AboveZLaw

I originally moved out to San Francisco in 1991, a few months after graduating from SUNY Albany. It, unfortunately, was an ill-fated move. I didn't have a ton of money, and didn't really have any plan as to getting work. I quickly fled back to the East Coast to live with my parents.

But in the short time out West, I met a couple of guys through SUNY Albany friends. Bill Layden and Tom Glass were teammates of my friends, and seemed like decent enough guys. Little did I know.

So when I went back out to San Francisco in 1993, this time for good, I at least knew some people, especially in the frisbee community. The flip side was that I was working hellish restaurant jobs that entailed me slaving away on most weekends, so I couldn't really fit Ultimate into my life.

So I worked in restaurants for about 2+ years. I started at a microbrewery in Alameda. Problem was I was living in Western Addition in SF, and didn't have a car. So I had two options. I started out by taking the Geary bus down to the Transbay Terminal and then taking a bus to Alameda, and then walking about a mile to the restaurant. The only problem with that plan is that the Transbay buses were pretty infrequent, so if I missed one I was screwed. I soon realized I could take the Geary bus to Bart, Bart to Oakland, then an Oakland bus to the same place in Alameda to walk a mile. It was a bigger pain in the ass, but Bart ran more often. And since more options worked better with my inherent laziness, this became my preferred option.

While working at this job, I could occasionally bring home a keg or two for parties. I didn't take them up on this too often, but when I did it was usually met with pretty ugly results. One of them was me putting my elbow through a friend's apartment window because I was liking the sound it made (a little Scott Lippy in me), and the other ended with me telling Worm "What Double needs to do to be a successful team" in a Mexican restaurant parking lot after they had just won the Western Regional Final. He was definitely looking at me like "Who the %##$$$%%$# is this drunken idiot", but in classic Worm fashion he humored me so he could mock me later about it.

Since I was very prone to take a flamethrower to things working in my life (like having a job in a microbrewery that gave me free beer), this job was destined to be kind of short lived. And I didn't disappoint by burning the bridge to a crisp.

One night we decided to go out after work. The general manager of the restaurant (I was the Assistant GM), his girlfriend and two of the bartenders. We went to some dive bar in Alameda, and were there getting relatively heated until last call. At this point the GM asked if we were ok to get home, and the 3 of us answered in the affirmative.

Well, we then decided after he left that it would be a good idea to go back to the Tied House, reopen it, and continue to get our heat on. Look, I never said I was a brain surgeon. We proceeded to drink heavily until about 4 in the morning, and then I headed back to one of their houses to crash before my 11am shift start.

Unfortunately the clock in his living room was set an hour behind. So I woke up and thought I had plenty of time. And ended up an hour late to work and stinking of Barleywine. Not exactly a great idea.

And also unfortunate was the fact that the GM had been an Oakland city cop in his former career. His license plate even read "AboveZLaw". I am not even kidding. So when he sniffed that something wasn't kosher the next day, he questioned us all separately about what we did the night before after he left. And, not surprisingly, we all gave different answers.

Someone had to take the fall for the questionable behavior, and as the most senior guy, the one who actually had the keys to let us back in, it had to be me. I wasn't heartbroken, I needed a kick in the ass to find a more convenient job anyway.