December 1st, 2015: Chained Bats

[xoxoxoBruce]

Thanksgiving morning, in San Francisco, either the police found or somebody reported, a baseball bat with nails, chained to a parking meter.

...a bat attached to a pole meter as if it were a sleeping dog.

Then they found another one, and another, and another, and at 4:45 PM they found the 27th bat... on Nov 26th.

(Sgt. Michael) Andraychak said there are no indications currently of who placed the bats or why. Police are investigating various aspects of what Andraychak described as a "very strange" episode.
Police said possession could be considered a probhibited deadly weapon with a felony charge.

No shit.

27 wood baseball bats, nails, and 27 lengths of chain ain't exactly pocket change, even at scrap prices, although the second picture looks like it's pieced together with plastic wire ties. So somebody spent a couple bucks or went to the trouble to steal all that stuff... must have been on a mission.
Maybe it was 27 places they planned to shop on black Friday, the 27th, and planned to smash the meters with the bats to save parking fees? Well I haven't heard a better reason.

link CAUTION, loud, self starting video ad, but scroll down just a quarter page and hit stop on the left like a youtube video.

[fargon]

There are some real Freaks in this world.

[Clodfobble]

Dude, it's in San Francisco. My money's on art installation, making a lame "statement" about Black Friday.

[fargon]

Usually the artist wants recognition for there work. Nobody has come forward to claim credit for the installation. Now that the cops are involved we may never know who did it.

[glatt]

I like it. It's art.

The chains are too short to do much of anything with the bat other than smash a car that parks by that meter. It's some sort of statement about parking spaces. There are activists/artists in that area who decorate parking spaces like living rooms. This is more of the same. Same group or sympathetic group.

[lumberjim]

to frighten away meter maids?
to use for popping tires of cars that park there?
were there cameras set up somewhere pointed at them?

[Diaphone Jim]

Even though this seems to be the kind of vacuous story local TV news shows love, for some reason I saw NO mention of it on any of the 4 outlets in the SF Bay Area.
Being of a suspicious nature, this makes me suspicuous.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It was Thanksgiving, Jim, you were sleeping off that turkey.
What is NBC(peacock)Bay Area, Jim? I assumed it's the NBC TV affiliate in San Francisco, is it not? If it is wouldn't that be one of the outlets? C'mon man, I'm all confused now straighten me out... please.

[Diaphone Jim]

Sorry Bruce, that link was a video which, being on dial-up, I ignore like texts in native languages from the Congo.
Actually I did watch NBC local news on TG evening, but didn't catch that story.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Shit, I must have previewed and didn't submit.. again.

Damn, it was a long one about my year on dialup, then the Devil's Spawn Comcast, finally Verizon FIOS which is great but getting expensive and still dealing with a corporation. Anyway I can understand wanting to avoid videos.

Oh, and skepticism is good.

[Snakeadelic]

Bruce, I feel your pain. We didn't even get DSL until 2007, and subsequently made no changes to our internet service until last month. Amazing how a company's reputation varies by region...we went with Charter and now consider CenturyLink to be worse than an insurance company (predatory customer retention tactics do not sit well with me or my nearest & dearest). Where my parents live, the reputations are reversed.

[Sundae]

I'm glad this isn't what I thought it was.
I was so wary of opening it and seeing poor bats trying to fly away...