This group meets twice a month in Seattle to practice picking locks

After a long day of work in Seattle, some people relax by playing soccer. Others go bowling, play music, make pottery or do yoga.

Matt Burrough picks locks.

Twice a month, people like Burrough get together to drink beer, chat and maneuver metal picks inside keyholes. They jiggle, turn and then … click.

Don’t worry: These are nerdy hobbyists and their pastime is legal. The locks they tease open are new ones they buy for fun or old ones no longer in use.

In January at a Seattle brewery, eight enthusiasts practiced at an outdoor table covered with padlocks and door locks of various sizes.

“This is locksport,” Burrough said. “It’s like a puzzle that the puzzle designer didn’t want you to solve.”

The 39-year-old from Redmond knows what he’s talking about, because he recently co-wrote the world’s only book about the activity: “Locksport: A Hacker’s Guide to Lockpicking, Impressioning, and Safe Cracking.”

Published last year, the book describes locksport as “the hobby of opening locks and the competitions to see who can do so the fastest.” It’s popular especiallyamong computer geeks like Burrough, who works in cybersecurity. Locksport experts can pick certain locks in a matter of seconds.

“At work, my job is to figure out any vulnerabilities in a system,” Burrough said. “Here, I’m just looking for vulnerabilities in a lock.”

Seattle’s large scene

Burrough helps manage Seattle Locksport, a club with dozens of regular and occasional participants, plus its own website and coat-of-arms logo. It’s one of the largest such groups in the U.S., with members who travel to compete.

The club started more than a decade ago at Ada’s Technical Books on Capitol Hill. Now there are regular meetups both in Seattle and on the Eastside. Participants come from as far away as Snohomish and Pierce counties.

Jonathan Hawks, from Everett, cracked his first lock when he was just a kid, he recalled at January’s meetup, laughing. He removed a device that his mother had installed to block him from watching television shows after school.

“I got away with it for months,” said Hawks, who works in computer security.

Although the 43-year-old can now watch TV whenever he wants, Hawks still enjoys opening locks, he said, especially in a social setting. Some devotees bring their locks and picks with them almost everywhere, treating the tools like fidget toys to keep their minds clear and their hands occupied.

Seattle is a hot spot because many lock pickers work in the tech industry. But the local club has also attracted people from other occupations, like health care providers, homemakers and law enforcement officers, said Peter South, the group’s co-organizer.

They share a fascination with mechanical riddles and a yearning for community, said South, 56, a retired paramedic from Granite Falls.

“All my best friends are sitting here at this table,” Burrough agreed.

How it’s done

Most locks in the U.S. are “pin tumblers” that open when a key’s teeth align exactly with a series of pins, pushing them out of the way in a certain order. Linus Yale Sr. invented these locks in the 1800s; Yale brand locks still exist.

To open a pin tumbler without a key, you can engage the pins with a metal pick and turn the lock with a tension wrench. These are the basic tools that hobbyists like Burrough and South bring to their locksport meetups.

The more pins a tumbler lock contains, the more difficult it is to open. You can’t see what you’re doing inside the lock, so you have to feel your way to the solution. That means you can carry on a conversation while you work.

“It’s actually easier when you don’t stare at the lock,” Burrough said.

In other countries, other types of locks are more common. They use different keys. There are also combination locks that use numbers, not keys.

Head-to-head

Social media videos are how a lot of people now learn about locksport. For example, a YouTuber called LockPickingLaywer has 4 million followers.

But lock-picking challenges have been around for much longer. In 1790, London inventor Joseph Bramah posted a sign in his window promising a cash prize to anyone who could pick his complex new lock, one story goes.

No one succeeded until 1851, when locksmith Alfred Hobbs picked the lock with his special Hobbs pick, said Burrough, who put the story in his book.

At today’s locksport conventions, some contests follow a round-robin format.

Everybody gets five minutes to pick their lock. Then they pass their lock to the person next to them until everyone attempts every lock, Burrough said.

Whoever picks the most locks, or gets the fastest time, is the winner.

There are also safecracking games, and even scenario-based games, Burrough said, like one where participants are timed as they “escape” by picking handcuffs, a door lock and a car lock in quick succession.

Burrough has picked locks at competitions in Washington, D.C., and the Netherlands multiple times, including inside a medieval Dutch castle. The German, British, Dutch and American hobbyists typically speak English together, whereas the Italians hang out by themselves, he said.

“The traveling is a lot of fun,” said Burrough’s wife, Megan Burrough, 42, who also competes in locksport. “European locks are so much harder.”

Two rules

Some outsiders may assume locksport participants are wannabe thieves, but they say they hold each other to a strict code of conduct.

There are two important rules: “You only pick locks you have permission to pick, and you don’t pick locks that are in use,” Burrough said.

Picking tools are legal in most U.S. states as long as the person carrying them demonstrates no intent to use them for a crime, Burrough’s book says. Hobbyists buy new locks to practice with or get old locks donated. Places like gyms sometimes need to get rid of the locks people forget on lockers.

Most burglaries are smash-and-grabs or opportunity crimes, rather than devious lock-picking capers, said South, from Granite Falls.

“They smash a door in, break a window,” cut a lock, or simply enter through a door or window that’s been left open, said Jim Fuda, a retired King County sheriff’s deputy who runs the nonprofit Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound. “The burglaries we hear about are not somebody picking a lock.”

It doesn’t bother Fuda that hobbyists are meeting up to fiddle with locks and share tips because, “If someone wants to learn how to pick a lock,” for criminal purposes, “they don’t have to join a club to do that,” he said.

“We see no issue” with locksport “as long as they do not intend to use their skills for criminal behavior,” a Redmond police spokesperson added.

The rules of locksport are pretty clear-cut, with one exception: The “love locks” that couples attach to bridges and fences to symbolize their unbreakable bonds. There’s one spot near City View Park in West Seattle.

Although many sport picking hobbyists leave the love locks alone, out of respect for the besotted couples, others consider the locks fair game because they’re abandoned, cluttering public property. Those pickers sometimes practice on West Seattle’s love locks, drawing curious glances from passersby.

Locksmith’s view

While some professional locksmiths worry about amateur pickers stealing their customers or committing crimes, other locksmiths appreciate the hobby and have donated locks to Seattle-area participants, South said.

Locksmiths install, repair and replace locks. They also help with lockouts by getting customers back inside. South works part time as a locksmith.

“We actually have several members” of the Northwest Locksmith Association “who got their start in sport picking,” said longtime Port Angeles locksmith Sheldon Koehler, who serves as vice president of the association.

Koehler sometimes watches locksport YouTube videos for tips and thinks the hobby can help recruit new locksmiths into an aging industry. His association is exploring whether to sponsor a picking competition, Koehler said.

“A lot of these kids getting into it could be very good locksmiths,” he said.