Thursday, July 5, 2007

holy fucking shit

it's a few minutes before four pm on thursday, july the fifth, and i'm walking along spring street in downtown los angeles. i've just taken my first peek inside what i'm told used to be the los angeles stock exchange. the building has a beautiful stone facade on the outside, but inside it looks like a cross between the death star and a trailer home from the 1970's.

i love it.

my car is parked on main street, just a little ways up from where spring and main meet. until earlier that afternoon, i didn't even know the two streets weren't totally parallel. i had meant to pick up some bike parts from maestro (on main) and then have a coffee with bri (at lost souls on fourth), then circle around (back up spring) to where my car was parked at a broken meter (lucky for me, being out of change) just a few yards down (again, on the main street side) from the angelique cafe, which is smack on the most acute corner of that little isocelese triangle-shaped block.



as i approach angelique, i notice that two of the women who work there are already packing in the small sections of white picket fence used to barricade off their patio area. the sun is shining, downtown is beautiful, and these ladies are going home.

i reach the patio just in time to see a grey pontiac cutlass heading north on main blow a tire, skid out of control, jump the main street side curb at about 20 miles per hour, glance off of a street light, and plow through the angelique cafe employee who not a second before was standing just ten feet from me, minding his own business stacking chairs and probably thinking about how he was going to spend the rest of his day.

i swear to God - he was there, and then he was gone. it was all over in about three seconds.

one of the women who was cleaning up comes running out of the cafe. what happened? what happened? where is jim? (speaking spanish)

the other woman (who is standing next to me) shakes her head. we exchange blank stares. like myself, she's still in the middle of processing what just happened. her coworker rushes back inside, where the wreckage of the cutlass is visible through a couple of large picture windows. the picture windows have those metal security gates on them that roll up like blinds, and the one closest to me has been torn completely off the building, its coiled shutters lying across the trunk of the cutlass, having shattered the rear window completely.

she stumbles back outside in tears. jim is not well. i spot the baseball cap on the sidewalk where he had been standing and i suddenly remember what i saw.

i take out my phone and start to dial 9-1-1, but someone inside the cafe has already been connected with a dispatcher. by now, not more than a minute after the incident, people are rushing to the scene, either to satisfy their curiosity or to help. i do the only thing i can possibly think of.

i walk away, retracing my steps down spring to a small beauty parlor about half a block back. i cut through the parlor, whose patrons have already emptied onto the main street sidewalk for a look-see and walk up to my truck, which is just a few paces down from where the cutlass came to a stop.

from this side i can see that after the cutlass slammed into jim, it travelled down the sidewalk another ten feet, scraping the driver's side of the car up against the brick facade of the cafe. i can't see through the windshield (it too is shattered, but intact). it looks like a wood beam or something has pierced it close to the driver's side. the front passenger wheel is shredded.

the whole scene is fairly beliwidering. angelique's kitchen staff seemed to have been in the middle of gathering up the day's baked goods for storage or disposal when the accident occured. they've dropped the bags of baguettes and rolls next to cafe's back door and rushed to assist jim, who seems to be pinned between the car and the wall and a stack of tables and chairs. a woman is sitting on the curb next to my car, crying hysterically and bleeding from head wound as three samaritans try to keep her calm.

just a few feet from the cutlass's front bumper, amongst the toppled patio furniture and forgotten bread, another hat lies on the concrete filled with what looks like spaghetti sauce and broken pottery.

at this point, it seems like the situation is as under control as its going to get until the fire department and medical assitance arrives. i'm about to get into my car when i notice a homeless man surreptitiously sidestep the hysterical woman on the curb, tiptoe around the hat filled with spaghetti sauce and pottery chips (oh God, i hope that's what it is), and casually swipe three baguettes from the bags the kitchen staff had dropped. he slips away unnoticed.

i drive back down main street to spring and fourth. i'd been arguing with bri earlier, and now i just wanted to tell her i loved her. up in her editing bay, i can hear the sounds of sirens racing up spring towards angelique and i feel a deep sense of remorse for not having acted in a helpful manner when the accident initially occured.

at this point the most i can do is give the police my information and volunteer myself as a witness, which is exactly what i did. the least i can do is go back to angelique next week and offer my support, any kind of support, which is what i plan to do. if anyone out there reading this lives downtown or happens to be a regular angelique customer, a little extra neighborhood/patronly support probably wouldn't hurt these nice folks.

between now and then, i'm just hoping that jim is all right.

or is it joe?

(photo by eric richardson; used under creative commons)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

ate there for lunch today. our waiter said that the employee "has a cracked vertebrae but is not paralyzed, thank God. right now he is just thankful to be alive".

Anonymous said...

Your facts are completely wrong. The car was a Chevy Celebrity. The driver was speeding and not going 20 mph. He only blew his tiore after losing control. Have you ever driven 20 mph? If you have, you would know that he was traveling more like 50-60 mph. There were three other people hit by the car including a woman who was hit from behind, picked up by the car and thrown 15 feet in the air (I believe you described her as hysterical but didn't mention the fact that she was hit by the car and bleeding from the head.) You can't do that driving 20 mph. Lastly, the owner of the restaurant watched from the 2nd floor and didn't come down the stairs to help his employee after he was hit so I'm pretty sure that antone who might be sympathetic to this restaurant should know that the owner couldn't care about his own employees.

Cutter said...

dear anonymous,

thanks for correcting my mistake about the vehicle make/model.

in my defense:

i heard the tire blow, but seeing as i wasn't paying attention to the chevy BEFORE it careened onto the sidewalk, i had no way of knowing the order of events that led to its losing control.

have you ever driven a car? they can weigh a ton. 2000lbs at 20mph is still pretty fast BTW, considering that a vehicle collision at 30mph can be fatal.

if you had read my post correctly, you would have noticed that i wrote that at the point the car jumped the curb, it was traveling about 20mph. again, i can't account for the driver's behavior before he lost control, but if the car was doing 50, it would have done a lot more damage than it did.

also, i DID mention the woman was bleeding from the head, but since i didn't see her hit, i didn't want to speculate her involvement. again, please read more carefully.

i'm not going to comment on the character of the owner, but it's good to know that his employee is okay. i hope the woman and the other victim are safe as well.

Anonymous said...

So to summarize, you didn't see the car before it hit the sidewalk and in less than one second estimated the car at 20 mph driving on the sidewalk. You didn't see the car strike the woman and two other diners along the side of the restaurant. And you encourage everyone to patronize the restaurant owned by a man who wouldn't come out to help his own employee after being struck by a car. No offense but your writing isn't crystal clear. Your original story made it sound as if the teenager were out for a Sunday drive going 20 mph and blew a tire (again at 20 mph) and then jumped a curb as opposed to blowing a tire after hitting the sidewalk traveling at an excessive speed.

Cutter said...

okay, you obviously have some sort of agenda that i'm not aware of, particularly because i don't know you from adam. i don't know where you get your facts from or even if they're correct.

maybe if you had corrected my account of the incident with a friendly, constructive attitude rather than a righteous and opinionated one, i'd take you more seriously.

but you didn't, so i don't.

Anonymous said...

No agenda, just want to make sure that the facts are represented clearly. I don't mean to dismiss your account and its impact on you because I'm sure it was traumatizing to watch (as I know) but a car going 20 mph that blew a tire couldn't go over both the island and the curb and then hit the sidewalk with such force. In fact, those two barriers likely saved the waiter's life as well as the lives of the three diners by slowing the car down where they could survive being hit.

Pachamama (estela) said...

Funny, my name is Joe and 3 years later I'm alright. This brought back memories...

Anonymous said...

http://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/10w084/so_this_little_bugger_of_a_piece_of_glass_was/