Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Cronut with Bum Fights



Today I ate a cronut. I have been wanting to try one for over a year. The only place I know of that sells them is a random French patisserie in the sketchy part of downtown. I loaded up the kids and drove to the mecca of bums, druggies and prostitutes.
Maybe it's because we live in the state capitol and it's easier to get assistance, but Sacramento has more homeless people than I could ever imagine. I grew up in San Francisco, where as a little kid, it seemed like there was a one to one ratio of homeless to housed, and downtown Sacramento is worse.
San Francisco has since erased this problem, and turned into a little honey pot, a haven where homeless, and even poor people, do not exist. 
Perhaps Sacramento's homeless population came from their inability to afford SF and the faux hippies turning their back on them because they're too busy working. 
I'd think they live in Sacramento due to the weather, but in a month, when the temperatures soar to hellish unbearable triple digits, the homeless do not mass migrate to cooler coastal temperatures. They still roam around, draped in parkas and sleeping bags, it is a fucking miracle they don't all fall over dead from heat stroke.

When the kids and I were getting our cronut, macaroons and coffee a lady screamed, "There's a fight."
Involuntarily, I screamed back, "A what?"
And a petite brunette stood up and pointed out the window across the street, shouting, "He is hitting her!"
I looked over, and this man and lady were fighting across the street. She was hitting him with her pink hawaiian print bag, and he was punching her in the side of the head. He wrapped his hands around her neck and started to strangle her. As her face turned bright red, a group of people ran across the street, pulling the two people apart.
That was my cue to get the kids in the fucking car, and get out of this shit part of town. With a coffee in hand, George on the hip, and a bag of food and Kiki on the other side, we rushed across the street to the car. When I was buckling in the kids, the strangling man came around the corner. He was meandering down the road like he was going about a casual day, looking at the clouds in the sky and birds flying by.
He didn't look like he was on a rampage, but I buckled the kids in with the kind of haste that we were next on this man's war path.
As we drove away, heading to a park in the much better part of town, I called my mom to share what I saw. She said, "I'm so glad you decided not to move downtown." And in a tone of elitist empathety, she added, "She must have been trying to steal his sleeping bag."
I guess you can take the girl out of San Francisco, but you can't take the San Francisco out of a girl.

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