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Home Appliance Repair
2011.10.26 01:14 linoleumknife Home Appliance Repair
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2021.06.21 17:29 OfficialRepairClinic ApplianceRepairClinic
RepairClinic.com FIND. FIX. FINISH. Whether you're a pro or a novice, we've got you covered with the repair know-how and replacement parts you need.
2011.03.24 07:09 roger_ AskElectronics
This is a technical ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING subreddit, covering practical, component-level circuit design and repair, electronic circuit theory, electronic components, tools and equipment.
2023.06.08 20:31 AmPMAppliances Reliable Appliance Repair Services in Northridge
When it comes to reliable appliance repair Northridge, we've got you covered! Our team of experienced technicians specializes in repairing a wide range of household appliances, including refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, and more. We understand the importance of having properly functioning appliances in your home, and that's why we are committed to providing fast and efficient repairs. With our expertise and attention to detail, we can diagnose and resolve issues effectively, ensuring your appliances are back up and running in no time. Trust us to deliver exceptional service and restore the functionality of your appliances. Contact us today for reliable appliance repair services in Northridge!
submitted by AmPMAppliances to u/AmPMAppliances [link] [comments]
2023.06.08 20:03 Odd-Woodpecker996 Good appliance repair
Hey guys a buddy of mine is looking for a good appliance repair, sounds like his fridge is having issues.
submitted by Odd-Woodpecker996 to missoula [link] [comments]
2023.06.08 19:20 WoodBoogerSpork XR Bearing Change - post mortem
Just completed a bearing change on my XR. Wanted to give my 2 cents to others who may be contemplating a bearing change.
Background - I am an IT person. Not super mechanical, but I own my own home and have a basic toolbox. I repair most things in my home that are not super technical. Think - changing garage door springs or putting up a privacy fence. Anything that falls into plumbing, electrical or major appliance change outs I leave to professionals. Just offering this as a kind of litmus test for others.
Where I went wrong - The press. Frankly I have ZERO need for a press outside of changing my one wheel bearings. I wanted to go as cheap as possible to get the job done. This can help you learn from my mistake. You need to ensure that the press working area is big enough to encompass your hub. (This will depend on the board type you have, but you need space.) I tried to get off SUPER cheap and bought a 1 ton press that only had a 5 inch working area. So I was able to get one bearing in, but not the other. Here is what I bought off Amazon. Vevor 3 Ton For those wondering, it is a total POS, BUT it gets the job done and for the least amount of money I could find. Did I mention I have no other use for an arbor press?
I picked up a Bearing Driver Set at Harbor Freight (https://www.harborfreight.com/bearing-race-and-seal-driver-set-10-piece-63261.html) Harbor Freight! - When it absolutely positively needs to work ONCE!
Oh you will also need metric allen wrenches. I had SAE, but the inner hub bolts are metric.
The actual change: The good news is I didn't fuck up my board. Just ran my first test ride this morning. Went with ceramic Grizzly bearings. I froze them before pressing them in. I think that definitely helps. Once I had the appropriately sized press, getting the bearings in was actually pretty easy. My biggest headache was getting the plate back onto the stator. The plate wouldn't seat all the way back down and was leaving about an 1/8 inch gap. Drove me nuts. Eventually I just got out the old 8lb sledge and went to town until it fit. (Joking. Don't do that) I did monkey around with it for about 30 minutes before I was finally able to get it seated.
After that the rest of the change was pretty standard stuff. My motor now makes an interesting rubbing noise, but I have searched and found plenty of other boards that folks have posted videos of and mine sounds exactly like theirs, which I have been told is nothing to worry about.
Hoping that helps some of you out there that may be on the fence about changing your bearings yourself. Took me about 6 hours all told. That time was filled with me carefully watching videos and striving not to fuck up my board. In the future this will probably be about 2-3 hours I would guess.
Happy floating.
submitted by WoodBoogerSpork to onewheel [link] [comments]
Background - I am an IT person. Not super mechanical, but I own my own home and have a basic toolbox. I repair most things in my home that are not super technical. Think - changing garage door springs or putting up a privacy fence. Anything that falls into plumbing, electrical or major appliance change outs I leave to professionals. Just offering this as a kind of litmus test for others.
Where I went wrong - The press. Frankly I have ZERO need for a press outside of changing my one wheel bearings. I wanted to go as cheap as possible to get the job done. This can help you learn from my mistake. You need to ensure that the press working area is big enough to encompass your hub. (This will depend on the board type you have, but you need space.) I tried to get off SUPER cheap and bought a 1 ton press that only had a 5 inch working area. So I was able to get one bearing in, but not the other. Here is what I bought off Amazon. Vevor 3 Ton For those wondering, it is a total POS, BUT it gets the job done and for the least amount of money I could find. Did I mention I have no other use for an arbor press?
I picked up a Bearing Driver Set at Harbor Freight (https://www.harborfreight.com/bearing-race-and-seal-driver-set-10-piece-63261.html) Harbor Freight! - When it absolutely positively needs to work ONCE!
Oh you will also need metric allen wrenches. I had SAE, but the inner hub bolts are metric.
The actual change: The good news is I didn't fuck up my board. Just ran my first test ride this morning. Went with ceramic Grizzly bearings. I froze them before pressing them in. I think that definitely helps. Once I had the appropriately sized press, getting the bearings in was actually pretty easy. My biggest headache was getting the plate back onto the stator. The plate wouldn't seat all the way back down and was leaving about an 1/8 inch gap. Drove me nuts. Eventually I just got out the old 8lb sledge and went to town until it fit. (Joking. Don't do that) I did monkey around with it for about 30 minutes before I was finally able to get it seated.
After that the rest of the change was pretty standard stuff. My motor now makes an interesting rubbing noise, but I have searched and found plenty of other boards that folks have posted videos of and mine sounds exactly like theirs, which I have been told is nothing to worry about.
Hoping that helps some of you out there that may be on the fence about changing your bearings yourself. Took me about 6 hours all told. That time was filled with me carefully watching videos and striving not to fuck up my board. In the future this will probably be about 2-3 hours I would guess.
Happy floating.
2023.06.08 19:09 RenIysPeach Recent Marketing graduate looking for work. Looking for advice on my resume.
I graduated with a Marketing degree in December. It’s been a struggle to find a job/internship since then. I spoke with two former professors and a career coach. They said there’s nothing wrong with my resume and I’m doing everything right. It’s simply just a bad time to get into marketing.
I’m interested in any entry marketing jobs. Throughout college I didn’t find a niche. I just felt comfortable doing everything. However, I was really interested in SMM, analytics, etc.
I realize I’m at a disadvantage for not interning in college. It wasn’t a good time to do it with COVID. Then during my last two semesters, there were multiple losses in my family and health issues with my mother and brother. I didn’t have time to intern and I wasn’t in the right headspace. But things are okay now.
submitted by RenIysPeach to resumes [link] [comments]
I’m interested in any entry marketing jobs. Throughout college I didn’t find a niche. I just felt comfortable doing everything. However, I was really interested in SMM, analytics, etc.
I realize I’m at a disadvantage for not interning in college. It wasn’t a good time to do it with COVID. Then during my last two semesters, there were multiple losses in my family and health issues with my mother and brother. I didn’t have time to intern and I wasn’t in the right headspace. But things are okay now.
2023.06.08 17:37 Gangreless Dishwasher recommendations?
We were looking at one of the Bosch 800 series but our appliance repair guy said they've been having issues with the new crystal dry technology failing and recommended staying away from it for now and to go with the 500 series if we needed to. Unfortunately our dishwasher isn't holding out as long as we'd hoped.
Does anyone have the 800 series with Crystal dry? Any issues with it? The 500 series felt cheap to me, like the controls and doors so I'm a little meh on it.
Other thank Bosch, any recommendations? (not LG)
submitted by Gangreless to Appliances [link] [comments]
Does anyone have the 800 series with Crystal dry? Any issues with it? The 500 series felt cheap to me, like the controls and doors so I'm a little meh on it.
Other thank Bosch, any recommendations? (not LG)
2023.06.08 17:26 ZimblerJack Built in Microwave issue
So I have a built in Frigidaire Microwave. Today when I was using it, the food was ready and I opened the door and saw a spark, and the microwave now doesn’t work at all (doesn’t even show the time)
I’m certainly going to call someone to get this fixed. I’m not so concerned over the exact problem at the moment (I’ll leave that to the experts when they come) but based on that description, do you think I should call an appliance repair company or an appliance installation company (meaning having it removed and replaced)?
TBH if this wasn’t a built in unit I’d just throw it out and fork out like $70 for a new one. I’d honestly never have a built in unit installed, but it came with the house.
submitted by ZimblerJack to appliancerepair [link] [comments]
I’m certainly going to call someone to get this fixed. I’m not so concerned over the exact problem at the moment (I’ll leave that to the experts when they come) but based on that description, do you think I should call an appliance repair company or an appliance installation company (meaning having it removed and replaced)?
TBH if this wasn’t a built in unit I’d just throw it out and fork out like $70 for a new one. I’d honestly never have a built in unit installed, but it came with the house.
2023.06.08 17:05 Ok-Sector-5106 dfgdsg
 | submitted by Ok-Sector-5106 to Nowhere [link] [comments] |
2023.06.08 15:16 JeNiqueTaMere LG dishwashers - garbage
About 6 years ago I bought an LG LDP6797ST, which for me at the time was a rather high end purchase (it was on sale for 800$ Canadian from an original price of 1200$ which in the pre-pandemic pre-inflation time was not cheap)
It had nice features and washed really well, while it lasted... Which was less than any other dishwasher I ever bought.
First problem happened a little over a year after I bought it, right as the warranty ended.
It has top mounted touch controls and the electronic board failed because of water and humidity. The board was not coated which isn't smart for something that sits in a hot and humid environment like a dishwasher. The new replacement board is now coated and has lasted the next 5 years, and this was a common design flaw according to the repair person. Luckily my credit card extended warranty covered the 400$ repair-half the original price for a design flaw.
But now 6 years later the dishwasher has started pissing water from the door. And I don't mean a small drip but water literally squirting out with force from both sides of the door towards the bottom.
I replaced both the gasket around the tub and the bottom door seal with no change to the leak.
While investigating I realized the metal part that holds the tub gasket was a bit flexible and loose. On closer inspection I realized the channel where the gasket sits is made from a metal sheet that is glued to the tub, and after 6 years the glue has disappeared from places and now there's gaps in the tub wall where the gasket sits.
Now keep in mind this is a stainless steel tub so you'd expect it to be a solid metal piece... But you'd be naive.
And since the glued channel is on the inside of the tub not the outside, these gaps basically let water pass behind the gasket to the outside. I put a flashlight in the tub and could see light coming through in many places and the soft glue was falling out.
Again, design flaw. Using glue to join metals inside a hot wet environment, not the smartest idea. It should have been welded, or the channel should have been glued on the outside of the tub not inside.
I tried to fix this by adding aluminum tape (the sturdy one used for HVAC). This sealed the gaps I could see but didn't change the leak in any way.
So now I'm going to throw out a 6 year old dishwasher that still washes the dishes very well, when it doesn't spray the water through the sides of the door.
Very disappointed in the level of engineering in this appliance.
I've had many other dishwashers in my family with their own problems, usually with electronic boards failing or no longer washing well, but never one that started pissing water all over after 5 years.
submitted by JeNiqueTaMere to Appliances [link] [comments]
It had nice features and washed really well, while it lasted... Which was less than any other dishwasher I ever bought.
First problem happened a little over a year after I bought it, right as the warranty ended.
It has top mounted touch controls and the electronic board failed because of water and humidity. The board was not coated which isn't smart for something that sits in a hot and humid environment like a dishwasher. The new replacement board is now coated and has lasted the next 5 years, and this was a common design flaw according to the repair person. Luckily my credit card extended warranty covered the 400$ repair-half the original price for a design flaw.
But now 6 years later the dishwasher has started pissing water from the door. And I don't mean a small drip but water literally squirting out with force from both sides of the door towards the bottom.
I replaced both the gasket around the tub and the bottom door seal with no change to the leak.
While investigating I realized the metal part that holds the tub gasket was a bit flexible and loose. On closer inspection I realized the channel where the gasket sits is made from a metal sheet that is glued to the tub, and after 6 years the glue has disappeared from places and now there's gaps in the tub wall where the gasket sits.
Now keep in mind this is a stainless steel tub so you'd expect it to be a solid metal piece... But you'd be naive.
And since the glued channel is on the inside of the tub not the outside, these gaps basically let water pass behind the gasket to the outside. I put a flashlight in the tub and could see light coming through in many places and the soft glue was falling out.
Again, design flaw. Using glue to join metals inside a hot wet environment, not the smartest idea. It should have been welded, or the channel should have been glued on the outside of the tub not inside.
I tried to fix this by adding aluminum tape (the sturdy one used for HVAC). This sealed the gaps I could see but didn't change the leak in any way.
So now I'm going to throw out a 6 year old dishwasher that still washes the dishes very well, when it doesn't spray the water through the sides of the door.
Very disappointed in the level of engineering in this appliance.
I've had many other dishwashers in my family with their own problems, usually with electronic boards failing or no longer washing well, but never one that started pissing water all over after 5 years.
2023.06.08 14:56 MaximStaviiski Pc randomly restarts in my apartment but not at the repair service
Updated:
I've had this happen on and off for a few years. I built my pc around 6 years ago and have been upgrading it since then.
PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 700W gold
GPU: MSI GTX 970
CPU: intel i5 11400F 6-Core LGA1200
MOBO: ASRock B560M PRO4
SSD: ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 512GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 3.5 2TB 7200 RPM SATA6
and WD Cavier Blue 1TB SATA 3 7200RPM
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 16 GB
I think it first started doing these restarts around 3-4 years ago. They almost exclusively happened ingame at first, then after some time while idling too. After several visits to the repair guys (in the span of months) they ultimately didn't encounter ANY restartd and didn't find anything wrong but the restarts continued at my place so they suggested changing the PSU. I didn't have any restarts with the new PSU for about a year, then they came back, but they were very infrequent. I would say once every few weeks or so.
This was all happening while I was living at my parents' house. I moved out 2 years ago but I'm not completely sure if the restarts with the new PSU began before or after I moved out.
Last week my pc started restarting itself randomly to the point of becoming unusuable. It gets stuck in a restart loop and the only way to get it out of it is unplugging or turning the psu off. I took it to a different repair service this time and after "rigorous testing for hours", according to them, they didn't encounter any restarts. So basically after a total of 4-5 visits to different repair services in the span of years, they've encountered zero restarts.
I tried 2 new power cords
Removed ALL the periphery
Tried every single outlet in my flat
Unplugged every appliance except for the fridge
The restarts are still happening within 2 to 30 minutes of being turned on.
At this point I'm so fed up with this sack of garbage I just wanna throw it out my window and buy a prebuilt pc. But I'm not even close to being able to afford that right now.
I literally have no more ideas or money to spend for new repair services. Any form of input will be greatly appreciated.
submitted by MaximStaviiski to techsupport [link] [comments]
I've had this happen on and off for a few years. I built my pc around 6 years ago and have been upgrading it since then.
PSU: Be Quiet! Pure Power 11 700W gold
GPU: MSI GTX 970
CPU: intel i5 11400F 6-Core LGA1200
MOBO: ASRock B560M PRO4
SSD: ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 512GB
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 3.5 2TB 7200 RPM SATA6
and WD Cavier Blue 1TB SATA 3 7200RPM
RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 16 GB
I think it first started doing these restarts around 3-4 years ago. They almost exclusively happened ingame at first, then after some time while idling too. After several visits to the repair guys (in the span of months) they ultimately didn't encounter ANY restartd and didn't find anything wrong but the restarts continued at my place so they suggested changing the PSU. I didn't have any restarts with the new PSU for about a year, then they came back, but they were very infrequent. I would say once every few weeks or so.
This was all happening while I was living at my parents' house. I moved out 2 years ago but I'm not completely sure if the restarts with the new PSU began before or after I moved out.
Last week my pc started restarting itself randomly to the point of becoming unusuable. It gets stuck in a restart loop and the only way to get it out of it is unplugging or turning the psu off. I took it to a different repair service this time and after "rigorous testing for hours", according to them, they didn't encounter any restarts. So basically after a total of 4-5 visits to different repair services in the span of years, they've encountered zero restarts.
I tried 2 new power cords
Removed ALL the periphery
Tried every single outlet in my flat
Unplugged every appliance except for the fridge
The restarts are still happening within 2 to 30 minutes of being turned on.
At this point I'm so fed up with this sack of garbage I just wanna throw it out my window and buy a prebuilt pc. But I'm not even close to being able to afford that right now.
I literally have no more ideas or money to spend for new repair services. Any form of input will be greatly appreciated.
2023.06.08 11:26 bharatservicesindia Best Home appliances repair services provider platform - Bharat services
At Bharat Services, We offer customers a wide range of complete home repairing solutions such as; AC repair, washing machine repair, microwave repair, tv repair, Fridge repair etc. We strive to help people by providing extraordinary service
submitted by bharatservicesindia to u/bharatservicesindia [link] [comments]
2023.06.08 10:33 onestoptra Appliance Repairs Directory in Christchurch
 | submitted by onestoptra to u/onestoptra [link] [comments] |
2023.06.08 08:59 AdvanceAppliances Advance Appliance
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submitted by AdvanceAppliances to u/AdvanceAppliances [link] [comments]
2023.06.08 08:56 AdvanceAppliances Advance Appliance
Advance appliance repair services provide services with a certified appliance service technician. Servicing all major brands of appliances, our first priority is to make sure to fulfill our customer’s expectations and over exceed them. We have a very good reputation among people and proved to stand behind affordable and quality service. Do not hesitate to contact us.
ADVANCE APPLIANCE REPAIR SERVICES
The Advance Appliance Repair Services strive to get your device back up and running as soon as possible. We provide the best customer service. Your home or business unit is only complete and comfortable when all your appliances are in perfect condition or working as you wish.
With competitive pricing, quality parts, and well-trained staff, we offer a unique home appliance repair experience.
SERVICES FOR THE INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE OF HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES?
When a device stops working, you may not know what to do; Of course, you don’t know how it works, you don’t know why it suddenly stopped working and you obviously don’t know how to fix it. We will show you what you can do! You can hire an appliance repair that will save your day!
Consumer electronics such as televisions, home entertainment systems, and DVD players are considered “brown products”. Brown items get their name from the color of the wooden crates that were originally used to pack them at the time of shipment.
Do not hesitate to contact us. https://advanceappliance.ca/
submitted by AdvanceAppliances to u/AdvanceAppliances [link] [comments]
ADVANCE APPLIANCE REPAIR SERVICES
The Advance Appliance Repair Services strive to get your device back up and running as soon as possible. We provide the best customer service. Your home or business unit is only complete and comfortable when all your appliances are in perfect condition or working as you wish.
With competitive pricing, quality parts, and well-trained staff, we offer a unique home appliance repair experience.
SERVICES FOR THE INSTALLATION AND MAINTENANCE OF HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES?
When a device stops working, you may not know what to do; Of course, you don’t know how it works, you don’t know why it suddenly stopped working and you obviously don’t know how to fix it. We will show you what you can do! You can hire an appliance repair that will save your day!
Consumer electronics such as televisions, home entertainment systems, and DVD players are considered “brown products”. Brown items get their name from the color of the wooden crates that were originally used to pack them at the time of shipment.
Do not hesitate to contact us. https://advanceappliance.ca/
2023.06.08 08:21 ApplianceRepairrrrrr Repair My Appliance
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submitted by ApplianceRepairrrrrr to u/ApplianceRepairrrrrr [link] [comments]
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2023.06.08 08:17 ApplianceRepairrrrrr Repair My Appliance
About us?
Repair My Appliance we strive to get your device back up and running as soon as possible. We provide the best customer service. Your home or business unit is only complete and comfortable when all your appliances are in perfect condition or working as you wish.
With competitive pricing, quality parts, and well-trained staff, we offer unique home appliance repair experiences like appliance repair edmonton, edmonton appliance repair, stove repair, dryer repair, appliance parts edmonton
Services for the installation and maintenance of household appliances?
Do household appliances have an attractive worst-case scenario for failure? This is not true?
When a device stops working, you may not know what to do; Of course, you don’t know how it works, you don’t know why it suddenly stopped working and you obviously don’t know how to fix it.
Are you worried about best rated appliance repair edmonton , best appliance repair edmonton services?
We will show you what you can do! You can hire an appliance repair that will save your day!
Household appliances (also known as household appliances, appliances, or appliances) are mechanical and electrical machines designed to perform household functions. This appliance can perform functions such as cooking, cleaning, or storing food. Household appliances are divided into small appliances, large appliances, and consumer electronics.
Large appliances such as dishwashers, dryers, refrigerators, air conditioners, fridge repair edmonton, and stoves are considered “appliances”. Appliances were originally painted white or white and many still do today.
Consumer electronics such as televisions, home entertainment systems, and DVD players are considered “brown products”.
Brown items get their name from the color of the wooden crates that were originally used to pack them at the time of shipment.
Do not hesitate to contact us. https://www.repairmyappliance.ca/
submitted by ApplianceRepairrrrrr to u/ApplianceRepairrrrrr [link] [comments]
Repair My Appliance we strive to get your device back up and running as soon as possible. We provide the best customer service. Your home or business unit is only complete and comfortable when all your appliances are in perfect condition or working as you wish.
With competitive pricing, quality parts, and well-trained staff, we offer unique home appliance repair experiences like appliance repair edmonton, edmonton appliance repair, stove repair, dryer repair, appliance parts edmonton
Services for the installation and maintenance of household appliances?
Do household appliances have an attractive worst-case scenario for failure? This is not true?
When a device stops working, you may not know what to do; Of course, you don’t know how it works, you don’t know why it suddenly stopped working and you obviously don’t know how to fix it.
Are you worried about best rated appliance repair edmonton , best appliance repair edmonton services?
We will show you what you can do! You can hire an appliance repair that will save your day!
Household appliances (also known as household appliances, appliances, or appliances) are mechanical and electrical machines designed to perform household functions. This appliance can perform functions such as cooking, cleaning, or storing food. Household appliances are divided into small appliances, large appliances, and consumer electronics.
Large appliances such as dishwashers, dryers, refrigerators, air conditioners, fridge repair edmonton, and stoves are considered “appliances”. Appliances were originally painted white or white and many still do today.
Consumer electronics such as televisions, home entertainment systems, and DVD players are considered “brown products”.
Brown items get their name from the color of the wooden crates that were originally used to pack them at the time of shipment.
Do not hesitate to contact us. https://www.repairmyappliance.ca/
2023.06.08 07:46 SubsidiaryPotato Best hotels in the area?
Hi, all!
We were planning on having a few repairs made at our house sometime in the next couple weeks, so we went ahead and decided to update the appliances and redo the floors, stairs, and deck at the same time.
The only problem is figuring out where to stay in the meantime! Do any of you know of any good hotels in town? I'd be willing to commute from a nearby town as well, so long as breakfast is provided!
I would like to avoid that one hotel in Upper Duck Pond, though. Everybody's been saying awful things about their experiences there.
submitted by SubsidiaryPotato to HaveWeMet [link] [comments]
We were planning on having a few repairs made at our house sometime in the next couple weeks, so we went ahead and decided to update the appliances and redo the floors, stairs, and deck at the same time.
The only problem is figuring out where to stay in the meantime! Do any of you know of any good hotels in town? I'd be willing to commute from a nearby town as well, so long as breakfast is provided!
I would like to avoid that one hotel in Upper Duck Pond, though. Everybody's been saying awful things about their experiences there.
2023.06.08 05:33 KillerOrangeCat Three New Terrifying True Scary Tales 6/7/2023
Three New Terrifying True Scary Tales
Number One: The Pool
Now, this happened a very long time ago. I am not going to mention when or where though and I am submitting it anonymously. I don’t want people going back and finding out more about it and then lashing out of me.
I was 13 years old and my brother was 11. As I mentioned, this happened a long time ago and I think today, not a lot of parents would put a 13 year old in charge of an 11 year old. But this was not unusual at all back then. In fact, I was looking after my little brother all the time before either of us even hit 10 years old.
After a while, of course, always keeping my eye on him began to get very annoying. It interfered with my hanging out with friends. It was quite a drag when I would try to talk to girls. It was just a pain in the ass, really.
Anyway, one day during a really hot summer, our parents decided to drop us both off at the local swimming pool for the day. My dad had to work and my mom had errands and stuff to run plus work do to do for the church. It was so hot and there was no way we could afford air conditioning. We had one old fan in the house and a sprinkler in the yard that we could go play in. But the swimming pool was the much better option.
Of course the pool was very crowded. Lots of families would drop their kids off there during the summertime. And of course, even though I knew it already, my mom stressed to me, “Keep an eye on your little brother at all times.”
Some of my friends were at the pool too. I got to talking to them and they told me about this new girl who moved into town. She would be starting school that fall and supposedly she was really hot. So of course, I wanted to check her out. I knew the lifeguards would be watching my brother in the water, so he would be fine.
I went with the guys and the girl was really cute. My buddies all dared me to approach her, which was admittedly a brave thing for a 13 year old boy to do. Of course, I couldn’t chicken out in front of them, so I did just that.
She was a very sweet girl. We actually ended up talking for a little while. Her parents were at the pool though, and they called her back after too long. So I went back to the water to see how my little brother was doing.
The only problem was that I couldn’t see him anywhere in the water. This was a small town in a rural area, so although I said the pool was crowded, it wasn’t like a water park is crowded though. I should have easily been able to pick him out of the water. He just wasn’t there.
I went and searched around the area surrounding the pool and didn’t see him there either. My heart started beating faster and I began panicking. I went to the building where the showers and concession stand were. He wasn’t there either. You couldn’t leave that pool without going through that building, though. I asked the attendant if a 11 year old boy had left the pool on his own in the previous hour and he told me no.
I then went to the lifeguards and my buddies. I thought maybe there was a chance that I had missed him. It’s easy to occasionally miss someone in a crowd. The lifeguards ordered everyone out of the pool. Fortunately, there were no drowned children in the pool. Unfortunately, my brother was nowhere to be found outside of the pool.
The lifeguards had to call my mother at the church. I had never before lost track of my little brother like this before. I had no idea what to expect when she showed up. I was only thankful that the police were already at the pool or she probably would have whipped my ass right there in front of the entire pool.
The trouble I got into at home isn’t something that I want to go into very much. My butt very much has PTSD from the experience. But that was minor compared to the fear I felt for my little brother. Hell, I didn’t even have time to feel guilty although that I knew that I was. I was only concerned for him and wondered what would happen.
All day and night, I expected the police to bring him home. But that didn’t happen. I expected it the next day too. But it didn’t happen.
The town organized a search to look for him. I kept expecting to hear from them that they had found him. But that didn’t happen either.
After about a week of my brother not being found, I began fearing for the worst. I began thinking that he was dead. And I was terrified every waking moment of my life, expecting to absolutely hear the news that his dead body was found.
Nearly two weeks after the disappearance, we got a phone call from the police. They had found my brother and thankfully, he was alive. But unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
Remember the attendant telling me that no boy had left on his own? Well that’s because the boy left with one of the lifeguards who was getting off duty. He had lured my brother out of the pool and into his car with promises of ice cream, something he and I rarely ever got. And my brother went to his house with him.
For all of that time, he kept my little brother locked up in his basement. He didn’t do anything sexually to him, thank God. But there was a lot of mental and some physical torment when my brother wouldn’t do what he was told to you. But the scariest part for him was thinking he would never get out and be with his family again.
Here is another weird part. The lifeguard wasn’t an adult. He did this while his parents were out of town for a few weeks. They came back early and caught him. And if you think I felt bad for my parents’ punishing me, what they did to him had to be legendary. The police thought he was either planning on killing or releasing my brother before his parents got home. But no one ever knew for sure.
He had to live with it without much help for a long time. Mental health assistance had a very bad stigma back then. But we’re both still alive today and he forgave me a long time ago.
Number Two: Taking the Garbage Out
A few weeks ago I went outside at around 3am to move the garbage to the curb since pickup would be in the morning. I often do this in the middle of the night. I just tend to keep weird hours and as the weather warms up for the summer I find the warm nights preferable to the sweltering days.
I’m not worried about bothering my neighbors since I don’t use noisy bins and all of the houses right next to me are currently empty. I actually find the quiet of the neighborhood at night quite relaxing.
Unfortunately since I don’t use bins animals are able to get into the bags a bit easier and while this doesn’t happen often it had happened on this night. So I was outside picking up the strewn around garbage and putting it into another bag when the silence of the night was suddenly broken by multiple police sirens.
At first they seemed distant and while they startled me it was not at all unheard of to hear sirens at night here. But usually it would be one in the distance. As I listened, still bagging the garbage, I could tell it was multiple sirens and they were getting closer. Then just as suddenly as it started it stopped again. There was just silence. By the time they stopped they sounded maybe four blocks away.
For a moment the night was silent again and I began hauling the bags to the curb when the neighborhood dogs began barking all at once. It was like every dog in the neighborhood had gotten the cue to start barking. Many were even howling. It continued for maybe a minute and once again it just stopped as suddenly as it had started.
Just a single chime in the night. Like someone getting a phone notification. This sound wasn’t blocks away. This sound was here. RIGHT HERE. No more than feet away. As I said, the houses around me are empty.
I was done. The rest of the garbage would wait until morning. I didn’t see anyone close by but that just made it worse. There was someone close by that I couldn’t see. I immediately went into the house to leave the garbage for the morning.
I don’t know if these things were related. If the cops had been chasing someone who’s fleeing had caused the dogs to bark. Someone who received a message on their phone as they approached my house. Or if it was all just a coincidence. But I won’t be taking the garbage out at 3am anymore.
A Commuter’s Nightmare
William M.
06/30/2021
Back in the 80s, I worked at the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco while living and commuting from Oakland, CA
My job as Registrar, took me all over Northern California, during Blood Drives at hospitals, clinics, major corporations, etc., where we would sometimes witness firsthand, the dead, being placed on gurneys, running out of the Coroner's or Medical Examiner’s rear doors, and down the sidewalks, because they simply didn’t have enough room or staff inside the morgues to process them. Mortuaries were having problems too due to the massive overload where deceased loved ones were admitted but not processed or interred for months or even years at a time.
I remember watching the News and reading newspaper accounts of E.R.s in hospitals, clinics, etc. so clogged with patients, that 1 in 10 would die waiting to just get in to see a Dr. It was a Public Health and Safety nightmare. It was a National disgrace. It was politically orchestrated mass murder. It was the B purge of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
I remember, starting work early on one of many Blood Drives (the A.I.D.S. epidemic was just getting started) and having to catch the first B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train out of the station at about 4:00 am, where morning after morning I would witness hundreds of people sleeping on the benches, or the sidewalks, or on the streets outside, waiting for it to open.
Hundreds of others would be seen walking around like zombies in the early morning freeze amid the concomitant yelling, screaming, moaning, begging, and pleading, all of it looking like a newsreel of the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Many times, I was woken at home in the middle of the night, to the sounds of people howling and cursing outside my window at some real or imagined threat, until either the police came, which usually took hours because they were spread so thin, or some tenant, or other, ran them off.
I remember the time I woke up to the sound of a woman’s voice begging in the early morning cold for someone to help her. She kept repeating it over and over growing weaker and weaker until it was little more than a whisper.
By the time I’d gotten up, armed myself with the steel-reinforced baton I’d purchased at a Police Supply store, and ran the 5 floors down to the ground floor, I found her sitting in a taxi shivering from the 42-degree drizzle coming in off the Pacific. The cabbie told me it was alright; she was just cold and needed someplace to rest and warm up; He’d drop her off at one of the nearby shelters.
At the time, I was living in a local Residence Hall on Lake Merrit in Oakland, California which was little more than a converted Hotel from the San Francisco/Oakland Gilded Age of the late 1920s. It had 5 floors and a penthouse with a capacity of about 200. I never saw it get much beyond about 30 residents. It sported a full kitchen, dining area, big screen tv viewing room, swimming pool, and a recreation room with pool, foosball, and darts.
I lived with a friend, at the time, on the 5th floor just under the penthouse. There was an elevator, but like most refurbs, it didn’t work. That meant we'd have to climb 10 flights of stairs every day to reach our room. The best part was that we had the entire floor to ourselves. I guess nobody wanted to climb that many stairs. Because we were both runners, it was a little like running the 900 feet to the top of Angel Island, running across The Golden Gate Bridge and back, or running the 3.4 miles around Lake Merrit twice a day.
Because there was no air-conditioning, all the windows were left open during the summer months, but along with whatever cool air the San Francisco/Oakland Bay would bring through the gaping nearly wall-length vault ceilinged windows, it was always accompanied by the teeming, screaming City of Oakland street din: cabbies, buses, cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, scooters, police sirens, ambulance, fire department, pedestrians, hustlers, druggies, break-dancers, prostitutes the homeless, et al. Day or night, winter or summer, it was like living in a jet engine test lab, somewhere on the 9th level of hell.
Of course, we could always close the windows against the noise 5 stories below. But if it was summer, with all the humidity coming off the bay, we’d roast like 2 suckling pigs in our own sweat even if we used a fan.
One night after a particularly grueling day at work, I came home, climbed Mount Everest (or at least K-2) to my steaming little abattoir, tore off my sports jacket, shirt, and tie, and fell into a coma-like sleep only to awake some 4 hours later to the sound of someone slamming a door, over and over, seemingly as hard as they could. It was about 2:00 am and raining so hard the water was pouring through the open window and flooding the floor and carpet. The sound was coming somewhere down the hall from one of the other units.
After about the 15th or 16th slam to my inner ear, I was up, as in a trance, running like a lunatic from unit to unit and window to window, covering the entire southside of the 5th floor; battening down the hatches, and getting drenched in the process. It was, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating. I was supposed to get up in 2 hours and commute to work in the upper peninsula.
Having unconsciously completed this Sisyphean task and realizing that there was zero chance of getting any sleep, I donned my foul weather gear, equipped my trusty baton (I used to tuck its 2 ½-foot length up my sleeve when running), and headed out the front door to Lake Merrit which was just outside the main entrance. From there, I trotted to the sidewalk circling the lake, and began to run.
As I ran counterclockwise against a torrential rain with a gale-force wind broken only by the occasional intermittent rainbow-hued lightning flashes which blinded me to almost everything around me, I almost ran into someone up ahead who was walking in the same direction.
He was hunched over against the wind and rain and wearing a long heavy winter coat. Unusual for that time of year, I thought. Whenever I would run in public, I always made it a courtesy to let people know when I was approaching especially from behind. I’d blurt out a perfunctory:
“Excuse me.” Followed by a conciliatory:
“Sorry.”
But apparently, the person ahead either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because, when I was about 6 feet from him, he suddenly turned around, exposing a darkened contorted face, jagged teeth, and a guttural growl that would have stopped a charging 600-pound Grizzly.
The sheer force of the malevolence emitted from this inhuman thing almost made me stop, but because I was moving so fast, the inertia along with the gale force wind and lightning strikes propelled me past him (or it), and fingering my steel-reinforced baton, I, in turn, steeled my nerve and kept running. I looked back only once to reassure myself that he (or it) wasn’t following.
Running on the leeward side now, with the rain at my back, I ran past a group of men in a circle smoking or drinking or doing whatever noxious or illicit thing I imagined, when, feeling charged with my own adrenalin, or the anger and resentment at that woman’s searing pleas for help, or the spook I’d almost run into, or just the gross injustices thrust upon the world in that dank, dark and dangerous time, I almost stopped, baton in hand, intending to take on the whole group: I may go down, I told myself, but at least I would take one or two with me.
Just then, the lightning struck particularly close to where I and they stood and the sheer blinding flash and concussive boom shook all of us enough to break up their conspiratorial collaboration and my righteous crusade; just enough, that is, to shove me headlong around the next bend, to the long straight full out dash to the front doors, the 5 floors, 10 landings, and 50 risers to rain-sodden home.
To get to work every day, I'd have to commute to the upper peninsula by using 3 buses, 1 train, and 1 cab and after a 10 or 12 or sometimes 14-hour day, I would have to take the same to get back. This meant that if I didn’t go out, make dinner, eat, or watch tv, I just might get about 4 hours sleep. Commuting took between 2 to 3 hours, one way.
Once on the way home, almost every stop was crowded with commuters. I was told that it was because there were so many buses down for repair. The ones still running were so filled beyond capacity, that the shocks and springs were sitting on the chassis, and stop after stop proved nearly impossible to take on any more passengers. Still, and despite the few getting out at every stop, the driver would take on even more and just pack them in.
I remember him yelling for people to get back behind the yellow line over and over. By then, he was long past any semblance of reason; his patience frayed to a single maniacal thought, his voice raspier and raspier, his manner, more and more brusk.
I can still see when he finally lost it; jumping up, out of his seat, with a nickel-plated 38 Caliber Revolver pointing at one of the passengers; an elderly woman, screaming from the top of his lungs:
“Get back behind the yellow line!”
I can still hear the woman begging the driver:
“Please...” while the passengers behind were practically trampling each other to get out of the line of fire.
I remember the sad, exhausted urgency in her voice; she really was trying to move back, but how could she, an old woman, do that with all those people blocking her way? Everyone knew this was an impossible task; everyone except the maddened driver. He just kept glaring, and bellowing with his gun out pointed right at her and the other passengers.
"Back up and make room" he yelled.
‘Or else what?’ I thought. ‘You're gonna kill an old woman?'
Getting up out of my seat, pushing my way through the throng who were pushing against me to get away, I managed to get within about 6 feet from the front when, roaring through the din and my fear and anger, I ordered the bus driver to:
“Put the gun down!” And again, with even more rage and authority:
“Put the gun down, now!”
The bus driver shocked that it might be a cop, or worse, shakily, put his gun back in his concealed carry holster and hypnotically sat back down. He resumed driving without saying another word. I got out at the next stop, along with the elderly woman. She was so shaken, that she busted out crying. I held her still fuming despite the close call because I would now have to wait for another bus and after that, 2 more; the train and a cab to get home. I wasn’t going to make it until well after 8:00 pm. As soon as I got home, I reported the bus number and the driver to Muni.
Many of the commuters I'd see day to day, or share a seat with were victims of the purge just trying to get out of the rain or the cold, or the wind, or the sun, even for just a little while. For them, it was easing the agony of living on the street, even just a little. For many of us regular commuters, during those dark times, it proved to be the same.
On one of the final buses that would take me to the train and across the bay, I remember standing, with about 50 others, on Market Street waiting. Like ours, stop after stop was so packed with people, some were standing in the street because there was simply not enough room on the sidewalk. The ones in the street would stay where they were for fear of losing their place and missing their connection and having to wait another hour, or more, to catch another.
Because the rapidly descending elevation of the southbound streets ending at Market Street from the upper peninsula were so steep and the transverse angle of the turn so sharp, some of the buses would skirt the edge of the curb, sometimes rolling up over it onto the sidewalk putting them dangerously close to the commuters waiting on the other side.
If there were any people in the street, especially the old or the infirm, they would either have to get out of the way and lose their place in line or hope the bus driver stopped before completing the turn. Most of the drivers would. Once there was one who didn’t.
I remember the television and newspaper account about an elderly woman waiting at one of the stops during the pm rush hour. When the bus made the oblique turn way too fast at 25 miles per hour she was either too close to the edge or standing in the street when she was hit by the side view mirror across the face and the left side of her head.
She went down under the wheels and her body got hung up under the chassis. The bus driver too full of passengers to stop, or late for his break, or just too coked up to notice, kept on heading for the Embarcadero before he realized something was wrong. By then, the woman had been dragged over a quarter of a mile. No one knew for sure whether the concussion from the mirror or the relentless dragging was the cause of death. I guess it didn’t matter to her anymore, one way or the other. It mattered to a lot of those who witnessed the whole thing though; screaming and yelling, block after block, trying to get the bus driver to stop.
To get across the Bay to San Francisco from Oakland or back, one alternative to the nightmare bus commute was the B.A.R.T (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It was quiet, clean, air-conditioned, and fast. Traveling under the Bay, it could span the 13 miles in minutes. Once I’d reach the train station, by bus, from the Oakland side, I’d descend one of the many street-level entries to the below-ground turnstiles which led to the train platform. Of course, there were always hundreds of derelicts, homeless, hustlers, etc., hanging out by the turnstiles waiting for their chance to slip through and get on any one of the many trains that serviced the Bay Area, but sometimes, especially after a scuffle with B.A.R.T. Security or the San Francisco/Oakland Police, they’d scatter to the winds (or the shadows as it were) until everything calmed down and then they'd be back at it again, day and night.
Almost every week I'd hear about someone falling, or being pushed, or jumping down onto the third rail, which would either short-circuit the line and knock out the power or if it was particularly grisly, halt service entirely. Because service resumption could take hours, waiting passengers would have to go back up and out onto the street and catch another train, take a cab or a bus or just walk or, as was often the case for me, run.
Once, I remember running to the next stop when I was ascending to the upper peninsula because the previous connection didn’t show up which meant it would have added another 45 minutes to my commute. The choice was obvious and inevitable: I could either
“wait to be late” or go for it. I chose the latter.
You just can't imagine what it’s like to run at a 20-degree angle uphill for about 2 miles while wearing dress slacks, dress shoes, a white shirt and tie, and a sports jacket, in San Francisco, during the summer, with the humidity until you’ve tried it. It’s, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating.
Running, I came upon a stand-alone, transmission shop, right in the middle of a residential area. The owners must have paid a pretty penny to get away with that one. There were police cars, the fire department, a metro ambulance, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a marked County Coroner’s Office vehicle scattered around the shop.
Some people along with some of the employees: their first names embroidered on their shirts, were standing on the sidewalk just outside the property watching. They’d been there for about an hour when I stopped to ask one of them (Bob) what happened.
Wearily he said:
“The girl who worked in the office answering the phone and typing up orders was shot to death by her boyfriend. The boyfriend got away but she was still down there being processed. God, she was only 24 years old. They’ll catch him, though. He hasn’t got a chance.”
'Nope,' I thought.
'In this town, I don’t expect he would.'
I was late again when I got home. Vaulting the 5 floors to reach our loft, I held my friend close, the entire night. She was ok with that. So was I.=
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Number One: The Pool
Now, this happened a very long time ago. I am not going to mention when or where though and I am submitting it anonymously. I don’t want people going back and finding out more about it and then lashing out of me.
I was 13 years old and my brother was 11. As I mentioned, this happened a long time ago and I think today, not a lot of parents would put a 13 year old in charge of an 11 year old. But this was not unusual at all back then. In fact, I was looking after my little brother all the time before either of us even hit 10 years old.
After a while, of course, always keeping my eye on him began to get very annoying. It interfered with my hanging out with friends. It was quite a drag when I would try to talk to girls. It was just a pain in the ass, really.
Anyway, one day during a really hot summer, our parents decided to drop us both off at the local swimming pool for the day. My dad had to work and my mom had errands and stuff to run plus work do to do for the church. It was so hot and there was no way we could afford air conditioning. We had one old fan in the house and a sprinkler in the yard that we could go play in. But the swimming pool was the much better option.
Of course the pool was very crowded. Lots of families would drop their kids off there during the summertime. And of course, even though I knew it already, my mom stressed to me, “Keep an eye on your little brother at all times.”
Some of my friends were at the pool too. I got to talking to them and they told me about this new girl who moved into town. She would be starting school that fall and supposedly she was really hot. So of course, I wanted to check her out. I knew the lifeguards would be watching my brother in the water, so he would be fine.
I went with the guys and the girl was really cute. My buddies all dared me to approach her, which was admittedly a brave thing for a 13 year old boy to do. Of course, I couldn’t chicken out in front of them, so I did just that.
She was a very sweet girl. We actually ended up talking for a little while. Her parents were at the pool though, and they called her back after too long. So I went back to the water to see how my little brother was doing.
The only problem was that I couldn’t see him anywhere in the water. This was a small town in a rural area, so although I said the pool was crowded, it wasn’t like a water park is crowded though. I should have easily been able to pick him out of the water. He just wasn’t there.
I went and searched around the area surrounding the pool and didn’t see him there either. My heart started beating faster and I began panicking. I went to the building where the showers and concession stand were. He wasn’t there either. You couldn’t leave that pool without going through that building, though. I asked the attendant if a 11 year old boy had left the pool on his own in the previous hour and he told me no.
I then went to the lifeguards and my buddies. I thought maybe there was a chance that I had missed him. It’s easy to occasionally miss someone in a crowd. The lifeguards ordered everyone out of the pool. Fortunately, there were no drowned children in the pool. Unfortunately, my brother was nowhere to be found outside of the pool.
The lifeguards had to call my mother at the church. I had never before lost track of my little brother like this before. I had no idea what to expect when she showed up. I was only thankful that the police were already at the pool or she probably would have whipped my ass right there in front of the entire pool.
The trouble I got into at home isn’t something that I want to go into very much. My butt very much has PTSD from the experience. But that was minor compared to the fear I felt for my little brother. Hell, I didn’t even have time to feel guilty although that I knew that I was. I was only concerned for him and wondered what would happen.
All day and night, I expected the police to bring him home. But that didn’t happen. I expected it the next day too. But it didn’t happen.
The town organized a search to look for him. I kept expecting to hear from them that they had found him. But that didn’t happen either.
After about a week of my brother not being found, I began fearing for the worst. I began thinking that he was dead. And I was terrified every waking moment of my life, expecting to absolutely hear the news that his dead body was found.
Nearly two weeks after the disappearance, we got a phone call from the police. They had found my brother and thankfully, he was alive. But unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
Remember the attendant telling me that no boy had left on his own? Well that’s because the boy left with one of the lifeguards who was getting off duty. He had lured my brother out of the pool and into his car with promises of ice cream, something he and I rarely ever got. And my brother went to his house with him.
For all of that time, he kept my little brother locked up in his basement. He didn’t do anything sexually to him, thank God. But there was a lot of mental and some physical torment when my brother wouldn’t do what he was told to you. But the scariest part for him was thinking he would never get out and be with his family again.
Here is another weird part. The lifeguard wasn’t an adult. He did this while his parents were out of town for a few weeks. They came back early and caught him. And if you think I felt bad for my parents’ punishing me, what they did to him had to be legendary. The police thought he was either planning on killing or releasing my brother before his parents got home. But no one ever knew for sure.
He had to live with it without much help for a long time. Mental health assistance had a very bad stigma back then. But we’re both still alive today and he forgave me a long time ago.
Number Two: Taking the Garbage Out
A few weeks ago I went outside at around 3am to move the garbage to the curb since pickup would be in the morning. I often do this in the middle of the night. I just tend to keep weird hours and as the weather warms up for the summer I find the warm nights preferable to the sweltering days.
I’m not worried about bothering my neighbors since I don’t use noisy bins and all of the houses right next to me are currently empty. I actually find the quiet of the neighborhood at night quite relaxing.
Unfortunately since I don’t use bins animals are able to get into the bags a bit easier and while this doesn’t happen often it had happened on this night. So I was outside picking up the strewn around garbage and putting it into another bag when the silence of the night was suddenly broken by multiple police sirens.
At first they seemed distant and while they startled me it was not at all unheard of to hear sirens at night here. But usually it would be one in the distance. As I listened, still bagging the garbage, I could tell it was multiple sirens and they were getting closer. Then just as suddenly as it started it stopped again. There was just silence. By the time they stopped they sounded maybe four blocks away.
For a moment the night was silent again and I began hauling the bags to the curb when the neighborhood dogs began barking all at once. It was like every dog in the neighborhood had gotten the cue to start barking. Many were even howling. It continued for maybe a minute and once again it just stopped as suddenly as it had started.
I realized I hadn’t heard any barking or howling while the sirens were going and that’s normally how it would work. These dogs had started up separately from the sirens and just stopped all at once. It just wasn’t normal. I went back to the side of the house to grab more bags when the silence was broken a third time.
Just a single chime in the night. Like someone getting a phone notification. This sound wasn’t blocks away. This sound was here. RIGHT HERE. No more than feet away. As I said, the houses around me are empty.
I was done. The rest of the garbage would wait until morning. I didn’t see anyone close by but that just made it worse. There was someone close by that I couldn’t see. I immediately went into the house to leave the garbage for the morning.
I don’t know if these things were related. If the cops had been chasing someone who’s fleeing had caused the dogs to bark. Someone who received a message on their phone as they approached my house. Or if it was all just a coincidence. But I won’t be taking the garbage out at 3am anymore.
A Commuter’s Nightmare
William M.
06/30/2021
Back in the 80s, I worked at the Irwin Memorial Blood Bank in San Francisco while living and commuting from Oakland, CA
My job as Registrar, took me all over Northern California, during Blood Drives at hospitals, clinics, major corporations, etc., where we would sometimes witness firsthand, the dead, being placed on gurneys, running out of the Coroner's or Medical Examiner’s rear doors, and down the sidewalks, because they simply didn’t have enough room or staff inside the morgues to process them. Mortuaries were having problems too due to the massive overload where deceased loved ones were admitted but not processed or interred for months or even years at a time.
I remember watching the News and reading newspaper accounts of E.R.s in hospitals, clinics, etc. so clogged with patients, that 1 in 10 would die waiting to just get in to see a Dr. It was a Public Health and Safety nightmare. It was a National disgrace. It was politically orchestrated mass murder. It was the B purge of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
I remember, starting work early on one of many Blood Drives (the A.I.D.S. epidemic was just getting started) and having to catch the first B.A.R.T. (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train out of the station at about 4:00 am, where morning after morning I would witness hundreds of people sleeping on the benches, or the sidewalks, or on the streets outside, waiting for it to open.
Hundreds of others would be seen walking around like zombies in the early morning freeze amid the concomitant yelling, screaming, moaning, begging, and pleading, all of it looking like a newsreel of the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Many times, I was woken at home in the middle of the night, to the sounds of people howling and cursing outside my window at some real or imagined threat, until either the police came, which usually took hours because they were spread so thin, or some tenant, or other, ran them off.
I remember the time I woke up to the sound of a woman’s voice begging in the early morning cold for someone to help her. She kept repeating it over and over growing weaker and weaker until it was little more than a whisper.
By the time I’d gotten up, armed myself with the steel-reinforced baton I’d purchased at a Police Supply store, and ran the 5 floors down to the ground floor, I found her sitting in a taxi shivering from the 42-degree drizzle coming in off the Pacific. The cabbie told me it was alright; she was just cold and needed someplace to rest and warm up; He’d drop her off at one of the nearby shelters.
At the time, I was living in a local Residence Hall on Lake Merrit in Oakland, California which was little more than a converted Hotel from the San Francisco/Oakland Gilded Age of the late 1920s. It had 5 floors and a penthouse with a capacity of about 200. I never saw it get much beyond about 30 residents. It sported a full kitchen, dining area, big screen tv viewing room, swimming pool, and a recreation room with pool, foosball, and darts.
I lived with a friend, at the time, on the 5th floor just under the penthouse. There was an elevator, but like most refurbs, it didn’t work. That meant we'd have to climb 10 flights of stairs every day to reach our room. The best part was that we had the entire floor to ourselves. I guess nobody wanted to climb that many stairs. Because we were both runners, it was a little like running the 900 feet to the top of Angel Island, running across The Golden Gate Bridge and back, or running the 3.4 miles around Lake Merrit twice a day.
Because there was no air-conditioning, all the windows were left open during the summer months, but along with whatever cool air the San Francisco/Oakland Bay would bring through the gaping nearly wall-length vault ceilinged windows, it was always accompanied by the teeming, screaming City of Oakland street din: cabbies, buses, cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, scooters, police sirens, ambulance, fire department, pedestrians, hustlers, druggies, break-dancers, prostitutes the homeless, et al. Day or night, winter or summer, it was like living in a jet engine test lab, somewhere on the 9th level of hell.
Of course, we could always close the windows against the noise 5 stories below. But if it was summer, with all the humidity coming off the bay, we’d roast like 2 suckling pigs in our own sweat even if we used a fan.
One night after a particularly grueling day at work, I came home, climbed Mount Everest (or at least K-2) to my steaming little abattoir, tore off my sports jacket, shirt, and tie, and fell into a coma-like sleep only to awake some 4 hours later to the sound of someone slamming a door, over and over, seemingly as hard as they could. It was about 2:00 am and raining so hard the water was pouring through the open window and flooding the floor and carpet. The sound was coming somewhere down the hall from one of the other units.
After about the 15th or 16th slam to my inner ear, I was up, as in a trance, running like a lunatic from unit to unit and window to window, covering the entire southside of the 5th floor; battening down the hatches, and getting drenched in the process. It was, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating. I was supposed to get up in 2 hours and commute to work in the upper peninsula.
Having unconsciously completed this Sisyphean task and realizing that there was zero chance of getting any sleep, I donned my foul weather gear, equipped my trusty baton (I used to tuck its 2 ½-foot length up my sleeve when running), and headed out the front door to Lake Merrit which was just outside the main entrance. From there, I trotted to the sidewalk circling the lake, and began to run.
As I ran counterclockwise against a torrential rain with a gale-force wind broken only by the occasional intermittent rainbow-hued lightning flashes which blinded me to almost everything around me, I almost ran into someone up ahead who was walking in the same direction.
He was hunched over against the wind and rain and wearing a long heavy winter coat. Unusual for that time of year, I thought. Whenever I would run in public, I always made it a courtesy to let people know when I was approaching especially from behind. I’d blurt out a perfunctory:
“Excuse me.” Followed by a conciliatory:
“Sorry.”
But apparently, the person ahead either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because, when I was about 6 feet from him, he suddenly turned around, exposing a darkened contorted face, jagged teeth, and a guttural growl that would have stopped a charging 600-pound Grizzly.
The sheer force of the malevolence emitted from this inhuman thing almost made me stop, but because I was moving so fast, the inertia along with the gale force wind and lightning strikes propelled me past him (or it), and fingering my steel-reinforced baton, I, in turn, steeled my nerve and kept running. I looked back only once to reassure myself that he (or it) wasn’t following.
Running on the leeward side now, with the rain at my back, I ran past a group of men in a circle smoking or drinking or doing whatever noxious or illicit thing I imagined, when, feeling charged with my own adrenalin, or the anger and resentment at that woman’s searing pleas for help, or the spook I’d almost run into, or just the gross injustices thrust upon the world in that dank, dark and dangerous time, I almost stopped, baton in hand, intending to take on the whole group: I may go down, I told myself, but at least I would take one or two with me.
Just then, the lightning struck particularly close to where I and they stood and the sheer blinding flash and concussive boom shook all of us enough to break up their conspiratorial collaboration and my righteous crusade; just enough, that is, to shove me headlong around the next bend, to the long straight full out dash to the front doors, the 5 floors, 10 landings, and 50 risers to rain-sodden home.
To get to work every day, I'd have to commute to the upper peninsula by using 3 buses, 1 train, and 1 cab and after a 10 or 12 or sometimes 14-hour day, I would have to take the same to get back. This meant that if I didn’t go out, make dinner, eat, or watch tv, I just might get about 4 hours sleep. Commuting took between 2 to 3 hours, one way.
Once on the way home, almost every stop was crowded with commuters. I was told that it was because there were so many buses down for repair. The ones still running were so filled beyond capacity, that the shocks and springs were sitting on the chassis, and stop after stop proved nearly impossible to take on any more passengers. Still, and despite the few getting out at every stop, the driver would take on even more and just pack them in.
I remember him yelling for people to get back behind the yellow line over and over. By then, he was long past any semblance of reason; his patience frayed to a single maniacal thought, his voice raspier and raspier, his manner, more and more brusk.
I can still see when he finally lost it; jumping up, out of his seat, with a nickel-plated 38 Caliber Revolver pointing at one of the passengers; an elderly woman, screaming from the top of his lungs:
“Get back behind the yellow line!”
I can still hear the woman begging the driver:
“Please...” while the passengers behind were practically trampling each other to get out of the line of fire.
I remember the sad, exhausted urgency in her voice; she really was trying to move back, but how could she, an old woman, do that with all those people blocking her way? Everyone knew this was an impossible task; everyone except the maddened driver. He just kept glaring, and bellowing with his gun out pointed right at her and the other passengers.
"Back up and make room" he yelled.
‘Or else what?’ I thought. ‘You're gonna kill an old woman?'
Getting up out of my seat, pushing my way through the throng who were pushing against me to get away, I managed to get within about 6 feet from the front when, roaring through the din and my fear and anger, I ordered the bus driver to:
“Put the gun down!” And again, with even more rage and authority:
“Put the gun down, now!”
The bus driver shocked that it might be a cop, or worse, shakily, put his gun back in his concealed carry holster and hypnotically sat back down. He resumed driving without saying another word. I got out at the next stop, along with the elderly woman. She was so shaken, that she busted out crying. I held her still fuming despite the close call because I would now have to wait for another bus and after that, 2 more; the train and a cab to get home. I wasn’t going to make it until well after 8:00 pm. As soon as I got home, I reported the bus number and the driver to Muni.
Many of the commuters I'd see day to day, or share a seat with were victims of the purge just trying to get out of the rain or the cold, or the wind, or the sun, even for just a little while. For them, it was easing the agony of living on the street, even just a little. For many of us regular commuters, during those dark times, it proved to be the same.
On one of the final buses that would take me to the train and across the bay, I remember standing, with about 50 others, on Market Street waiting. Like ours, stop after stop was so packed with people, some were standing in the street because there was simply not enough room on the sidewalk. The ones in the street would stay where they were for fear of losing their place and missing their connection and having to wait another hour, or more, to catch another.
Because the rapidly descending elevation of the southbound streets ending at Market Street from the upper peninsula were so steep and the transverse angle of the turn so sharp, some of the buses would skirt the edge of the curb, sometimes rolling up over it onto the sidewalk putting them dangerously close to the commuters waiting on the other side.
If there were any people in the street, especially the old or the infirm, they would either have to get out of the way and lose their place in line or hope the bus driver stopped before completing the turn. Most of the drivers would. Once there was one who didn’t.
I remember the television and newspaper account about an elderly woman waiting at one of the stops during the pm rush hour. When the bus made the oblique turn way too fast at 25 miles per hour she was either too close to the edge or standing in the street when she was hit by the side view mirror across the face and the left side of her head.
She went down under the wheels and her body got hung up under the chassis. The bus driver too full of passengers to stop, or late for his break, or just too coked up to notice, kept on heading for the Embarcadero before he realized something was wrong. By then, the woman had been dragged over a quarter of a mile. No one knew for sure whether the concussion from the mirror or the relentless dragging was the cause of death. I guess it didn’t matter to her anymore, one way or the other. It mattered to a lot of those who witnessed the whole thing though; screaming and yelling, block after block, trying to get the bus driver to stop.
To get across the Bay to San Francisco from Oakland or back, one alternative to the nightmare bus commute was the B.A.R.T (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It was quiet, clean, air-conditioned, and fast. Traveling under the Bay, it could span the 13 miles in minutes. Once I’d reach the train station, by bus, from the Oakland side, I’d descend one of the many street-level entries to the below-ground turnstiles which led to the train platform. Of course, there were always hundreds of derelicts, homeless, hustlers, etc., hanging out by the turnstiles waiting for their chance to slip through and get on any one of the many trains that serviced the Bay Area, but sometimes, especially after a scuffle with B.A.R.T. Security or the San Francisco/Oakland Police, they’d scatter to the winds (or the shadows as it were) until everything calmed down and then they'd be back at it again, day and night.
Almost every week I'd hear about someone falling, or being pushed, or jumping down onto the third rail, which would either short-circuit the line and knock out the power or if it was particularly grisly, halt service entirely. Because service resumption could take hours, waiting passengers would have to go back up and out onto the street and catch another train, take a cab or a bus or just walk or, as was often the case for me, run.
Once, I remember running to the next stop when I was ascending to the upper peninsula because the previous connection didn’t show up which meant it would have added another 45 minutes to my commute. The choice was obvious and inevitable: I could either
“wait to be late” or go for it. I chose the latter.
You just can't imagine what it’s like to run at a 20-degree angle uphill for about 2 miles while wearing dress slacks, dress shoes, a white shirt and tie, and a sports jacket, in San Francisco, during the summer, with the humidity until you’ve tried it. It’s, how should I say: exhilaratingly infuriating.
Running, I came upon a stand-alone, transmission shop, right in the middle of a residential area. The owners must have paid a pretty penny to get away with that one. There were police cars, the fire department, a metro ambulance, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a marked County Coroner’s Office vehicle scattered around the shop.
Some people along with some of the employees: their first names embroidered on their shirts, were standing on the sidewalk just outside the property watching. They’d been there for about an hour when I stopped to ask one of them (Bob) what happened.
Wearily he said:
“The girl who worked in the office answering the phone and typing up orders was shot to death by her boyfriend. The boyfriend got away but she was still down there being processed. God, she was only 24 years old. They’ll catch him, though. He hasn’t got a chance.”
'Nope,' I thought.
'In this town, I don’t expect he would.'
I was late again when I got home. Vaulting the 5 floors to reach our loft, I held my friend close, the entire night. She was ok with that. So was I.=
2023.06.08 03:30 Tractorboiii 1 bd available for rent immediately (Rent 1400)
1 bedroom available in a spacious 2bd 2.5ba townhouse available near downtown Livermore. I am currently occupying the master bedroom and looking for someone to take over the second bedroom. This bedroom does not have an attached washroom, but the detached bathroom is right outside the door beside the washer and dryer cabinet. This will be your personal bathroom and is not shared by me at all. If you want the master bedroom with the attached washroom, that works too (the rent will be 1600 for the master bedroom) The house itself is quite spacious and spread on 3 levels with a dedicated garage at the bottom floor with a half bathroom available for common use. I don’t have a car, so the garage is available as well as any street parking for your guests. The living room and kitchen are on the first floor with a patio/balcony beside the kitchen. The kitchen is open for cooking if you need to and has all the necessary appliances. The bedrooms are on the second floor along with a washer dryer combo. My current housemate is in the process of moving out so the pictures reflect that but rest assured everything will be cleaned before move in (the blind in the available bedroom will be fixed as well). If you would like the room furnished, I can put you in touch with him to purchase anything you wish to. All utilities are split equally and usually total about 150 per person per month (for estimate and includes trash, water, PG&E and internet). About me: I work for a startup here in Livermore and I am quite an easygoing person. I don’t mind socializing and value my privacy just as much as you value yours. I have been living here for a little over 2 years now and the landlord is pretty good about repairs and maintenance, as and when needed. About you: preferably working professional and easygoing person. Any paperwork/application will be routed through the landlord and subject to credit checks and the routine stuff. If you are interested, please reach out to me here through chat.
submitted by Tractorboiii to Livermore [link] [comments]
2023.06.08 02:34 smelltheglue Had to throw away everything in apartment fridge after mechanical failure for the SECOND time in less than a year. Any chance of reimbursement?
For context, I live in an apartment in MN managed by a rental company with many properties.
Almost exactly a year ago, the cooling on our fridge went out and we had to throw away basically everything inside (we're talking like room temperature inside, food poisoning city).
10 months after the initial repairs were made, the same thing happened again, and once again we had to toss the entire fridge worth of food.
Do we have any legal recourse for reimbursement on the cost of things we had to throw away? We let it slide the first time and we do have a service request on record to prove it happened. We're talking hundreds of dollars worth of food.
Would there be anything specific to look for in the lease regarding their responsibility to upkeep appliances that would possibly make them liable to reimburse us?
I took photographs of the contents as well as a thermometer reading the unsafe temp (almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit)
Thanks in advance!
submitted by smelltheglue to legaladvice [link] [comments]
Almost exactly a year ago, the cooling on our fridge went out and we had to throw away basically everything inside (we're talking like room temperature inside, food poisoning city).
10 months after the initial repairs were made, the same thing happened again, and once again we had to toss the entire fridge worth of food.
Do we have any legal recourse for reimbursement on the cost of things we had to throw away? We let it slide the first time and we do have a service request on record to prove it happened. We're talking hundreds of dollars worth of food.
Would there be anything specific to look for in the lease regarding their responsibility to upkeep appliances that would possibly make them liable to reimburse us?
I took photographs of the contents as well as a thermometer reading the unsafe temp (almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit)
Thanks in advance!
2023.06.08 02:17 Chemical_Simple_6257 Do NOT buy Washer and Dryers on FBM.
This is mostly to vent. But title says it all. We bought a set for 375 with delivery and installation. Worst mistake I have ever made in my life. The dryer does not work. Worked for 1 load and then bam, nothing. An extra 250 later for an appliance repair company to come and fix it (the fuse blew), worked for one load, and now its not working again. Waiting to see what we do now, either have them come back to see what’s actually wrong with it, or might just straight up but a brand new one. STAY AWAY.
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2023.06.08 01:22 pinkyogi fridge 🅱️roke
are naturals not allowed to have small boobs, big booties, and narrow waists because i feel like i’m reading that an “hourglass/pear” torso plus width in your shoulders is like illegal for a natural and our body is supposed suggest kitchen appliance. i have quarterback arms so i type myself as a natural however it seems naturals don’t have any ass so idk maybe i gotta do a Sears return, something is wrong here since my tiny titty size-up-in-bottoms self does not compute with the stereotypes i’m reading about
submitted by pinkyogi to Kibbe [link] [comments]
2023.06.07 23:08 jadesix Ninja Foodi OL701 Discontinued?
So I started getting a probe error with my Foodi OL701, literally a week after the warranty expired. So I contacted Ninja to see if there was anything they could do for me, replacement parts or a warranty exception, etc. Thankfully they were able to accommodate me with a replacement unit, but in the course of asking about repairs or replacement parts, I was told they weren't available because the OL701 is being phased out. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any on store shelves either (I compulsively look into the appliance aisle every time I'm at the store, obviously).
Had anyone heard anything about Ninja discontinuing the one lid models, aka the greatest kitchen gadget ever created? I'd love to see more of these roll out in the future.
submitted by jadesix to NinjaFoodi [link] [comments]
Had anyone heard anything about Ninja discontinuing the one lid models, aka the greatest kitchen gadget ever created? I'd love to see more of these roll out in the future.