"This is NOT civilization!"

Well, it's been a while since anyone posted on this blog. Perhaps you thought City Dangers was defunct, but I'd like to thank our loyal followers. Hi, Dad! Oh ... he left too? Awkward.

New business. I wait in line, then sell my front-row spot to the highest bid.

It turns out that a sizable city danger is the trap wherein you spend much of your free time working to support your urban lifestyle. A lifestyle you then cannot enjoy because your brain is Jell-o from squinting at Photoshop for 11 hours. Or, you know, solving world hunger. However you might be employed.

This Halloween, my reward for those long hours is a break from Chicago to visit an exotic and uniquely scary place: our nation's capital. Ostensibly, I am headed there to have sib bonding time and to reunionize with much-missed friends. But, there is also the matter of the small get-together on the National Mall called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Glenn Beck is Saruman in this one.

So, you thought all the noise was just? 

You know that scene in the second Lord of the Rings movie where Saruman goes out onto the balcony of his tower with Grima and looks out over his massive army of orcs that he has created to conquer Middle-earth, and if you look closely you can see Grima shed a single tear, but it's not clear whether he is overcome with awe, or has just realized he helped destroy the human race?

Well, that was pretty much this weekend in Washington when Glenn Beck came to town for his public anger conclave/suburban block party, where he and a hundred thousand (after CGI)  friends appropriated the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech to Take Back America for conservative anger bears.  If Sarah Palin shed a tear, it was for the first reason.

Highlights and photos after the jump, hooray!

Guest Spot by Josh Nance: "That's what real gunfire sounds like? Training Day sucks!"

After my brother and I (mostly my brother) started this blog, it quickly became apparent that our grievances with our respective cities were pretty tame. While we hope those stories are at least semi-amusing, let's face it, stalker Mary Kay agents and the hazards of river kayaking are low on actual danger in the traditional sense. I think we're grateful for that. However, there are people in our urban circles who do brave life-threatening activity on a routine basis. Our first City Dangers guest spot is courtesy of Josh Nance, a Chicagoan who lives in an area of town quaintly named, "The Devil's Rectangle". ...

A few weeks ago two gang members were shot outside my building. One was shot twice in the legs. The other was shot in the chest and died immediately. I heard the whole exchange and watched the man bleed out from my seventh story window. A police officer appeared on foot within minutes along with at least five police cruisers, a fire truck and an ambulance. The gangbangers' attitude towards anyone authoritative is obvious and tired, which is why I was so astonished to see their cooperation with the police once they arrived. The ones that hadn't been shot directed the officers and EMTs to the man with the chest wound first while the other victim sat patiently nearby. 

And I mean patiently. He didn't say a word as he lay there next to, presumably, his friend, and watched him die, waiting his turn to be looked at. But this cooperation ended instantly. The second the police asked them what they saw and which direction the shooter headed, the kids fell silent.

On Bikes, Part 1: Five Reasons Why Biking is City Dangerous

My trusty steed. 

Last week I ran out of money on my metro card, and decided that the rest of the month would be Bike To Work Month. I’m on my third day of biking and it’s already time for a list of things that make biking annoying and potentially dangerous. 

1. Bikers who pick and choose which traffic laws to follow. I know. I know you can’t be bothered with The Man’s game of red-light, green-light and you eschew play-by-the-rules cogs like me that live within in the double yellows. I know that when you speed past me with a smirk as I’m sitting at a red light sucking in exhaust, you are thinking, “This goddamn tool, waiting for the robots to let him live his life.” And when you cross onto the sidewalk to avoid waiting at a red and then don’t signal as you rejoin traffic, I know you are proud of your little trick. I want you to know that you sicken me.

First time riding metro? Our doors aren't like other doors.

Bear traps?

I feel a little bad now. The Washington metro's escalators were this blog's introductory City Danger, but it appears I may have been a bit insensitive in giving WMATA a hard time about the Bethesda escalator outage. According to the best blog in DC, the problem is that there are, like, so many escalators down there. The post has a fascinating map of the metro's escalators, and some interesting figures on how much it takes to maintain them. Spoiler Alert! Due to math, it's $30 million dollars per year.