Lot Wallower’s Tum-Tum Provides Portable Palimpsest – February 27, 2012
• Tuesday, January 24 1:11 a.m. Graveyard shift at the all-night variety store in Uniontown involves lively interactions with they who are attracted to bright, shiny objects in the night. One shoplifting suspect found new versatility in the object of his ardor – a bottle of alcohol – by repurposing it as a weapon against the beleagured night staff. Police arrived in under three minutes, and found the man firing off fire extinguishers near a side door. He was arrested.
11:44 a.m. A vehicle left locked at the Fickle Hill entrance to Redwood Park the previous Friday inevitably had its passenger-side window bashed and $150 in property stolen.
12:41 p.m. A man terminal with unspecified afflictions said he just wanted to die, but not before speaking to a priest. He was taken to the hospital.
1:32 p.m. Yak Man took a noise complaint about a rooster at his forclosed urban homestead. He said the crowing cock belonged to a houseguest.
3:09 p.m. A woman said that when a male houseguest left Saturday night, she saw him take her unlocked bicycle, a tan Giant ladies bike valued at $500. Another version held that she had lent it to the man, whose last name and address was unknown. The victim asked that police let her know if they came across it.
5:23 p.m. A “hippie-type” man with a red beard, tan pants and hoodie and knife reportedly tried to steal something from an I Street store, then fled northbound on H Street. Based on sightings, police chased him around at 11th and H, 12th and I, 12th west of k, 12th and m, L and 15th and eastbound on J. The fleet-footed flower child was never found.
10:26 p.m. A man walked out on his $12.32 bill at a Plaza restaurant, and police were called in. After the customer came back from his after-dinner cigarette outside, he paid the bill.
• Wednesday, January 25 12:50 p.m. A mentally ill man at L.K.Wood Boulevard and Granite Avenue made the sort of statements to emergency personnel that sound as momentarilyc amusing on face value as they are depressing insofar as they measure his ability to care for himself. Found naked by his blue sleeping bag, the man said he had ink poisoning and needed help. He said that all his property – just some clothes – was covered in feces and he didn’t want it any more. Public Works was called in for the biohazard cleanup and the man was taken to a mental health facility.
1:31 p.m. A 290 registrant was advised “in detail” about camping laws and the specific terms of his parole.
1:37 p.m. A man said a former acquaintance ripped the passenger-side mirror off his car as people looked on. Later, while he was inside the car, his nemesis climbed onto the car and jumped up and down, causing damage.
2:28–4:04 p.m. It took 96 minutes for police with assistance from two UPD units to process four people pulled over at Sunset Avenue and 101. The two women were released, but their wily menfolk, wanted on warrants, both went to jail. The vehicle was towed.
9:56 p.m. A report of someone firing a .22 caliber handgun at the Arcata Service Center triggered police response. The witness was located, had been drinking and was taken back to the station. There, he said that he wasn’t really sure where the shots had been coming from, or that it was a .22. Police couldn’t find any sign of the supposed gunfire.
11:14 p.m. Weirdness in progress at a Valley West gas station featured a man and woman and more syringes than most people find necessary to tote around.
• Thusday, January 26 12:41 p.m. A witness reported a shirtless man lying on his back in an H Street realtor’s parking lot and other men writing on his stomach with marking pens. Police found none of the tummy scribblers or scribblee.
3:27 p.m. An extraordinary number of cars are coming and going around the clock at an Appaloosa Way mobile home.
8:50 p.m. Maybe leaving your car unlocked for an hour on 12th Street between G and H streets with an iPad and iPod inside wasn’t such a good idea after all, even though it cost the formerly trusting soul $1,300.
• Friday, January 27 12:39 a.m. The courtship tactics of one man on Samoa Boulevard involved turning up in the ex-girlfriend’s bedroom at midnight, head-butting her, arguing and refusing to leave. Unfathomably, the victim didn’t swoon at this treatment but instead summoned police. The headstrong romantic was arrested on an assault charge.
1:34 a.m. A conversation with a man wearing a baseball cap at a 10th Street taco truck ended with his arrest on a warrant.
10:30 a.m. A woman parked her motorcycle on 11th Street one night, and the next morning found it on the other side of the street. It looked like it had been laid down on its side and uprighted, but now had damaged handlebars and wouldn’t start.
11:18 a.m. A man cut his finger at a California Avenue laundromat, but declined medical attention.
12:08 p.m. A Buttermilk Lane resident reported $3,000 in jewelry stolen out of her bathroom last July. She hadn’t reported it at the time as she thought she had just misplaced it, but no, it had been stolen.
12:42 p.m. As a man was parked at the stop sign at 11th and H streets, a red-haired man wearing light green scrubs and carrying a stick came up to his window and asked for money. When he was refused, the man hit the car window as the driver was rolling it up.
2:09 p.m. As an employee was distracted the previous night in a Valley West shop, a woman stole merchandise valued at more than $1,000.
3:21 p.m. A red-haired man went to a house at 11th and J streets and demanded food, saying he hadn’t eaten in 20 days. He left, “pulling tennis shoes attached to a hanger.”
3:32 p.m. A K Street resident had complained earlier in the week about a man living in a van out front of her house. Then the van left, but when the woman came home, she found a note that said she had to buy high-quality puppy food because her cat had scratched his pup. He included his cell phone number for handy puppy food delivery.
