does she get for her troubles? Between June 12 and 13, Afterglow was burgled, despite new security measures: "I had clad the door around the locks in metal sleeves, ditto the door frame, installed a back security door over the back door, which has a deadbolt and plank ... and placed barricades in the window frames." The burglar(s) unscrewed and bent back the window bars, and then, "amazingly, squeezed over the bars, through an eighteen-by-fourteen-inch window, and onto the sink, after prying out the glass. It was an incredible feat of gymnastics," muses Cools, whose wedding was days after the theft. The culprit(s) dumped out bags and boxes and stole jewelry, hats — and lingerie.

Retailers at war: Nearby, the next day, two armed men stole money and personal items including a brand-new Dell laptop from staff at Ruby's Garden Kidwear & Flower Shop at 4925 Shattuck Ave. — hailed in this year's Express Best Of issue for its whimsical free gift-wrap, free scones, and ethics-conscious communitarian flair. Because of the robbery, the shop is shut. "I can't see going back to business-as-usual," co-owner Mae Chan Frey posted at an online forum. "I have so enjoyed running the shop ... but this experience has made me wonder if it's worth risking my life for." One of the robbers has been apprehended with the contents of Frey's wallet. Appalled at the flood of retail robberies, another local lamented online: "We are at war."

Is nothing sacred? After thieves hit Oakland's Firestorm Memorial Garden earlier this month, prying off all 25 aluminum plaques bearing victims' names and making off with a handcrafted bronze "tree" — likely sold by now as scrap metal — locals despaired. "Perhaps the Memorial Garden needs some kind of a moat," one suggested online. "A high-tech moat."

I smell bacon: On June 5, Walnut Creek police visited a house on Mount Pisgah Road whose resident had been shocked to discover raw bacon strewn all over the porch. "It looks pretty fresh," the police report reads. The incident was later identified as a practical joke, the strewer being "a member of the reporting party's Jewish youth group." Elsewhere in Walnut Creek that night, a boy called the cops to say that "his parents are throwing all his stuff away because he wouldn't clean his room." Three days later, a greasy-haired man tried unsuccessfully to lure girls into his red van near Walnut Creek's Foothill Middle School. He then drove off, but witnesses caught his license-plate frame inscription: "World's Greatest Dad."

I'll get you ... some day: A man summoned UC Berkeley police on Lower Sproul Plaza a few minutes before midnight on June 16 to report that his bike had been stolen and that he had spotted someone riding it. Turns out the bike was stolen in 1969. Thomas Cornish, aged 53, was "distraught," reports Assistant Chief Mitch Celaya. "He was sad." Cornish told officers that the two-wheeler, whose rider had long since pedaled away from the scene, bore the same serial number as the one stolen from him when he was fifteen. "He said he remembered the serial number because he's good with numbers," Celaya says.