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Finally, a use for those old BART cards with $.30 on them… handy for when you get wasted at Blondie’s ^[2], miss BART home, and forget your bike lock combination. I saw it happen, and shrieked and giggled like a little girl at how easy and fast it was. More photos and info after the jump.

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As it turns out, a Master lock is alarmingly easy to pop open with a simple shim, much the same way you can slide a credit card along (non-deadbolt) door locks to open them when you forget/lose your keys.

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Trimming the BART card can make it easier, so you have a ‘handle’ to apply torque to twist the shim around.

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The internal latch on these Master combination locks are pretty much the same latching mechanism as an ordinary doorknob; slide something into the slot, wiggle it until it pushes the slide open, and the lock pops open.

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It’s also suggested that you can make a simple shim for this technique out of an Altoids tin lid; Jonathan Moore ^[6], who demo’ed this for me after sharing much red wine, points out that had we been drinking Tecate we could have also done it with a beer can ^[7], and another friend posted a video demo of hacking these locks with metal shims ^[8] a while back .

t’s especially interesting that BART cards are perfect for this, being of the right amount of firmness, thickness, slip and strength. Yay BART!

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