Grog Glugged, Buds Chugged, Synapses Nulled, Enstupidation Process Complete – July 6, 2010
• Friday, June 11 7:09 a.m. It’s not like porches on Villa Way have some sort of bike thief-repelling force field around them. Perhaps that was why a Red Schwinn disappeared in the night.
7:32 a.m.
A pianist pounded the keys
And neighbors on K Street weren’t pleased
The playing and singing
Had left their ears ringing
When cops came, the concert had eased
8:59 a.m. A small bird was reported in distress on a sidewalk next to a Plaza bank.
10:53 a.m. A woman complained that while crossing the street at Ninth and K streets, a car “barely let her by.” She took the license plate number, but it returned to a car that had been scrapped in Sacramento.
2:24 p.m. A woman complained that there are “numerous frequencies” in her house that are bothering her. She’s reported this to the landlord, since, she said, there are laws against too many frequencies in the home. Further, her computer, though not connected to the Internet, has 15 “call signs” on it.
3:08 p.m. A woman reported that a man who had touched her inappropriately on the Plaza had just done so again. She was told about restraining orders.
3:56 p.m. A man at a Valley West drive-thru window was so damn drunk he could barely be understood, and the hamburger stand employee noticed an open container on the passenger seat. These vital clues suggested possible drinking and driving, further confirmed when the boozy burger buyer next turned up in the lobby, incoherently demanding a refund. This gave police plenty of time to respond and arrest him.
7:43 p.m. A woman complained that a kitten valued at $2,500 had been stolen from out front of an I Street cooperative supermarket. The kitten rustler said he thought he had bought the kitty for $5 from the owner’s daughter, but he returned it anyway.
10:06 p.m. A man dressed in all black lingered in a downtown doorway muttering about decapitating people.
• Saturday, June 12 9:01 a.m. Someone tried to wrest a scooter from its secured spot in a Foster Avenue carport overnight, succeeding only in damaging the putt-putt.
9:58 a.m. A powerfully sulphurous odor emanated from a Deer Fern Court house, its acrid tentacles twisting sleeping neighbors’ noses strongly enough to awaken them.
11:50 a.m. A woman feeling poorly on the Plaza was ambulanced away.
2:31 p.m. At Ninth and I streets, a man reached behind the front seat of his white pickup truck and removed a rifle wrapped in a towel, which he then placed in the truck bed.
4:01 p.m. If the charges are true, the doper population of the Plaza was reduced by two after an officer nabbed double drug-doing dudes at Ninth and G.
5:25 p.m. If the charges are true, the drunk driver population of Janes Road was reduced by one after a guy was arrested and his car flatbedded away near Heindon Road.
5:43 p.m. A woman near a Uniontown variety store alternately yelled at people and revealed her breasts unto them until asked to move along.
10:56 p.m. A Valley Wester was cited for tethering a dog to a pole.
11:06 p.m. A restaurant employee reported being bedeviled by hang-up phone calls at work from some guy, who pulled the same pointless trick on the woman’s cell phone. The alleged caller denied the troubling telephonery, and said he had no fewer than six witnesses who would “be his alibi.” A later report held that even after this, he continued to pester the restaurant lady.
11:19 p.m. A Eureka mom got a tearful call from her 15-year-old daughter, who had been kicked out of a dance at the Community Center for reasons unknown. Mom wanted her money back from the host.
• Sunday, June 13 2:01 a.m. Callers from upper Beverly Drive reported a hysterical woman screaming and yelling about breaking windows, possibly from inside a car. Then an SUV left and the screeching subsided.
3:18 a.m. The lodger from hell was asked to leave a Janes Road motel after threatening other guests. When told she couldn’t get a refund for her room, she sped off in a car almost striking someone with the vehicle.
4:28 a.m. The coroner was called to an Olympia Street address.
5:56 a.m. The constant caller was seen waiting outside the restaurant for the woman to get off work at 6 a.m. Though wearing a white wife beater, he was instead seen beating on the hood of her car, this tactic apparently fueled by recent cocktail assimilation. He was arrested on a public drunkenness charge.
8:57 a.m. A visitor from out of town got all bollixed up about the one-way streets downtown, and went against the grain. Warned.
12:33 p.m. A mountain lion was reported near Boyd Road, and the witness said it had been there the previous Friday night as well.
2:46 p.m. An inoperative motorcycle disappeared from an R Street driveway.
4:50 p.m. After a Hyland Street resident asked some people to leave his house, the rejected companions may have lashed out. He later found his car’s fender kicked and the door apparently struck with a rock.
5:50 p.m. A male sort of person who may have had some relationship with a party in Dorothy Court was reported on Shirley Boulevard indulging in Arcata’s latest fad – looking in cars, possibly for unsecured valuables. At Lynn Court, he stopped and threw a cell phone into the street for reasons never disclosed. Police arrived shortly and took a juvenile home to his father.
• Tuesday, June 14 2:21 a.m. The alley behind a downtown hardware store serves the spillover crowd from the Carport of Mystery, Adventure and Romance, a popular venue for any manner of after-hours recreational activities, just a stumble away from the donut shop. These pastimes range from fragrant joint operations to freestyle saxophone serenades, unique innovations in animal husbandry and downtown’s usual unceasing drunkard overture. This night, the spittle-splattered asphalt glimmered and twinkled amid shadows cast by clenched fists listlessly swung more or less in the direction of similarly cocktail-addled targets of convenience. The grungy gladiators’ fighting spirit summarily shriveled with the arrival of buzzkill-blue uniforms.
5:35 a.m. A fuel drum on the back of a residential bus was left open, with what looked like cooking grease pouring out onto the sidewalk, then into a storm drain and soon, Humboldt Bay, which isn’t yet oil-despoiled, but we’re working on it. An officer knocked on the bus door, but though the persons inside peered through the windows at the officer, they refused to open the door. Pictures were taken for referral to day shift.
6:52 a.m. A window at a K Street gas station was broken during a smash-and-grab off the front counter, with unknown items taken.
7:46 – 7:57 a.m. Campers were flushed from the north and east sides of a Uniontown shopping center.
8:30 a.m. APD and CHP officers returned to the groovy bus spewing cooking oil from its turgid ass at a Uniontown shopping center, and oh, the low-hanging fruit of flagrant erroneousness they encountered. A half-dozen or so éminences greases disembarked from the hulking hellhole, with two souls cited for warrants that somehow hadn’t just magically gone away. The owner was cited for multiple vehicle code violations, and everyone was warned about illegal street camping.
9:27 a.m. Air compressors and miscellaneous tools were burgled from a Giuntoli Lane warehouse over the weekend, with numerous stolen items found stashed in the bushes around the business.
11:33 a.m. A Beverly Drive resident complained of a neighbor leaving wet grass and lawn clippings “all over” her property following an earlier argument.
12:05 p.m. A man sat in a car outside a Northtown apartment complex with a gun resting on the seat next to him. It turned out to be an Airsoft paintball pistol, and the man was advised to keep his atmospheric armaments in the trunk.
2:19 p.m. A supermarket in the remote westward reaches of 11th Street reported a toilet paper heist, and the buttwipe bandit’s address was known to the store. An officer went there, but if anyone was inside, they refused to come to the door, possibly being busy elsewhere in the house.
3:10 p.m. A man reported borrowing an orange mountain bike and locking it up at a Ninth Street resource center three days previous. By now, all that was left was the cut lock and one tire.
4:07 p.m. A rabies-crazed raccoon in a Diamond Drive backyard was sent heavenward.
4:38 p.m.
Sitting in a parked van
Eyeing little children with lax intent
Caught lurking like a lout
Sleazy lingerer in a blue-white redoubt
(Whoa aqua van)
Squatting till the cops come
Watching as the schwilly hippies run
(Wait till they come)
Seeming like a dumb schmuck
Waiting to sleep in his Redwood Park truck
(Way outta luck)
Sun streaking cold
A young man wandering lonely
Making camp the only place he knows
Plan working bad
As it ended with a cop-send
He goes down with a talk
And, warned, defeat
Camper-man, my friend
Don’t you try to stay here sleeping
You blue-vanned clod
Please leave our lovely trees
5:14 p.m. Through the fogged windows of a white Ford sedan parked at Valley East Boulevard and Hallen Drive, a dog was observed licking the windows.
5:14 p.m. A man in highly reputable camouflage pants and hefting a comparably confidence-inducing black plastic bag circled an H Street medical office, peering in the windows. He said he had permission to stay on the porch, but had no documentation from the doc to that effect.
9:34 a.m. A brace of boobs by the Boat basin thought they could camp amid the trees there with a tent and everything, oblivious to Arcata’s active and ever-curious complement of Park Rangers, not to mention the horrifying prospect of being the subject of a Jethro Tull song parody. One schlub was arrested on a warrant, ending his bungle in the jungle.
11:08 a.m. A man flopped on the ground facing the wall of what was once an Assembly of God church, looking like a pile of spare parts awaiting assembly into a higher or at least more vertical life form. He said he was waiting for free food.
1:35 p.m. A man was cited for smoking a cigarette in Redwood Park, which annoyed him to the extent that he wanted to talk to the police chief about it. Arcata Police have recently begun enforcement of the law prohibiting stinkarette chugging in a park with a children’s playground, and yes, there is such a law: Arcata Municipal Code Sec. 5703, Smoking Prohibitions.
- G. Playground Areas. Smoking shall be prohibited within the outer perimeter of all City parks containing playground areas, and on any adjacent sidewalk.
In other words, one more reason to quit.
1:59 p.m. A patient made a scene at a medical clinic, causing the staff to call police. They told an officer that the guy was just trying to get meds, helpfully adding that perhaps he should get some tea to calm his nerves.
