By Peter Lawrence Kane
The Chronicle reported this morning that the “Rainbow Girls,” a loosely defined gang of at least three independent groups of teens/20-somethings with dyed hair, have been shoplifting tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of designer bags and other goods from Union Square boutiques — and they’re getting even bolder about it as the holiday shopping season rolls along. This year alone, the Rainbow Girls have hit Neiman Marcus, Armani, Gucci, Victoria’s Secret, and several other high-end retailers.
It sounds like Divine and Mink Stole terrorizing Baltimore in some early John Waters movie. However, with the widespread damage to small businesses in Berkeley and Oakland, the region’s tolerance for property theft and bad-girl misbehavior might be at its ebb. Currently, the only leads the SFPD has are some surveillance footage, a license plate, and a get-away truck that was later set on fire in the Bayview.
This has nothing to do with the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls, which is a leadership-building group. Moreover, the Rainbow Girls aren’t all girls, nor are they merely shoplifting en masse. Two men hit up the Maiden Lane Chanel store at 3 a.m. on the day before Thanksgiving, smashed the windows and made off with $265,000 worth of merch. (If they were wearing neon jeans at that late hour, or how that crime was otherwise tied to this spate of grand larceny during business hours, Matier and Ross do not say.)
The gender aspect cuts deeper still. Last year, the Examiner claimed that at least three women in a group of six Rainbow Girls were African-American transwomen, and that all the area’s high-end stores were on the lookout. In 2012, Haighteration (a precursor to Hoodline) referred to “heavyset, flamboyant shoplifters” who’d stolen products and a receptionist’s phone from a salon in the Lower Haight and had also been seen shoplifting in the Castro.
So it’s been happening for a long time. It’s a little peculiar that groups of people who dress to be noticed could keep this up like that. Stranger still, when two of the Rainbow Girls were caught, they were sentenced only to two weeks in jail.
[Via SFGate; video screenshot via SF Chronicle Youtube]
