Drunk And Drunker Fail Verticality Quest – October 30, 2010
• Sunday, September 26 6:20 p.m. A man threw a glass at someone at a downtown bar whom he believed to have hit on his girlfriend.
• Monday, September 27 6:49 a.m. A man reported that his partner woke him up, spit in his face, stormed out and then made a bunch of threatening calls. Both went to the police department to file complaints about the other.
2:30 p.m. A $900 bike was left unlocked on L.K. Wood Boulevard overnight.
• Tuesday, September 28 8:01 a.m. It wasn’t likely that an Arcata resident had bolted to England, lost his passport and needed money like the sketchy e-mail said. Located (in Eureka, actually), the man said his e-mail had been hacked.
11:16 a.m. Like a mammoth queen termite turgid with eggs but in this case plastered with stoner art and laden with 11 mpg vagabonds, a large, multi-colored bus became more or less the capital of M Street. An orange sticker was destined to take its place amid the psychedelic Krylon miasma.
12:07 p.m. After a car was vandalized, the victim supposedly sought relief by targeting a person for vengeance without due process. “She’ll get hers, whether she did it or not,” was the quote related by the one who was soon to face retaliation. She offered to produce friends who could vouchsafe her innocence.
12:51 p.m. After being detained at a supermarket, an accused shoplifter said he might as well kill himself.
1:10 p.m. A bike rack was cleverly repurposed as a multi-dog hitching post as their masters socialized nearby.
1:55 p.m. A man said his ex-girlfriend stole a bag containing $300 in salmon from his truck while parked out front of a Plaza tavern.
2:27 p.m. After a dispute over a credit card charge at a Plaza business, a customer reportedly threw a phone at an employee.
2:44 p.m. A man at the front APD counter wasn’t having a wonderful digital life. In fact, he said,another man’s inappropriate primal urges were costing him big bucks. Someone, had charged his cell phone for $36 in erotic entertainment, and even though he closed the account, porn continued to stream into his phone. As if that wasn’t enough, he took a call from “an investigator” (presumably on the oversexed cell phone) who told him he would have to come up with “a large amount of cash” or he’d be arrested. Yes, there’s more. Someone stole this luckless wretch’s checking account number and raided that as well. Police visited the King of Pain and found things not quite as reported.
5:29 p.m. A Park Avenue resident complained of not being able to halt delivery of the Tri-City Weekly. She had called multiple times to no avail, a la 2005. An officer was to elevate the plea’s urgency by contacting the legendarily non-responsive ad circular’s management. Here’s hoping we’re not in for a return to 2004-level TCW strewage.
7:20 p.m. A somewhat perforated truck driver ran over a volleyball team member’s foot near a Valley West pizzeria. The girl, age 12, was headed for the hospital. The foot-flattening driver was described as having a pierced eyebrow and “gauges in his ears.”
10:44 p.m. If you see a bearded guy in a hoodie with a backpack and dog anywhere close to downtown, hold on to your eyewear. A man of that description knocked someone’s glasses off at Samoa Boulevard and F Street.
• Wednesday, September 29 9:27 a.m. A chained dog on Frederick Avenue howled piteously for two days. A night shift officer later contacted the owner, who said the dog would henceforth be kenneled during the day.
10:22 a.m. About on the level of paint huffing in terms of cheesy crime, but with a car, a self-emprivileged driver parked in the handicapped spot in a Northtown lot, then sauntered ably off to cavort about the neighborhood. The suavé may have gone out of his or her swagger on returning to find a $360 ticket for blue zone-squatting under the wiper.
11:48 a.m. Urine vapors swirled up from the parking lot, mingling with the green-marijuana stench from the cannabis clinic next door as a shirtless man relieved himself on a vehicle there. “Classy,” remarked a passerby, averting his gaze. “We ain’t got no bathrooms,” reasoned the man, zipping up. “Right, it’s someone else’s fault,” the passerby wittly countered, noting that most people manage their wee-wee challenges without having to hose down postal vans. Weary of the endless intellectualizing, the green-hatted man went into primate chest-thumping mode, suggesting that “if you want to get obnoxious, I can get obnoxious,” as though that was some future attainment. As the passerby called police, the sinewy lot liquefier strode away toward I Street.
11:55 a.m. Police went to the principal’s office to pick up some confiscated marijuana.
1:04 p.m. A pooch trotting south on West End Road appeared “spooked.”
6:02 p.m. A man with a gun was reported on the Plaza. Police found and detained him at gunpoint, locating his weapon on the driver’s side floor of his vehicle. Arrangements were made for a mental health committal.
8:06 p.m. Whatever cosmic forces are in charge of scheduling daily streetcorner ravers around town positioned a classic example at Samoa Boulevard and G Street. The tattoo-faced wailer leaned against a fence, haranguing randomly and wandering off before police arrived.
6:14 p.m. It’s not the sort of thing residents of Devlin Court are used to seeing in the neighborhood – a rental truck with its back doors open, displaying a load of cannabis plants.
• Thurssday, September 30 11:46 a.m. A car left unlocked on C Street was quickly relieved of a green suitcase containing “supplies.” The loss was estimated at $450.
12:53 p.m. A couple took a car on a “test drive” on Old Arcata Road, and after 45 minutes, the owner wondered how extensive the testing was going to be. He didn’t know the names of the man and woman he’d turned the car over to. Eventually, they did return with the vehicle.
2:04 p.m. A panhandler had a bad day at the office, embarking from a downtown eatery on a howly-growly jaunt westward on 11th Street, dreads flapping in the breeze as he threatened people in his sphere of effluence. The sight of the taser was enough to immobilize him long enough for a short lecture on civil behavior.
3:47 p.m. A man who lives in a bus with children on Valley East Boulevard (wait… what?) left the back end open, displaying his mobile marijuana plantation (seriously?) to schoolkids walking by. An officer contacted the man, who was “verbally aggressive” to the officer regarding the 11 plants. “He will attempt to keep the,” reads the dispatcher log.
4:33 p.m. A man glared at a woman in an Alliance Road parking lot.
10:29 p.m. A landlord was reported being irrational toward female tenants, hacking into a modem and router with use of a hammer.
• Friday, October 1 11:35 a.m. A man set the new Android smartphone he’d had for three days down on the counter of a Plaza shop.
11:51 a.m. A woman brought in a “Telephonic Guilty Plea Proceeding” form from Yuma, Arizona. She wanted an officer to witness her signature and thumbprint being placed on the form. She was cautioned that jurisdictional differences didn’t guarantee that she wouldn’t face further prosecution.
2:32 p.m. A man and young girl were spotted near the high school, he wearing a holstered firearm. A school lockdown was considered as police scrambled to locate the two. Found at 14th and G street with a staple gun, they were warned about hanging illegal utility pole flyers.
5:52 a.m. Among the tools in one geezer’s obnoxiousness armamentarium were a long white beard and a stick. He was told to stay away from polite company at a Fourth Street market.
11:04 p.m. The neighbor of a noisy apartment dweller banged on the walls in retaliation, bringing the man to her door for some helpful yelling. She slammed the door in his face, and soon police were sorting out yet another hissyspat.
• Saturday, October 2 12:21 p.m. Two school-age children startled a traveler on the Plaza, and he reacted by grabbing one by the shoulders.
12:42 p.m. A vigilant citizen reported a sandwichboard sign placed on the roundabout apron at Samoa Boulevard and Union Street.
12:56 p.m. The Sheriff’s Office reported an Arcata woman posting pictures of knives and blood online implying suicide. Deputies searched for her at Patrick’s Point, found her and the Be-On-The-Lookout bulletin was canceled.
12:27 p.m. A goat wandered goatily on Boyd Road.
12:53 p.m. A 50-something man was reported firing a BB gun at an injured gull in the recovering wetlands area off Old Arcata Road. He admitted throwing a rock at it, and was admonished for endangering marine wildlife. The gull was outta there at that point.
• Sunday, October 3 1:20 p.m. The galoot in Room 105 at a no-budget Valley West motel evidently misunderstood the sign on the door. Noon was checkout time, not pass-out time. Police were called to help motate the drunken schlub out the door.
1:28 p.m. The survival rate of a bass guitar left in a truck out back of a downtown club at 2:30 a.m. is, by one musician’s test, zero.
• Monday, October 4 9:47 a.m. When will trusting Arcatans on Diamond Drive and elsewhere ever learn? The nighttime swarms of slithy toves make a career out of scouring the town, trying car door handles, and they never have any trouble finding ones that aren’t locked.
10:17 a.m. A caller reported a woman in a black skirt and red shirt with a stack of $20 bills, tearing them in half and dropping them on the ground. She had told the witness that “the money was hurting her.” Police found the woman un-crazy, just hatin’ the cash.
11:17 a a.m. A man and woman smoked marijuana at 11th and D streets. A doctor said they could, so it wasn’t an issue.
12:19 p.m. It seems like there are better destinies for a friendly, collarless Golden Retriever mix than to go to the county animal shelter.
12:28 p.m. A financial predator somehow got hold of a woman’s Social Security number and started harassing her for money. He called her at work, and, identifying himself as a police officer, demanded $430. He also called the woman’s mother in Seattle.
436 p.m. Another multicolored behemoth bus blotted out the landscape at Eighth and H streets.
7:22 p.m. A “grubby looking” man lingered in the Community Pool parking lot, eyeing little girls leaving the place with questionable intent. Aqualung was gone on police arrival.
• Tuesday, October 5 9:04 a.m. A beardo in blue has taken to whapping a Northtown shop’s bicycles with a stick, and should find a different hobby.
10:02 a.m. A slithy tove quickly deduced that an open car window was a welcome mat to unearned riches on L.K. Wood Boulevard. Prying off the stereo faceplate didn’t accomplish much more than damaging the careless owner’s stereo to the tune of $500, so the thief recouped its wasted effort by stealing a baby stroller.
10:26 a.m. Two big fat guys, one with a red beard and the other a brown hat, were all tanked up for vigorous day of trying to remain standing. But a witness observed them already running into trouble with their mission right around brunchtime in an alley off Ninth Street. A police officer interviewed Drunk and Drunker, deeming the latter sufficiently schnockered to be tankable.
12:26 p.m. Modern technology and all its conveniences have made everyone so relaxed and happy that when we aren’t verbally eviscerating each other under fake names on blogs, we’re in meatspace, using our cars like rock ’em-sock ’em robots. One woman was followed off the freeway, then parked anywhere and ran inside a 15th Street business to get away from an enroadraged pursuer. When she walked back outside, he said bad, bad things about her. Returning to her car, the woman noticed a large scratch on the right rear quarter panel.
12:49 p.m. It’s not likely that the actual thought formed in a woman’s head before she parked overnight at a Union Street apartment complex, to the effect that “I’ll just leave my purse, passport, asthma inhaler, credit/debit cards, $140 in cash and car registration in the car, and not lock it, and it’ll all be here tomorrow afternoon.” But if she had thought that, she would have been wrong.
2:40 p.m. The problem wasn’t the Plaza bank customer’s tan coach purse, pink sweater or the gap between her front teeth. It was that she was clearly under 30 years old. The ID she was using to withdraw $1,300 from “her” bank account indicated a woman over age 60. On this being noticed, she fled. But records showed that she’d already withdrawn more than $10,000 from the account at a Redding branch. Police found a pink-sweatered woman on the Plaza. Then the bank worker then said that the gap-toothed fraudster had been wearing a white sweater.
2:56 p.m. With the concrete picnic tables removed to discourage slouchabouterry, one leisure specialist had nowhere to pause and savor the bottle of Seagram’s 7 he’d spirited from a Uniontown supermarket. Police, occupied with the gap-tooth scammer lady caper, arrived at the scene 18 minutes later but the suspect was gone. His attire may have aided his escape, the leopard print pants, short dreadlocks, red beard and some sort of festive cloth wrapping about his head helping him blend in with the Arcata landscape.
6:18 p.m. Another bandana/dread-headed man was seen punching his pit bull in the face with his fists at an I Street bike rack, no doubt putting the toothsome creature in a friendly mood.
