Chain Falls Off Little Girl’s Bicycle – August 29, 2010
• Saturday, July 24 10:19 a.m. A pipe and some marijuana were found at Sixth and F streets by one of the few Arcatans who wouldn’t immediately clamp the nozzle to her or his pie-hole – a police officer.
1:50 p.m. A man on California Avenue was walking, running and stumbling in front of vehicles. He seemed to have selected his clothing ensemble with equivalent precision – black-and-red workout pants, a blue sweater and baseball cap.
2:01 p.m. The Valley West gas station next to the corner Alfred Edmunson stands on with his jocular-infuriating cardboard signs reported that Big Al had enlisted the aid of two youths who were also holding signs saying bad things about the station. Police told the station personnel that it was a freedom of speech issue.
2:24 p.m. Bees were reported swarming an Alliance Road apartment complex.
4:05 p.m.
The Plaza, Arcata’s crown jewel
Was briefly, if bongo-ly schooled
With tap-happy beats
When cops came to greet
The players, they’d left to refuel
7:52 p.m. A 300-pound man with a missing front tooth and an orange shirt decided that a local pizzeria should give away its pies for nothing, and loudly assailed the proprietor over this deeply-held principle. After issuing unspecified threats, he got in a car with a woman and left the area.
11:40 p.m. “Thumping music” (possibly Screaming Lord Sutch’s classic “Thumping Beat,” but not likely) emanated from an Anina Way house. After multiple calls, police arrived to find the gutty guitars subsided and everything all peaceful-like.
• Sunday, July 25 2:33 a.m. Overdressed for the occasion, a man who not only lacked the mandatory skanky hoodie but was all spiffed up in a white dress shirt and slacks made an extremely literal beer run at an Alliance Road stop ’n’ rob. That is, he snabbed an 18-pack of The King of Bland Beers and scurried out the door.
8:59 a.m. A man more appropriately dressed for mischief – black hoodie, saggy britches – was observed frolicking with cans of spray paint outside a Westwood Center supermarket. Not surprisingly, graffiti vandalism was swiftly detected. The man explained that he was demented and was to get some special brain pills that very day. He agreed to come back in an hour and clean up his mess.
11:47 p.m. An amorous shopping cart mounted a vehicle in a Uniontown parking lot.
11:49 p.m. A friendly Jack Russell terrier, all alone in the world, padded around aimlessly on Janes Road. It was taken to the county shelter.
12:36 p.m. A loose dog of unknown breed wandered lonely on 14th Street until it too was picked up and taken to the shelter.
5:47 p.m. A man rolled up to 11th and F streets in a truck loaded with marijuana plants and two children. After a while, someone called police. The man showed officers his 215 recommendation, so possession wasn’t an issue. Except that it was insofar as the peril inherent in openly displaying pot plants laden with gooey cannabinoidal goodness in THC-worshipping Arcata, escpecially with children nearby.
7:56 p.m. A woman complained that a Plaza bartender had exploded out of her tavern and “got in her face,” pinning the woman against a fence and yelling at her for loitering out front. The woman said she kicked the bartender to get away. She offered an arriving officer a rambling narrative about her children and life in Arcata, then wandered off.
• Monday, July 26 9:40 a.m. Ungodly forces attacked an 11th Street church, tearing its banner, breakings signs and uprooting plants.
5:47 p.m. A woman started a new job at a Janes Road business on July 23. After two hours, she walked off the job in uniform and didn’t return, even to retrieve her belongings. The Valley West motel she was staying at reported her gone but never checked out, with her property left in the room. Her emergency number was disconnected, and the business was worried about her. Police in her home town of Stockton were contacted and they went to her last address and spoke with someone who had spotted her there with her children the previous Friday.
10 a.m. A bear must like a certain garbage can on Fickle Hill Road, as it has rummaged through it twice.
11:56 p.m. A blue van parked in front of a Plaza business for three hours, its occupants cigaretting up the business’s entrance. Police came and asked the mobile miasma factory to move along.
1:53 p.m. A man heading for Arcata picked up two hitchhikers in Willow Creek and gave them a ride to the Plaza. Their vehicle, they said, had broken down en route from Colorado. The disturbing part is that the girl said she was 12 years old, while her companion was a scruffy-faced 20-something man. The two had been hugging, and seemed like a romantically involved couple. Police searched for the two, to no immediate avail.
3:40 p.m. A Hidden Creek Road resident whose home was burgled July 6 found the stolen box of ammo in a nearby forest area.
6:14 p.m. A wallet full of U.S. and Canadian currency plus lots of receipts was found on the Plaza.
11:26 p.m. Hallen Drive residents were pelted with pebbles out front and in back of their home.
• Tuesday, July 27 1:47 a.m. Room 252 of a Valley West motel had been rented under a company name, and was filled with intoxicated people “screaming and banging.” Police stood by as the screambangers collected their property and cleared out.
8:13 a.m. A slithy tove car doorhandle-tryer struck silicon on 14th Street, where the unlocked car yielded a $1,000 laptop computer.
9:14 a.m. A skunk found curled up against a Haeger Avenue fireplace was deemed diseased, then dispatched and disposed of.
1:12 p.m. A Eureka business reported that its gas card had been used to buy 446 gallons of petrol, some 53 of these gallons from an Arcata station where the purchase was recorded on video.
1:16 p.m. It’s not unusual for a Union Street apartment dweller to be woken up by his neighbors. But the previous Thursday night was different. He heard timers going off and cooking sounds emanating from their bathroom, followed by a strong chemical smell.
1:27 p.m. A trailer with South Dakota plates was obnoxiously abandoned in a red zone in a blind spot on Shirley Boulevard near Patrick Court. Abatement procedures were initiated.
4:06 p.m. A 10-year-old girl showed up at the Police Department with a problem – the chain had fallen off her bicycle and she didn’t know how to put it back on so she could get home. An officer helped her fix her bike and sent her on her way, and she was to call in when she made it home safely.
4:23 p.m. A Valley West resident said that she saw a man riding his motorcycle around the apartment complex with his wife on the back and his 15-month-old baby sitting on the gas tank, with no one wearing a helmet. The man asked the woman what she thought of this activity, and she said, “I’ve never seen anything so [adjective redacted] stupid in my life.” As if to taunt her, the man continued to weave in and out of the parking lot speed humps with the baby still on the gas tank. The woman was extremely upset at the child endangerment and called Child Welfare, which told her to file a police report, which this was.
4:41 p.m. Three cannabinizers, one pushing a baby carriage, chugged their daily dope at Ninth and H streets, alarming at least some of the populace.
6:50 p.m. A man ingesting some unspecified type of drug in a Plaza tavern’s bathroom was escorted off the property. He told an officer that he’s trying to get help for his addiction.
9:19 p.m. A man with metal objects puncturing his face turned up at a 14th Street rooming house asking for someone who doesn’t live there any more. He didn’t take the news very well, lifting up one of the flower pots on the porch and hurling it in a random direction.
• Wednesday, July 28 11:18 a.m. Two brunchtime drunks were extracted from the Plaza.
12:27 p.m. An employee at a Ninth Street business was reported stealing items and storing them at a “facility” across the street. An officer was to meet the employer there at 1:30 p.m. to witness the thievery in progress, and apparently did. The officer stood by as the employee was fired.
6:30 p.m. A therapist called about a client, who was hysterical and threatening suicide, which she had tried before. Police found the woman, who denied any suicidal tendencies but said that she was frustrated about moving.
