In Oakland, CA, the streets often seem lawless. Once on Highway 580, the driver in front of me, going about fifty miles an hour, opened his door and dropped a bottle of vodka onto the concrete below. I’ve seen cars completely ignore ambulances and fire engines, preferring instead to take advantage of the fact that all the other cars are pulled over, so they can speed through the intersection themselves. Then there are the people who stop their cars smack dab in the middle of a street, traffic piling up behind them, to chat with a friend in an oncoming car, or on the sidewalk, or at a stop sign. Drivers in this town are—to quote the kids—totally whack.
This is of course nothing compared to the homicides, which consistently hit the triple digits. Recently my dad and I almost ended up as part of that growing tally, and not surprisingly, it was a car that almost put us there.
My dad came down to Oakland on a recent Tuesday to help me schlep a bunch of stuff from the garage and out to the curb for a bulky waste pick-up. (It’s my grandma’s old house, so there is a lot of old stuff in the garage.) Normally on a Tuesday, I would be at work and my car would be in the driveway. But today, the car was moved and we were shuttling items up and down the driveway.
We finished hauling the refrigerator, old lawn chairs, and broken wheelbarrows out to the sidewalk. My dad was getting ready to go, but not before we walked out onto the front lawn to do a quick visual inspection of my chimney, which I worried was in disrepair. We then crossed the lawn and walked to the sidewalk in front of my house. About a minute later, as we stood chatting on the sidewalk, I heard a tire squeal from down the street. I was thinking to myself, “who the hell is driving so fast on my street?” because generally, people are not racing around my block; it’s not a main vein through the neighborhood and there’s no real reason to be on this block unless you live there. I drive exceptionally slow on my street because there are often kids riding bikes or people walking dogs.
