Cheap Entertainment

I present for your consideration a real, actual blog post about a real, actual thing that happened to me today on my way home from work.

Usually, when a Street Person asks me for change, I say "Sorry, I don't have any." And usually when I say that, it's actually true. I rarely have coins on my person. Sometimes, though, when I do actually have change, I enjoy giving it out just for the privilege of listening to the Street Person's monologue for a few minutes. That was the case today as I was walking home from work. I learned the following interesting facts from a guy:

• He's going to buy beer. It might not be from 7-11 (which we were outside of), but he's going to buy beer.
• It has apparently been scientifically shown that cigarettes are good for you. (I'm not sure where he got that one.)
• All these psychological disorders, and all the pills you take for them, well, it has been shown that the pills are not only useless, but actually counterproductive.
• What would you think about people who were your friends, but betrayed you because you drink beer and smoke the occasional cigarette? All like "Oooh, he drinks beer! He's such an asshole! He's going to become an alcoholic!" What would you think of that? (I know, this isn't a fact. But it's still interesting. He didn't wait for my answer before moving on.)
• Psychological disorders are caused by your grandfather wanting to see you unconscious. Or other severe trauma.
• His, if anything, would be a case of severe depression, not bipolar disorder.
• He's 33. He started smoking weed when he was 13, and started dropping acid when he was 16.
• These people who hear things that aren't there, they must be hearing something. They must be hearing SOMEthing. They must be hearing SOOOOMEthing. (Emphasis his, not mine. I'm not sure where he was going with this, as he then started talking about something else.)
• A few years ago (seven, I think he said), he was diagnosed with schizo affective disorder. He has found that the only treatment that works is beer, exercise, and healthy eating.
• Fuck his friends, anyway. They're not really friends. They're just acquaintances who happen to be comforted by having people around them. (Actually, this one is from a different guy, who stopped to ask us if either one of us had a lighter he could use. I did not; the dude did.)

All these facts were delivered in a single very disjointed monologue, interrupted only occasionally by me saying "Yeah", "Mmmhmm", "Uh huh", etc. Also to answer a couple direct questions to me, such as "Do you smoke cigarettes?" and "Are you a psychology major?" That's right. He didn't ask what I study, or even if I was a student, just went straight to "Are you a psychology major?"

Aaaah, the joys of living in Berkeley.

I also gave a couple coins to a different guy, and I think I pissed him off a little bit. He asked for change, so I started reaching into my pocket and pulling out the coins I had, he held something out, and I dropped my coins into it. Then, I realized it was his drink. A large can of something alcoholic, wrapped in a paper bag. He offered me a drink, I pretended to take a small sip and handed it back. He asked me to "pop a squat" and drink with him, but I told him I was in a hurry, and started walking away. So he told me again to pop a squat, and was holding his drink, with my coins in it, out to me. So I just kinda laughed and kept walking. Poor dude. I hope he finishes his drink, and gets my coins out of it. I didn't really mean to do that; I was just trying to help a little bit. ;-)

Stolen Bike Club

So, I am now a member of the club referenced in the title of this post. It sucks. I biked home from work on Friday, as I typically do, and locked my bike in our downstairs bike storage room in our apartment building. In case you didn't quite catch that, let me rephrase: as of 7:00 PM Friday evening, my bike was LOCKED in a ROOM behind a LOCKED DOOR that was LOCKED. Then, Monday morning, when I left to go to work, I discovered that my bike was gone. Missing. Nowhere to be seen in the bike room. It looked to me like nothing else was missing. I saw all the bikes I normally see in there; only mine was gone. So I swore and cursed a lot, and then walked to work.

A few thoughts about this went through my head as I walked. I was trying to think of what might have happened. One possibility is that I forgot to lock the bike room Friday night. I ruled this out immediately; when it comes to important things like keys and locks, I am VERY MUCH a creature of habit, and my habit is to lock the bike room doorknob as soon as I open it, even before I go in to leave or retrieve my bike. Another possibility is that another tenant of this building forgot to lock the bike room door. Of course, if that were the case, that would mean that someone just randomly happened to forget to lock the door on the same day that some punk just randomly happened to try the knob. Possible, but pretty unlikely. (I should mention here that, in the past 2.5 years of me using the bike store room 5 days a week, I don't think it's _ever_ been accidentally left unlocked by anyone. At least, not that I've ever seen.) Another possibility is that someone picked the lock, which is certainly possible, if they are skilled enough. I didn't see signs of forced entry, though. Nothing about the door seemed damaged at all. I don't know what signs, if any, would be left behind if someone picked a lock. So maybe someone picked the lock and was in a hurry, so just grabbed the first bike available, which was mine.

Finally, it's possible someone who shouldn't have a key has one. There's a guy who used to work for CDSP as a maintenance / groundskeeping type guy, and I suspect he might have something to do with it. He was fired several months ago for a variety of unpleasant reasons, and a couple months after he was fired, several bikes went missing from the CDSP dorm building, again, bikes that were behind a locked door. But that's a whole other story. Anyway, I suspect maybe it was him. I don't know of anyone else who would potentially have a key, especially since all of our doors in this apartment building had their locks replaced not that long ago.

Anyway, so this evening, our doorbell rings, I answer it, and it's our apartment building manager, telling me that he has joined my club; his bike was stolen too. It was there yesterday (Monday), but gone today (Tuesday). So - two bikes were stolen from a locked door within 2-4 days. I think that effectively rules out even the possibility that the door was accidentally left unlocked. I think either someone's picking it, or someone has a key.

Anyway, Jim (the apartment manager who lost his bike) is going to report to the police. I've got a friend who was planning on selling his bike on Craigslist, who will probably just give it to me instead (after I check it out to make sure it fits me, etc.), and in the meantime, I'll just walk to work. It probably takes more energy to walk to and from work than it does to bike, and that's probably good for me anyway. So. I am now officially a victim of what I hear is the most common crime in Berkeley. I never thought I would be a victim of this particular crime here in Berkeley, since my bike was behind locked doors 99% of the time (it gets, or rather, got locked inside at work, and was locked inside the bike room at home). Crazy, eh?

P.S. In completely unrelated news, did you all know that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has read this particular post? He posted on his blog once that he has set up a Google Alert that will notify him whenever his name, Scott Adams, turns up on the internet. He said something about how it's like being a fly on the wall, because no one ever expects him to be reading their dinky little blog. So, now that I have included his name, Scott Adams, three separate times in this post, Google will pick it up, and will let him know that he was mentioned, and he will come read this post. Hi Scott! I know this post doesn't have anything at all to do with you, so I'll just include a small amount of fanboyism here for you. Santa brought us Dilbert 2.0 for Christmas, and it was fantastic. I only wish it had even more in it. ;-) I haven't yet delved into the DVD, however, so I guess there's still plenty for me to read.

UPDATE: So Jim called the cops, who came over and talked to him for a little while, and then talked to me as well. We've got case numbers and everything. (Separate case numbers, presumably since they happened at different times.) The cop referred to the perpetrator as the "bad guy." Seriously. We were talking about how we think it was probably Sunday night and Monday night, and the cop said something about how we should make sure everyone who has bikes in that room has moved them, because "The bad guy could be back in 30 minutes, an hour, 2 hours, 5 hours."