Old Yarn - The Dark Alley Incident

Introduction

This is the seventh “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting,” and most recently The In-Flight Voyeur). This is the kind of story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

The Dark Alley Incident – ca. 1993

I was living in an apartment on Webster Street in San Francisco’s Western Addition, aka Lower Haight. This wasn’t one of your better neighborhoods, but wasn’t too rough either. The rent was low and the architecture was really good, mostly Edwardian/quasi-Victorian row houses that were built not long after the 1906 earthquake. Honestly, in those days—and to some degree even now—architecture and walkability were more important to me than safety.

Doing a little light fact-checking now, I see that in the early ‘90s this neighborhood was worse than I’d realized. It was considered sketchy by most San Franciscans, and compared to today had significantly higher rates of violent street crime, largely due to a crack epidemic that lasted until around 1994. The homicide rate was bad enough that the local media often described parts of the neighborhood as a “war zone.” If Internet research had been a thing back then, I might have chosen not to live there.

Still, it was cheap, I had my own room, it was a short walk to my favorite Thai restaurant, and it offered easy mass transit to my office job downtown. Plus, it was only six blocks to the Market Street Safeway where I shopped. And that’s  where this story (finally) gets interesting: if I was willing to take a little risk and go down an alley next to the tall, fenced-off hill where the San Francisco mint is, and then cross over the subway tracks at a place where you really weren’t supposed to, I could cut the walk down to just three blocks. It was practically a straight shot from my apartment, and from the standpoint of convenience, pretty much irresistible.

Granted, this was a pretty dicey shortcut. I can’t remember if there was an actual fence, but if so it wasn’t high (though looking at Google street view I see now that they’ve since built a giant fence, easily 12 feet tall). This wasn’t the classic dark alley of the imagination—long and narrow and dripping wet for some reason—but it was remote and kind of spooky, especially at night. It drove my girlfriend crazy that I took this shortcut, and she exhorted me to go the long way around, but I didn’t want to listen. Perhaps I had some premonition that one day she’d be my wife, with all the authority that goes with that, and then I’d have to toe the line—so I should enjoy my freedom while I still could.

On the night in question, as I headed toward the tracks well after dark, I encountered three shifty-looking characters off to my right in a narrower, perpendicular alley. They wore large black hooded Starter jackets, sagged pants, and ribbed wool watch caps. They were leaning in toward one another, speaking in low voices. Just as I passed their tight huddle I saw a flash of light, which had to be a cigarette lighter. Even back then, smoking a joint right out in the open in this neighborhood would have been perfectly normal, so their discretion meant something. Wow, I thought. How urban … they’re actually smoking crack!

Of course I didn’t gawk or anything—wouldn’t want to draw attention to having witnessed them. I kept my head facing forward, kept walking, minded my own business. I crossed the subway tracks, went around to the front of the Safeway, and did my shopping.

Now, given what I’d just seen down this alley, you’d think I’d finally go the long way around on the way home, right? But I was really loaded down with groceries and just didn’t feel like walking that far. I had multiple plastic shopping bags hung along each arm, all the way down to my wrists. One hand clutched a couple more loaded bags, and the other a big plastic jug of liquid laundry detergent. So I was lumbering along pretty slowly.

Past the subway tracks, when I was halfway down the alley, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t look over—just kept my eyes pointing ahead, seeing what I could with my peripheral vision. The movement was getting closer. I wasn’t sure it was the three dudes from earlier until one of them spoke. “Yo man,” he said, “hold up.”

I stopped and turned. It seemed important to act as casual as I could. Obviously these guys weren’t asking for directions … maybe they just wanted to mess with me. Could be they were sizing me up. I gave a quick chin-up nod, like, ‘sup? The dude looked me over and said, “Whaddya doin’, man?”

I glanced down at my bags, reflecting soberly upon how utterly impossible it would be to run with such a burden, and yet also how ridiculous it would be to abandon my groceries and flee, on the mere speculation that I was about to be mugged. I mean, I’d be pretty irritated if someone took one look at me and decided I was obviously a criminal. So I played it off. “Just doin’ my shopping,” I said. It’s funny: years before this, when I was an awkward teenager, suddenly called upon to speak, my voice would sometimes come out high and weak, like there was a reed stuck in my throat and I was short of breath, but now, when I really might have had something to be legitimately nervous about, I managed to sound fine. Casual, even, I thought.

“Hey man, I see you got detergent there, man, you gonna do some laundry?” the guy asked. He and his buddies were standing awfully close. Was this some preamble while they got ready to surround me? Or was I just being paranoid?

I glanced down at the laundry jug, wondering if it would make a good bludgeon but reflecting that the soft plastic would be more like a wiffle bat. Plus, loaded up as my arm was, I lacked the strength to even lift the jug that high, much less swing it. So I just looked back at the dude and gave another  upward nod. “Yeah. Of course.”

This is the part you’ll swear I’m making up, but I’m not: the dude reached into his coat and pulled out—not a gun, but a box of Bounce. You know, the fabric softener. “Man, you wanna buy some Bounce?” the guy asked. I couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d pulled out a bouquet, or a puppy. Where did he get that? I wondered. Did he roll some other guy walking home from Safeway?

I shook my head. He persisted: “For the dryer, man, make your clothes softer!”

I shook my head again. “No, man,” I said, feeling increasingly like I was part of some improv skit. “I don’t use that stuff.”

“Aiiight, ‘s cool,” he shrugged, and the three of them shuffled off without so much as a glance back. I faced forward again and resumed my slow trudge home. I resisted the temptation speed up, or to look back. Was that really it? Was the encounter truly over? The whole way home I was simultaneously a) braced for the other shoe to drop, and b) working hard not to burst out laughing. Were those dudes  just screwing with me, or had I passed some test? I will never know. And did I ever take that shortcut again? Honestly, I can’t remember.

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