suspicious, even Bob himself. The entire avenue is like one big Fellini film. The only way a person would look even remotely unusual to a Bob & Bob’s employee is if that person were actually standing in front of them in a ski mask, waving a gun, and it would be a little late to alert anyone at that point. And who are we supposed to report these suspicious characters to anyway? Homeland Security? Bob? You can’t arrest someone just for looking suspicious.
The neighborhood cops even stopped by on their bicycles. (I don’t like their chances of catching up to the perps in their getaway car on those bikes, even if they pedaled like the Wicked Witch of the West, and besides, even if they could catch them, what would they do? Ask the robbers to pull over and wait while they get off their bikes and arrest them?) They gave us some helpful tips on what to do in the case of a robbery. They told us not to play the hero. For eight bucks an hour? Don’t worry about it. And hand the money over to them cheerfully. We’ll hand it over, all right, but cheerfully? We don’t even do that for our customers. Record store employees are misanthropes. It goes with the territory. Plus, if you’ve worked retail for more than six months you will most certainly be suffering from Retail Burnout Syndrome. Even if you were cheerful when you were hired, you won’t be for long.
Jennifer and Laz have banded together as selfproclaimed “crime experts.” Jennifer knows someone who was shot in the leg (of course she does—spilled blood is only one of her many ghoulish preoccupations), and Laz has started his own perp walk of all the neighborhood unsavories that he’s acquainted with. He has a long list of suspects, and I hate to burst his Columbo bubble, but the cops say it’s very unlikely that the suspects are from the neighborhood. Still, I think it’s nice that the latest crime spree has brought him out of his shell.
I have my own suspects but I’m not saying anything right now. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed these two guys hanging around who look a little uptown for this end of Telegraph. Telegraph Avenue runs for miles and becomes Oakland somewhere along the way, but this end, the Berkeley end, is only about six blocks long and ends at the campus. It’s like falling down a rabbit hole and arriving in 1967. You notice new people, and these two are definitely a little slick for around here. When I first saw them, right around the same time that the robberies started, I figured that they were dealers moved in from San Francisco or Oakland or some other city, looking for a new customer base. One of my suspects is taller and wears a black wool beanie and a spendy black leather jacket. He wears some expensive-looking pimp bling too. The other one wears a tracksuit and a headband. It’s entirely possible that they have a little armed-robbery hobby. Everyone needs a hobby. These two also don’t look like the kind of people who would be entirely uncomfortable pointing a gun. I’ve seen them getting into an illegally parked late-model BMW with slick rims and throbbing woofers. One of them, the one in the tracksuit, was in Bob’s last Saturday night buying a hip-hop CD. He was definitely not interested in exchanging pleasantries with me. Next time I see Shorty and Jam, I’ll ask about them. Nothing happens on the street without those two noticing, at least nothing drug-related.
The other thing about neighborhood crime is that it tends not to be too good for business. People like to watch it on the news from the comfort of their La-Z-Boy recliners and shake their heads at the state of the world while they munch on a bag of Cheetos, but they’re not keen on getting too close. This has put Bob in a worse-than-usual state of mind and he’s filled the CD carousel with Nick Cave and Nina Simone and Jeff Buckley and a few other Gloomy Gus–type singers, consequently depressing everyone in the store until we’re all staring out the
The neighborhood cops even stopped by on their bicycles. (I don’t like their chances of catching up to the perps in their getaway car on those bikes, even if they pedaled like the Wicked Witch of the West, and besides, even if they could catch them, what would they do? Ask the robbers to pull over and wait while they get off their bikes and arrest them?) They gave us some helpful tips on what to do in the case of a robbery. They told us not to play the hero. For eight bucks an hour? Don’t worry about it. And hand the money over to them cheerfully. We’ll hand it over, all right, but cheerfully? We don’t even do that for our customers. Record store employees are misanthropes. It goes with the territory. Plus, if you’ve worked retail for more than six months you will most certainly be suffering from Retail Burnout Syndrome. Even if you were cheerful when you were hired, you won’t be for long.
Jennifer and Laz have banded together as selfproclaimed “crime experts.” Jennifer knows someone who was shot in the leg (of course she does—spilled blood is only one of her many ghoulish preoccupations), and Laz has started his own perp walk of all the neighborhood unsavories that he’s acquainted with. He has a long list of suspects, and I hate to burst his Columbo bubble, but the cops say it’s very unlikely that the suspects are from the neighborhood. Still, I think it’s nice that the latest crime spree has brought him out of his shell.
I have my own suspects but I’m not saying anything right now. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve noticed these two guys hanging around who look a little uptown for this end of Telegraph. Telegraph Avenue runs for miles and becomes Oakland somewhere along the way, but this end, the Berkeley end, is only about six blocks long and ends at the campus. It’s like falling down a rabbit hole and arriving in 1967. You notice new people, and these two are definitely a little slick for around here. When I first saw them, right around the same time that the robberies started, I figured that they were dealers moved in from San Francisco or Oakland or some other city, looking for a new customer base. One of my suspects is taller and wears a black wool beanie and a spendy black leather jacket. He wears some expensive-looking pimp bling too. The other one wears a tracksuit and a headband. It’s entirely possible that they have a little armed-robbery hobby. Everyone needs a hobby. These two also don’t look like the kind of people who would be entirely uncomfortable pointing a gun. I’ve seen them getting into an illegally parked late-model BMW with slick rims and throbbing woofers. One of them, the one in the tracksuit, was in Bob’s last Saturday night buying a hip-hop CD. He was definitely not interested in exchanging pleasantries with me. Next time I see Shorty and Jam, I’ll ask about them. Nothing happens on the street without those two noticing, at least nothing drug-related.
The other thing about neighborhood crime is that it tends not to be too good for business. People like to watch it on the news from the comfort of their La-Z-Boy recliners and shake their heads at the state of the world while they munch on a bag of Cheetos, but they’re not keen on getting too close. This has put Bob in a worse-than-usual state of mind and he’s filled the CD carousel with Nick Cave and Nina Simone and Jeff Buckley and a few other Gloomy Gus–type singers, consequently depressing everyone in the store until we’re all staring out the
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