Friday, July 02, 2010

High drama at the crosswalk

My prayers were answered on Thursday. The toe was feeling much better and survived a night of drinking and walking down at Summerfest. It appears the attack may be over and I have won the battle.

It is a relief. The thought of walking around Summerfest in pain- no way I was going to miss the Scorpions show- haunted me. I guess following the simple ways of flushing out the system worked, though next time I will go see a doctor. If it is as they say that it gets progressively worse, I don't want to deal with more days of discomfort.

Last night I met up with an old college friend to catch up and see the Offspring. I ran into my buddy last Friday at the Fest. It had been a couple years since we had gotten together for a show or some beers. Not sure what happened but it was good to get back in touch.

The Offspring show was nothing that memorable. Much like last year. It was good but nothing you would go around bragging about. The band sounded off. Maybe it was the mix or where we were standing.

One thing that surprised me was that there weren't any fights. Last year two fights broke out by us in the crowd. I thought that would happen again this year because the crowd was getting unruly. Women were hopping onto the shoulders of the boyfriends to get a better view. That pissed off the people behind them. So they started throwing things at the girls, yelling at them to get down. I was shocked one guy didn't make his way to the back of the crowd to smack a guy.

In another instance, some big chick waded her way through the crowd and stopped right in front of a small girl. As they exchanged words I was thinking cat fight! But the big chick turned to watch the band and it appeared over. I was wrong. The small girl's boyfriend got in the big chicks face and gave her hell. Then everyone around them yelled at the big chick until she walked away.

But the best confrontation of the night was at the crosswalk after Summerfest. Some guy was having a conniption fit because the light wasn't changing and he couldn't cross the street. The intersection has 3 auxiliary police officers working the traffic. There was a real cop on horseback and another on a motorcycle working the controls of the light. The guy was bitching about why the light wasn't changing. He started to yell at the closest cop about it, just going batshit crazy.

He kept ranting on at the closest cop who did his best to ignore him and continued to do his job. Apparently the girl on the cycle had enough. That cop got off her bike and walked over to tell the guy to be quiet. She then told him to shut up or she would continue to let the traffic go. Of course this guy, not being too bright, complained some more about that.

We had been waiting there a couple minutes at this point. A small crowd had gathered waiting to cross the street. Some in the crowd started to tell the guy to shut up. The cranky SOB then got into the face of a guy who was yelling at him. I was laughing at this point. This guy had no clue that his bitching was making it all worse.

Then cranky guy got a great idea. He noticed the number of people waiting and figured if everyone went, the cops couldn't go anything. He tried to worked up the crowd but they weren't buying in. Then crowd then taunted him to go. And he did!

As he weaved through the 3 lanes of vehicles, the lady cop on the motorcycle hopped off and chased him down. With traffic stopped because of the cranky dude, everyone then crossed the street. As we did we saw the guy being led away, caught by the cop.

The mob that he thought would back him up began to taunt him. Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, GOODBYE!!! The crowd was laughing as it moved across the bridge and into the night.

It is kinda sad that the drama at the crosswalk was more memorable than the concert.

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