Outside the home of the Grateful Dead
Fighting Crime
She is a Tae Kwon Do vigilante who moonlights as an actor and producer, he is a psychiatric criminologist with a penchant for rhyming words, and together, they fight crime. On the bus Greg had his wallet stolen, once we realised this we managed to commandeer another bus and told the driver to “follow that bus!”, get the police on the phone and confront the man, who finally handed over the wallet cash and cards intact. He ‘claimed’ to have found it, (stuffed in Greg’s pocket) and that he was doing a good deed by taking it. He then asked us for compensation for handing over our wallet, “just a little coca cola?”. He was lucky we didnt take him to our next stop.
Maximum Security. Alcatraz.
No we didn’t put him there although we were tempted. Seriously, the tours to Alcatraz were booked up for months in advance and we didn’t want to wait that long!So we were faced with a small crisis. How can we get into jail? Greg suggested we commit various acts of villainy however I felt it was a little excessive and potentially time consuming. Instead we joined a long queue at 5am to try for the few tickets available on the day. We were around 89th in the queue as most people had been up since 3am waiting….The irony of trying so hard to get into a jail was not lost on us, believe me. We met some lovely Polish friends in the queue Wioletta and Adam who we then had breakfast with. Sadly they were not so lucky and missed out on tickets.Alcatraz itself was interesting, Greg was grumpy at having had his brilliant plan thwarted and also getting up so early. “It was good, but not must-see”. I enjoyed seeing it, there is a sick fascination with seeing such a famous jail. Only one jail break succeeded, which involved tunneling out through the ducts with spoons and placing fake dummies in their beds made out of papier mache. These men were never to be seen again, so whether they escaped to Mexico and took on new identities or drowned in the shark infested waters we will never know.Luckilywemanaged to get out, and headed straight for the first speakeasy we could find, calledBourbon & Branch. An 1920’s speakeasy, which is located on the site of the original one, entitled ‘JJ Russells Cigar Shop’ – he did not sell many cigars. Whispering a password we were led through a dark corridor and taken through a revolving bookcase to a tiny bar with great cocktails. After dinner with our Polish friends we were approached by a very well spoken 19 year old homeless black man named Sio. We spoke for a while and offered to buy him dinner, he was very intelligent and looking for work, but had to wait another 2 weeks for an address. I do hope he got it, its not often you meet someone so well spoken and self educated on the streets.
Horsey Kisses
PS Thank you to Don, Shelley & Lily for all your awesome suggestions!
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