Weird stuff happens all the time when wandering around the streets of San Francisco late at night, but on Halloween things are that much more bizarre. I was walking home from a Halloween party and the streets of the Mission district were packed with people still in costume. Picture your standard city street at night; dark dank and dirty streets with trash, tagged walls, homeless people sleeping in doorways, people scattered around staggering home, etc. Now take all those people in your image, and put them in cowboy or sexy Snow White costumes. Now add clown noses to the homeless. Oh yeah, it’s 2AM and no one’s sober, so everyone’s puking too. It’s just one giant sea-sick vertigo costume party Roman Shower with only about an 1/8 of the people enjoying themselves. Fucked up, right?

And that’s just the set up to the weird part. As I was walking down the street watching a crying ballerina pick the vomit out of her boyfriend’s fake Jack Sparrow dreadlocks and mustache, I saw a fight break out across the street. It was a stereotypical Mission street hipster (American Apparel uniform; beard; tapered jeans) being chased by five guys with bats. But these weren’t just any normal hooligans. It was the Baseball Furies from The Warriors! And they weren’t hitting him with regular baseball bats, but with WIFFLE BALL BATS! Now, for the people out there who don’t fully get the scene, think New York Yankees players in yellow KISS makeup with children’s plastic bats beating on Devendra Banhart.

So Devendra was running down the block with the Baseball Furies swinging with all their wiffle-y might when Mr. Banhart caught one of the bats in his hand and the retaliation began. His fencing classes and love of Star Wars paid off because he dodged, parried, and lunged with the fury of Zorro the last Jedi. After about five minutes of fighting, the Furies walked away, and Devendra marched off in the opposite direction. Two minutes after that, Devendra came back with his bike (a fixed gear no less) and threw it at the Furies! This was not taken kindly, and the Furies attacked with… well… fury. Devendra did all he could, but his androgyny and boner jokes (he seems to make a lot of them in real life) were no match for the KISS army. Then, when it looked like it was over for Devendra (or that he might have sustained a bruise) the cops showed up (I mean the real police, not a guy with a plastic badge). The Furies were handcuffed behind their backs and sat against a wall in a row with flashlights shining on them. As I walked over, I heard one cop turn to another and say “Dude. It’s the guys from The Warriors!”

Weird night.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.