so this past weekend was…interesting.
friday jon, kate, eric and i went to ravinia to see the ben folds and rufus wainwright concert. good times were had – there was hard lemonade and guiness and wine, plus chinese food and chee-tos.
saturday was the Last Cookout at Andrew’s place – he, trevor and dave a parting ways (at least for now)…i guess their landlord is sort of an ick-day. there were bratwurst and i had some mudslide that kate brought.
afterwards eric and i met up with ben, sara and ben’s friend (from galesburg) matt at the diversey rock ‘n bowl. fran had just driven up from florida and found an apartment that very morning so she came out too, sort of to celebrate. and also, we hadn’t seen each other for a year!…except. that halfway through the second game…fran’s purse was stolen. from where it was all of 2 feet away (at most) from where she and i were sitting.
and then came the suckiness.
the owner/manager (hereafter referred to as ‘totally unhelpful fucking asshole’ or ‘tufa’) didn’t really seem to give a shit and wasn’t even interested in pretending to care that theft had been committed on his property. i went outside to watch fran’s cr-v, because her keyless entry thing was on her keys in her purse and she didn’t want the thief to come back and steal her car, which was loaded with most of her belongings since she’s moving up here for law school. welcome to chicago! yay! (feel the sarcasm).
the bowling alley was searched, even the garbage cans and i looked around the parking lot, etc. but the purse was never found. inside was: $200 cash, new driver’s license, credit cards, cell phone will all phone numbers in it, keys for car and the spare set angie & aaron lent fran for their apartment while they were out of town. so not only was fran out the money and the ids/credit cards, but no way to drive out of there, no way to get into the place she was crashing for the weekend.
after hanging up on the police because she’d been on hold for half an hour, fran tried to call her mom from my phone but she wasn’t answering because she didn’t recognize my number. finally fran gets ahold of someone in her family to get ahold of her mom. we call her phone to see if we can hear it ring or the thief wil answer. the tufa turns down the blaring music in the bowling alley for all of 5 seconds.
the tufa yells at fran for being upset. the tufa tries to get eric to pay the bill for bowling. fran gets mad and so he tears it up.
eric gets ahold of aaa so they can come tow her car someplace safe. after 40 minutes or so, dr. j shows up with the most bad-ass looking tow truck i’ve ever seen. sadly, fran’s car is real all-wheel drive. this means it can’t be towed with 2 wheels on the ground. dr. j tries to break into fran’s car so he can maybe figure out a way to drop it in reverse. he can’t break in.
about 40 minutes to an hour later the second tow truck shows up, a flat bed. the car is dragged up onto it and we’re finally ready to go. fran has to repeat several times to the tow truck drivers that her purse was stolen, no she didn’t lock the keys in the car, yeah she’s totally screwed.
we get the car up to the sears parking lot by ben’s place. the guy angles back his flat bed and releases the winch and…nothing happens. the car is just sitting there, at like a 45 degree angle and it isn’t budging. you know, since it’s not in neutral. so – the guy tries to use the hydraulics on the flat bad to sort of wiggle the car off. up and down, back and forth, tiny little whining hydraulic noises and 15 minutes later…the cr-v has moved like…an inch.
so, the tow truck guy gets out his old school jack and starts jacking the car up and sort of levering it back. finally the front wheels are on the ground. so he thinks that he can sort of pull the tow truck away and the car will slip off. sorry, that would be too easy – instead the flat bed drags the car hanging half off of it. he has to whip out the jack AGAIN to get the car the rest of the way off the flat bed.
at about 4 in the morning we bed down for the night with fran crashing on eric’s couch. the next day, we go to angie & aaron’s apartment building. they were in eureka till late that night, so fran starting knocking on neighbor’s doors to see if anyone had the super’s number so he could let her in their apartment. eventually, she asks a woman with her dog sitting outside and gets the number.
in the apartment fran has her checkbooks, passport, spare car keys and an old cellphone with a broken screen. these in hand, we go get her car and then go to jewel to get some well-deserved ice cream. but the cashiers at jewel have never validated a check with a passport. commence drawn-out process wherein more cashiers are summoned to the first one’s aid. i think like 3 of them managed to figure it out.
we ate the ice cream, watched the planes fly overhead, then parted ways – fran had to get ahold of her new landlord to explain the red flag on her account and why all of her credit cards had been cancelled. hopefully this wouldn’t stop her from moving in the next day.
of course i forgot to mention that a few months ago, fran had her wallet stolen while she was putting groceries in her trunk. this girl can’t catch a break! i’m glad i got to hang out with fran this weekend but…come on chicago! nice welcome guys! reeeeaaaal nice.