I just went out for my 1:30 AM cigarette, and there was a guy hiding behind the stairs wearing only boxer shorts, a T-shirt, and socks, holding a baseball bat. When he heard me come out, he started giggling and gingerly skipped up the block a ways. After a minute or so, he skipped back and hid behind a different staircase next door, and then slipped around and stood behind a van.
What kept it at “what the hell?” level of interest instead of “holy shit psycho bat guy!” was that I could hear his buddies a couple doors down, out on the sidewalk drinking. But what sucks is that I stood out there to see how the whole thing played out, but one of his friends walked by with a beer can and pointed at him, and the dude just followed him back to the apartment, holding the bat. I expected a lot bigger pay-off.
Now I like to think I’m pretty open-minded, but it’s stuff like this that makes me think I’m just not cut out to live in the city. Merry Prankster Bat Guy was weird but pretty tame. More annoying is the huge lesbian with the scalp tattoo who plants herself on my steps to smoke cigarettes and talk on her cell phone. And whoever it is that leaves half-eaten sandwiches in plastic bags at the top of my stairs (that’s happened twice now). And the woman who walks by once a week at 2 AM having a long, loud, angry conversation with no one in particular. And the guy I already mentioned who always wears shorts no matter how cold it is and is always washing his car or cleaning out his garage in the wee hours of the morning. And the guy who walks by fornightly playing a digeridoo. And that weird guy who’s always out on his doorstep at 1:30 smoking a cigarette and then goes back inside to write about it on his weblog.
And this is a relatively boring neighborhood; I wonder what goes on in the rest of the city?