Excuse me, Sir-- There's a Taxi in my Soup

Last night, at around 3AM, I, Travis, and Trevor decided to grab a bite to eat at the Diplomat. The place was very crowded given the time, since usually the bar crowd has started to clear out by that hour, but I was commited, and it was either wait or go home. So, we waited, roughly half an hour I think, and watched lots of drunks stumble around and generally make asses of themselves. When we finally did get seated, the wait for our food was actually surprisingly short, so we were eating soon after. The twins each got breakfast while I had chicken balls. The waitress was a bit abrasive, but I would be too after dealing with that level of drunken revelry.

So, we had our meal, and the twins each had a piece of cheesecake for their dessert. As I was sitting there watching them eat, I happened to be staring at the wall behind them when there was a loud thump, shaking the whole wall and sending a sheet of dust down. I stared and blinked a couple of times at the red light that said "George's" before my brain finally processed that I had just watched a taxi drive into the side of the restaurant. Everyone else around seemed to have had a similar delayed reaction, but then suddenly everyone got very loud and came over to see what had happened.

We weren't at one of the two tables that could have reached through the window and touched the vehicle were there a hole, but we were at the next table over. I don't think that anybody was seriously injured, but judging from the way the wall shook and the speed at which I watched it hit, things would have been very messy if it had been going much faster. If I were one of the two people sitting at the table looking at the windshield a foot away from them (and pointed sqarely at them), I think that I'd have been quite a bit more distraught than they seemed to be. Apparently it left a pretty nasty hole on the outside of the building, but when we left the hole was surrounded by cops, not to mention that the taxi was still planted squarely in it, so we never got a good look at it from the outside. According to the loud transvestite at the next table (who incidentally, called the three of us "fuckers" for our refusal to clap when prompted), the fellow had swerved to avoid an accident that would have been worse, but I'm not sure how much credence I should give to the testimony of a drunk transvestite.

So, anyway, although a late-night trip to the Diplomat usually does involve at least one cop car, this time was a little different than usual.