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…..