Hellzapoppin

Such excitement around here lately, mein little schnitzels. Recently, our very dear friend Superagent Fred (aka UrbanStreetPirate) was awakened at 5:30 in the A.M. by firefighters pounding on his door and yelling "Fire! Everybody out! Fire!" Not what you want to hear in your tasteful fifth floor studio, even if it is a semi-bad part of the groovy downtown scene. Superagent said he ran around trying to find his pants, his glasses, his cat, his cat carrier, his important documents, and his brain while smelling smoke. Apparently he passed up a perfectly good opportunity to scream like a girl, but that's just how he is.

Turns out the fire was next door, but it gutted that building and damaged Superagent Fred's. The firemen (I prefer to think they were muscley and had large penises because I always look on the bright side) busted down his unlocked door AFTER he had left and dragged the hoses through his place to get to the fire escape so they could try to get to next door.

He wound up at his boyfriend's, with his cat and was very flipped out. Who can blame him? So we took him out to lunch in the Castro to try and cheer him up. After we finished eating and were waiting for the check, I decided to nip up the street to run an errand. Half a block down, at the intersection of 18th and Castro, I saw a fire truck turned sideways blocking traffic and realized the unearthly racket was from some stupid heavy equipment drilling in the middle of the street.

As I walked by, I could see it had punctured some line and I could smell the gas escaping and I just kept walking up the street past it. Pollyanna, that's what they call me. Or maybe it's "Stupid," I forget.

I sauntered up Castro as cops were evacuating businesses all around me thinking "I'll just go to Rossi's Deli and buy a meter card and then they can close down." I am always prepared to be delusional.

Of course Rossi's was closed and then the cops wouldn't let me go back the way I had come, I don't know, something about imminent peril so I had to take a tour of the neighborhood to get back to where my dearest friends were having lunch. And there they were, 300 feet from the excitement, totally unaware of what was going on. Cops frantically forcing people out of all the businesses on one side of the intersection and ignoring the ones on the other. Go figure. Maybe their large penises interfered with rational thinking. Again, I don't know. We paid up and split.

And then I busted my shin in the same spot on the dishwasher door twice that evening. It's just one thing after another around here, I tell ya. I have to go lie down.