The City of Oakland is both wonderful and problematic, as Ars editor Joe Mullin and I can attest, given that we're both denizens of this fine city. It has incredible natural beauty and vibrant culture, but also a notoriously mismanaged police department and a climbing crime rate.

It’s understandable, then, that some Oakland residents would be slightly annoyed at an upcoming workshop entitled “Introduction to Lockpicking,” which was mentioned in Mayor Jean Quan’s weekly newsletter (PDF) this week. The class is one of a larger "Workshop Weekend," to be held at Tech Liminal, an Oakland co-working space, and Sudoroom, a relatively new hackerspace in downtown Oakland. (Disclosure: I am a paying member at Sudoroom.)

According to the Oakland Tribune, some Oaklanders are miffed that the city would seem to endorse such a practice—the mayor has subsequently apologized.

"I've heard from people who are upset about the lockpicking class item," Mayor Quan wrote in a statement on Wednesday. "I understand their reaction and I apologize."

Oakland Local's Susan Mernit put it this way:

Does mentioning a class in lock-picking promote and encourage criminal behavior in Oakland? Seems like, if you're a resident on a street where the police are slow to show up and criminals endlessly case and cruise, the answer feels like yes. Update: Some folks wondered if I was bothered by this workshop being offered, or the Mayor's newsletter mentioning it, and the answer is no. I feel terrible about the level of crime in Oakland, and as a resident, I am involved in the issue as everyone here, but most of the criminals I've encountered aren't going to be taking lock-picking classes anytime soon.

However, what may be lost on the mayor and local media is that lockpicking has long been a part of hacker culture—best exemplified by the fact that Germany’s well-known Chaos Computer Club has been holding a Lockpicking Competition since 1997. The New York Times even covered lockpicking in Amsterdam back in 2009, profiling TOOOL (The Open Organization of Lockpickers), a group that is "dedicated to picking locks for fun.”

Not surprisingly, the Bay Area has a TOOOL chapter, meeting every “3rd Sunday of the month, sometimes at the Noisebridge space and sometimes elsewhere.” There's even a "College of Lockpicking," currently on tour across the United States.

TOOOL puts its motivation this way: “Lockpickers see locks as puzzles, and solving such a puzzle provides an enormous thrill ;) This thrill motivates people to carry on with it and try an even more difficult lock. It is addictive, but pacifying all the same.”