To start off my brand new blog, I thought I’d post this little adventure I had a little over a year ago. This represents the kind of thing this blog will be for. Note, the adventure below really happened & what is written is from the 2 emails I sent to my friends with the story…. enjoy & welcome to my blog!
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Subject: I Ignored The Law & The Law Won.
Date: April 1, 2003 12:24:35 PM PST
In my latest attempt to bolster my “bad boy” image (I hear the chicks dig it) I got arrested last night. For those of you still savoring my DWITS (Driving While In Tiger Suit) incident of 2001 , you’ll enjoy this one even more. For those of you outside of San Francisco, the Central Freeway is a long overhead freeway that various activists (myself included) have worked long and hard to demolish to replace with a tree-lined ground level boulevard.
8:45pm – Call accomplice on phone from train (I was working late) Me: “Accomplice, why don’t we go climb up on the Central Freeway structure and take a look before they start tearing it down.” Accomplice: “I don’t know ‘Deep – it would be fun, but it is all locked up and is probably guarded….. OK.”
11:00pm – Finish late dinner with accomplice at Pakwan. Walk over to Central Freeway, and look for a way to get through fence.
11:30pm – Climb over 1 fence only to find we picked a bad spot & there was another fence beyond it that was more annoying to climb. Retreated back over first fence.
12:00-5am – Pried open two attached fences.
12:05am – Entered fences.
12:05:15am – Noticed California High Patrol Car hidden behind barrier 20yds away. Began wondering if it was occupied.
12:05:30am – Flashing lights and loud voice on speaker. Stopped wondering.
12:07am – Began appreciating how much handcuffs hurt, especially when you are cramped in the back of a CHP car with an accomplice at least as big as you are. Couldn’t help but laugh a bit about predicament, but didn’t want to piss off cops. They were actually pretty cool about the whole thing, especially when they found we had no spray paint & were not interested in vandalizing anything – that we were merely foolish political activists who wanted to check out the view.
12:15am – There is a hold up in processing at the station so we sit in the car with the officers, chatting about the Central Freeway as they do paperwork. The officer identifies me as a black male into the radio (“Now I’m done for!”). I also realize that the knit cap I’m wearing has the word “slut” emblazoned across the front. Not good. Luckily they take it and everything else I have and put it in envelope.
12:50am – After a series of fingerprints, photographs with placards (I didn’t get a chance to respond to the known aliases question! I love saying “Alias: ‘Deep”), etc,. We’re escorted a holding cell, with three other guys who were snoring loudly. The room or maybe the guys, is/are quite smelly.
1:00am – Realize that accomplice & I can’t sit around discussing politics, the war, and the Lord of The Rings movies (some of our favorite subjects) without waking our slumbering cellmates. Life in the big house.
1:15am – The first in a series of increasingly scary characters are added to the cell with us.
1:45am – Suckiness of situation tempers but does not replace sense of bemused resignation.
2:00am – They take more pictures of us and more fingerprints and check us against a database of some kind. Probably the “Registry of Foolish Political Activists Who Crow Over Their Few Victories Too Much”, either that or the TIA stuff
2:15am – They return our belongings, give us a court date (for tomorrow!) and we walk out into the free air of San Francisco. Freedom never felt so good.
2:15:15am – We realize that we are jaywalking across 7th St. The prison system clearly does not rehabilitate.
My accomplice thinks only the love a good woman can save me from this self-destructive path I’m on….
‘deep
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Subject: UPDATE: I Ignored The Law & The Law Won.
Date: April 2, 2003 3:24:53 PM PST
This morning charges were dropped – before I could learn how to make a “shiv” – Damn!
We didn’t even get to incriminate ourselves further by actually speaking:
Evidently, my accomplice was prepared to plea bargain a deal by claiming “the tiger suit guy talked me into it – he’s a criminal mastermind!”.
For myself, I was prepared to plead the “chutney defense” much like Dan White’s famed “twinkie defense”: “I was hopped up from chutney from Pakwan and wasn’t thinking straight.” Of course, I didn’t have any chutney at Pakwan, but when you’re in the big house, perjury is the least of your worries…..
I always tell Katie, that if I get arrested she needs to go to Bad Boys Bail Bonds (“because your momma wants you home”) instead of that crappy Aladdin Bail bonds (“here, have a place to sit while we do the paperwork to get your husband out of jail, do you want some coffee, perhaps some tea? Are you sure? Crumpet?”)
fuck that, i’m in jail. GET. ME. OUT. no coffee. no tea
Hi, Amandeep. How are you?
Okay, this is the only post of yours that I’ve read so far, but I’m linking to you, dammit. Glad to read you’re rehabilitated!
‘Deep! I can’t believe you are a Jailbird!! And to think we had you at that holiest of holy functions – our wedding!! Well, I don’t know if Mary will be able to take this news without suffering from the vapors.
As George Takei would say:
“Oh My!”
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