I came across this post on GNXP & thought I should write up something that happened to me just last week in SF.   After a tres chic SF event , the GF & I planned to meet some folks for a late bite at Mel's on Van Ness about 10:30ish on Thursday night.  We parked around the corner from Mel's, on Post between Polk & Van Ness and started walking up.... 

About 20 ft ahead of us & on our path to Mel's, sat a typical SF, scraggly-looking, smelly bum.  He said "excuse me, excuse me" a couple times as we were walking up to him and I gave him my standard "hand" and said "sorry dude, nada."  (I may have given him a bit more 'tude than usual cuz I was dressed up and feeling kinda slick ;-)

As we walked past, I could hear his footsteps behind me but before I could turn around to more forcefully say "No Dinero!", he jumped up next to me, jabbed some blunt metal object into my ribs / armpit and said "Give me your money!"

The object didn't feel sharp like a knife and I'd been around enough guns that I was pretty sure it wasn't a gun barrel either.  Most likely it was just some random piece of blunt, curved, scrap metal.  To this day, I wonder whether it reflects more on me or the bum that he chose to threaten me with what was quite possibly a discarded restaurant spoon.

BUT, I didn't really have time to process this.  Instead, and completely on auto-pilot, I grabbed the guys arm, twisted it up, pushed him away and while yelling "fuck you asshole, get the fuck off of me!"  (I think there were a few more choice words but I can't quite remember 'em now.)

I pushed him pretty hard hard & he was forced back a couple of steps.  And that put us in a made-for-TV moment - frozen in our tracks for a suspended second & staring each other dead in the eye.  (The GF, was completely frozen from the beginning here.)  I shook my head at him and raised my hands in an angry, insulted "what the fuck?!?!" kind of way and he took off and ran down the street.

A silent second or 2 later, I turned to my GF and said "whoah, I guess we'll have a story to share at dinner..."

She checked my shirt for any signs of trauma from the random metal object - no blood, no fabric tears, no stain from his filthy, miscreant fingers.  Nothing.  Not even soreness cuz he didn't really jab me very hard with whatever it was...

At the dinner table I told the story to a couple of folks including the GF's bro.  He pointed out that we'd left her car back on Post street and that the hoodlum clearly knew which vehicle was ours cuz he saw us getting out.  We decided to walk back to make sure the car was OK and call the cops if necessary.  And just in case the bum was still there, we wanted to be prepared.  Our adrenaline-charged and sleep-deprived brains decided to parry his spoon with forks we swiped from Mel's.

So now, no more than 5-7 minutes had passed from the initial, err, assault, & we walked back to the scene of the crime with GF's Bro & with forks jiggling in our pockets.  But, as we rounded the corner back onto Post street, there were now 3-4 cops, 2 squad cars and some random, preppy-looking dude they were circled around. The Bro & I walked past them & we overheard the guy telling the cops that he'd just been mugged and he described an MO almost identical to mine!

It's actually pretty amazing in a cold, detached way.   In no more than 7 minutes, our street scum attempted to mug me, really did mug this other guy, the cops were called, and 3-4 of them in 2 cars showed up - all on one city block.  The Bro and I were pretty impressed with the, uh, efficiency displayed by all parties.

The other guy was a clean cut dude somewhat smaller than me - a pretty boy probably on his way to a club, and given that we're talking about San Francisco, he triggered the gaydar a little - at the very least he was tres metrosexual.  When the mugger asked for his money, this guy gave up his wallet containing ~$50 in cash, ID, and Visa / ATM cards - all enumerated for Officer MacDougal.  I introduced myself to him & the cops, gave them my story, & shook his hand to commiserate on the twist of fate that brought us together.

In one of those weirdly primal moments of male pride,  I could tell he was sizing *me* up and asking himself "how come he's still got his wallet?"  Heh.  I tried not to chuckle out loud when this hit me...

To tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure I did the right thing given the situation.  I can say that the whole thing started and was over before I had a chance to think about it at all.  I can also say that at least in the case of this particular piece of vile street scum, simply displaying a bit of resistance was enough to wreck his filthy plan to get ahold of my lucre & send him scurrying back to his little varmin-infested rathole.  As much as I'd like to credit my hulking physical presence, I think it was more the stream of profanities honed from years of watching Blacksploitation flicks that made our dialectic turn the proverbial corner.

Once he'd committed to execute his sinister plan, both of us were locked in a dance of pre-rational action and reaction and, for whatever reasons, my primal Fight reaction triggered his primal Flight.  It was certainly over well before his synaptically-impaired brain had a chance to logically process it.  As they say, he was probably terrified as he started the exchange and my refusal to follow the script he'd mentally charted out was enough to push him past his fear threshold.

I did have some opportunity to inflict more physical damage on the guy & the thought did cross my mind for a nanosecond as we were staring at each other.  He was perhaps an inch or 2 taller than me but scrawny as hell and clearly malnourished from his crackhead lifestyle so, I may have had a good chance. 

Later that night, I had the shamelessly self-aggrandizing realization that I'd possibly just had the Spiderman moral moment - the one where Peter Parker realizes that his inaction in the face of similar scum led directly to his Uncle Ben's murder and that his great powers were accompanied by great responsibility and that... well, ok, maybe I'm making too much of it (perhaps by the time I'm retelling the tale to my grandkids this part of the story will bear more fruit..).

Nevertheless, my Uncle Ben was this poor dude standing in front of me who had lost his wallet & $50 because I chose to walk the other way.  I used the moment to make a smart-ass quip to the GF rather than engage or call the cops that very instant.

Obviously there are hundreds of ways it could have turned out worse (thank God) but I do think it's important to recognize how often this type of violence lurks just beneath the covers of even the supposedly civilized dominion of San Francisco and the utterly banal form it takes.  Perhaps even more importantly, it thrust home the message that YOU are your own last line of defense.  While I was duly impressed with what was probably a 2 minute response time from SFPD, the essential plotline for the entire encounter was determined in less than 10 seconds.

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