How to tell I’ve been watching too much Firefly

Car­ni­val was hap­pen­ing here in San Fran­cis­co this week­end. The streets in the Mis­sion were closed off from 24^th Street all the way up to 16^th and each block had bar­ri­cades with secu­ri­ty guards to push the bar­ri­cades aside in case a vehi­cle had to get out or something.

Jolie and I got to Jolie’s place this morn­ing after she cheered me on to my fin­ish at the Mis­sion Rock 5k (I fin­ished in 27:39, sig­nif­i­cant­ly faster than I expect­ed to) and I dropped her off while I went in search of a park­ing spot for the Moto Guzzi. When I approached her house, I saw some­one stand­ing in her dri­ve­way, fac­ing the cor­ner of the garage door. It was pret­ty obvi­ous­ly a case of pub­lic uri­na­tion, cer­tain­ly not unusu­al in the Mis­sion Dis­trict, but it is a pet peeve of mine. I mean, hel­lo, are we ani­mals or human beings here? Well, I shout­ed some­thing at the guy and he shuf­fled off, but not before I noticed that his bag­gy trousers and blue shirt were part of his uniform.

That’s right, the fuck­er piss­ing in the dri­ve­way was a uni­formed secu­ri­ty guard. In my per­fect delu­sion­al world, this is the guy who should be keep­ing peo­ple from piss­ing in peo­ple’s dri­ve­way. I went in and told Jolie, and then when we went out again I did­n’t see the guard. I asked the guard who was stand­ing on the cor­ner if she knew the guard that had relieved him­self across the street. Although I’d seen her talk­ing to him after he’d gone across the street, she played dumb but dis­closed some­thing that was prob­a­bly true: that she and every­one else had been hired by the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that very morn­ing to do security.

We let it go, but decid­ed that if we saw him again that I’d take his pic­ture with my cam­er­a­phone. We talked to one of the police offi­cers on the street who told us that even if we found the guy that there was­n’t much that he could do. He said that pub­lic uri­na­tion is “only an infrac­tion.” I’m not cer­tain what that means, but that’s the phrase he used. Sure enough, on the next block, who was it “guard­ing” the bar­ri­cade? The secu­ri­ty guard who had tak­en a leak on Jolie’s garage door.

It was not very far back to the cops we had talked to, so we went back and explained that we had in fact found the guy. The cop who was doing the most talk­ing repeat­ed that there was­n’t much that he could do as far as tick­et­ing or arrest­ing the guy.

And here’s the part where I real­ized that I’d been watch­ing too much Fire­fly: I said, “I’d take it as a kind­ness if you’d go and talk to him in a men­ac­ing fashion.”

The cops went back to the guy with me and Jolie. They asked for his ID and asked if he had any war­rants and explained that pub­lic uri­na­tion is not con­sid­ered to be cool. I’m sat­is­fied with this. I think that just let­ting him know that he was seen and that peo­ple care about their prop­er­ty is enough. It’s pret­ty dis­gust­ing and bewil­der­ing, but on a crowd­ed fes­ti­val day I cer­tain­ly don’t expect the cops to be drag­ging any­one off to jail for any­thing less than assault and bat­tery. It’s more than bewil­der­ing to me, actu­al­ly. The guy had a por­ta-pot­ty just a block away from his assigned post. He actu­al­ly had to trav­el about five times far­ther to get to Jolie’s dri­ve­way than he would have to get to an appro­pri­ate place to answer nature’s call.

We did get his pic­ture and it may not do any good, but I plan to write to the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny and to the orga­niz­ers of Car­ni­val who hired that secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny (Ambas­sador). I doubt we can get the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny to change any­thing, but maybe we can get them to not be brought in again next year