A Blogger Handcuffed for Walking Down the Street

Well, so much for me not having any police troubles in Palm Springs!

On Saturday I proudly wrote that I was not the reason that a number of squad cars were called to the California Investment Conference. In fact there were two separate assaults on the Mercenary Geologist, Mickey Fulp, at the conference so I was enjoying being out of the spotlight for a change. That was, until Saturday evening when I apparently committed the crime of “walking down the street” (which actually is a really rare, circumspect thing to do in California).

I swear, I do not try to attract the police but in the US it is nearly impossible to avoid … and if you don’t smile and bow down they’ll be on top of you in an instant. I and a TDV subscriber, Ken J., decided to leave a bar called the Nest because the average age of the partiers was around 75 years old and were walking a few blocks to another place when a squad car pulled up and started shining its big, bright light at me. Confused, but not overly surprised, I stopped, and he hopped out. Three other squad cars were right behind him and surrounded us. He immediately put me in handcuffs and the next thing I knew I was in the back of the squad car.

I asked him what we had done and he told us that he kidnapped us because we had been drinking and were walking down the street. But, he stopped trying to charge me with anything as soon as he saw my Dominican Republic passport. He actually let out a little sigh when he said, “You’re not American?”

I responded that I wasn’t and he put down his ticket book where he appeared to be ready to write out a fine. He then zeroed in on Ken, who is a local slave and who they have complete power over. He spent quite a while trying to get Ken to tell him where his car was so he could “drop us off there”… after which he’d pull Ken over for a DUI, without doubt, but Ken was too smart to fall for this obvious ruse. In the end, the cop actually drove us back to the hotel. It was sort of like a free taxi service, but in handcuffs and against your will.

Danger, Danger Everywhere

It is amazing how many warnings there are for everything in California. Here are just a few ones that I saw.

I didn’t know that! Thanks for the totally random warning, California!

Or how about some more random, vague warnings about how if you hang around there you’ll get cancer or won’t be able to have babies.

Probably the most ridiculous is this warning on a slow moving walkway. Yes, the voice repeats every 10 seconds, “Warning: The walkway is deadly”.

That walkway is many things … but deadly? Yeesh.

Mexico

I’m on a flight from Houston to Mexico City now, so I should be safe from being kidnapped again now until the next time I go back to the US. I like the style in Mexico so much more… there aren’t warnings for anything. I prefer it that way. I had an American friend mention once that there should be a warning sign beside a small, 2 feet deep hole in the sidewalk that he saw. I had to explain to him, “Here we don’t need warning signs. What we do here is just not fall into the hole”.

It works pretty well.