An hour ago I headed down to the liquor store—the Korean one, not the Punjabi one, thank you very much. John, the owner, extended me the common courtesy of rounding down the taxes on the cheapest six-pack in his cooler. As I bore my questionable brew home Big Rich called me from East Baltimore, about his time in West Baltimore on the day crew at Stop, Shop & Run.

I stopped in at the hipster bar for one beer as Big Rich regaled me with the tale of…

A fine young man, his pants hanging below his knees just so, his hat cocked just so, seemed to have lost his way. The police officer on duty at this fine urban foods emporium noticed that the man had mistaken the front door for the register lane and walked over to render aid, customer service on his mind. The customer frantically kept trying to haul his two, two-gallon jugs of tide laundry detergent out of the cart, and kept being dragged back in, ‘barely a buck-ten his self’.

Miraculously our hero yanked the [$50 retail, $20 resale] haul out of the cart, and made off, the cop hot on his heels, reaching for his tazer. Our hero made it to the head of the parking lot as the cop drew a bead on him. The stairs down to the parkway were concrete, and the cop did not want a dead shoplifter on his hands. He yelled for the customer to drop the jugs and he could go. He did so. Officer Thrifty brought the haul back to the store and then alerted cops and security stationed at nearby stores.

Within an hour, our hero, Tide Yo, fell for the bait and was collared by security at Bull’s Eye Big Buys and hauled off to Central Booking.

One of the new White Vice Lords—tattooed teardrops and all—came into the bar selling women’s deodorant and body wash he had just stolen from the drug store two blocks away. The going price was two dollars per unit. He seemed to be fully inked except for portions of his face.

I walked through the grassy courtyard of the church and the rectory where four young men smoked pot and drank malt liquor. The eldest said, “Good evening Sir” and I returned the courtesy.

As I came to the main drag a group of four younger teens were joking on my side of the street so I crossed. As I did so a ‘thunk’ ‘clunk’ ‘ping’ and ‘moan’ of metal and fiber glass sounded behind me.

A youth behind the wheel of an SUV with tinted windows had side-swiped a mail truck—one of those that look like a converted German WWII staff car—on the driver’s side and dragged it out into the middle of the road. The four boys were cheering him on as he struggled to get it in gear.

I was now halfway cross a side street as he tore loose a piece of fiberglass fender from his driver’s side, put it in reverse, whipped it around, and gunned it up the street. He then got stuck in traffic behind the cars at the next light and his engine died. He turned it over a few times, shifted, pulled his moaning door tight, and then got it started. He banked right so I leaped onto the sidewalk in time to avoid becoming the punch line.

He did about fifty going up the side street as the sounds of sirens began to converge from two fire stations. I saw an ambulance, a pumper, and a hook and ladder. The mail truck was not moving. The police chopper was headed out to the West Side.

Hopefully the postal employee is okay.