"The Move In"

It is difficult enough to go through a strenuous move into a new apartment in San Francisco, but it is even more difficult with scantily dressed drunk girls everywhere. Don’t get me wrong, some of my friends have actually driven up to fifty miles just at the slight rumor of a drunken young gamine, but trying to move during these circumstances was like trying to diligently follow a calculus lesson during the Hooter’s Swimsuit pageant. Sidestepping a pool of vomit near our box of clean plates and cutlery while trying to maneuver a one hundred pound couch I felt like Reggie Bush carrying a wounded ox. Just as I gingerly did a tap-dance-juke, keeping my fresh pair of shoes from becoming the vomit’s next victim while balancing the couch a drunken passerby shouted some desultory remarks resembling something to the extent of what idiots move during Union Street Fair? Before giving either of us a chance to defend our daft decision making due to his short term memory forgetting he even asked the question, the inebriated sot let out a drunken bellow of “Union Street Fair. Whoo…” Both of his hands shot into the the air causing his beverage to splash hastily all over himself and almost onto our couch. At the time I didn’t think much of it but apparently this tippler was actually giving us the official yell of the Union street fair. Although each following variation we heard from other loaded partiers were slightly different due to the level of their intoxication, they seemed to follow the same basic principal. Each included something about the Union Street Fair, some sort of celebratory chant or scream and usually involved the spillage of some sort of beverage all over their person.

Unfortunately neither myself nor my roommate Tony bothered to check any sort of calendar, otherwise we would have chosen our move in date differently. After a few items had been moved we realized we needed to expedite the process so we too could yell slurred obscenities and spill alcohol all over ourselves.

After finally finishing our move and dropping our U-haul off at a liquor store near the projects of all places we were ready to hit the fair. I’m still unclear on how U-haul came up with the marketing plan of leasing trucks through a liquor store but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have a team Harvard marketing graduates partnering with Mothers Against Drunk Driving come up with the plan.

“Here you go sir, third truck on the right. The clutch sticks a bit and the FM radio doesn’t work, but we’ve left a fresh box of St. Ides forties in the passenger seat for your troubles…on us – really just one of the great advantageous of the U-Haul-Pablo’s Liquor Store partnership.”

What’s next? Hertz Rental car and Jimmy Joe the crack dealer teaming up?

We headed out to the fair, just a block from our place about nine hours later than most of the partiers had starting drinking and it was absolute total chaos. At one point when just standing observing the drunken disaster a cop confronted an intoxicated guy drinking a 22-ounce Coors Light in a can. In any other city I’ve lived in, this drunk-ass (sorry I used up all the other intelligent sounding vocabulary words for drunkard in this entry), would have been cuffed, pepper sprayed and given a generous cavity search with a rubber glove for drinking an open container, but I watched in amazement as something I’d never seen before happened. The cop actually asked the guy to get rid of the can. She didn’t swipe it from him, threaten him, or beat him senseless with her billy club like I expected. She actually asked him politely if he would get rid of his beer. Amazing, I thought expecting the guy to politely cooperate and thank god for getting off so easy but instead the moron started pounding his beer right in front of her! And still, there was no senseless beating or mace to the face. The cop actually tried to pull the can away from the moron’s catlike grasps but was not successful as he kept pounding away. The moron’s girlfriend started to get involved by yelling at her idiot boyfriend and trying to assure the cop that he really is a decent god-faring individual. The guy finally finished his fraternity house hazing-like gulp and then tried to reason with the cop to let him finish the beer.

Finally after the cop started to finally get a little agitated the moron’s girlfriend had to reason with the cop to let him off the hook. I’m sure she reasoned that being with the moron was probably punishment enough let alone having to bail the loser out of jail. The cop agreed and took off to leave the girlfriend to bitch out her stupid boyfriend.

Drunken Idiots 1, Cops 0

I think I am going to like this place…