The Ballad of the Burglar of Telegraph Hill

By: Andy Wright

First comes the legend, then comes the song.

The city held its collective breath this week, as a suspected burglar hid out on a steep shrub-encrusted hillside in Telegraph Hill. The burglary was reported shortly after 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, and the man fled, but not very far: he remained on the treacherous cliff until 10 p.m. Wednesday.

During the hours that he clung to the cliff, a bevy of different organizations were deployed in an effort to coax him out, including U.S. Park Police, a California Highway Patrol helicopter, and firefighters.

But it was all to no avail. He crept away around 10 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Like any ne’er do well whose exploits achieve this level of attention and, well, oddness, it was only a matter of time until he was immortalized in song.

After asking around, we found two artists —Taylor Brown and Brian Bergeron —who said the felt inspired enough to write us a song about this still-at-large prowler. Behold, now, "The Ballad of the Telegraph Hill Burglar." The lyrics are posted below for those of you who would like to sing along. (Which we assume will be most of you.)

Embed:http://youtu.be/MhgucnqSfhk

The Ballad of the Burglar of Telegraph Hill

Way up on the cliffs of Telegraph Hill

Perched a young man with plenty of time to kill

He may have been seen stealing the ring

From a nearby apartment building

 

The cops thought for sure we've got him good

No need to climb up there into the woods

Shined the lights up on the trees saying 'can burglar please'

'let us know if there's anything that you need

 

Well he said 'Turns those lights off I'm trying to sleep"

And anyways you ain't got nothing on me

Well the cops have had enough so they packed up their stuff and let the man on Telegraph Hill be

 

He came down down down down the Telegraph Hill

The neighborhood had nothing better to do watched him slide

down down down down Telegraph Hill

 

Written by Taylor Brown

Performed by Taylor Brown and Brian Bergeron