Champion of the Day: Not Shuttin' Up on the Bus Guy

Dude, it was bad enough when I got on the bus and you were already sitting there in the back yammerin' away on your cel phone. Everyone else on the morning ride sits and reads or listens to music... y'know being RESPECTFUL of the other riders.

But not you.

You didn't care if everyone heard your phone conversation. And seriously, could you actually hear the person on the other end? Really? Even with the loud sounds of the bus? Wow. How do you do that?

But after you got off the phone, why did you have to start up a conversation with that guy sitting towards the front? He may have been your co-worker, but there was PROBABLY A REASON WHY HE SAT FAR AWAY FROM YOU. That guy really took one for the team when he got up to move to the back so you wouldn't have to converse with him across the bus. But that didn't matter. We could all still hear everything you were saying.

And seriously dude, I could not believe you were able to explain and summarize three seasons of the new Battlestar Galactica on a twenty minute bus ride.

I HATE YOU.

The area "A" Residential Parking Permit adventure.

I never thought I would be one of those frustrated people you see running around looking like they don't know what they're doing, but there I was last Wednesday afternoon at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland looking for the offices of the Transportation Division. And because two different security guards could only take their best guesses as to where I could get a parking permit, I was sent to two different buildings that didn't have what I was looking for. Bitches.

I'll backtrack a little bit: With my new job in San Francisco, I've been leaving my car in Oakland; but because of the parking restrictions on my street (you have to move your car every two hours during the day) I had to leave my car about three blocks away. But I could pay to get a residential permit for my area so that the two hour restriction wouldn't apply. So I headed to City Hall downtown, which unfortunately seemed to consist of EVERY BUILDING in Frank Ogawa Plaza. WTF?

Finally I found the information center and asked the clerk where I could get a parking permit. She gave me a building number, but at that point I was so frustrated I made her physically walk with me out to the plaza and point to where I needed to go.

When I got to that building another security guard stopped me and asked me what I needed. I told him a parking permit and he had me sign in and directed me to go through some double doors. The doors read "Parking Citations" --I looked back at the guard and said, "...there? I need to BUY A PERMIT." He just nodded and said, "that's it."

I walked into the next room and saw a bunch of chairs for people to wait in and some teller windows. Hey, whaddayaknow? Maybe this was the right place. I sat down and waited to be called. When I got up to the cashier window I told the lady I needed to buy a Residential Parking Permit for area "A".

She looked right at me and said, "You don't get that here. That's up on 6, but they're already closed at 4:30."

It was 4:45. My head almost exploded.

I stormed out of there and glared at the security guard. I wasted almost an hour on a wild goose chase and came away only with a seething hatred for Oakland's governmental beaucracy.

Two days later I returned for another attempt at getting that damn permit. This time the security guard was much more competent, "...head up to the 6th floor, I'll call and let them know you're coming." ...wow. Where was this guy the other day? I guess they stick all the dumdums on the night shift.

And EVEN BETTER, when I went to the offices to apply for the permit, the clerk told me the permit for my area was FREE. She just copied my info, gave me a sticker, and I was on my way. The whole process took less than ten minutes. How easy was that? Crazy.

In search of the Black Dahlia.

Black Dhalia was the nickname for Elizabeth Short, a woman brutally murdered back in 1947. She was cut in half and her killer (killers?) were never caught. Here's the Wikipedia entry about her life, infamous murder, and sensationalized murder investigation.

Anyway, it turns out she's buried in Piedmont at Mountain View Cemetery (along with some other notable people). I've been to the cemetery many times for walks, it's actually designed with lots of trails like a park, but this time a group of us were on a quest to find the Black Dahlia.

Roll call: Me, Big Cherry, Specs, The Writer, and Croms (who brought the Black Dahlia to our attention).

We all stumbled to meet at the cemetery gates around noon--which was as early as any of us were going to show up anywhere on a Saturday morning--and made our way past the mausoleums and up the hill towards "Millionaire's Row," where some of the aforementioned notables are buried.

When we made our way to the top, Specs and The Writer pointed out how a lot of the monument tombs had symbols of Illuminati on them (the photo above features C.O.G. Miller's pyramid mausoleum). A good amount of our time after that was spent looking for other Illuminati symbolism on tombs and gravestones--eagles, snakes, pyramids, floating eyes, statues of a woman pointing up, etc.

On the way back down we began our hunt for the Black Dahlia. After a little online search the night before, Croms found out Elizabeth Short was buried in plot #6. Unfortunately the plots jump around without any sense of reason, from 12 to 13 to 37. And each plot had anywhere from 16 to 60 graves. The search was coming up fruitless and some of the crew needed to bail.

It was up to me and Croms to wander around one of the back corners of the cemetery for the elusive plot #6. One of the legends of Black Dahlia is that the groundskeepers move her grave around from time to time within the cemetery to prevent crowds of people converging on her grave. We finally found plot #6 and split up to read tombstones--unfortunately, no Elizabeth Short.

We wrapped up our quest and headed back out towards the main gate. Maybe next time I'll try to find the grave of Mac Dre (seriously...check that link of notable people).