When Hobbits Go Wrong, Only A Buzzkill From The Skies Can Slow ’Em Down – May 13, 2010
• Thursday, April 15 9:21 a.m. A TransAm’s inherent awesomeness was kicked up a significant notch with an impressive burnout demonstration (a symbolic representation of the young buffoon’s ever-so-agile sperm motility, though he likely wasn’t thinking about that, or much else) at Sunset and Western avenues. But the display of reproductive prowess took a humiliating plummet when the mouth-breathermobile slammed into a fire hydrant, unleashing a prematurely orgasmic fountain of wa-wa. As the dethroned cock-o’-the-block scurried away like a scared kitten in his crumpled chariot, an angered neighbor phoned police with a profanity-peppered report of the incident. As emergency forces sped to the scene, police handily located the slammed TransAm going nowhere fast on Boyd Road. Burnout Boy was returned to the scene to face the music, which took the form of police radios and a witness saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, that’s him.” The on-call Public Works tech responded and turned off the water.
12:36 a.m. The testosterone cascade continued on Tavern Row, where a small but moronic menagerie of menfolk argued, then found common ground on one point – they should go into the alley out back, which is one of the few places left that doesn’t have cameras trained on it (or so they believed), and fight. For whatever reason (possibly the irrestistible allure of boiling grease, the aroma of which spans all races, creeds and belief systems as a sort of universal language of acrid stenches) the battling boyos’ slugfest migrated to the donut shop alley, attracting yet more combatants. A woman told police she didn’t feel safe in the area, so officers responded and arrived seven minutes later. But attention spans being what they are these days, hostilities had trailed off by then. Needless to say, donut production continued unhindered.
7:39 a.m. Further elevating the stature of the male race, two gentlemen peed on a garage door in the 800 block of Ninth Street and at that point their retriever wasn’t the only thing that was golden.
9:13 a.m. A resident of the “Growview” neighborhood of town reported that a man in a red Toyota pickup truck drove slowly up to his house the previous morning and stopped, attempting to look in the resident’s windows. For reasons unknown, police know Mr. Red Tacoma and happened to have a picture of him from some prior contact, which they showed to the resident. He confirmed the ID, so police called the subject. He said he “wasn’t happy” with what the resident said on the A&E program, Intervention: Pot City USA, but that he didn’t care any more and would not try to intimidate him. He denied slowing down or stopping in front of the temporary TV star’s home, and promised not to do it again. In fact, he wants nothing at all to do with the resident. Really, officer, I’m done with it… just don’t come to my house.
10:36 a.m. Dogs running loose in Maria Court drew police. The owner told police he’d released the hounds to do their business (at the location of their unsupervised dogly choice). Police related two words: leash laws.
1:46 p.m. A woman complained that when she walks past the roundabout at West End Road and Spear Avenue, three dogs charge the fence, forcing the passersby into the street to escape the slavering curs. The resident will be asked to cut back bushes at the fence to make the sidewalk more accessible, which seems like a solution to a somewhat different problem but at least it represents some kind of improvement in the area.
2:04 p.m. Good old Trail 3 in the Community Forest, a location always turgid with low-hanging fruit. In this case the ripe-for-plucking offenders included a wandering soul with a warrant out of Modoc County, which agreed to extradite him or her. The rest of the campers were cited.
3:22 p.m. It was kind of hard to miss the not-exactly-camouflaged man in a red jersey with a big “34” on the back, running drunkenly away from the freshly poured concrete he’d just vandalized on Samoa Boulevard near the train tracks. He was found and arrested for being composed of too many parts alcohol.
9:50 p.m. A man in Courtyard Circle, fed up with loud motorcyles, handled it exactly wrong by calling the CHP on 911 a dozen times. An APD officer stopped by to tell him to stop playing with the phone.
• Friday, April 16 12:23 p.m. Three hobos sat visiting in the freeway median at the Sunset Overhead until advised away.
3:26 p.m. A well-armed Hidden Creek Road resident became less so when someone took his sliding glass door off its tracks and took his pistol off the night stand as well as the rifle next to his bed, plus 200 rounds of ammo.
7:43 p.m. Though he wore what would be generically referred to as a baseball cap, the hairy dude who came to a California Avenue front door asking for money for the Little League at this time of night seemed unlikely to have much of a connection to the Great American Pastime; more likely another Arcata waste-of-time.
• Saturday, April 17 12:35 a.m. Just about the time a citizen told an officer on the Plaza that there was a firearm in a nearby green Toyota, another officer suggested increased police presence downtown due to a “gang element” and a report of a handgun in a teal/green Chevy Malibu.
12:59 a.m. Next, a reported 30-person brawl on F Street came to involve maybe 50 people, with a “large amount” of blood on the stairs of an apartment building and medical aid requested for two people with head injuries. Up the street sat the green Toyota previously implicated in plaza shenanigans, piloted by a man in a red hat. Soon, yet another car, a green Monte Carlo was reported involved somehow. Suspects were eventually located at a Plaza tavern, but the assault victims didn’t want to press charges.
5:54 a.m. A man in a puffy jacket did what people do on cell phones – talk-shout. Unfortunately, this was at the corner of 12th and F streets in the dead silence of pre-dawn, robbing apartment dwellers of their last prized moments of slumber.
7:04 a.m. A park ranger made the acquaintance of, and issued citations to, a number of forest denizens who weren’t supposed to be there. Some who were cited didn’t leave with appropriate dispatch, and for them, the exit route was clarified.
10:24 a.m. The traveler, dog and dope density at the I Street information kiosk exceeded advisable limits, so the Blue Meanies rolled up to beneficial effect.
11:28 a.m. A woman walking on Margaret Lane was bitten by a dog. She, the animal and its owner stood by for the arrival of police, then the woman went to the ER.
1:17 p.m. Hangers-about at the Skate Park were dispersed. Something named “Batson” was further advised to stay away after repeated warnings.
4:49 p.m. A rogue goat on Ribeiro Lane was rounded up and taken to a shelter.
7:14 p.m. A man who had been quenching his thirst with tangy adult beverages had a hissysnit near the Ball Park and, in a surfeit of drama, threw his jacket on the ground.
10:58 p.m. Who goes a-knockin door-to-door at the lowest of low-budget motels in Valley West at this time of night? A dreadlocked man of dubious intent, who somehow escapes further detection.
• Sunday, April 18 4:18 p.m. “Medical personnel and officers were unable to locate the subject’s testicles.”
• Tuesday, April 20 6:03 a.m. The annual marijuana holiday dawned dankly, with cold rain acting as a Buzzkill From The Skies. In Larson Park, one man did some kind of hysteria-inspired anti-raindance in the gazebo, screaming and dancing around and then getting back in his sleeping bag. Police admonished him for his top-volume spazz-out, and cited him for disturbing the peace.
6:35 a.m. Up in the woods, a park ranger came across a camp stocked with soggy schlubs. One turned out to be a child, and the Olympia, Washington Police Department was notified that a runaway juvenile it was looking for had been located. She was walked out of the woods and taken to Juvenile Hall. Her colleagues were all cited for illegal camping.
8:01 a.m. More forest hobbits-gone-wrong, more citations.
11:19 a.m. As police continued to cite parkgoers for their rippage to the social fabric, the 4-20 attendees began ripping each other off for their personal possessions. Someone’s backpack and OxyContin supply disappeared overnight.
12:09 p.m. A drunk was removed from Redwood Park.
12:19 p.m. A beer guzzler at 13th and G streets had to go to jail.
12:47 p.m. With the park meadow waterlogged, goodtimers reverted to in-town amusements. An I Street cooperative supermarket asked for a police drive-through due to “carloads of subjects coming and hanging out.”
12:55 p.m. Hospital workers heard a loud noise, then went outside and saw a woman in a car that had apparently struck another car. When eye contact was made, she got out and looked at the damage, then fled the scene.
12:59 p.m. A drunken juvenile was taken out of Redwood Park.
1:18 p.m. Four women were cited for druggie doings in Redwood Park.
1:22 p.m. You’ll never in a million years guess what someone was cited for in Redwood Park. OK, maybe in a hundred years. A nanosecond?
1:25 p.m. A white-bearded man walked near Eighth and G streets, reportedly screaming obscenities and behaving aggressively with a seven-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl.
1:46 p.m. A man who had been arrested the previous Friday night by the Drug Task Force said his girlfriend had left his backpack for him at a Ninth Street homeless service center. The staff there left it outside under the pay phone for him to pick up, but it wasn’t until Saturday morning that he got over there, and shockingly, it was gone. The pack’s contents had included his clothes, Social Security card, birth certificate, bus tickets, cell phone, charger and bluetooth accessory and his checkbook.
2:06 p.m. An old RV with mold growing on the side and expired registration parked on South G Street, its sewer tank cap removed. Given the operators’ lofty standards for personal responsibility, a nearby resident was concerned that the poo tank was going to be emptied out on the spot. The vehicle was cited for abatement.
2:36 p.m. A person tabling outside a Uniontown variety store told a woman that she was collecting petition signatures to “save the schools.” The temporarily gullible passerby signed six different petitions, then read them and found out that the petitions advocated things she would never support. She then crossed her name off all the petitions, and in talking to police, couldn’t remember exactly what they were for except that she didn’t agree.
2:51 p.m. The fallback plan for drizzle-fizzled 4-20 involved a dozen travelers agglomerating in Larson Park. “DISPERSE.”
4:35 p.m. So eager were visitors for their ritual 4:20 p.m. THC infusion that they cast their fates to the wind automotively, and cast off their cars in wholly impractical locations as close as they could get to Redwood Park. Police cited and towed cars that had been parked in front of driveways and out in the roadway at 12th Street and Bayview Avenue.
8:37 p.m. A woman who’d made off with a $17.99 bottle of vodka from a Uniontown store was arrested in front of the laundromat.
