Story Time: Hard To Keep Safe

And second, and third...

It's the last ride of the night and week, as I've made my number with margin to spare. The ping comes from Jack London Square, which is kind of the East Bay's much better answer to Fisherman's Wharf. It's a shared ride, and the first passenger is coming off a shift at a restaurant, en route to a karaoke bar. She's overdosed on perfume and sits in the front seat, and kind of wifty, but what hey, life is short and I'm here to be busy. I start the ride but have to pick up a second passenger a couple of blocks away. And away we go, first into Oakland proper then to the neighborhood around 98th Street. (Note: note the best part of Oakland.)

My second passenger is a little bit intoxicated and a little bit pushy about using the aux cord, but that's really not the problem. The problem is more along the lines that she seems eager to get into some confrontational conversation with the person in the front seat. Luckily for all concerned, front seat passenger gets out first before things can escalate, and after a few minutes of enduring bad mouthing to the departed, I'm looking forward to 3-starring both of these folks and going directly to my bed.

Which is when we come upon one of those scenes that you really only see in marginal neighborhoods. Tonight, it's a bare-shirt bare-knuckle fight among two guys who are probably in their late teen years, with a crowd of onlookers rooting them on... in the middle of the street. Which I can't just, well, drive through.

My passenger is also now eager to leap out of the car and tell these people exactly what she thinks of their activity, which isn't exactly conducive to my personal goals for the evening. Mostly, just to get the hell out of Dodge with as little fanfare as possible.

I lock the doors, stay still and patient, and point out to my passenger that our MMA wannabees don't have any weapons, so let's just breathe a bit.

The duellists part and leave the street clear. I take the passenger to her home and shut down for the night.

Just another fare, in the long run.

But kind of almost not...