It's a little after midnight and I really should be getting to bed, since I've got to be on my
bike at 6:30am to get into work, but I've already poured the bourbon and need to drop
this story on to paper before it slips my mind. Not a well written story for some of you
that enjoy my philosophical, prose style blunderings.
Saturday October 7th (I believe):
A sun's ray is traveling at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s, leaving its home in the some what distant
sun, cutting through the plentitude of space and the etching its way through a thin layer of
O3, then dodging and bouncing through crap in the earth's atmosphere before it strikes
the east facing façade of 1515 Alice street. I coincidentally am a west facing window in
1502 Alice street and get to collect a couple of these beat up, bounced up sun rays and
call them my morning light. Lucky for me my apartment is a quaint 16' x 12.5' room
with generous white walls, so the trickle of light actually does a pretty good trick of
lighting the place up.
The black futon that I scavenged off the street 3 weeks after I began managing the
building is spread out, taking up a 7' x 5' swath of the room. It only comes out when
Arshi spends the night, because she complains about my normal nightly napping spot of
the loft bed and her fear of falling off of it. Lucky guests get the futon all to themselves
and have to deal only with my climbing clumsily above them into my loft bed, such
distinguished guests have included the scholar-ish Donald E. Sells who now is pursuing a
PhD in Toronto in Greek fragment comedy from the 3rd - 5th BC, my former high school
and now Saint Mary's Bio/Chem student Luke Johnson, the always enjoyable Linh Dich
(now pursuing a PhD at Amherest in Composition/Rhetoric), Linh's sister Nancy, and the
prohibitionist turned lush- Maya Everett (pursuing a PhD in Molecular Biology at John
Hopkins).
Arshi is her "delightful" and "wakeful" self as those first rays are coming in the room,
but most likely not her fault since I have assuredly kept her awake while I was fast
asleep. I'm tied to the building for the day, since I've booked an open house and once its
been posted on craigslist there is really no going back. I don't have the means to remove
the listing from home and even if I did so all those that have seen it are already on their
way. Fuck. I spin up on the futon, stand and find my pants (pair #1 our of 3). I find my
business shirt; the blue collard shirt I picked up at the salvation army on international
blvd last year. Its arguably my best looking shirt; no holes, collared, no stains, minimal
wear factor, so minus the wrinkles it's the most friendly shirt for first impressions. I run
down stairs and tape my Open House sign up on the door and then slip back up the red
carpet stairs to my place.
I have to weasel my last hair tie out of Arshi's hands so I can hide my hair for the
apartment showing. My hair is currently at the middle of my back. It's a pain in my ass
and I would cut it, but I have a bet with Arshi. She hates my hair and knowing this we
agreed upon a bet; I will cut my hair (which is now long enough to donate for cancer
patient wigs or to the bald guy at my work who also asks for it) if Arshi can hike from the
base of Mount Diablo to the top in under 3.5 hours. It's a good trade off and win win for
me; I get to cut my hair and I get to help Arshi get in shape.
I tuck my samurai style pony-tail under my beanie while Arshi grabs her stuff and leaves
for some commitment at home. I spend the next two hours getting to meet all kinds of
folks that I would otherwise have no reason to interact with and I don't mean this in a bad
way. I really enjoy this specific aspect of my position as a resident manager. The
knowledge and types of knowledge that these people who are outside of my sphere of
normal relations is really intriguing. I've learned more about messy break ups in ages 18-
70 than anyone should ever know from a strangers, learned about more "jobs" than are
posted in classified adds, and most importantly have learned that Oakland is rapidly
changing both in its culture, age, and values.
I take a mid day break to go get running shoes for the marathon I just signed up for
earlier in the week. Its been 5 years since I bought running shoes so it took me about a
half an hour worth of phone calls to friends to determine where a feasible place to obtain
such shoes would be. I end up in Copeland's Sports in Alameda, which quite possibly has
the best prices around, but the worst service in the East Bay. It took me 15 minutes to flag
down someone to check the back room for a specific size of shoe and when I hoped to
find another shoe in the same size I figured it would be easier to just help myself to the
inventory. With the shoes purchased I returned home to quickly lace them up and go for 2
laps around Lake Merrit. The Seattle Marathon is on Nov 26. It will be my first
marathon, most people train for ~20 weeks. I have…ah 6-ish, don't really enjoy running,
but am doing it with an old friend from high school who lives up in Seattle.
3pm and I finally get to sit down and get a decent meal in my gullet. Erum the manager
across the street at 1515 drops by and we people watch for a while. For Erum its
managerial-voyeurism- getting to watch her tenants come and go from her building and
see what they are up to. In the course of about 1.5 hours we saw 2 drug deals go down in
front of her building. I'm not talking about guys in parkas standing around moving
baggies to other guys in parkas. No, we live in a nice residential area where the deals are
more nonchalant.
Item 1: Two guys on the bottom floor have been hangning out on the steps most of the
time Erum has been in my place. A car pulls up, parks and a well dressed man pulls out a
couple of grocery bags, well stocked, but not with food and enter the apartment. 4
minutes later a car pulls up, throws its four way flashers in a red zone and a guy walks
over to 1515 Alice and one of the apartment dwellers who had just recently helped move
the bags inside talks with the fellow for about 5 minutes. A lot of head shaking, number
jiving goes on and then the guy gets back in his car and takes off. Minutes after he's gone
there is a repeat incident, but with a new guy who is a little more snappy dressed. He also
leaves after a couple head shakes. 3 minutes later the two tenants and the snappy dressed
delivery guy pop into the delivery car and take off…probably to a secured deal for
whatever the consumable is that they transported back into the trunk of the car in the
grocery bags.
Item 2: A woman from the top floor is hanging out on the steps when a gentlemen arrives
wearing an unusually large coat for the 70F day. They go up to her room, which I can
easily view from my place. He pulls some items out of the coat, she gets him a drink,
they sit talk, laugh and then she pulls the blinds most of the way shut. However, the sliver
of light escaping from beneath the blinds is enough to outline a little extra giving for
whatever is being received. The gent leaves a little while later and within the next hour,
top floor woman has 2 customers meet her down stairs who she then brings up stairs and
does business with. The irony of the whole thing is her neighbor, stage right from my
window, is also a dealer, but supplies more the burning crowd….not so much coke etc,
but more trippy stuff like shrooms and acid. I wonder if the neighbors have ever met, if
either one suspects that the other is in the same business?
7:50pm and I hear a "My keys!" from the street. I don't think much about it, people yell
all kinds of crazy stuff on the street around here. I then hear, "Stop him, he has my keys!"
I run to the window with the phone in my hand, dialing 9-11. I peer out the window just
in time to see a moderately tall guy sprinting as fast as he can with a blue pursue in his
hands. The 9-11 operator picks up and I fill them in on the details. I call the
neighborhood watch tree to get the information flowing and then head down stairs to see
if I can locate the woman who was mugged. OPD are surprisingly fast to respond and I
fill them in on the details and the cars begin immediately patrolling the area for the
suspect.
With not much for us to do Erum and I decide to go on a walk to see if we can find the
discarded pursue. I check all the trash cans and nooks and crannies on Alice street going
down to Snow Park in the general direction that I saw the suspect running. In a garbage
can next to Snow Park I find something of interest. My arm extending in to the trash
peaks Erum's interest who is on the other side of the road and she comes over to see what
I've found. To her disappointment its 5 porno DVD cases…sorry no DVD's inside. I try
to imagine how those found there way into this can, but give up. There is so much smut
flowing in the streets that anything is almost conceivable. We leave the DVD cases on
top of the trash can, not so that young children can find them in the morning, but because
a block behind us a homeless guy is coming along and checking all of the trash bins for
cans etc. We figured, "White Chicks who Suck Big Cocks II" or one of the other title
works would really make his day.
Back on central Alice street we find the woman who was mugged and she gives us the
low down on the incident. She was digging for her keys infront of 1461 Alice while a
man was trying to work the intercom. He turned around while she had her purse out and
just snatched it and ran. Talking with some other folks on the street that night it appears
that there was another mugging on 14 and Jackson about 20 minutes after the woman at
1461 was robbed. The fellow probably didn't get what he needed and went to push some
one else over for money. Desperation that produces this sort of repetitive crime leads me
to believe the guy was in the area to buy and didn't have the cash and need what ever the
fix was that night and so was willing to mug two people to get the bank roll he needed.
Erum and I watch the street the rest of the night from the porch nook on my building and
accidentally finished two bottles of wine and she polished off some of her Canadian
smokes, aptly named "Export-A." I didn't realize until that night how cool Canadian
companies are with poking fun at their own sterotype. Cool eh?
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