Walking stories:

No crime is victimless

May 1, 2021

Soon after the start of the Pandemic, Page Street was designated by the city as a Slow Street.  This meant that there were signs informing drivers that it isn’t a through street. City workers jerry-built makeshift barricades, with an aesthetic reminder of  San Francisco’s past.  Obviously, these obstructions paid homage to  history by creating street-corner simulations of the piles of rubble left after the 1906 quake. 

Drivers had to nose their cars around these obstructions. The intention was to turn the street into a promenade for urban boulevardiers.  I, for one, stuck to the sidewalk, because I wanted to stress to Greenberg that the sidewalk was where he belonged, rather than the middle of the street, where many drivers were still ignoring the “slow” signs.  

A few months after these hastily-posted signs and topsy-turvy barricades went up, it’s obvious that  they weren’t strong enough to hold back traffic.  The plastic batons have been smashed to the asphalt, stricken and suffering, proof that even if you’re bright orange and stamped “DPW,” , the average driver, a behind-the-wheel libertarian, might not respect your authority.

Thus,  it is only natural that the neighbors have  decided to take matters into their own hands, and while doing so, exercise their creativity.  Some corners boast large potted plants (fake and real), the pots placed inside automobile tires so they can’t  be tipped over.  In December someone put up  a Christmas tree upon which neighbors hung wishes (presumably for peace, and for an end to the pandemic and for parking). One corner has a large cut out heart shape made of plywood, with reflectors that glimmer at night, and pinwheels spinning on top. Next to that, someone has put a table; other people have brought chairs.

Down at Page and Broderick, a collection of plants and stones was joined, after a while, by a cast stone garden dog, about the size of a Labrador retriever, with a cast stone basket in its mouth, brimming with fruit.  Good dog.

A neighbor I’ll call Betty, a dog walker, too, said that two other neighbors had helped drag this cement Fido from her garden to its post in the middle of the street,  where it was added to the tableau.  

A few days later, I am aghast to see - among demands for the recall of various holders of public office, and the removal of beehives from a neighbor’s roof -- Betty’s entry in our local NextDoor listings  

Someone has made away with the dog. Who would be so crass?, she asks (not in those words exactly, but that was the gist).  She had shared that dog for the pleasure of everyone in the neighborhood.   

I don’t approve of the crime, but I am not shocked by it. As a homeowner who  over the years has been  victim to the wee-hour ripoffs of a botanical garden of potted plants on the front steps, I am  sympathetic.  That dog was a pleasing if arguably kitschy ornament,  but in urban life,  there’s always someone around to ruin a good thing.

Most NextDoor comments have  been kind to the victim, and empathetic.  Betty had pitched in to improve the ambiance of the street and someone had taken advantage of her generosity by improving the ambiance of their garden.

 But not everyone who lives nearby  has been equally sympathetic. 

 “I hate those things,” says another neighbor about the home-made barricades.  She’s a perfectly friendly woman who doesn’t seem at all like a righteous  Karen. “They really junk up the streets.  Why do people feel that they have to add to the clutter?”

A few weeks pass.  Then, on May 1, when I come to the corner -- it’s on my regular route -- I do a double-take when I notice that the dog is back.  Cement is not naturally glossy, and his gray coat looks as un-shiny as ever.   I can  see no scrapes and bruises, and it looks as though his fruit basket hadn’t lost so much as a grape.

But what was his path?  Had a thief who reads NextDoor been guilt-tripped into doing the right thing, and returned the thing with as much stealth as it was taken?  Are the neighbors willing to forgive and forget? If the perp is caught, does this count as first in the accumulation of three strikes that could  send the thief to the hoosegow for life? 

It seems only right to ask the victim.

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“Ugh,” he says, “can’t you see I’m suffering here?  My cheeks are trembling, my lips are bleeding.  How would you like to go through life with your jaws permanently clenched around a damned concrete chatchke. The basket pretends to be willow, but there’s nothing willow-like about carrying around a chunk of stone by your teeth.   Here, there, wherever I go, I’m always  shlepping produce. My mouth is killing me (and don’t you dare tell me I ought to floss more).   What did I ever do to deserve this life sentence, just sitting here.  I can’t even lie down and lick the parts that need licking. How’s a guy supposed to keep himself tidy?

“Rain or shine, it’s me in this backyard holding this thing, which isn’t even filled with real food.  She never looks out the window at me, never a word of encouragement, a pat on the head, a ball to chase after.  Does she really think I’m a fan of cement fruit? I can tell you, it can’t hold a candle to a decent bone dripping with fat. 

“Hold on a sec … What’s that creaky sound?  The back gate opening?   Who are these strangers and why are they walking toward  me?  Please, please, please, can I put the basket down now?  What is she telling them?

“They smile at me, not even beginning to know how tired I am.  Also there’s an itchy spot behind one ear that for eight years, just sitting here, I have wanted to scratch.  ….Wait a minute, now they’re picking me up.  Gasping and heaving, they’re carrying me somewhere. 

“Meanwhile, she’s just standing there smiling like the lady of the manor, while these guys are breaking their balls while grabbing me in places I’m too shy to describe.

“Oh God, we’re outside the gate now. I haven’t  been out of that backyard for eight years, and I can’t believe I’m really going on a trip.  If I could wag my tail, I would. …

“What? This is it?  The middle of Page Street.  You’re kidding me, right? Right next to a potted plant?   Its only use to me is as a trigger for peeing, and I can’t even do that.  They’re rocking me back and forth, and she’s still standing there – ‘a little to the right, now a little to the left,’ she says – as though  I’m nothing, and she’s Lady Bountiful and has just funded a whole season of ‘Masterpiece Theatre.’...

“They’re all gone now, and I think it’s late at night, because there’s hardly anyone on the street, except people with dogs who seem to think this is Paris and I’m the pissoir. Meanwhile,   I am denied the same pleasure that they seem to come by naturally. What do they think, that I’m a hydrant?  If I could only move, I’d show them what it feels like to be peed on.  I’d drown them in a urine monsoon.  

“But here’s a group of guys and they don’t have masks on, and they’re sort of clapping each other on the back and lurching from side to side on the street and singing a Brittany Spears song.  I don’t know which one; I’m only a dog.  From the smell of their breath, they haven’t been drinking lemonade. ….

“ ‘Let’s take him,’ I hear one say.  And suddenly I am set upon by four pairs of hands, some of them grabbing me in very personal spots.  We’re in 2021, for God’s sake; doesn’t anyone ask for permission before they touch you? If I could growl, I would let them have it.  Bare my teeth, too.  The whole angry ball of wax.

“I can’t tell you how frustrated and humiliated I am.   I am not only unable to defend myself, but I can't even spit out this God damned basket of fruit.  If I could, I’ll tell them to put their grapefruit where the sun doesn’t shine.

“They drag me away for a few blocks, and then bump bump bump down some steps, I think to someone’s basement.  In fluorescent light in the distance, I can make out the shapes of a washer and dryer on a far wall of the space. Then the clatter up the stairs, laughing, and they  leave me alone.  

“I guess they’re not worried that I’ll take advantage of their hospitality and do a wash.  I wasn’t raised like that, and I  wouldn’t do that. So I’m  back where I started, alone and abandoned. But it’s even worse, because instead of being outside and being surrounded by dandelions and overgrown hedges, I am in some  dark dank basement, surrounded by cast-off skis, skates and crutches.

“I fall asleep to the sound of one of the guys in the apartment above, retching.  I am struck by the horrible thought that this might be my permanent home.    But after a few days and a few nights, one of the guys comes stumbling down the stairs carrying a plastic tub  overflowing with crumpled underwear and wadded up socks. Good, I think, let him know that it’s not such a picnic carrying  around a heavy basket. 

“He turns on an overhead  light, and I hear him gasp when he spots me, and sigh as he totes the thing past me to the machines in the corner.  ‘Gotta get rid of this thing’, he mutters to himself as he brushes by me. It’s not exactly a compliment, but at least he has noticed me.

“Later that night, at 2 or 3 in the morning, the guys who brought me here come back. This time they seem pretty serious; there are no boisterous cries or hee-hawing laughs. They keep their voices low, and tell each other that they’re worried about lower back strain. I didn’t hear any of that talk the night they carried me here from the street corner.

“They pick me up again -- come ON , guys, p l e a s e watch where you put those fingers -- and return me to Page and Broderick. 

“And I swear, if one more lollipop-sucking  toddler on a scooter bumps into me, I’m gonna fling this fruit  basket right in his sticky little face.”