Magellanic Meta-Thuglets Drift, Drink, De-Nebulate – February 28, 2012
Lauraine Leblanc & Kevin L. Hoover
Arcata Eye
• Friday, January 27 4:41 p.m. Seven men agglomerated in a sort of Magellanic Cloud of Loud, then drifted around Valley West for a bit. First they stood in the road, yelling and panhandling. Then the stupor-novae aggressively panhandled in front of the store where everything’s worth a damn dollar, finally gravitating to the grounds of a restaurant for an eccentric orbit ’round the Great Attractor – a bacterially-charged bottle o’ booze. But the feeble gravity of their alliance of annoyance then dissipated, with two of the meta-thuglets spiraling off toward a gas station, another to a nebulous residential area and the rest to the area’s remoter recesses for mysterious dark matters.
8:44 p.m. Two men who had been drinking but were just drunk enough to make the transit center inhospitable to people who had the brazen temerity to want to use it as a center for, you know, transit, were made to clean up all their shit and GTFO.
11:42 p.m. A warehouse party at a South G Street drain-unplugging business proved extremely popular, with lots of pedestrians, noise and one dude getting so wasted it wasn’t funny. So non-humorous was his condition that he was ambulanced to the hospital.
• Saturday, January 28 2:48 p.m. A woman was understandably upset that her leashed dog was attacked by loose dogs in Westwood Center.
5:24 p.m. A man pushing a stroller with three kids in it was reported as maybe having made a transaction in the alley by the donut shop, but this couldn’t be verified.
5:49 p.m. A man yelling at a woman that he was going to kill her might have directed his furies at a more practical issue – replacing his burned-out taillight.
• Sunday, January 29 12:47 a.m. A shirtless man leaned suspiciously against a tree on G Street.
5:32 a.m. A man loitered outside a 13th Street supermarket of choice in such aggressive fashion that customers huddled inside, frightened to leave for fear of traversing his tempestuousness. He was found drunk, and arrested.
10:02 a.m. Recipe for mayhem: Take one stolen black iPod, add one pair of gray engraved Columbia sunglasses and spice liberally with two large knives concealed in a backpack. Serve garnished with a parole violation.
11:02 a.m. A laptop appeased a gatecrasher wielding both a penknife and a threat that “If you don’t give me something I am going to start plugging you.”
12:38 p.m. Less decisive than a chicken, he kept walking halfway across the street and turning back. When the wranglers showed up, the tie-dyed ditherer was safely curbed at Ninth and H.
1:44 p.m. JK dad, yr car wasn’t stolen, just towed cuz I left it parked it in the road. LOL!
4:43 p.m. Shirts versus skins on West End Road, with five weaponless combatants duking it out by the lumber yard. Sheriffs were also called in to referee.
4:56 p.m. Loud party, live band. They are going to play one last song and then the party will be over.
10:59 p.m. A mustachioed epicure pocketed his salsa of choice and stumbled down the hill, donut-bound.
• Monday, January 30 6:38 a.m. Guests, like fish, stink after three days. When one’s guest steals one’s salmon right out of one’s fridge, police advise that eviction procedures must be undertaken, unless said guest departs voluntarily, as was the case.
9:58 a.m. Pocket dialed 911 while in class. Awkward.
12:07 p.m. Leaving his car parked at a Sunny Brae market while he went out of town seemed like a good idea until his car turned up on fire in Bayside.
2 p.m. Being apprehended outside of the BofA lends plausibility to his claim that he was on his way to get cash to pay the cabbie the $20 fare.
2:44 p.m. At 11th and G, bouts of fighting were interspersed with episodes of sitting and fits of yelling. It was just a friendly fight between friends, officer, just a friendly argument and a friendly punch to the side of the face.
3:44 p.m. There are young people smoking marijuana in the parking lot at 10th and G Streets.
4:01 p.m. A further smoking party convened across the street at the other parking lot at 10th and G streets.
4:46 p.m. Would a man with an aggressive dog really not have it leashed in front of an I Street kiosk? Preposterous!
5:27 p.m. Could be shortness of breath and/or could be someone slipped him some acid. EMTs found no indication of a problem.
9:31 p.m. A long haired bearded man clad in a gray sweatshirt with circles loitered with two other less gaudily clad men in front of a bar on Tavern Row.
11:34 p.m. In the legendary parking lot at Sixth and F streets, a modern-day Cinderella caught up to her fleeing coach before midnight, leaving nothing behind but her nightgown.
• Tuesday, January 31 1:55 a.m. Sticking to that New Year’s resolution, he headbanged the newspaper dispenser at a Westwood market, then moved on to do some push-ups on Alliance Road.
8:41 a.m.
At city meters, on Granite
Black Honda Civic occupied by two
Subjects are smoking
11:57 a.m. The inherent difficulty in convincing the police that he had permission to take the recycling was that he was transporting it in a stolen shopping cart.
3:52 p.m. Dinner and a show under the golden proscenium arches. Act one: he chases. Act two: they argue. Act three: she cries. Grand finale: he is whisked off to McKinleyville in a blue and white chariot.
4:34 p.m. The source of a trashy smoke smell on the Plaza eluded detection.
5:10 p.m. Aggro dogs run free in Valley West. Again.
5:29 p.m. In the enchanted environs of 6th and F Streets, two black-clad men yelling profanity faded away in the early winter darkness.
• Wednesday, February 1 1:28 a.m. After punching out the window of one bar, he cleverly sought to elude detection by hiding out in the bar next door. Doh!
8:01 a.m. At the donuttery, Bashful, Happy, Sneezy, Sleepy, Grumpy and Doc were prevented from stuffing Dopey into a shopping cart.
3:49 p.m. Sitting bare bottomed in the flowers is only cute when you’re a cartoon. Put your pants back on, Thumper.
11:13 p.m. A relationship re-kindled on Facebook proved less cordial once he moved in with her. Unfriended.
• Thursday, February 2 3:06 a.m. Truck party on lower H Street, with 4 garbage trucks, tow trucks and/or street sweepers making a lot of noise and throwing things around. “That is the time they start,” someone was heard to say.
8:58 a.m. Who you gonna call when a bald, bearded man declared that he going to “occupy” your house?
12:07 p.m. Dude, where’s my XBox and TV?
1:38 p.m. You know, you can just block people on Facebook rather than get the police involved…
2:03 p.m. Stole your car, parked it on my front lawn.
3:09 p.m. Twenty Chihuahuas is too many Chihuahuas.
4:21 p.m. Skunky smell, check. Blacked-out windows, check. Vehicles coming and going, check.
8:33 p.m. It’s a small town with only a coupla liquor stores, so if you wanna get your drink on, green hoodie man, you probably shouldn’t put the store clerk in a head lock. Ooh, too late.
• Friday, February 3 12:58 a.m. Together we strum our guitars
Serenading under the stars
The beauty of Shirley
The charms of Beverly
Till the po-po drive up in their cars.
1:07 a.m. Screaming from the cow field behind the church. Satanic ritual? Chainsaw massacre? Murder in the red barn? Nah, just lost his keys.
7:06 a.m. You, yes, you have won the crime spree showcase package! A new-to-you Cadillac complete with keys! A wallet! And, because you correctly answered the bonus question, a .22 caliber rifle!
9:17 a.m. Check it off the to-do list: turn in the knife and loaded handgun tenant left behind… 25 years ago.
9:41 a.m. Yak in yard. Y, Y?
12:30 p.m. An attic squatter fell through the roof, startling several construction workers, who ran him off nonetheless.
1:49 p.m. Humboldt Homie: jeans, pitbull, wife that threatens your ex that she’ll “beat her ass.”
3:08 p.m. Explosions and smoke at 10th and G streets turned out to be a City bus blowing a tire.
6:15 p.m. When she misfiled her change of address at the Post Office, she requested that the multiple parties now receiving her mail return it to her. When her neighbor did just that, she thanked him nicely. Apparently not finding the mail to her liking, though, she soon came to his front door, dreadlocks writhing, threatening to accuse him of mail fraud and refusing to leave until police were called. No good deed shall go unpunished.
8:25 p.m.
Garage band neighbors
I have called upon police
who will silence you
9:35 a.m.
Complaining neighbor
We have all long ago learned
To keep watch for cops
11:41 p.m. Honey, the least you can do if you’re going to throw me out of your bar is buy me a $6 drink.
• Saturday, February 4 8 a.m. Honest, there was a baby goat in a box behind the home of honest goodness. Taken to a shelter.
10:18 p.m. A step up from a flaming bag of dog poop on your porch – an air horn zip tied to keep it blowing.
11:07 p.m. No, officer, my van’s not on fire, that’s my vehicular fireplace, man.
• Sunday, February 5 11:35 a.m. Car door checking slithy toves were rewarded for their persistence with a pair of $600 waders, a $120 rain jacket and a $100 pair of sunglasses.
2:58 p.m. A man on Foster Avenue claiming to own the pavement was said to be partitioning off his property by placing cinder blocks in the roadway.
• Monday, February 6 7:22 p.m. If I had a hammer, I’d help you get into your store. Oh, I see you have keys. OK, I was just kidding. Hello, officer.
10:55 p.m. You can smash my coffee table, break a bottle on my steps, carve an expletive in my door, but spitting on my doorknob? You have gone too far, sir, too far.
• Wednesday, February 8 10:30 a.m. Her neighbor is on her porch making noises throughout the night after she goes to bed. Turns out, she’s not OK with that.
2:13 p.m. The new owner of Foster Avenue was reportedly adding dirt piles to his street barricade, but police found nothing amiss.
4:48 p.m. A music store received a YouTube message stating that the sender would be “leaving Earth in three days to be with my heavenly father.” Investigation determined that this was neither a suicidal statement nor a portent of the Rapture.
9:27 p.m. A reported pipe bomb by a bike rack at Ninth and G Streets proved to be a conduit with electric wiring that has been there for some time.
• Thursday, February 9 12:05 p.m. A grocery store manager reported that someone had stolen some $60,000 worth of alcohol in the last six months and was now openly bragging about selling the hot liquor.
12:38 p.m. Meanwhile, in the forest, a cyclist repeatedly argued with an equestrian.
