There were only a few Fridays left on Parental Control, and Walter, our location’s guy, finally had a slow enough workday, he could go grab lunch. He still had a lot of work to do closing out his paperwork on all of the houses he scouted this season, so we opted to go someplace close to eat instead of my usual Friday grubbery, The Whaler. We settled on Barney’s Beanery on the Promenade with its New York Time’s length-ed menu.
We were immediately seated at the outdoor patio facing the impending action, which was about to unfold in front of us. Our waitress flew right into to take our drink orders. We ordered a pair of Pabst Blue Ribbons (because even without the blue ribbon, it’d still be Pabst… HA!). Before she had a chance to leave the table to bring us our order, the most alarming phrase was heard:
You’re putting people’s lives in danger!
Everyone on the patio craned their necks around trying to see where the “dangerous” warning came from. There was an elderly woman screaming as a homeless (or just completely insane) guy who was throwing shit into the tree right next to the Beanery’s Patio.
What the hell are you doing?! You’re putting people’s lives in danger!
Again. What the hell was the guy doing? Was he throwing a brick into the tree, leaving the woman afraid it would crack someone in the skull leaking their brain matter all over the sidewalk? Nothing that intense. The guy continued to launch a water bottle into the tree until a basketball-size bees’ nest crashed down and exploded on the sidewalk, unleashing an army, nay, a horde of bees into the air.
I can see why a lunatic woman might yell “You are putting people’s lives in danger;” a lot of people are allergic to bee stings. We could have had a record setting number of people going into anaphylactic shock right in front of us. Or if I played “Shout” we could have had a record number of people doing the “gator” from Animal House.
A few people looked nervous about the bees, but for the most part, they flew around a bit and then dissipated to regions beyond.
But that’s not the best part.
The woman continued to scream. And then something awesome happened. This portly passerby walked up the rabid homeless man and asked him why he would do something like that and “put people in danger.” The degenerate’s only response was to grab the innocent passerby by the collar of his shirt. The passerby said calmly to the loon, “Let go of my shirt” several times before the homeless man took it upon himself to take a swing at the nice man.
Next thing we all knew, they were rolling around right there on the Promenade like two sixth graders fighting after school. And they went at it for a good ten minutes before any kind of authority figure showed up to break it up.
First on the scene was a Promenade security guard, and thank god, because someone with a “badge” needed to be there to keep on eye on things until the real police arrived.
Shortly after the real police showed up, they pried the two wrestlers apart. The now enraged homeless man made what could be interpreted as an aggressive move toward the cop, so the cop did the most rationale thing he could think of: zap the fucker with a taser. And wouldn’t you know it, that crazy old man just wouldn’t go down. The officer had to offer up a second helping of juice before the bearded madman finally went down.
The cops then drug him to the other side of the sidewalk for no apparent reason except to make it harder for the patrons of Barney’s to watch the man get handcuffed. Fuckin’ pigs.
I mean, could that lunch get any better? I say only if the waitress had brought up our beers instead of going to call 911. Oh well.
I watch the stars as they fall from the sky… I held a falling star, and it wept for me… Dying…
No comments:
Post a Comment