By unpopular demand...

A bunch of years back, I guess mid to late 90s, my friend Eric, who fashioned himself an actor, was living in Pennsylvania. I used to go out there to drink a ton of Yuenglings, chase the skirts at the local pub, and listen to the Fun Lovin' Criminals on his stereo system while football played out on the screen, sound down. On some other weekends I would return the favor as he would travel into NY to attend auditions and crash at my place, annoying my grumpy roommate Ian. I actually stole Eric from Ian - they were friends and after one weekend where we all went out boozing together Eric decided he liked me better and gave my roomie the drop.

For some reason one year when I was out there we took a ride into Baltimore. I still dont know what the reasoning was. I do remember there was a huge block party, and it was near the famous "seaport" but I cant imagine we drove all that way to go to a block party. Anyway, the whole block was closed off and it was full of beer stands, beer, beer gardens, and drunk women. Drunk men too, unfortunatly, scoring women meant for us.

My friend Eric, who was quite the dandy, unfortunatly met some men this time around. A couple of hoodie types, by a beer stand. They were locals, and he was asking them all kinds of questions about the place. You would have thought he was trying to move there. Turns out he was looking for a drug connection and using "drug-speak" that I did not understand. They were exchanging inane small talk in order to estabish that neither party were Johnny Law working undercover. I did not care, I was busy watching some bikini girl in the dunk tank.

After a bit Eric comes to agreement with these two sketchy gentleman and they wave me along to follow. We end up walking to the end of the block and hook a right where there is a series of big dumpsters for all the waste of the day. It was also where people went to pee and puke, or sneak a spliff or accept a BJ.

Eric and the brothers sit down and commence to smoke up. I demurred, beer was quite enough for me. I must have looked quite the loser, standing in the street by myself drinking beer while 3 guys sat on the curb getting high. The end booths of the block party were literally 20 feet away, so I was practically at the party but appearing to enjoy the company of the dumpsters and porto-johns instead.

Next thing I know Eric is like, "ah, come on, man. what the fuck." I look over and he is still sitting on the sidewalk. Actually, they all are. Apparently between puffs and laughs one of the guys basically told him, "yo, we got guns, empty your pockets." And they were engaging in a placid conversation about it on the curb like they were the Little Rascals watching a parade or something.

Eric calls me over, later saying he did so cause he did not want me absently walking away to get more beer without knowing what was going on, cause he was afraid i would get shot in the back. I walk over and as I do both guys stand up and they both pull out TWO guns each. It was almost comical. FOUR guns on the two of us. Actually, they were all pointed at me while I was walking over, Eric was just standing there between them with this stupid look on his face. If I did not know any better and if I did not see his money taken from him with my own eyes I would have thought he was in on it. Mind you, if I turned around 20 feet away were a line of people buying hot dogs and cotton candy but here we were, in another world of guns and grit.

So I look at these four guns and mutter my infamous "Four guns?? What is this, the wild wild west??" line, which Eric later laughed at in his pickup truck but he nearly shit himself at the time when I popped this one as wisecracks need not apply. Muggers are looking for John Rockefeller, not John Candy.

They basically tell us to cut the shit and empty the pockets. Get this - not only did I tell them I forgot my wallet I ACTUALLY HAD FORGOT MY WALLET. Eric was actually covering me all day as I left my wallet at his place, which sucked in more ways than one. We were not able to get into any of the bars along the street, which is why we met these guys in the first place.

They dont believe me, of course, and i get patted down. I was drunk enough to where I found the situation more amusing than aggravating. I mean, Eric and I had wasted almost TWO HOURS hanging out with these guys! They even smoked to the last before the guys got on with the robbing! And all they were trying to do was get us alone to rob us. It seemed like a colassal waste of time.

To make a long story a little shorter, not only did they take all of Eric's money they also took his Los Angeles Dodger baseball cap. I remember him whining, "can I just keep the cap, please?" and the guy was like, "No." They also decided to keep his license, for all I know they had a collection on a wall someplace. They promised Eric they would drop it into the mail but 4 years later it had not arrived. I remember he was even a little worried they were going to come to his apartment to get high with him, and mug him again.

During this at least a handful of people walked right by, going to the porto potties over there. A couple of them near enough to touch. I guess it was pretty established around there that you don't rat. Eric actually explained it all to me on the drive back to his place - if you are dumb enough to get rolled, people are going to ignore it and let you get what you deserve. Meanwhile, HE was dumb enough to get rolled, I was following him around cause I did not have any money on me.

On top of everything else he was low on gas and had to borrow money from someone to get us out of there. I remember the next day he wanted to head back into Baltimore to this street fair again, this time with a baseball bat, to find the guys that robbed us. He considered himself "street smart" (yeah, street smart enough to get us robbed on a sidewalk just off a crowded street) and explained how those guys probably made a living feeding on the out-of-towners in that fashion.

Me? I was in no mood to go back to Baltimore. I still had MY wallet, remember? And football was on that day, and I had my Fun Lovin' Criminals cassette on hand.