Wednesday night, I got a text message from my friend and ALC tentmate, 
TeeLo, letting me know that he was in the bay area and did I want to have dinner. Since I am in a state of pretty extreme poverty, I begged off, but he was insistent and offered to take me to dinner, so who could refuse generosity? He suggested Walzwerk, and I agreed, and an hour later he was arriving to pick me up.
The restaurant was crowded, so we had a beer while we waited the approximately 30 minutes before we could be seated. Meanwhile we had a delightful conversation about work, the ALC, Thilo’s growing up in Germany, mimicking accents, learning another language, musical instruments and how musical talent often grants one ease of learning other languages, the local food movement, that creepy video of the male chicks being tossed into the grinder for the crime of being male, among other things.
Dinner was pretty decent – since German food reminds me of my growing up (my mother is of German ancestry), I decided to grant myself a dispensation to my pescetarianism for the night, and had the pea soup (which had small pieces of ham in it) and the jaeger schnitzel. Thilo had the potato pancakes and the jaeger schnitzel, too.
After dinner, we kept the conversation going, even as he drove me back home. It was a lovely two and a half hour conversation, yummy dinner, and delightful company. Now that I know that Thilo is up here a couple days a week for work from LA, I am happy to know that we get to hang out more!
Oh, yeah, and I think I decided that I’m going to do the ALC again next year.
Today, I had traffic court – back in March I got a ticket for (not) driving in the bus-only lane on O’Farrell. Since I didn’t actually do this, I decided to fight the ticket. In June, I had the arraignment, where I plead not guilty, and had the court date set for today.
The actual violation is a city transportation code violation, and wouldn’t add any points to my driving record, but something the officer said to me while he was giving me the ticket pissed me off – he said “you know, they’re really cracking down on this.” He said this to me before he even told me what it was that I supposedly had done – I had to ask him what he was talking about and what he thought I had done. When he told me that I had driven in the bus lane, I was boggled, because that’s just not something I do when I drive. It actually makes me upset when I see other people driving in that lane, because I’m a big supporter of public transit and think we should have more of it and at a lower cost.
During the arraignment, I asked the judge where the officer’s report was, and she said that he hadn’t submitted one. If that was the case, I argued, isn’t that analagous to him not showing up in court, and I moved that the charge be dismissed. She said no, that he hadn’t submitted a report, but that I would have a chance to defend myself at the trial.
Today, I sat on the bench outside the courttoom looking to see if the officer showed up. I remember what he looks like, and I didn’t see him, so that was hopeful. I had prepared by having the text of the code printed out, a google map and six pages of satellite images of O’Farrell Street so I could look quickly at where the officer said I was in violation, and I indexed the images to the map.
When my name was called, I had already turned on my movie trailer voice, and said “here” so commandingly that every single head turned toward where I was sitting in the back of the room. But the officer’s name went unanswered, and the clerk said “case dismissed.” I got the little slip of paper from the other clerk and exited the courttoom, exulting in my victory! That’s $159 ($60 fine plus administrative fees) I couldn’t have figured out how to pay, so I’ll take a default victory anyday.
The absence of the officer is something you should all take away from this – in just the 20-ish names that were called before mine, in almost all of the cases, the officer was not present and the case was dismissed. Why San Francisco lets itself lose so much money is a mystery, but there it is.
After court, I came home, napped a bit, then hopped back on the bus to work.
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