Last night, tipster Allison Y. alerted us to an incident that occurred yesterday morning—an incident so strange, we just had to tell you about it. It all started at about 10:15am Thursday morning, when our tipster was in the right-hand turn lane on Oak Street, waiting to turn onto Octavia. I first spotted her zooming down Oak in the far left lane, she writes. I saw her go by and realized there was a guy on the hood on his back, hanging on kind of spread-eagled. She turned right from that far left lane across all lanes of traffic onto Octavia. We caught up to her around Market—she was screaming, he was screaming, it was insane. As you can see from Allison's photo, it does appear that there was a lot of screaming going on, with what she describes as a metermaid guy clearly shown atop the hood of the vehicle. The account continues: I have no idea what started her on this drive of terror, and no idea why this dude did not get off her car, but I was pretty relieved the cop showed up as the light turned green. I'm positive she would have driven onto the freeway on-ramp with this guy on her hood. We checked in with the SFPD, but they didn't have any record of the incident on file, and couldn't confirm what had happened (updated, see below). Does anyone else have an eyewitness account of the incident or have any theories? We simply must know more. Update, 2:15pm: We heard back from the SFPD and got a full report from Officer Albie Esparza, who confirmed that the man on the hood of the car was indeed a DPT parking control officer. According to Esparza, the incident began yesterday at 10:10am on the 1300 block of Hayes. The parking control officer was in the process of issuing a parking citation when the female driver of the vehicle got into it and attempted to run him down. According to Esparza, the officer had to jump onto the vehicle in order to avoid being run over. In.
Wild times All This Mayhem. Photograph: Gregory William Stewart Gregory William Stewart/ PR Here is a skateboarding documentary with a meaty story to tell – though sometimes it strays suspiciously far from objectivity. It is the extraordinary and tragic tale of the Pappas brothers, Tas and Ben, two teenagers from suburban white Australia who travelled to the US in the 1990s with the purpose of conquering the vertical skateboard scene. And conquer it they did, for a while, before succumbing to drugs and wild times and finding themselves repeatedly frozen out as Aussie outsiders by the world of corporate-sponsored skateboard competition, whose judges appeared to favour the homegrown American star, Tony Hawk. ( In boxing, they say it's the kind of place where you have to knock their guy out to get a draw.) Then the boys' money ran out, and the film hints that the brothers' father had embezzled it from their company. Really? When? How? The movie does not elaborate, and as this documentary project is approved by Tas, I sense it has tiptoed around the issue of Pappas Sr. It would also be interesting to hear Hawk's side of the story: he is conspicuous by his absence. A sad, involving story. If it becomes a feature, Andrew Garfield would have to play Tas.
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