Brian Almost Gets Arrested

With only a few weeks left in Chicago this summer I am trying to cram in all the stuff I want to do. On Tuesday night I went with one of the other interns down to the Sox-Tigers game at Comiskey. The ride down was interesting because the train was half filled with Cubs fans going home after the day game and the other half filled with Sox fans going to the night game. We scalped two tickets and were pleasantly surprised that there were a large number of Tigers fans at the game. The game was close throughout and the Sox fought back to take it to extra innings. Even in extras, after every inning people would leave because it was a Tuesday night. We never even considered leaving. The game ended when Nick Swisher hit a 2 run homer in the bottom of the 14th. It would have been nice to see a Tigers win though. Since the game went 5 hours, I didn't get home until 1:30, but I would easily do it again.

Then yesterday (Wednesday) one of the interns, Ryan, who kinda looks like Steve Holt (STEVE HOLT!), invited us up to Evanston to go to an open bar at Northwestern. I headed up a bit earlier because I wanted to check out the campus. Northwestern is located right on lake Michigan with the city of Evanston to the west. As with most of the college towns that I've been to I expected that the road between the campus and the town would be full of bookstores, restaurants and bars. Much like Grand River at MSU or University Ave in Gainesville. But instead there were just houses running all the way up the street. But something about the houses wasn't quite right. There weren't any red solo cups on the lawns or couches on the porches. There were however children's toys on the lawns and the elderly on the porches. Immediately surrounding Northwestern is an actual neighborhood. I was looking for the slums of the student ghetto. The campus itself is very nice but I with only 8,000 undergrads it really feels small for a Big Ten university.

I got to the bar a few minutes before 8 and was the very first customer of the day. Soon after the other interns showed up and then Ryan came with some girls. I couldn't believe it, I was at an open bar near a college campus and the place was empty. There were nine of us, and maybe about 5 other people in the bar. I realize it's a weeknight in the summer, but I bet if even if our worst bar (Touchdowns) had a $15 open bar it would be packed. The CO2 canister blew so the bar was only serving well drinks, this was a guaranteed one way ticket to drunktown. Once it got down to 40 minutes until the open bar ended, it became a race to drink as much as possible. I was slamming G n' T's with one of the girls, Liz, and convincing a random stranger to pay $1 so the jukebox would play Miley Cryus.

While at the bar we decided to go to the beach on the campus, after being told stories of Ryan hiding from the cops after sneaking in late one night. We grabbed some towels from one of the girls places and started walking towards the beach. By this time I was drunk, and I needed to pee. I slowed down and walked behind a bush and did what I had to do. Just as I was tucking in and zipping up I noticed a light shining on me from behind. The voice holding the flashlight said "What do you think your doing?"
I replied "Don't worry about it."
This is probably the worst thing to say to a cop. Well, I take that back. I think the time I told one of Ann Arbor's finest to "Fuck Off" was worse. Once I realized that my balls were in a salad shooter, I immediately apologized and started talking to him. Turns out he has been working for Northwestern for about a year and is planning on going to the police academy in the fall. My long standing belief that the best way to deal with the law is to be polite and cooperative paid off because he said he wasn't going to write me a ticket. I walked up the street with him and up to our group who all thought I was fucked. Instead I introduced him to everyone and we talked to him for a bit. He noticed our towel and said "If your going to the beach I'm not going to follow you, but if you get caught I can't help you." Which was pretty cool for the guy who just caught me going pee pee in public. I forgot to mention that the entire time I had a Miller Lite in my pocket.

You didn't think that was me almost getting arrested did you?

So we jumped the fence and snuck onto the beach. Once down to the beach, Liz took me by the hand and told me to come in with her. I threw off my shirt and shorts and we ran into the water. We raced to a buoy about 40 meters away from shore. It was there, shoulder deep in the warm water of lake Michigan and underneath the summer stars, that I had the most romantic kiss of my life. Soon after everyone else was in the water and hanging out. Not too long after that we saw the spotlight of a cop car from the parking lot. I ran up the beach, got my things and took off south. My exit route had been blocked by another cop who shined his light at me. As a immediate response I dropped to the ground. All this did was get me soaking wet. I then crawled into a large patch of bushy grasses. I was 21 years old and still running from the cops like I was 17.



I was in a pretty good spot but I could hear the cops saying that if I give up now I won't be arrested. They were searching the area and one of the cops came within 20 feet of me. I heard on the radio that they had apprehended 4 people already I decided to stay put because they only way they would find me is if they brought out a dog or a helicopter. Then I heard a dog barking and a cop say "go get em boy". I guess the dog got on the scent of one of the other kids because it didn't come near me. I waited about an hour and a half and then low-crawled to the parking lot. Everyone else made it out, and the one who got caught only got warnings. By this time the train had stopped running for the night and we were still sandy and wet. I didn't make it home until 3:30 and then had to shower before I went to bed. I came into work an hour and a half late and missed my first meeting of the day. The good news is that we have plans to go back up next Wednesday.