Paticus' Past: Volume 17 : The Shootout at Fantasy Island

My Special Lady and I spent our last couple of years in Los Angeles(or "L.A.", as I like to call it) living in an apartment that was next to a place called "Fantasy Island"...Now, Fantasy Island was either a bikini bar(where the waitresses are serving in bikinis-I don't know if there were dancers or not) or a strip club, depending on whom you asked. I never went inside to find out, so I cannot tell you for certain.

 What I can tell you is that it was an interesting place to live. The laundry room for our apartment building(which was actually two sets of  four apartments in a row) was a little free standing room that was directly behind our apartment. To get to it, we would step out our back door, open the wooden gate, and literally take about 6 steps, and there would be the laundry room.The club usually had someone in the parking lot, and I think they were generally there to keep people from annoying the neighbors.And they did a fairly good job of it.

  I remember one time, I stepped out to go to the laundry room, and one of the bouncers was scanning the lot. i said hello, and he turned around and said this: "Hey...Um, it might be better if you went back inside. There was just a guy out here with a knife, and I'm not sure where he went."  "You got it. Thanks." I replied,and stepped back into the house.

  And then, there was the shootout. No need to rub your eyes, you read that correctly: The SHOOTOUT.

  It was a Wednesday night, and my Special Lady and I were settling into watch an episode of "Law & Order"(this was 2000 or 2001, I think), when we heard that sound...It sounded kinda like firecrackers, but we knew it wasn't any firecrackers...And it was pretty LOUD. We both actually hit the floor.I don't remember how long it lasted, it probably wasn't more than a few seconds, maybe a minute, but it sounded like quite a few gunshots.

    We stayed on the floor for about an hour and a half...No, I'm kidding, after a few minutes, we got up from the floor. After a few more minutes w heard people talking outside, so we thought we would go out and see what happened.

  The cops were gathered outside,and there were a bunch of those little yellow markers they put on the ground by the shell casings. It was kinda like being on a cop show...Sorta like that one on NBC...Oh, what's it called...It's been on forever...It'll come to me later, I'm sure.

  The police asked us about what we heard, and we told them. they said that it was most likely two different people shooting at each other...FROM OPPOSITE SIDES OF A CAR! Two people standing on opposite sides of a parked car, shooting at each other.We didn't hear anyone scream like they had been shot,and there was apparently no evidence of blood, so they MISSED EACH OTHER!!! How crazy is that ?

  I couldn't help imagining the scene from either the Naked Gun Movies or the Police Squad tee vee show(In Color!) where we see to ends of a shootout, only to have it revealed that the guys are two feet from each other.I laugh every time.

  The reality is that they were probably firing into the air(one of the neighbors who lived behind the lot and across an alley{not in our building, maybe hundred feet or two hundred feet away} said there was a bullet hole in his wall the next day), but I still can't get the image out of my head.

  And there you have it...the Tale of The Shootout At Fantasy Island.

I will leave you with the message from Fantasy Island after 9/11: